{"id":1382,"date":"2010-12-02T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/12\/02\/gleanings\/"},"modified":"2010-12-02T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T16:00:00","slug":"gleanings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/12\/02\/gleanings\/","title":{"rendered":"gleanings"},"content":{"rendered":"

(findings, briefings<\/a>, reports, call them what you will… I’m in an Agnes Varda<\/a> mood, which is helping me deal with the loss of several weeks of gleanings in the hard drive crash that will define my life as “before 11\/20\/10” and “after” it)<\/em><\/p>\n

Scientists found<\/a> that Asian and American brains respond completely differently<\/a> when faced with images of dominance and submission, and when evaluating character traits of themselves as opposed to other people. Asians and Americans gathered with other world leaders to fiddle<\/a> at a Mexican resort<\/a> while buildings burned<\/a>. (Some Americans<\/a> stayed away. Activists grew distressed<\/a>.) Hermetic libraries<\/a> began giving off their own whiff of smoke<\/a> amidst the dust. Google added trees<\/a> and climate prognoses<\/a> to the digital Earth. James Cameron tried to add a whole forest<\/a>. U.S. corporations, meanwhile, gave thanks for their record profits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Irish humanities academics called upon<\/a> Irish humanities academics to help save the country’s sinking economic ship. Worldchangers<\/a> sadly jumped their own ship, with barely a whimper. Anthropologists convening<\/a> in the shipwrecked city of New Orleans slugged it out<\/a> over whether or not they were scientists. Graham Harman and Steven Shaviro got ready to slug it out<\/a> in the middleweight neo-realist philosopher category of the international thought-wrestling society. (The heavyweights are mostly dead, though their thoughts persist, and a few of them linger on.) A heavyweight of another kind, Chalmers Johnson swam away<\/a> from it all quietly.<\/p>\n

(More on the Harman-Shaviro showdown, as well as other object-relational matters, soon. And of course I’m being facetious with my terms here. Both are great intellectual role models, among the best and most public and genuine of the new breed of philosopher-metaphysicians, and I eagerly await the results of their deliberations. You all know which of them I agree with more, but the debate has been truly invigorating, and has been the main cause of my own interloper’s slide into philosophy <\/em>sui generis – or so I hope that it’s <\/em>generis. Wish I could be there at the Whitehead conference<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists found<\/a> that Asian and American brains respond completely differently<\/a> when faced with images of dominance and submission, and when evaluating character traits of themselves as opposed to other people. Asians and Americans gathered with other world leaders to fiddle<\/a> at a Mexican resort<\/a> while buildings burned<\/a>. [. . .] Graham Harman and Steven Shaviro got ready to slug it out<\/a> in the middleweight neo-realist philosopher category of the international thought-wrestling society. [. . .]<\/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":[520594,1],"tags":[16795,16939,16805,266],"class_list":["post-1382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-politics","category-uncategorized","tag-anthropology","tag-cancun","tag-harman","tag-shaviro"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-mi","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13598,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/07\/18\/ontology-101-b-buchlers-natural-complexes\/","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":0},"title":"Ontology 101-B: Buchler’s “natural complexes”","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 18, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"An earlier post on this blog, entitled \"Ontology 101,\" proposed to clear the way for a general understanding of the different kinds of things an ontology (or general conception of reality) should be able to distinguish. My book The New Lives of Images, which will be out in September, examines\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\/2024\/04\/image-5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5474,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/12\/13\/the-joy-loneliness-of-being-interdisciplinarian\/","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":1},"title":"The joy (& loneliness) of being interdisciplinarian","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"What makes an -ologist, -osopher, -ographer? What, for instance, makes one an anthropologist? A geographer? A philosopher? A scientist? Scene 1: As chair of a search committee looking to hire a political ecologist, a tenure-track position to be shared between a Geography department and an Environmental Studies program, I've been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/12\/Alien-262x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12539,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/05\/14\/the-becoming-visible\/","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":2},"title":"The becoming-visible","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 14, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Two images came into my in-box this morning from wildly different directions, which in their combination set up a fizzy train of thought in their wake. (No doubt because of my current thinking on images in the Anthropocene, including images of that weird space where we find the religious, spiritual,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science & society"","block_context":{"text":"Science & society","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/science\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/05\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/05\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/05\/image-1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/05\/image-1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/05\/image-1.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/05\/image-1.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1198,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/15\/climate-denialism-as-hysteria\/","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":3},"title":"climate denialism as hysteria?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Dipping once again into the public debate around climate change science -- today it's in the responses to MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel's op-ed in the Boston Globe, to which no less than 15 comments were added in the couple of minutes it took me to write these first couple of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"ft0p3003d3_00001.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/02\/ft0p3003d3_00001.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10784,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/06\/04\/eco-ethico-aesthetics-and-george-floyd\/","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":4},"title":"Eco-ethico-aesthetics and George Floyd","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 4, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"As I explain in Shadowing the Anthropocene, process-relational philosophy in a Peircian-Whiteheadian vein takes aesthetics to be first, ethics to be second, and logic (which, in our time, we need to think of also as eco-logic) to be third. This is not a temporal sequence, but a logical one: aesthetics\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cultural politics"","block_context":{"text":"Cultural politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cultural_politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6072,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/08\/20\/post-soviet-riot-grrls\/","url_meta":{"origin":1382,"position":5},"title":"Post-Soviet riot grrls","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"While this doesn't have much to do with the usual themes of this blog, it is an interesting case study of media culture and political protest (and one that my Ukrainian studies background qualifies me to comment on). It's the case of Pussy Riot supporter Inna Shevchenko, an activist with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2012\/08\/original-275x183.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382","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=1382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}