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Posts Tagged ‘Ontology, epistemology’

Eco-onto-politics 2: Integralism & climate change

Posted in Climate change, Eco-culture, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , , , , on April 8, 2011 | 7 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 […]

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Ecology-ontology-politics (1): Pickering’s cyborgs

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Science & society, tagged , , , , , , on April 4, 2011 | 9 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 […]

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Ecosophy-G

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , , on March 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

To the extent that ontological questions drive my recent writing (which includes Ecologies of the Moving Image, Ecologies of Identity, and a metaphysical manifesto-thriller called Why Objects Fly Out the Window), they are predominantly the following two: How do things enter into relation with other things? What happens (in the world) when they do? In […]

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2 cheers for lava lamps & Lego blocks

Posted in Music & soundscape, Philosophy, tagged , , , on January 11, 2011 | 6 Comments »

Tim Morton seems not to have liked my comment suggesting that reality is a mix of stability and instability, and that stability is an achievement rather than a default position. The universe, I would say, is an achievement as well. His much-loved (?) lava lamps are achievements, as are Graham Harman‘s Lego blocks. They don’t […]

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Process-relational theory primer

Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , , , on November 5, 2010 | 12 Comments »

One of the tasks of this blog, since its inception in late 2008, has been to articulate a theoretical-philosophical perspective that I have come to call “process-relational.” This is a theoretical paradigm and an ontology that takes the basic nature of the world to be that of relational process: that is, it understands the basic […]

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assemblages, species, genres, & cinema

Posted in Cinema, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , on September 11, 2010 | 2 Comments »

(Warning: This is a long and involved post.) In reposting Steven Shaviro’s critique of DeLanda’s A New Philosophy of Society, Levi Bryant has reminded me of one of the impetuses (impeti?) that moved me to a Whiteheadian perspective. Steven’s review is excellent, and it prefigured what eventually became his book Without Criteria, which I think […]

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SR, Whitehead, etc.

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , on June 29, 2010 | 4 Comments »

I’m just catching up with this interesting exchange between Gary Williams (Minds and Brains), Graham Harman, and Tom Sparrow (Plastic Bodies). Williams takes issue with Harman’s and others’ portrayal of Speculative Realism as “revolutionary.” “The narrative of ‘finally’ moving beyond the ‘Kantian nightmare’”, he writes, “is tired and overplayed.” He argues that it’s not a […]

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actual occasions

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on June 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Glancing through a recent issue of the journal Subjectivity, I noticed that their very first issue — an impressive debut that featured an all-star cast of relational thinkers including Isabelle Stengers, Annemarie Mol, and Nigel Thrift — is freely available online (to non-subscribers). The issue also included an article by Paul Stenner that provides an […]

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Vibrant Matter round-up & final thoughts

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , on June 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

There’ve been smatterings of commentary on the posts dedicated to specific chapters of Vibrant Matter, but not the kind of extended arguments I had originally anticipated (before reading the book). So I’m guessing we may be wrapping up this cross-blog reading group (though Scu may still post on chapter 8). To the list of entries, […]

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Bennett’s conatus

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , on June 25, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Just as I was getting ready to wind up the Bennett discussions yesterday, Scu posted a substantial piece about chapter 7, and promised more to come on chapter 8. I’m glad to see it, since I thought there could have been more discussion about both (and about some general issues throughout the book). Picking up […]

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cane toads on Mars, firewalls on Pluto

Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, tagged , , , , 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?” [. . .]

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cinema, ontology, ecology

Posted in Cinema, Eco-theory, Media ecology, Visual culture, tagged , , , , , on March 14, 2010 | 8 Comments »

I’m on my way this week to the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in LA, where I’ll be presenting, in miniature, the ecocritical/ecophilosophical model of cinema that I’m developing in my book-in-progress. This “process-relational” model draws on Peirce, Whitehead, Deleuze, Bergson, Heidegger, and others, with inspirational nods to psychoanalysis, cognitive film theory (which, to be honest, is a little less inspirational, but to some extent inevitable), and individual theorists like Sean Cubitt, John Mullarkey, and Daniel Frampton. Its ecophilosophical basis is that it is primarily concerned with the relationship between cinema — as a technical medium, a thing in the world, and a form of human experience — and the ecologies within which humans are implicated and enmeshed. Here’s one articulation of that model. [. . .]

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