Television guitarist and songwriter Tom Verlaine has passed away. In his honor, I’m reposting something I wrote back in 2010, a version of which made it into Shadowing the Anthropocene. Much of it deals with the objects-versus-relations debate that was occupying the then very active “speculative realist” (“new materialist”) blogosphere. The first video captures Verlaine […]
Posts Tagged ‘relationalism’
R.i.p. Tom Verlaine (relationalism & earth jazz redux)
Posted in Music & soundscape, tagged Grateful Dead, improvisation, Marquee Moon, Miles Davis, musicology, object-oriented ontology, relationalism, television, Tom Verlaine on January 29, 2023 | Leave a Comment »
Process-relational readings
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged new materialism, Ontology, epistemology, organization studies, process research, process-relational thought, relational theories, relationalism, speculative realism, sustainability science, sustainability studies, Whitehead on March 21, 2020 | 1 Comment »
A very helpful analytical review of the “relational paradigm in sustainability research, practice, and education” has just been published online by Ambio. While it’s limited to a certain selection of key publications, the article, by European sustainabililty researchers Zack Walsh, Jessica Bohme, and Christine Wamsler, covers the terrain of “relational approaches” to ontology, epistemology, and […]
conversions & convertibles
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged Harman, object-oriented philosophy, relationalism, speculative realism on December 5, 2010 | 4 Comments »
(I try not to edit things once they’re published, but I couldn’t resist adding a Chevy Impala to this blog.) It may not quite be Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, as Graham Harman’s blog post title suggests, but Chris Vitale has clearly had a change of heart, a dropping of resistance that’s resulted […]
on Buddhism, objects, Zizek, Morton, etc.
Posted in Politics, Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, object-oriented philosophy, relationalism, Zizek 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 […]
relationalism, earth jazz, & the solstice
Posted in Music & soundscape, Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, improvisation, Miles Davis, music, object-oriented philosophy, paganism, relationalism, solstice 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.
the relational seduction of (and between) objects
Posted in Blog stuff, Philosophy, tagged blogosphere, object-oriented philosophy, relationalism, speculative realism 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 […]
a symmetrical peace?
Posted in Philosophy, tagged object-oriented philosophy, relationalism, speculative realism 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 […]
ontologizing
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged Harman, object-oriented philosophy, Peirce, relationalism, Whitehead on May 4, 2010 | 7 Comments »
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 […]
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. […]