Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

Reply to Harman

Posted in Philosophy, tagged on January 14, 2011 | 9 Comments »

Graham Harman has written a post about me in which he says that I was trying to “refute” OOO in my “2 cheers” post, and that I “claim[ed] quite frankly that OOO is wrong.” I thought it worth pointing out that nowhere in that post did I mention OOO, or Graham’s philosophy under any other name. […]

Read Full Post »

Puzzles

Posted in Philosophy on January 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

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 […]

Read Full Post »

2 cheers for lava lamps & Lego blocks

Posted in Music & soundscape, Philosophy, tagged , , , on January 11, 2011 | 6 Comments »

Tim Morton seems not to have liked my comment suggesting that reality is a mix of stability and instability, and that stability is an achievement rather than a default position. The universe, I would say, is an achievement as well. His much-loved (?) lava lamps are achievements, as are Graham Harman‘s Lego blocks. They don’t […]

Read Full Post »

On animism, multinaturalism, & cosmopolitics

Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 10, 2011 | 15 Comments »

Since there isn’t much available in English about Philippe Descola’s writings on animism, I thought I would share a piece of the cosmopolitics argument I mentioned in my last post. It will appear, in modified form, in the concluding chapter of the SAR Press volume mentioned there. Most of the volume will consist of ethnographic […]

Read Full Post »

Planes of immanence

Posted in Philosophy, Visual culture on January 3, 2011 | 1 Comment »

“Concepts are like multiple waves, rising and falling, but the plane of immanence is the single wave that rolls them up and unrolls them. … Concepts are the archipelago or skeletal frame, a spinal column rather than a skull, whereas the plane is the breath that suffuses the separate parts.” “it is a [the?] plane […]

Read Full Post »

…& beginnings (a toast to this moment)

Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter on December 31, 2010 | 5 Comments »

A process-relational buddhontology sees every moment as a moment of grasping, or prehension, that begins with an open, spacious cognizance, gathers/feels/responds to what has arisen before it, and ends in the satisfaction of its own concrescence. When the object of that satisfaction is unrecognized as what it is — as the immanent flow of desiring-production, […]

Read Full Post »

On anthropomorphism: making humans, pencils, & souls

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , , on December 29, 2010 | 8 Comments »

Tim Morton has recently been suggesting that just as humans anthropomorph (that’s a verb), so pencils pencilmorph. I love this idea, though I’m not sure about its implications, which I want to think through here. Anthropomorphism #1 (traditional, & its extensions) The traditional definition of anthropomorphism is something like “the attribution of human characteristics to […]

Read Full Post »

Books of the decade in ecocultural theory

Posted in Eco-culture, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , on December 19, 2010 | 24 Comments »

What books, published over the last ten years, have contributed most cogently and profoundly to our thinking about the relationship between culture and nature, ecology and society? (That’s to name just two of the dualisms this blog regularly throws into question.) Who have been the most important ecocultural theorists so far this century? And which […]

Read Full Post »

Agreements & productive differences

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on December 13, 2010 | 10 Comments »

Levi Bryant has proposed a ceasefire on the objects/relations debate, and followed that up with a nice post calling for self-moderation of our more confrontational urges and for a more affirmative writing (and blogging) style that would render the form of our writing more consonant with its content. I’m all for the latter; it’s something […]

Read Full Post »

Being knowing, knowing being

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on December 12, 2010 | 3 Comments »

The debate between relational and objectological variants of speculative realism (for lack of a better characterization) has taken another of its more frenetic turns, which is both frustrating and promising — frustrating because it tends to descend into personally directed pejoratives when it does that, and because, as Steve Shaviro suggests, it seems to go […]

Read Full Post »

mediation arrives…

Posted in Philosophy on December 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Michael at Archive Fire has been doing an excellent job summarizing and, at times, mediating between Levi, Bogost, and myself (and others). See, e.g., here, here, and here. He’s genuinely trying to see the best of both perspectives and to weave them into some concordance. Paragraphs like the following, which reframes  the discussion over life […]

Read Full Post »

repetition with (slight) difference

Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on December 10, 2010 | 4 Comments »

Just a few quick responses to Levi Bryant. Levi writes: 1) entities are nonetheless patterned or structured despite their becoming, 2) they are unities, and 3) they cannot be submerged in or exhausted by their relations. Relations can always be detached. Objects can always enter into new relations. [. . .] if you hold that […]

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »

Skip to toolbar