Ecology, ontology, politics: These three terms are among the most common themes of this blog, but their intersections deserve a more sustained exploration. This is the first of a series of posts that will do that through critical discussion of various readings and concepts. This first post reviews and reflects on some of the questions […]
Archive for the ‘Process-relational thought’ Category
Ecology-ontology-politics (1): Pickering’s cyborgs
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Science & society, tagged Bateson, cybernetics, ecology, Ontology, epistemology, Pickering, Politics, science studies on April 4, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Cronon, Chomsky/Foucault, & public reason
Posted in Academe, Blog stuff, Media ecology, Process-relational thought, tagged aesthetics, Chomsky, Cronon, Foucault, Politics, Wisconsin on March 29, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The Bill Cronon-Wisconsin Republican party tangle is making me — and many others, judging by the responses I’ve seen on academic listservs — think a little more deeply about how we use our e-mail addresses. Like many, I’m troubled by the possibility that someone could ask to see my e-mail correspondence on any old topic. […]
Ecosophy-G
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged ecosophy, ecosophy-G, eventology, Guattari, Naess, Ontology, epistemology on March 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
To the extent that ontological questions drive my recent writing (which includes Ecologies of the Moving Image, Ecologies of Identity, and a metaphysical manifesto-thriller called Why Objects Fly Out the Window), they are predominantly the following two: How do things enter into relation with other things? What happens (in the world) when they do? In […]
s(S)peculative r(R)ealism & philosophy-as-life
Posted in Academe, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged correlationism, ethics, Meillassoux, philosophy, speculative realism, Whitehead on February 27, 2011 | 7 Comments »
It’s nice to see Speculative Realism capturing the attention of SF writer and all-round idea impresario Bruce Sterling – see his Speculative Realism as “philosophy fiction.” As a long-time SF lover, the idea of “philosophy fiction” has always appealed to me. Some of the best writing in the genre has been profoundly metaphysical, which is […]
Paradigms, productivity, perspective
Posted in Blog stuff, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged object-oriented philosophy on January 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Levi Bryant responds to my last post (and by extension to Chris Vitale’s) here. I agree with him that he and Graham Harman have made worthy efforts at addressing concerns that are central to process-relational philosophical communities (e.g., in Bryant’s Difference and Givenness and in the books of Harman’s that I’ve lauded on this blog); […]
Vitale throws down the gauntlet…
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged object-oriented philosophy on January 14, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Chris Vitale has “thrown down the gauntlet,” as he puts it, to the object-oriented ontologists to finally respond in a satisfactory way to process-relational critiques. (I admire his Sicilian bravado!) Chris is obviously writing in a somewhat feverish mode, blogging at the speed of thought rather than in the tempered and cautious tone written philosophy […]
On anthropomorphism: making humans, pencils, & souls
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged animism, anthropomorphism, Jung, Latour, object-oriented philosophy, Whitehead 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 […]
Agreements & productive differences
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged Bryant, OOO 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 […]
Being knowing, knowing being
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged object-oriented philosophy, Whitehead 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 […]
repetition with (slight) difference
Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged Bryant, object-oriented philosophy 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 […]
the attractions of process (metaphysics)
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged object-oriented philosophy, process philosophy, Whitehead on December 9, 2010 | 26 Comments »
With Whiteheadian process philosophers and object-oriented ontologists meeting minds in Claremont, Chris Vitale softening up to OOO, Levi Bryant declaring himself a process philosopher — more precisely, that he’s “always been, [is], and will always be a process philosopher” — and Ian Bogost sharing a very sympathetic attempt to develop commonalities between the two schools […]
conversions & convertibles
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged Harman, object-oriented philosophy, relationalism, speculative realism on December 5, 2010 | 4 Comments »
(I try not to edit things once they’re published, but I couldn’t resist adding a Chevy Impala to this blog.) It may not quite be Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, as Graham Harman’s blog post title suggests, but Chris Vitale has clearly had a change of heart, a dropping of resistance that’s resulted […]