{"id":1206,"date":"2010-02-25T11:18:17","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T16:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/25\/more-serious-nutritious-morsels\/"},"modified":"2010-02-25T11:18:17","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T16:18:17","slug":"more-serious-nutritious-morsels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/25\/more-serious-nutritious-morsels\/","title":{"rendered":"more serious (nutritious) morsels…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judith Butler’s recent talk on Alfred North Whitehead, which you can listen to here<\/a>, is very impressive — and a heartening sign of the times. With Butler distancing herself from some of the implications of her earlier work on sex and gender (30-some minutes into the talk) and decisively settling into post-constructivist, non-anthropocentric, process-relational*, immanent naturalist**, vibrant materiality*** land, we can start to wonder: Of those who really shape the terrain of public thought, are there any real social constructionists left?<\/em><\/p>\n

(*=Whitehead; **=William Connolly, ***=Jane Bennett; but the scope of all of these, which is the theoretical scope of this blog, is much broader.)<\/p>\n

It’s a rich talk and I will probably have more to say about it soon. While I may be a little prematurely triumphalist here, it seems to me that the humanities are coming together around a paradigmatic convergence of sorts — a post-constructivist, post-representationalist, post-anthropocentric humanist, and post-Kantian one (I mean one that is post- exclusively <\/em>each of those, not one in which there is no<\/em> representation, no Kantian subjectivity, etc.), but whose positive terms have yet to find an agreed-upon center, an identifiable and singular “ism” (which is good). This shift has been long in coming, and I’m convinced it can be a powerful player in the public ‘making sense’ of the twenty-first century. While it still needs to be articulated in ever more coherent forms, a crucial next step — perhaps the crucial one — will be to communicate it across the “two cultures” divide. Because science is an important player in it, though it (unfortunately) hardly knows that yet.<\/p>\n

And secondly, a useful new study of the religion blogosphere has come out, with the support of the Social Science Research Council<\/a>, which is behind the Immanent Frame<\/a> blog (that I’ve mentioned here before). “The New Landscape of the Religion Blogosphere<\/a>” provides a very good overview of blogging in general (section 1<\/a>) and academic blogging more specifically (section 2<\/a>) before it goes on to map out the world of religious-themed blogs. Jason at The Wild Hunt<\/a> notes that minority faiths remain sparsely represented, but within the more mainstream faiths, the landscape covered shows some healthy diversity in political orientation, style, and more. The whole report can be downloaded here<\/a>. I can think of a number of other blogospheres that deserve this kind of study (environment, philosophy, etc.).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judith Butler’s recent talk on Alfred North Whitehead, which you can listen to here, is very impressive — and a heartening sign of the times. With Butler distancing herself from some of the implications of her earlier work on sex and gender (30-some minutes into the talk) and decisively settling into post-constructivist, non-anthropocentric, process-relational*, immanent […]<\/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":[688385],"tags":[107,16868,423],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog_stuff","tag-blogosphere","tag-post-constructivism","tag-whitehead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-js","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2589,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/08\/whitehead-media-theory\/","url_meta":{"origin":1206,"position":0},"title":"Whitehead & media theory","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Jussi Parikka at Machinology is reporting on media theorist Mark Hansen's move from a focus on media objects to a Whiteheadian focus on media processes. A few quotes: \"Well known are the Whitehead writings of Massumi and Manning in Montreal, and of course the recent Whitehead writings of Steven Shaviro,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4103,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/05\/23\/thinking-with-whitehead\/","url_meta":{"origin":1206,"position":1},"title":"Thinking with Whitehead","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Isabelle Stengers's Thinking With Whitehead arrived in the mail today. The publication of the English translation of this tome, a long nine years after the French original, is a genuine Event in the world of process-relational philosophy (or whatever you'd like to name the \"beatnik brotherhood,\" as Harman calls it,\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\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/05\/9780674048034-180x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8868,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/07\/06\/whitehead-in-greensboro\/","url_meta":{"origin":1206,"position":2},"title":"Whitehead in Greensboro","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 6, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This post follows up on my\u00a0previous note\u00a0about Alfred North Whitehead's time\u00a0spent in Greensboro, Vermont. It was updated on July 7, 2016, thanks to information obtained from the Mitchells' descendants. I have\u00a0found out where the Whiteheads stayed when he was writing his philosophical magnum opus,\u00a0Process and Reality. It was in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"s-l1600","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2016\/07\/s-l1600-275x182.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5836,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/05\/04\/nt5-shaviro-on-panpsychism\/","url_meta":{"origin":1206,"position":3},"title":"NT5: Shaviro on panpsychism","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 4, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I took a break from live-blogging [added later: I had originally written \"love-bloggin\" LOL. I won't correct other typos, but there're probably many of them here] during the break-out sessions, taking advantage of the time to work a bit more on my own paper, to be given this afternoon. I'm\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\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2012\/05\/149394_348082255245170_100001301968136_875238_106006282_n-206x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1331,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/09\/02\/realism-or-bust\/","url_meta":{"origin":1206,"position":4},"title":"realism, or bust","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael at Archive Fire just shared a good quote from Latour on Whitehead, \"king of the realists.\" Funny thing -- I just finished up some comments introducing Whitehead to my ecocinema students... The upshot of those comments is that, according to Whitehead's attempt to rewire the metaphysics of the western\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Whitehead\"","block_context":{"text":"Whitehead","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/tag\/whitehead\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1056,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/12\/deleuze-whitehead-bergson\/","url_meta":{"origin":1206,"position":5},"title":"Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Keith Robinson's introduction to the collection Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson: Rhizomatic Connections, just published by Palgrave Macmillan, provides an excellent and much needed overview of the reception histories of these three thinkers. Robinson's contextualization of them within the analytical and continental philosophical traditions makes clear why each has been marginalized or\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","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=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}