Graham is “puzzled that Ivakhiv thinks OOO can be refuted by the fact that objects have histories.” I’m puzzled why Graham would think that I think that. I’m also puzzled why my brief comment (on Tim’s blog) about stability and instability, and about stability as an achievement rather than a default mode, should have set off such a volley of responses (e.g. here and here).
There are a lot of things being mixed in here, for instance about “scientistic fact-candy” (which sounds like the kind of food I try to avoid) and about Deleuze and whether he, as Chris puts it, “reduces the sheer difference of objects to ‘all the same’” or not. On the latter, Tim and Graham may think he does, while Chris, I, and a dark army of Deleuzians (minus Hallward and Badiou, if they count in that category) would say he clearly doesn’t. But truth isn’t necessarily a matter of numbers, and Tim’s and Graham’s arguments are as welcome as any. Tim suggests that my reading his Ecological Thought, which he very kindly sent me a copy of, should change my mind about that kind of thing. I’m all for minds changing, but it’s a lot to bet on one book. We’ll see.
My point in that comment to Tim was to seek for a balance we might agree on. (I have been criticized, in the past, for my unforgiving attitude toward “objects,” and it seems that Tim was taking a similar attitude toward fluidity and change.) But things seem to have gotten personal and overheated, and I’ve decided to sign off for now from this debate (largely for reasons unrelated to it, actually). It continues here and here and here, for those who can’t get enough.
