The objects versus relations debate has revved up again over at Larval Subjects, in the commentary responding to Levi Bryant’s Questions about the possibility of non-correlationist ethics. The debate, as I would describe it, circles around the following question: If we agree that traditional philosophy has been too centrally premised on the relationship between humans […]
Search Results for 'process-relational'
the politics of objects & relations
Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, tagged Bergson, Bryant, Buddhism, Deleuze, Harman, object-oriented philosophy, political theory, relationalism, speculative realism, Spinoza, Whitehead on January 29, 2010 | 5 Comments »
subjectivity, impermanence, & dark flow
Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, flow, Lacan, meditation, mindfulness, Ontology, epistemology, Shinzen Young, Vipassana, Whitehead on December 7, 2009 | 19 Comments »
I think the idea and image of dark flow streaming out of our universe has also been resonating with me because of the work I’ve been doing using Vipassana teacher Shinzen Young’s system of mindfulness training. [. . .] Dark Flow is the (cosmic) Real, the shimmering atomic structure of things behind the structured object-world we (think we) see, the wave-like spirit-energy that Buddhists calls “emptiness” only because giving it a more substantialist term would already be a way of trying to contain it. Call it emptiness, or dark flow. If astrophysicists hadn’t “seen” it, we would have had to invent it. (I mean we, invent, it.)
Žižek and his Others
Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, ecology, environmentalism, Lacan, paganism, Zizek on November 24, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Speaking here at the University of Vermont last Friday, Slavoj Žižek responded to a student query about where to study Lacanianism by lauding our Film and Television Studies Program as the only one anywhere at which Lacanians are actually “in power” — the current chair, former chair, and at least one other faculty member, plus […]
on politics & ontology
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, tagged art, philosophy, Politics, speculative realism on November 2, 2009 | 7 Comments »
(For some reason, this didn’t go out over Google Reader, so I’m re-posting it…) The Speculative Realist blogosphere has been abuzz over the relationship between ontology and politics. Nick Srnicek’s post at Speculative Heresy – and the many comments on it – provide a good entry point to this discussion. Nick has wisely redrawn his […]
still process-relations all the way down
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged Delanda, Deleuze, Harman, Latour, relationalism, speculative realism, Whitehead on September 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Keeping up with Graham Harman means continually being tempted to respond to him, and since he doesn’t allow comments on his blog, for reasons I completely understand, I can only hold my tongue or flap it here. (Or I can do the respectful thing and write up a lengthier and more in-depth argument, but that […]
spinning the Earth
Posted in Eco-culture, Eco-theory, Philosophy, Spirit matter, Visual culture, tagged Buddhism, Deleuze, imagination, visuality, Whitehead on August 25, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Just by linking Carl Sagan’s eloquent little Pale Blue Dot to the teachings of Gautama Buddha, James Ure’s Buddhist Blog brings out the buddhism inherent both in Sagan’s words and in the imagery of the Earth from space. That imagery (as I’ve discussed before here and here) is multivalent, but Sagan’s spin on it — […]
when bad things happen (karma running over dogma)
Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged Bennett, Buddhism, deconstruction, Deleuze, mortality, Whitehead on June 26, 2009 | 4 Comments »
We live in a universe of hazard, a place where asteroids strike, where car smash-ups pluck out a life like a boot squashing a centipede, where planes fall out of the sky, a heart attack takes a brother from behind in the middle of a night, a train runs over a friend’s passed out daughter, […]
happy solstice
Posted in Eco-culture, Politics, Spirit matter, tagged eventology, immanence, paganism, revolution, revolutions, solstice on June 21, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Two revolutions are being marked this weekend. One of them is natural, cyclical, the revolution of the earth around the sun with the sun reaching its most northerly point (in closeness to the surface of the tilted planet we live on), standing still for a brief moment, and turning back to the south. The second […]
between continental & environmental philosophy
Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, tagged Continental philosophy, Deleuze, ecotheory, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Spinoza on May 30, 2009 | 26 Comments »
Responding to a post on this blog, Kvond, a little while ago, raised the question of the relationship between Arne Naess, originator of “deep ecology,” and Spinoza – which made me think of the interesting if sporadic/uneven/episodic relationships between the main traditions of continental philosophy and environmental thought. A glance at the changing editions of […]
open-source socialism & the politics of self-organizing systems
Posted in Media ecology, Philosophy, Politics, Process-relational thought, tagged autopoiesis, biology, ecology, ecotheory, enactive cognition, political ecology, self-organization, Whitehead on May 27, 2009 | 4 Comments »
(On Kevin Kelly’s “The New Socialism,” Paul Ward’s Medea Hypothesis, Steven Shaviro’s “Against Self-Organization,” and more.) Self-organizing adaptive systems and other networks are more than just the flavor of the philosophical month; they are a model increasingly used to make sense of the natural and cultural worlds. Generally it’s assumed that such distributed self-organization is […]