immanence

So I’ve started a Substack newsletter. It’s called “Terrestri(e)alism.”

It isn’t meant to replace Immanence, though there will be overlaps and we’ll see how things develop.

The reasons to go to Substack are multiple. It’s a thriving media ecosystem that’s both reader- and writer-friendly. Some of my favorite writers commenting astutely on today’s world are there, and likely some of yours, too. At the same time, it’s good to be aware that, like any single platform — especially one that’s a privately-held, venture-backed company — there’s a certain inevitability that that ecosystem will change, likely for the worse, for reasons that are outside the control of its users. (Cory Doctorow’s take on that is appropriate, and some say it’s already started to happen with Substack.) So there’s something about spreading one’s eggs across different baskets that’s relevant here.

I’ve loved this space here, and this WordPress platform hosted by the University of Vermont (where I’m still a faculty member, now technically “emeritus” and no longer salaried), and I don’t intend to leave it behind. Its 15-year archive of thinking and writing has been helpful for me and (I’m told) for others, and I intend to keep it that way.

But it hasn’t felt like it’s been growing with me recently. The early years of Immanence were particularly exciting, because it felt like there were a lot of us — bloggers (in the philosophical blogosphere, especially) and we were interacting much more — I’m thinking of the objects versus relations “wars,” for instance (they were friendly skirmishes, really), and the cross-blog book readings of texts like Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter. Substack seems like the best place that offers something akin to that level of interactivity today.

Reflecting on the last 15 years, it’s clear to me that blogging — writing a regular newsletter in plain view of the public — is a great way to keep one’s thinking active, alive, and accountable. A lot of what I’ve written here has worked its way into my writing, into books and articles that can now be read elsewhere (see the “Publications” links in the right-hand sidebar), and some of the feedback I’ve received here has been helpful for it. But much of that writing has not left an obvious “real-world” product, and it’s good to keep a record of that thinking, which this space will do.

That said, the Earth will go through its revolutions, technological systems will falter and fail, records and archives will pass and open up new niches for colonization by new life forms. (Selling my own vinyl record collection was one of those moments that forced me to reckon with the passing nature of all things loved. And of course we all know that from losing people we’ve loved. Fortunately, my Whiteheadian metaphysics is good with that, as one of my favorite books of comparative philosophy, Steve Odin’s Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics makes beautifully clear.) The moment will continue turning into the next moment, and communicating and sense-making from the midst of that transitional space — prehending, to use Whitehead’s word — will remain the most important thing we ever do. Maybe all we ever do, as I argued in Shadowing the Anthropocene.

So: Immanence will remain here, and I’ll continue publishing on it the things that seem most relevant to it. (My other blog, UKR-TAZ: A Ukrainian Temporary Autonomous Zone, will also continue in its form, where you can find things directly relevant to my research in Ukraine, the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the like. The multi-author book talk on my edited anthology Terra Invicta can be found there.) And I’ll keep writing for other venues, scholarly and otherwise.

But if you want to follow my thinking closely, over the coming months and perhaps longer, I recommend that you subscribe to “Terrestri(e)alism.” The About page gives you a sense of what to expect there. If it sounds like a rephrasing of what I’ve been writing here for years, that’s exactly what it is. But a rephrasing for riding the current of our times.