{"id":3060,"date":"2011-03-24T21:11:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-25T02:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=3060"},"modified":"2017-05-08T12:38:33","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T17:38:33","slug":"ecosophy-g","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/03\/24\/ecosophy-g\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecosophy-G"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the extent that ontological questions drive my recent writing (which includes Ecologies of the Moving Image<\/em><\/a>, Ecologies of Identity<\/a><\/em>, and a metaphysical manifesto-thriller called Why Objects Fly Out the Window<\/em>), they are predominantly the following two:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. How do things enter into relation with other things?<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. What happens (in the world) when they do?<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In other words, I’m grappling with the nature of events<\/em>, which I would define as new relational processes arising unpredictably from the encounter of previously unconnected processes.\u00a0 If all things are taken to be organized sets of processes, bounded or unbounded, open or closed in varying degrees, then events would be occurrences that do not merely repeat<\/em> cycles of activity, but, rather, that bring new things into existence. They always feature the setting-off of processual action into a new direction, or into many. The general parameters of an event may be more or less predictable, but there is always an element of unpredictability, because of the creativity initiated in the creative advance into novel processuality that constitutes that event.<\/p>\n

    Readers of Whitehead may ask what doesn’t<\/em> qualify as an event. At the most microcosmic scale, every actual occasion could be called an event. My notion of an event, which may be better capitalized as an “Event,” or even prefixed as a “Hyper-event” (following Tim Morton’s lead<\/a>), encompasses not a single prehensive occasion, but a meeting of processual consistencies out of which arises an unpredictable set of distinctly new<\/em> processes, which in turn expand the circle of affective horizons by which their effects reverberate into the universe. The difference is a matter of scale, and the Events of interest to me will be different than those of interest to the ant crawling on the window in front of me. Epistemology thus always impinges on ontology; categories are affected by the perceptual capacities of those for whom they are relevant.<\/p>\n

    It just happens that the kinds of events I’m analyzing in depth all involve humans: film viewers entering into relations with films and the worlds they present (in EMI<\/em>); artists, music aficionados, travelers and pilgrims, entering into relations with landscapes<\/a>; scientists and journalists entering into relations with El Ni\u00f1o-Southern Oscillation weather patterns<\/a>; post-Soviet artists and East European border dwellers<\/a> entering into relationship with “the West” (in E of I<\/em>). But there is always more than just people and things: there are cameras, film-viewing spaces and screens, and the internet; dance steps, concert stages, and highways (in Cape Breton Island); concepts, models, media networks, ocean currents, and weather measurement devices; borders, maps, transfigured icons, and galleries (in East\/Central Europe).<\/p>\n

    And in principle there is no reason why the kind of process-relational ecophilosophy I’m proposing couldn’t be applied to events occurring among Himalayan snow leopards, soil microorganisms, worms and sulfur-oxidizing bacteria in deep-sea hydrothermal vents, or atmospheric processes on Titan — that is, in places where humans have either never dared to tread or are far from being central characters. I don’t have the requisite background in animal cognition, pedology, oceanography, or extraterrestrial geophysics to do that kind of work justice, so I will stick with what I know best, which is culture. But redefined through this prism, culture, I hope, will look rather different from how it’s traditionally been seen.<\/p>\n

    Why “ecosophy-G”? <\/em>I’m following Arne Naess’s habit of signing his own ecosophy as “ecosophy-T,” named after Tvergastein, a mountain hut where he apparently<\/a> wrote many of his books. My ecosophy comes closer, in many ways, to Felix Guattari’s<\/a> (and Gregory Bateson’s in turn), but the nod in each direction is apt.<\/p>\n

    The “G” stands for the Green Mountains, Greensboro (Vermont), Glastonbury Tor, and mount Grabarka<\/a>, all of which have loomed in the background of my thinking and writing at one point or another; and for geophilosopher-ecosophists Guattari (with Gilles Deleuze) and Gurdjieff<\/a>; and for the letter “ge” (\u0490, \u0491), which was excised<\/a> from the Ukrainian alphabet by Stalin, because if the Russians don’t have a “ge” and<\/em> a “he,” why should Ukrainians? To paraphrase Bakhtin, even letters will have their homecoming festivals. But mostly, it stands for ground, earth, land, Ge<\/em>, the Greek \u03b3\u03b7 or \u03b3\u03b1\u03b9\u03b1, the creatureliness<\/a> born from Chaos that in turn gave birth to sky, sea, and mountains. It is ecosophy grounded in these very things amidst which we find ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    To the extent that ontological questions drive my recent writing (which includes Ecologies of the Moving Image, Ecologies of Identity, and a metaphysical manifesto-thriller called Why Objects Fly Out the Window), they are predominantly the following two: How do things enter into relation with other things? What happens (in the world) when they do? In […]<\/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":[688977,4422],"tags":[16886,17849,16891,229,17850,692664],"class_list":["post-3060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","category-process-relational-thought","tag-ecosophy","tag-ecosophy-g","tag-eventology","tag-guattari","tag-naess","tag-onto_epistemology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-Nm","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5895,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/05\/14\/for-the-moment\/","url_meta":{"origin":3060,"position":0},"title":"For the moment","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that a very busy semester has ended, I can return to the constructive speculative-metaphysical strand of this blog, in which I work out the process-relational philosophy I've tentatively labelled Ecosophy-G. A suitable acronym for this project might be \"pre-G\" (process-relational ecosophy-G), pronounced \"pree-jee,\" with the \"pre\" also indicating that\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\/bubble-231x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6398,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/07\/13\/the-conceptual-machine\/","url_meta":{"origin":3060,"position":1},"title":"The conceptual machine","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I've always been more of an improviser than a long-range planner, but my job requires that I occasionally dabble in long-range projections of my work. Here's one. While a number of concerns have framed my scholarship over the years -- ethical, political, cultural, ecological, and theoretical concerns -- the philosophical\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":8836,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/06\/20\/whiteheads-genius-loci\/","url_meta":{"origin":3060,"position":2},"title":"Whitehead’s genius loci","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I was astounded\u00a0to read the following passage as I sat in a cottage on the shore of Caspian Lake in Greenboro, Vermont, earlier today: \"Work on 'The Concept of Organism' began with the summer of 1927, which the Whiteheads spent in a cottage on the shore of Caspian Lake, in\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":10465,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/17\/comments-on-process-relational-meditation\/","url_meta":{"origin":3060,"position":3},"title":"Comments on process-relational meditation","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 17, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Part Two of my book Shadowing the Anthropocene (open access to all) outlines a system of \"bodymindfulness\" practice rooted in the mindfulness meditation system of Shinzen Young, but extended triadically to account for the active nature of living. Here are a couple of comments on and tweaks to that system,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Process-relational thought"","block_context":{"text":"Process-relational thought","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/process-relational-thought\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/moment-of-nothingness-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1313,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/07\/06\/writing\/","url_meta":{"origin":3060,"position":4},"title":"writing…","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been slow here because I am hard at work on the manuscript of Ecologies of the Moving Image, which I had hoped to finish this summer. The first three chapters are complete or close to it; the last three and final epilogue are in various stages of semi-completion. Until\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11507,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/01\/15\/why-three-ecologies\/","url_meta":{"origin":3060,"position":5},"title":"Why three ecologies?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 15, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"French philosopher and psychoanalyst F\u00e9lix Guattari, in his The Three Ecologies, was the first to articulate the threefold nature of ecology, but he failed to provide a clear articulation of why there should be three and only three ecologies -- not two, not one, not four or more. What is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/01\/285bbd1e-a65e-4b4d-932a-36c5d608a22e_blob.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060","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=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9244,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions\/9244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}