• Home
  • About
  • Explore
  • Faves
  • Primer
  • Resistance
  • Who

immanence

ecoculture, geophilosophy, mediapolitics

Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Immanence

December 1, 2008 by Adrian J Ivakhiv

Immanence suggests co-implication, the implication of one thing in another (spirit in matter, mind in body, movement in repose, humans in nature), nonduality, the vitality of becoming rather than the stasis of being, the sufficiency of life in its generative relational flux, its vessels of light scattered for our gathering in each moment of darkness.

Philosophers of immanence, from Heraclitus and Nagarjuna to Spinoza, Whitehead, and Deleuze, find inspiration in the middle of things, the moment-to-moment movement of thought, awareness, connection, action, rather than in large, transcendent, ventriloquistic forces (such as ideologies, ultimate causes, or apocalyptic narratives).

Immanence suggests a continuity and empathic resonance rippling between things. “When we try to pick out anything by itself,” John Muir wrote, “we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” This could have well been written by Nagarjuna or by Jacques Derrida in an errant wander outside the text (as his later writings often did). Derrida may be popularly known for saying that “il n-y a pas d’hors-text,” or “there is no outside-the-text,” but his writings on ethics, religion, politics, and animality make clear that this “no outside” is more akin to a Zen koan or Nagarjuna’s “emptiness” than to a denial of bodies, spirits, and whatever else. Like Muir, both Derrida and Nagarjuna posit a world of what Buddhists call “codependent arising” (and see here), where things, ideas, and selves arise and make sense only in relation to others in a process of ceaseless becoming, the rhizomic connectivity of “and… and,” as Deleuze and Guattari put it, rather than the binarism of “either/or.”

This blog, like that process, will seek connections between environmental philosophy, cultural theory (especially in its poststructuralist and postconstructivist variants), and sciences and philosophies of the east, the west, and the ne(i)ther (the postcolonial, the fourth world, et al) — connections to help make sense of the world in its current states of unrest, swerve, systemic shift, transition, and (r)evolution.

(“Really, (r)evolution toward what?” you ask. How about to a socially and ecologically sustainable, post-carbon, self-renewing, radically democratic, globally just, and bioregionally diverse society. Murray Bookchin, I think, had spoken about utopianism being a necessity in our time. That would be effective, informing, inspiring, as opposed to pie-in-the-sky dreamy utopianism.)

An ethic of immanence is one of responsiveness shimmering across animate bodies to feel the collective breathing, the communion of subjectivity.

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Related posts:

  1. Stuart Kauffman coming to Vermont
  2. Avatar: Panthea v. the Capitalist War Machine
  3. Harman’s object-oriented philosophizing
  4. climate change victims

Posted in Philosophy | Tagged Connolly, immanent naturalism | Leave a Comment

  • Categories

    • Academe (108)
    • Anthropocene (75)
    • Blog stuff (52)
    • Cinema (88)
    • Climate change (75)
    • Cultural politics (46)
    • Eco-culture (175)
    • Eco-theory (57)
    • Manifestos & auguries (46)
    • Media ecology (125)
    • Music & soundscape (39)
    • Philosophy (261)
    • Politics (173)
    • Process-relational thought (101)
    • Science & society (38)
    • Spirit matter (131)
    • Uncategorized (59)
    • Visual culture (89)
  • Archives

  • Subscribe2


     

  • Popular resources

    Trump 2.0 critical resource list

    Lyme disease & beyond: a bibliographic resource

    Humming the New Earth (on the "global Hum")

    33⅓ Environmental Studies greats (or, a canon revisited) (2015)

    Books of the decade in ecocultural theory, 2020

    Books of the decade in ecocultural theory, 2010

    Between Continental and environmental philosophy (2009)

  • Publications

    Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth

    The New Lives of Images: Digital Ecologies & Anthropocene Imaginaries in More-than-Human Worlds

    Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies

    Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times

    Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature

    Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona

    Academia.edu (various articles; requires registration)

  • Selected interviews, talks, music

    Ecologies of the Multipolar Information Disorder, SFU, 2025

    Apocalyptic Anxieties, SFU, 2023

    SFU Global Humanities interview

    KCSB Selectric Davyland interview

    The Zone is Us (Vermont Humanities, 2022)

    Bandcamp music page

    What’s on my Bandcamp music page

    Soundcloud playlist (music sampler)

    Krista Tippett On Being (Speaking of Faith) interview

    Imperfect Buddha podcast

    10 greatest albums of the ‘album era‘

    More links here

  • Associated sites

    EcoCultureLab: Enter the Feverish World

    EcoCultureLab blog

    Media+Environment journal

    M+E+ blog

    UKR-TAZ: A Ukrainian Temporary Autonomous Zone

    E2MC (Evolving Ecological Media Cultures)

  • This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States license.
  • wordpress visitors

Get a free blog at WordPress.com

Theme: Mistylook by Sadish.


Skip to toolbar
  • UVM Blogs
    • WordPress
      • About WordPress
      • Get Involved
      • WordPress.org
      • Documentation
      • Learn WordPress
      • Support
      • Feedback
    • UVM Blogs Home
    • Site Directory
  • Sign In