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Posts Tagged ‘object-oriented philosophy’

on Buddhism, objects, Zizek, Morton, etc.

Posted in Politics, Spirit matter, tagged , , , on October 25, 2010 | 5 Comments »

I’ve been meaning to catch up on the discussions over Buddhism and objects/relations, Slavoj Zizek’s critique of “Western Buddhism,” and related topics, which have been continuing on Tim Morton’s Ecology Without Nature, Jeffrey Bell’s Aberrant Monism, Skholiast’s Speculum Criticum Traditionis, and elsewhere. I haven’t quite caught up, but here are a few quick notes on […]

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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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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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DeLanda, Peirce, etc.

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , on September 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Larval Subjects and several other blogs have begun their reading group of Manuel Delanda’s small but ambitious book A New Philosophy of Society. It’s not my favorite of his books — that remains the brilliant A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, followed by the drier, but useful, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. But I think […]

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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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relationalism, earth jazz, & the solstice

Posted in Music & soundscape, Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , on June 20, 2010 | 9 Comments »

If there’s a musical demonstration of relationalism, and by extension (as Skholiast points out) of ecology, it’s the kind of improvised music that the Dead are supposed to have excelled at (and occasionally did). The universe gives rise to many wondrous entities in its long history of spontaneity, relational responsiveness, habit-formation, and form-building. The habits start as rhythms, melodic chirps that turn into territorial refrains and calls, and that gradually maneuvre their way into verse patterns, melodies, harmonies, polyrhythms. Distinct songs develop for particular purposes and gradually get freed from those purposes, taken up into improvisational routines and performances, some of which crystallize into larger-scale architectonics, but only ever temporarily.

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daughter objects (& processes)

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on June 14, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Levi has a nice post on pedagogy, objects, and his daughter. His conclusions, I think, can be rephrased in terms more amenable to an objects-relations dialogue. [. . .] Since Graham has set out a challenge (“Take that, relationists!”), I’ll take a very quick stab at a process-relational reply:

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the relational seduction of (and between) objects

Posted in Blog stuff, Philosophy, tagged , , , on May 9, 2010 | 2 Comments »

I’m on the road, and haven’t been able to keep up with the continuing exchange that’s now drawn in Steven Shaviro and Chris Vitale in addition to Levi and Graham, with side comments from Peter Gratton and others. That despite Graham’s call for a “cease fire,” which elicited some spirited responses from Levi, Steven, and […]

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a symmetrical peace?

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , on May 4, 2010 | 5 Comments »

I should probably resist from critiquing blog posts, since these rarely capture one’s considered thoughts the way print articles and books do. So rather than replying in detail to Graham’s rejoinder to my previous post, I’ll agree to the cease-fire he proposes (though I hope we weren’t really sniping at each other!). At least after […]

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