I’m looking forward to Graham Harman’s forthcoming review of Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, and I’m glad to see that this discussion between object-oriented philosophy and Bennett’s vibrant materialism (and, by extension, the other theoretical impulses she draws on, which this blog, for the most part, enthusiastically shares) is getting underway. That discussion will no doubt […]
Posts Tagged ‘object-oriented philosophy’
ontologizing
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged Harman, object-oriented philosophy, Peirce, relationalism, Whitehead on May 4, 2010 | 7 Comments »
the remainder…
Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged landscape, object-oriented philosophy, pilgrimage, relationalism, religion on April 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
For an indication of why I’m interested in the “more” that object-oriented philosophers grapple with, the “remainder” beyond what can be accounted for of an object or phenomenon through relational accounts, I thought it would be appropriate to share a few paragraphs from my 2001 book Claiming Sacred Ground.
subverting the subversives?
Posted in Philosophy, tagged Harman, object-oriented philosophy, relationalism on April 13, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Graham Harman replies here and here to my last contribution, and Paul Reid-Bowen joins in with an interesting and original take on the debate at Pagan Metaphysics. I’ll try to keep my reply to both of them fairly brief in what follows. Graham writes that “You can’t find the cane toad by summing up all […]
cane toads on Mars, firewalls on Pluto
Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, tagged complexity, object-oriented philosophy, Ontology, epistemology, relationalism, speculative realism on April 10, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Replying to me here, Graham Harman explains his objections to relational ontologies, arguing that they fail to make a distinction between the “two sorts of relations” in which an entity is involved. These are not “the famous ‘internal’ and ‘external’ relations,” but are what he “somewhat whimsically” calles the “domestic” and “foreign” relations of an object. (I like this distinction, though I’m not sure how it’s different from internal and external relations.)
GH: “Surely Adrian doesn’t want to claim that the cane toad is a set of all its relations? If Mars were five inches further along in its course than it currently is, would the cane toad be a different cane toad than it is now?” [. . .]
subjects & objects, together or apart…
Posted in Philosophy, tagged Bryant, Deleuze, Harman, object-oriented philosophy, relationalism, speculative realism, Whitehead on April 9, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Levi Bryant’s detailed and generous replies to my critical queries, both in the comments section of this post and at Larval Subjects, and Graham Harman’s replies here (and in an e-mail exchange) have helped me get a much clearer sense of where the main differences lie between their respective “object-oriented” positions and my relational view. […]
let a thousand objects bloom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Bryant, object-oriented philosophy, speculative realism on April 6, 2010 | 15 Comments »
Here’s a quick reply to Levi Bryant’s reply to my post from this morning on objects and relations:
space junk & the (relational) Real
Posted in Philosophy, tagged Bryant, geophilosophy, Harman, Jameson, Lacan, object-oriented philosophy, relationalism, speculative realism, Whitehead on April 6, 2010 | 5 Comments »
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzUYiOV2-kE?fs=1&hl=en_US (This post spun off from the last, where I concluded by noting the increasing amount of debris out in the upper atmosphere. Somehow I couldn’t resist pulling that image into the vortex of ecopolitics and the objects-relations debate, which is carrying on at hyper tiling, Object-Oriented Philosophy, Larval Subjects, and elsewhere.) Like the tail […]
Bryant’s objects & a possible object/subjectology
Posted in Philosophy, tagged Bryant, Harman, object-oriented philosophy, relationalism, speculative realism, Whitehead on January 31, 2010 | 9 Comments »
Reading Levi Bryant’s blog sometimes feels like having a brilliant storm of white-hot thought rain down upon one’s backyard garden, the shoots struggling to stay vertical, but rendered that much stronger after the rain. There are wonderful passages in his recent musings on ethics, relations, objects, and ontology. From Ethical Etymologies: Thinking Out Loud (Always […]
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 »
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 […]
Things slip away… (on Harman’s Latourian object lessons)
Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, tagged Deleuze, Harman, Latour, mortality, object-oriented philosophy, speculative realism, Whitehead on September 9, 2009 | 33 Comments »
Continuing from yesterday’s post on Graham Harman… (Warning: This post is long.) Where Tool-Being presented a Heidegger flushed clean of his anthropocentrism, Prince of Networks takes Bruno Latour for a ride on a philosophical adventure toward a world not of actors and networks but of objects, pure if not so simple. The book’s first half […]