immanence

When one of our cadre of eco-cultural theorists gets noticed — more so, fêted — by one of the leading newspapers in the world, we need to take note and celebrate with him. In this case, it’s Timothy Morton getting called “the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene” by The Guardian, in a profile titled “A reckoning for our species.”

With his dozen or so books (at least half of them monographs), Tim has been incredibly prolific as an eco-critic, literary historian of Romanticism, and theorist of the ecological crisis. Long-time readers of this blog will know my critical engagements with the OOO orientation he converted to some years ago (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and in published form here and here). But there has always been much more shared than disputed, as our collaborations (such as our 2013 Latour panel and our Integral Ecology reading group) have shown.

Morton’s talks, for me, have always conveyed a kind of energy that is emblematic of his writing: at once passionate, droll, humorous, intense, and captivating. And his conceptual generativity — and influence far outside the ranks of scholars, as the Guardian article attests (for instance, on artists like Björk and Olafur Eliasson) — has been wonderful. We could do much worse than have prophets like him. Congrats, Tim.