I was going to post something to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, but Sarah Phillips has already posted something so good, saying many of the things I would have wanted to say, that I will simply link to her article at Somatosphere and add some personal notes of my own. The result reads more like a love letter to post-Chernobyl Ukraine than a lament. So be it.
First, a couple of choice bits from Sarah’s article:
Posted in Eco-culture, Politics | Tagged Chernobyl, ecology, environmental movement, nuclear politics, Tarkovsky, Ukraine, Vapniaky | 1 Comment »
Today’s link dump is devoted to sound, earth, religion, language, and the creativity of friends…
First the sounds. Here’s Science Friday’s Earth Day episode on the origins of music in the Great Animal Orchestra; and what American English sounds like to non-English speakers (hilarious):
Posted in Media ecology, Music & soundscape, Spirit matter | 2 Comments »
Happy Earth Day, and many thanks to those of you who’ve written me kind and appreciative emails in reply to my last comment.
I try to reply to emails individually, but just in case I don’t get around to it, your thoughts are always welcome and very appreciated.
Gone to Earth (Haida Gwaii series, A. Ivakhiv)
Posted in Blog stuff, Eco-culture | 1 Comment »
Substantive posts on this blog will be more sporadic for the coming little while, since I really need to focus on wrapping up my cinema book.
But do let me know (by private email or public comment) if you’ve been finding the “Ecology-Ontology-Politics” series, or any of the other lengthier recent posts, useful. Those may eventually work their way into publications, but that’s such a slow process (and its results so inaccessible, compared to online publishing) that I wonder how worthwhile it is to expend the energy for it.
At the same time, while I’m happy to post more like those pieces, the price you pay for having them here should be at least the occasional comment (or even just an email)! 😉
Posted in Blog stuff | 2 Comments »
Both Oxford and Indiana university presses are having their annual spring sales. Among other things, my own Claiming Sacred Ground is selling at Indiana for $12.
Also of possible interest to readers of this blog, at Indiana, are Jesper Hoffmeyer’s Signs of Meaning in the Universe, Foltz and Frodeman’s Rethinking Nature, and bunches of books by Peirce, Heidegger, and a posse of U.S. Continental philosophers (Sallis, Caputo, Lawlor, de Bestegui, et al.), as well as a good selection of cinema studies titles. The deals aren’t as good this year as they have been in past years, and unfortunately Peirce’s Essential Writings are not on sale this year; but John Sallis’s Topographies is a good deal.
Among the deals at Oxford are the following (note that the sale prices aren’t listed on the book pages, but go back to the sale page and you’ll find them – 50% or 65% off for all of those below): Hal Restivo’s Science, Technology & Society encyclopedia, Bill Edelglass’s and Jay Garfield’s excellent volume on Buddhist Philosophy, Jay Garfield’s highly regarded translation of Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika (The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way), Roger Gottlieb’s A Greener Faith, and David Orr’s The Nature of Design.
Posted in Academe | 1 Comment »
This post continues from the previous in this series, which looked at integral ecophilosopher Sean Esbjorn-Hargens’s writing on the ontology of climate change. Here I examine the relationship between leading integral theorist Ken Wilber, integralist Esbjorn-Hargens, and process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.
It’s a little difficult to separate Wilber’s and Esbjorn-Hargens’s views on Whitehead. I will simply refer to “IT” (Integral Theory) in speaking of both their views, though these are generally ascribable to Wilber. (And I should note that identification of the term “Integral Theory” with Wilber himself is not uncontested.) I will use “KW” (Wilber) or “EH” (Esbjorn-Hargens) when quoting from specific written sources. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes attributed to EH will be from his article “Integrating Whitehead: Towards an Environmental Ethic,” which is found online, undated and unpaginated, at the integralworld.net website. Most of the Wilber references are either from “Appendix A: My Criticism of Whitehead as True but Partial,” found here, or from printed sources, especially The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad (1997) and Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution (orig. 1995, revised 2000).
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Spirit matter | Tagged integral theory, integralism, nonduality, object-oriented philosophy, spirituality, transpersonal psychology, Whitehead, Wilber | 5 Comments »
(This is a slightly revised version of the piece I posted a few hours ago…)
I haven’t posted about the debate between object-oriented and process-relational ontologies for a while here, in part because I said I’d had enough of that debate.
But the more I read of Levi Bryant’s work — both in Democracy of Objects (which he’s kindly sent me a pre-publication version of) and on his blog — the more convinced I am that there isn’t much of a debate, at least not over fundamental and incommensurable differences, between his version of OOO and my understanding of PR ontology.
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought | Tagged Bryant, correlationism, Meillassoux, object-oriented philosophy, Peirce | 3 Comments »
Chris Vitale has a nice post up on Deleuze’s Bergsonian notion of the image as a “slice of time,” or a “slice of the world” — which for Deleuze amounts to more or less the same thing. In a similar spirit, I thought I’d post briefly about a Whiteheadian notion of time.
Normally when we think of slicing into time to depict a moment of it, we tend to think of it as a linear flow. Slicing into time is like slicing into bread: what’s on the left of the slice is the past (for westerners and others who read from left to right), what’s on the right is the future, and the slice itself is where we’re at right now. The world as it appears to us is a cross-section of the loaf.
Or a better metaphor, since we’re in motion, might be a train moving forward on the track of time: the tracks ahead of us are the future, those behind are the past, and the train is us.
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Spirit matter | Tagged Bateson, Ontology, epistemology, Peirce, rigpa, time, Whitehead | 5 Comments »
This is the second post in a series on the intersections between ecology, ontology, and politics. (The first reviewed Andrew Pickering’s The Cybernetic Brain.) Here I focus on integral ecologist Sean Esbjörn–Hargens‘s article An Ontology of Climate Change: Integral Pluralism and the Enactment of Multiple Objects. This post can also serve as a prelude to the cross-blog reading group on Esbjörn–Hargens‘s and Michael Zimmerman’s Integral Ecology, to begin in May of this year. The next entry in this series will look more directly at Integral Theory founder Ken Wilber’s relationship with the ideas of process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.
Posted in Climate change, Eco-culture, Philosophy, Process-relational thought | Tagged environmental sociology, Esbjorn-Hargens, integral theory, integralism, Ontology, epistemology, post-constructivism, Whitehead, Wilber | 7 Comments »
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 raised by Andrew Pickering’s latest book The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010). The next two posts will examine the integral theory of Sean Esbjörn–Hargens as applied to climate change, and integral theory pioneer Ken Wilber’s critique of process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Science & society | Tagged Bateson, cybernetics, ecology, Ontology, epistemology, Pickering, Politics, science studies | 9 Comments »
UW Madison has done an exemplary job responding to the Wisconsin Republican Party’s efforts to intimidate eminent environmental historian William Cronon. The two documents, by the university’s legal counsel and by chancellor Biddy Martin, are well worth reading and are available on Cronon’s blog. While many of the legalities are specific to Wisconsin, the principles aren’t. They deserve a congratulatory shout-out for upholding the best academic and legal traditions.
Posted in Academe, Politics | Leave a Comment »
Some of today’s most important eco-artists — people like Patricia Johanson, Betsy Damon, and others — work on a landscape scale with interdisciplinary groups of participants to render socio-ecological change into aesthetically tangible and artistically significant forms. Experimental dancer and choreographer Jennifer Monson’s work falls into this category as well, though, as dance, it tends to be more ephemeral and less product-oriented than even the most process-based of eco-art.
Posted in Eco-culture, Spirit matter | Tagged dance, eco-art, iLAND, Monson, New York City, performance | 3 Comments »
