{"id":1257,"date":"2010-05-04T21:57:52","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T02:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/04\/a-symmetrical-peace\/"},"modified":"2010-05-04T21:57:52","modified_gmt":"2010-05-05T02:57:52","slug":"a-symmetrical-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/04\/a-symmetrical-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"a symmetrical peace?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> to my previous post<\/a>, I’ll agree to the cease-fire he proposes (though I hope we weren’t really sniping at each other!). At least after making one last point, which I’ll do by creatively misquoting his penultimate paragraph, specifically by inverting the object-relation duality:<\/p>\n


\n“Stated differently, I\u2019m not sure why a [relational] ontology is interpreted to mean that [objects] don\u2019t matter. Of course they matter. Hiroshima comes into relation with an atomic bomb, and much is changed thereby. The problem with [object-oriented] ontologies is that Hiroshima ends up just as affected by butterflies and grains of dust as by the atomic bomb.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The first three sentences make perfect sense in both Graham’s (original) and my (revised) renditions. The problem with the fourth, in both versions, is the word “just.” I’m also not sure why a relational<\/em> ontology is interpreted to mean that all relations, no matter how large or small, distant or proximal, stable or fluctuating, are equal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Cease-fire (or symmetrical peace) notwithstanding, Chris Vitale’s comment on our exchange at the wonderful blog Networkologies<\/a> opens the discussion up to a wider set of issues, and in the process explicates the kind of Whiteheadian-Deleuzian-Uexkullian “speculative realist relationalism” that I’ve been working my way toward as well. Chris also addresses the Meillassouxian critique better than I could. Meillassoux, in short, argues that “absolutizing the correlation,” or arguing that all objects are subjects — which is what Whitehead does, for instance — is idealist. As Chris points out, the Spinozan-Deleuzian tradition makes pretty evident that there’s no inherent reason why subjectivity and matter can’t get along. He writes:<\/p>\n

“Mind is simply part of what matter does, and the more complex the aggregate of matter, the more complex the aggregate of mind, for these are, to quote Spinoza, simply two different aspects of the same. And to continue the Spinozism for a moment, the more complex the society of the matter, and the more distributed its architecture (the more \u2018democratic\u2019 our objects, so to speak!), the more freedom there is.”<\/em><\/p>\n

His argument is worth reading in whole, and I’m looking forward to his book, Networkologies: A Manifesto<\/a>, which Chris informs us is close to completion. He also reminds us that these exchanges should be taken in a “spirit of good fun and debate,” and I apologize for occasionally forgetting that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/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":[16806,16807,16789],"class_list":["post-1257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","tag-object-oriented-philosophy","tag-relationalism","tag-speculative-realism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-kh","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1117,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/09\/08\/harmans-object-oriented-philosophizing\/","url_meta":{"origin":1257,"position":0},"title":"Harman’s object-oriented philosophizing","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019ve been reading Graham Harman\u2019s Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects and Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. More accurately, I\u2019ve been dipping into and sipping from the first and systematically digesting the second. Given the amount of blogging that goes on under the rising star(s) of \u2018object-oriented\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":1237,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/09\/subjects-objects-together-or-apart\/","url_meta":{"origin":1257,"position":1},"title":"subjects & objects, together or apart…","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"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\"\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":4692,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/06\/17\/those-objects-in-the-rearview-mirror\/","url_meta":{"origin":1257,"position":2},"title":"Those objects in the rearview mirror…","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Differences are starting to emerge in our group reading of Integral Ecology, with Tim Morton taking a grumpy stance from the back of the car while others are measured but generally more positive in their assessments. Tim's main criticism seems to be the Object-Oriented Ontological one that E\/Z's categories \"map\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":1233,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/06\/let-a-thousand-objects-bloom\/","url_meta":{"origin":1257,"position":3},"title":"let a thousand objects bloom","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a quick reply to Levi Bryant's reply to my post from this morning on objects and relations: I have no qualms about Levi's terminology, which I find to be generally very lucid and thoughtfully articulated. A philosopher not only has the right, but is expected to develop terms that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Bryant\"","block_context":{"text":"Bryant","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/tag\/bryant\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1256,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/04\/ontologizing\/","url_meta":{"origin":1257,"position":4},"title":"ontologizing","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"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.\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":1239,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/13\/subverting-the-subversives\/","url_meta":{"origin":1257,"position":5},"title":"subverting the subversives?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2019t find the cane\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\/1257","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=1257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}