{"id":1160,"date":"2009-11-30T21:03:16","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T02:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/11\/30\/more-on-zizek-natures-discontents\/"},"modified":"2009-11-30T21:03:16","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T02:03:16","slug":"more-on-zizek-natures-discontents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/11\/30\/more-on-zizek-natures-discontents\/","title":{"rendered":"more on \u017di\u017eek & nature’s discontents"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s interesting to watch a topic spin itself out rhizomically across the blogosphere. Picking up on \u017di\u017eek’s ecological musings, Levi Bryant<\/a> seems more or less in agreement with what I had argued here<\/a> last week, as does Michael Austin<\/a>, while Ben Woodard<\/a> criticizes the narrowing of the “ecology of concepts of nature” (a point I had made, too) and the “ontological priviledge of the subject” that “remains a serious stumbling block for any approach to nature that is not too shallow or too obfuscated.” This latter point sounds to me like Quentin Meillassoux’s (fashionable, in Speculative Realist circles) argument against “correlationism,” i.e., the (post-Kantian) anchoring of philosophy in the human subject’s relationship with the world. While I haven’t read Meillassoux’s After Finitude<\/a>, I share his critique of correlationism if it’s restricted to the human<\/em> piece (since the world is made up of more than just human subjects) but not to the extent that it tries to decenter subjectivity in general. As I see it, subjectivity and objectivity are mutually co-constituted through the events (becomings, actual occasions) that make up the world, and this relationship ought to be central to a philosophically realist understanding of the world.<\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek’s recent lecture on apocalyptic times is available here<\/a>, his First as Tragedy book talk here<\/a>, and his new blog<\/a> can alert you about other things being churned out of the \u017d factory. And see all the responses to Mikhail Emelianov’s short post<\/a> about the first, and Arts & Ecology’s post about the second<\/a>. What’s most interesting about the apocalypse talk is that \u017d. doesn’t include eco-apocalypse in his three main kinds of apocalyptic thinking in popular culture. Has he really come around to seeing both the forest (of “nature”-as-idea) and<\/em> the trees (the things themselves, including the effects we are having on them)?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the (pseudo-) event of the hacked climate change e-mails<\/a> continues to reverberate<\/a> in the media, siphoning off energy from the rather more important work of preparing for the Copenhagen summit. Grist<\/a>, Dot Earth<\/a>, Climate & Capitalism<\/a>, Arts & Ecology<\/a>, and WorldChanging<\/a> are some of the better sites for staying up to date on that topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s interesting to watch a topic spin itself out rhizomically across the blogosphere. Picking up on \u017di\u017eek’s ecological musings, Levi Bryant seems more or less in agreement with what I had argued here last week, as does Michael Austin, while Ben Woodard criticizes the narrowing of the “ecology of concepts of nature” (a point I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977],"tags":[16789,377],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","tag-speculative-realism","tag-zizek"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-iI","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2605,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/11\/examining-life-trash-radical-nature\/","url_meta":{"origin":1160,"position":0},"title":"Examining life, trash, & radical nature","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iGCfiv1xtoU I enjoyed Astra Taylor's film Examined Life when I first saw it a couple of years ago, and, having just watched it again, I'm glad to see that it bears re-viewing. As one might expect, some segments are more lasting than others. Slavoj Zizek wearing an orange safety vest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/iGCfiv1xtoU\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1099,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/07\/05\/speculative-realism-its-ecological-sympathies\/","url_meta":{"origin":1160,"position":1},"title":"Speculative Realism & its ecological sympathies","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The philosophical movement increasingly known as Speculative Realism is starting to get attention in these parts of town (the town being Academe, or at least its digital suburbs, and these parts being its ecocritical\/biocultural\/animaphilic ghettoes). News about the forthcoming re.press anthology, The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism, has been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1159,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/11\/24\/zizek-and-his-others\/","url_meta":{"origin":1160,"position":2},"title":"\u017di\u017eek and his Others","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Speaking here at the University of Vermont last Friday, Slavoj \u017di\u017eek responded to a student query about where to study Lacanianism by lauding our Film and Television Studies Program as the only one anywhere at which Lacanians are actually \"in power\" -- the current chair, former chair, and at least\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"images.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/11\/images.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6236,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/12\/11\/zizek-v-buddhism-whos-the-subject\/","url_meta":{"origin":1160,"position":3},"title":"Zizek v. Buddhism: who’s the subject?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This started out as a response to Slavoj Zizek's recent talk here at the University of Vermont on \"Buddhism Naturalized,\" but evolved into a consideration of subjectivity, which happened to be the topic of my next post in the pre-G (process-relational ecosophy-G) series. So this can be considered part 1\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1358,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/10\/25\/on-buddhism-objects-zizek-morton-etc\/","url_meta":{"origin":1160,"position":4},"title":"on Buddhism, objects, Zizek, Morton, etc.","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1366,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/05\/process-relational-theory-primer\/","url_meta":{"origin":1160,"position":5},"title":"Process-relational theory primer","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"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 \u201cprocess-relational.\u201d This is a theoretical paradigm and an ontology that takes the basic nature of the world to be that of relational process: that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}