Just a few quick notes on chapters 2 and 3 of Vibrant Matter. See Critical Animal for the continuing cross-blog discussion of the book (to be resumed after the Memorial Day holiday, no doubt), and Philosophy in a Time of Error for what’s been said so far.
These two previously published chapters seem to me to be illustrations of Bennett’s thesis, but not necessarily advancements of it, so I will be reserving more commentary for what comes later in the book.
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought | Tagged Bennett, vital materialism | 3 Comments »
From Evan Eisenberg’s The Ecology of Eden:
Half a million years ago, our genus formed an alliance with perennial grasses which allowed us to conquer the world. Over the past ten thousand years, an alliance of humans and annual grasses has conquered much the same ground in a fraction of the time, displacing or subduing not only other species but other humans, their allies, and their cultures.
Only a few centuries ago, a third alliance arose which is now very close to total hegemony over the living world. It has displaced or subjugated much of the natural world that survived the first two waves, as well as what was left of the waves themselves, including humans, their allies, and their cultures. The odd thing about this third alliance is that our most important allies have been dead for millions of years. They are cycads, ferns, giant horsetails, mollusks, plankton, and other creatures that flourished in the Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras, and which the bear-hug of the earth’s crust has crushed into energy-rich carbon compounds.
Modern humans are merely the latest in a long and distinguished line of saprophages: creatures such as fungi, maggots, and various microbes that feed off decaying or decayed organic matter. In our case, the dead organic matter in question is wood, peat, coal, and oil. [. . .]
An oil spill is a kind of night of the living dead, in which dead organic matter that we have called from its grave rises and strangles the living. But oil spills are the least of the problems that fossil fuels cause. For species not allied with man, this third wave is a horror show in which their own ancestors come back to haunt and harm them. Whatever humans could do before–strip forests, rip up soil, move themselves and their allies to the outermost corners of the world–they can now do more easily. [. . .] The earth is punctured, gouged, and scraped to get at more fuel, and at the minerals that are used to make the machines that use the fuel. [. . .]
A biologist from a pedestrian planet, peering at some stretch of North America from a height of five hundred feet, will conclude that its dominant species is a shiny lozenge-shaped reptilian creature that alternately basks in the sun and sprints at great speed. It is host, he will note, to small endosymbiotic organisms which at intervals emerge, move about slowly, then re-enter the host. Further observation reveals why the host puts up with these seeming parasites. They are devoted to the care and feeding of the host. They suck energy-rich organic compounds from the bowels of the planet and feed them to the host, something it is unable to do for itself. At times they even fight other colonies of their own species for access to the host-food. They make over ecosystems to meet the host’s needs, replacing vast forests and grasslands with flat surfaces on which the host can bask or sprint more easily, and building hives or dens in which the host can take shelter from the elements. What they get in return is as yet unclear. Indeed, it seems possible the two organisms are forms of the same species, the lozenge being a sort of queen and the smaller creature a worker.”
Posted in Eco-culture | Tagged ecopolitics, oilpocalypse, petrochemical civilization | Leave a Comment »
…sinking into ugly reality
Many more like this came out of Greenpeace UK’s
rebranding BP competition.
Posted in Visual culture | Tagged environmental communication, Greenpeace, oilpocalypse | Leave a Comment »
The Associated Press is reporting that the “oil spill cam” has become an Internet sensation. On Thursday, apparently, “more than a million people watched it. Many found it hypnotic.”
Also, apparently, watching the video can “offer clues to who is winning in the battle — BP or the oil,” according to the director of the National Spill Control School (?) at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi.
“If the stuff coming out of the pipe is jet black, it is mostly oil and BP is losing. If it is whitish, it is mostly gas and BP is also losing.
“If it is muddy brown, as it was Friday, that may be a sign that BP is starting to achieve success, [National Spill Control School director Tony Wood] said. That ‘may in fact mean that there’s mud coming up and mud coming down as well,’ which is better than oil coming out, Wood said.”
Or, as a developer whose “gated fishing community” is “now on hold because of the spill” put it: “It’s the unknown that’s killing us.” Indeed. What else besides “the unknown” lurks beyond the the Deepwater Horizon?
Compared to the other videos I posted, silence may speak loudest. Here, it seems to be accompanied by a mechanical alien probing around on another planet, out of a film by Werner Herzog:
Posted in Media ecology | Tagged oilpocalypse | 2 Comments »
As of yesterday, academic file-sharing library AAAARG appears to be dead. (This time for real.)
Digital death, however, is rarely total or eternal, and arg-ists at the Facebook group (find it yourself) appear to be awaiting instructions about the next incarnation. Red-robed monks are scouring the electronic Himalayas searching for the child manifesting the correct signs. An unusual alignment of stars can be expected to announce the next location.
Here, in the meantime, are a few pages of interest for aaaarg buffs, e-library lovers, and open-sourceniks:
Masters of Media ｻ Small is Beautiful: a discussion with AAAARG architect Sean Dockray
Scanners, collectors and aggregators: On the ‘underground movement’ of (pirated) theory text sharing
Sub Specie Aeterni on “Help!!! AAAARG.ORG!!!” (scroll down for some recent comments)
Posted in Academe | 3 Comments »
Chris at Networkologies has an excellent reply to my post on time- and crystal-images and the campaign ads he had described here. Chris writes:
When we first see a campaign ad, our first thought might not be that there is virtuality lurking within the images before us, but of course, for Deleuze, there is virtuality lurking within everything, the trick is to find ways to unveil and release it. But as each reworked rif on an ad is produced, each new version expands virtual potentials present within the original, just as each of these new versions can serve as potential fodder for new reworkings. Many of these reworkings are incompossible with each other, but they are all fundamentally mirrorings of the original ad, which is its germ, with YouTube as the medium which then crystalizes into the new ads themselves as so many mirrors. Its in this sense that we see time ‘gush forth’ from these images in multiple directions.
Acknowledging some puzzlement over the Slowdive video I had included in that post (which I chose partly because it resonated with Tim Morton’s post, and because it was simple — a remix/reviewing of only two elements, or moments from two other films, sutured together through a single piece of music — and partly because I liked it), Chris still manages to insightfully read the video as a crystal-image in which “Difference emerges within the image in previously unexpected ways, producing new potential pasts and futures of the film images.” See the rest of the post here.
With our shared interest in Deleuzian, Whiteheadian, and other process-relational approaches and in media in general and cinema in particular, I’m finding Chris to be a kindred spirit in cultural theory, and am looking forward to his forthcoming Networkologies book.
Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments »
How’s that drill-baby-drilly stuff workin’ out for ya?
On the other hand, the violence in détournements like this one is pretty grotesque. I’m even hesitant to link to it, let alone embedding it, for fear of getting my hands too dirty. I don’t think I’d want the guy who made it (no question it’s a guy) to live in my neighborhood. Thuggery (and misogyny) disguised as political cleverness. Makes me want to defend Sarah Palin.
Posted in Media ecology, Politics | Tagged ecopolitics, oilpocalypse | 1 Comment »
The OTE keeps unfolding…
Does that thing (between 0:11 and 0:27) know what it is swimming through??
Here’s a good collection of some of the most memorable images (but what’s that awful music?):
Does Sarah McLaughlin improve things a little?
Posted in Politics, Visual culture | Tagged ecopolitics, eventology, media, oilpocalypse | 2 Comments »
Levi Bryant has an interesting post on how the internet is changing the way philosophy gets done. For Levi the web, despite its drawbacks, represents
“something of a dialectical synthesis between the Athenian agora and text. Any idiot gets to speak and participate in discussion, and audience is no longer an audience of fellow scholars within a discipline, but whoever comes along and has something interesting and intelligent (hopefully) to say. As a consequence, the sorts of dialogues that emerge in print are no longer determined by the gate-keepers of elite journals, conferences, or the pedigree of schools, but rather are the consequence of the formation of collectives that are borne of people that would like to talk a bit more with each other. Not only do we witness the emergence of electronic journals and presses devoted to rendering intellectual labor a dimension of “the common”, of that which is owned by no one, of that which is readily available to everyone who is able to click on a link, but all sorts of new possibilities emerge within this common as well. […] It is now possible for graduate students to engage with established thinkers one on one whether through email or through blogs.”
And over time, I’m sure (it’s happening already), those among the established thinkers who engage with these electronic-pioneering graduate students — blogging philosophers and cultural theorists like Bryant himself, Harman, Leiter, Shaviro, Jodi Dean, Henry Jenkins, et al — will grow in influence, while those who don’t will gradually fade away.
I don’t think the open-access internet will ever become the sole venue, and probably not even the primary venue, for philosophical and critical thought. Specialized journals and elite societies with their gatekeepers and credentials-checkers will continue to play an important role, because they perform a useful function and because the academic profession requires that sort of thing. But the two will grow into a kind of symbiosis with each other. So tomorrow’s Socrates and Zeno will be debating in the electronic agora as much as they will be lecturing in the academy, and Epicurus and Plotinus will be blogging the daily regimen from their philosophical communes. Traffic will flow smoothly and steadily between the streets, the teahouses and libraries, and the deserts and monasteries to which the empire’s refugees have retreated. (Or ecosteries, rather, where the practicalities of sustainable living will be figured out as society redesigns itself for a post-carbon future. A sweet thought in a time when the gushing blackness of oil seems bottomless.)
With all that in mind, it’s good to see Progressive Geographies, Archive Fire, Critical Animal, and others chipping in to the Vibrant Matter blogathon (which is becoming ever more spread out, including on this week’s host blog, Philosophy in a Time of Error).
And good, also, to see the continuing activity everywhere on the Middlesex crisis — which reminds us that without the academy the digital agora, at least its philosophical wing, risks losing its muscle, if not its raison d’être. Philosophy still needs the intensity of face-to-face discussion, debate, close mentoring, and the institutional grooming that goes along with it.
Still, it’s nice to dream of a world in which philosophy and the liberal arts aren’t seen as unprofitable appendages left over from an era of bloated welfare states (a neoliberal narrative that is deeply problematic), but where they are vital nodes within a culture of social and ecological transformation — not because philosophy feeds social change in some direct, instrumental way, but because of a shared recognition between philosophers and activists of how and why it is that we have come to live in a world of oil spills and economic crises, and how and why it could be all different.
Posted in Academe, Media ecology | Tagged Academe, blogosphere, philosophy | Leave a Comment »
The Vibrant Matter Reading Group has launched: see Peter Gratton’s generous flow of postings at Philosophy in a Time of Error, all linked here.
What follows is my first series of thoughts on the book, with a focus on chapter 1. I’ll try to add bits of these as appropriate to the comments in Peter’s postings, but since I’ll be in transit for a large part of today and at a retreat much of the day tomorrow, I thought I would get these out here first.
To start with, I should say that I am deeply sympathetic to Bennett’s project, which I see as closely aligned with the theoretical task that’s been central to my own thinking for several years now. That task is the articulation of a post-constructivist understanding of the world, one that sees the world to be made up of complex relational processes that, at one and the same time, take material forms (things we can see, measure, predict, and so on) and contain or express affective-semiotic dynamics (“internal” dynamics associated with perception, responsiveness, subjectivity, and affectivity or feeling). Such a “process-relational” view attempts to overcome the divides between object and subject, matter and mind/spirit, realism and constructivism, structure and agency — divides that have shaped and encumbered western thinking for centuries — by resituating them within dynamic processes of world-making and becoming.
Posted in Philosophy | 1 Comment »
I’ve been wanting to post something about the images of the Gulf oil spill (or, rather, of the unmitigated man made deep water volcanic vent of crude oil and gas) — about what they indicate (i.e. directly inform us about), what they symbolize (i.e., mean) and iconize (look like), and why it might be that CNN and other cable news outlets are so fascinated by the Spillcam. Of course, they mean different things to different people: corporate negligence or ecocide to some, more disappointment in political saviors to others, the dark ecological eye of the Real to yet others (at least that’s something like what I would expect to hear from Zizekians, Mortonites, and maybe dark vitalists), and perhaps just a vague of sense of weird (un)reality to most.
We leap from rock to rock across a raging river — economic crash, volcanic fog, oil spill, and so on — and these are the images that link the chain for us, the dream of globality, the chain we can use as a string of prayer beads or as the rope to strangle ourselves with.
… And about the Middlesex philosophy fiasco, which one can hope isn’t a harbinger of academic seismic shifts to come. (We have some power not to let that happen.)
I’ve been too busy writing and dealing with other matters to do much of either. But it’s a good time for thinking about the sorts of things Jane Bennett writes about in her political ecology of things. The reading group should be getting started over at Philosophy in a Time of Error shortly (and winding its way over here eventually).
Posted in Visual culture | Tagged media, oilpocalypse | 1 Comment »
A couple of recent posts by Chris Vitale and Tim Morton have rekindled my thinking about Deleuze’s crystal-image. Chris’s interesting post is about the power of crowdsourcing and video detournement in delivering a more democratic form of media politics. Tim’s brief posts share music videos and reflections on dark ecology and the timbral.
Chris describes the video detournements as “crystal-images,” where “one image acts as a germ or seed, and it crystalizes the medium its in, just like a string when you make rock candy. The result is a proliferation of possible paths the image can take, but they all echo each other.” My understanding of the crystal-image is a little different from this, but I think it’s fruitful to pursue Chris’s trajectory while combining it with the more ambient trajectory of Tim’s and Deleuze’s own thought. The crystal-image is fundamentally about time, which, for Deleuze (following Bergson), is the flow in which we find ourselves, looking back and forward at one and the same moment. Deleuze writes:
“What the crystal reveals or makes visible is the hidden ground of time, that is, its differentiation into two flows, that of presents which pass and that of pasts which are preserved.” (Cinema 2, p. 98)
Posted in Cinema, Media ecology, Visual culture | Tagged Deleuze, time | 4 Comments »
