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Archive for the ‘Process-relational thought’ Category

things

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought on November 19, 2010 | 3 Comments »

. . . scribbled on a restaurant napkin: 1. Things are always already in process. 2. More complex things are more in process, or in more (and different) processes, than simpler things. 3. Growing/developing/evolving things tend to become more complex. Other things tend to become less so. 4. Being in process, things elude capture. Those […]

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Process-relational theory primer

Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , , , on November 5, 2010 | 12 Comments »

One of the tasks of this blog, since its inception in late 2008, has been to articulate a theoretical-philosophical perspective that I have come to call “process-relational.” This is a theoretical paradigm and an ontology that takes the basic nature of the world to be that of relational process: that is, it understands the basic […]

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philosophy, salvation, & the world

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged , on October 1, 2010 | 7 Comments »

Fabio Gironi has a very perceptive response to the recent posts at Larval Subjects, Ecology Without Nature, and here, over Buddhism, objects, and relations. I like his admission that “I have never been – nor [do] I plan to be—a practicing Buddhist or a ‘believer’ of any sort, but the encounter with Nāgārjuna’s philosophy was […]

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Buddhist objects & processes

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , on September 29, 2010 | 6 Comments »

Does object-oriented ontology = Buddhism? Tim Morton has been making intriguing sounds to that effect, and Levi Bryant has begun to ask him the hard questions about how and whether that might be possible — of how to “square the circle” of independent substances (OOO) with Buddhism’s conditioned genesis (a.k.a. dependent arising, codependent origination). Tim’s […]

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assemblages, species, genres, & cinema

Posted in Cinema, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , on September 11, 2010 | 2 Comments »

(Warning: This is a long and involved post.) In reposting Steven Shaviro’s critique of DeLanda’s A New Philosophy of Society, Levi Bryant has reminded me of one of the impetuses (impeti?) that moved me to a Whiteheadian perspective. Steven’s review is excellent, and it prefigured what eventually became his book Without Criteria, which I think […]

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stray shopping carts

Posted in Eco-culture, Process-relational thought, tagged , on September 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Julian Montague’s Stray Shopping Cart Project ought to please both objectophiles and processophiles (for different reasons–which suggests a pragmatic solution to that debate): “Until now, the major obstacle that has prevented people from thinking critically about stray shopping carts has been that we have not had any formalized language to differentiate one shopping cart from […]

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strange strangers, or just weird friends?

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged on August 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

One of the challenges of blogging is that, if one is to do it respectfully and well, one must be prepared to respond to one’s critics, and in such a high-speed medium this can lead to a pace that is unsustainable over time. The coming days won’t allow me much time for such exchanges, but […]

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in defense of relations (again)

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on August 21, 2010 | 19 Comments »

In response to my last post, Levi is arguing, as Graham has before, that relational ontologies have had their day, that “it is relational and processual thought that has become a habit that prevents us from thinking, not object-oriented thought,” and that “For the last century we’ve repeatedly said ‘things are related’ to such a degree that claims about interdependence, relation, and interconnection have lost a good deal of meaning” and “become stale metaphors and worn coins.”

[…]

My belief, if it needs reiterating, is that we -– society at large -– still have not developed a nuanced enough understanding of the nature of relational process, including the many different kinds of relational processes that make up the world. This is why we still put animals in cages (as if the jaguar in a cage is the same as the jaguar in a forest) and dump toxins on our farms (as if the final product is the pest-free corn and not the health of the soil), still produce objects that are guaranteed to be obsolete junk in a few years (as if their making and disposal wasn’t an integral part of them), still buy those objects (as if they will satisfy our cravings for something new and exciting), still send soldiers to war and forget about them when they come back (leaving their partners and kids without health insurance, as is the case with a friend of ours who lives up the road), still expect that we can “win” wars (as if they won’t breed the resentment that will lead to even worse wars), still define people according to fixed gender identities and racial categories, and put people away for life (in this country at least) because they don’t have the means to live in ways that would exercise their creative potential, and so on and so forth. […]

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almost a real Paris

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , on August 18, 2010 | 5 Comments »

I haven’t wanted to tread into the recent Speculative Realist debates over Derrida, in part because I haven’t had time for them (and my internet access has been a little unreliable), but in part also because I think they’re mostly reiterating themes that have already been well covered. OOO makes a valid and important point […]

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conversions

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged , on August 7, 2010 | 1 Comment »

What a lovely, touching post Tim Morton has written about his conversion to object-oriented ontology. Since my days of doing religious-studies fieldwork, I’ve always gotten ripples of that nameless mixture of joy, pleasure, and sad melancholy — that feeling of being existentially touched, even pierced — whenever I’ve been around people undergoing conversion experiences (whether […]

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Inception: the anti-Matrix?

Posted in Cinema, Process-relational thought, Visual culture, tagged , on August 6, 2010 | 8 Comments »

I’ve been studiously avoiding reviews of Inception, Christopher Nolan’s new metaphysical heist thriller, wanting to see it for myself (intrigued by its premise) before I start to see it through other people’s eyes. Today I saw it, and I’ve now scanned some of the reviews and a bit of blog commentary (see links at bottom). […]

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writing…

Posted in Cinema, Media ecology, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on July 6, 2010 | 7 Comments »

It’s been slow here because I am hard at work on the manuscript of Ecologies of the Moving Image, which I had hoped to finish this summer. The first three chapters are complete or close to it; the last three and final epilogue are in various stages of semi-completion. Until they are complete, blogging may […]

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