{"id":6516,"date":"2013-02-23T05:59:01","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T10:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=6516"},"modified":"2013-02-23T05:59:01","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T10:59:01","slug":"shaviro-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/02\/23\/shaviro-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaviro interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few<\/a> cousin<\/a> blogs<\/a> have already mentioned<\/a> Figure\/Ground’s interview with Steven Shaviro<\/a>, which I recommend for those interested in Whitehead, speculative realism, media theory, and other themes explored on this blog.<\/p>\n

Shaviro has insightful things to say about Isabelle Stengers’ role in reviving an interest in Whitehead, Gilbert Simondon and his (and Whitehead’s) relevance for ecological thinking, and Francis Fukuyama’s neo-conservative critique of the academic tenure system.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On the latter:<\/p>\n

[Question:] Francis Fukuyama argues that the tenure system has turned the academy into one of the most conservative and costly institutions in the country, making younger untenured professors fearful of taking intellectual risks and causing them to write in jargon aimed only at those in their narrow subdiscipline. He believes the freedom guaranteed by tenure is precious, but thinks it\u2019s time to abolish this institution before it becomes too costly, both financially and intellectually. What do you make of Fukuyama\u2019s assertion?<\/em><\/p>\n

I think that Fukuyama\u2019s assertion is altogether false, and indeed risible. I don\u2019t know whether to ascribe his claim to honest ignorance or deliberate malice, but it must be one or the other. One of the most important reasons for tenure is precisely that it protects scholars, preserving them from the pressures of knee-jerk conformism and conservatism. It is indeed true that, to a certain extent, \u201cyounger untenured professors\u201d are put in a position where they are forcibly made \u201cfearful of taking intellectual risks.\u201d But this need for caution and conservatism on the part of such younger scholars is precisely because they don\u2019t (yet) have tenure!<\/p>\n

Once scholars achieve tenure, they are much more free to go in new directions and strive beyond the boundaries of \u201ctheir narrow subdiscipline.\u201d To abolish tenure would be precisely to make the conformism and fear of risk that Fukuyama claims to deplore a universal condition \u2014 nobody would dare to be original any longer. In a university system without tenure, if you ever went beyond the limits of your \u201cnarrow subdiscipline,\u201d you would lose your job. We would have an unconditional reign of the marketplace, which means that the only form of intellectual activity to be encouraged would be that of the star system in which a very small number of so- called \u201cpublic intellectuals\u201d would make huge amounts of money by pontificating via dubious overgeneralizations and simplistic political pronouncements \u2014 precisely in the manner that is exemplified by Fukuyama himself.<\/p>\n

It is disingenuous at best, and dishonest at worst, to worry about tenure being \u201ctoo costly\u201d, either \u201cfinancially\u201d or \u201cintellectually.\u201d Universities want to get rid of tenure precisely so that they can replace professors with adjuncts who are much more poorly paid, and who are usually denied the benefits that permanent employees most often have. However, despite the mania for such cost-cutting among university administrators, in fact humanities departments like English and History make a lot of money for their institutions. Having researchers with relatively modest research budgets (compared to the physical and biological sciences), and who teach large numbers of students, is in fact an enormous bargain. If universities seek to maximize short-term profit even further, by deranged cost-cutting and austerity programs directed at destroying activities and functions that are in fact largely viable, this can only be a symptom of the out-of-control insanity of corporate culture today, and of its relentless extension into sectors of society (like universities) that used to be more or less free of it.<\/p>\n

And on Whitehead:<\/p>\n

[…] I think that Whitehead\u2019s philosophy resonates quite strongly with a number of contemporary concerns. For one thing, the term \u201ccreativity,\u201d which Whitehead pretty much invented, turns up everywhere these days (both for good and for ill). The way that Whitehead describes creativity and novelty, through selection, modification, and recombination of already-existing elements, seems almost like a blueprint for our contemporary aesthetic of sampling and remixing. And Whitehead\u2019s understanding of processes and relations throughout the world, in a manner that is not necessarily human-centered, provides important resources for our current environmental and ecological concerns.<\/p>\n

One other similarity between Whitehead and Simondon, which has not been sufficiently remarked, is their understanding of the dynamics of change. In a lot of environmental thought, as well as in thought about living organisms and other dynamic systems (including social systems), the focus has been on self-maintenance. We commonly hear about homeostasis, about autopoiesis (a biological concept in Maturana and Varela, extended to social systems by Luhmann), and about Spinoza\u2019s notion of conatus<\/i> (the tendency of every entity to strive to persist in being). These are important concepts, but I think that they have been overstated and applied too widely. Whitehead (with his notion of what he calls concresence<\/i>) and Simondon (with his notion of individuation) both provide correctives to this: they both point to the ways that living things, and other complex systems, strive not only to persist, but also to change, to produce novelty, to become different from what they were before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few cousin blogs have already mentioned Figure\/Ground’s interview with Steven Shaviro, which I recommend for those interested in Whitehead, speculative realism, media theory, and other themes explored on this blog. Shaviro has insightful things to say about Isabelle Stengers’ role in reviving an interest in Whitehead, Gilbert Simondon and his (and Whitehead’s) relevance for […]<\/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":[203,688977],"tags":[266,49508,49507,423],"class_list":["post-6516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academe","category-geo_philosophy","tag-shaviro","tag-simondon","tag-tenure","tag-whitehead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-1H6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5586,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/02\/28\/process-objects-at-the-nonhuman-turn\/","url_meta":{"origin":6516,"position":0},"title":"Process-objects at The Nonhuman Turn","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The preliminary schedule is out for The Nonhuman Turn in 21st Century Studies. The list of speakers reads like a \"who's who\" of the neo-ontological, speculative-realist crowd in cultural and media theory: Steven Shaviro, Jane Bennett, Brian Massumi, Erin Manning, Mark Hansen, Ian Bogost, and Tim Morton are among the\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":1120,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/09\/18\/relations-vs-objects-part-x\/","url_meta":{"origin":6516,"position":1},"title":"relations vs. objects, part x","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm glad to see that Steven Shaviro and Levi Bryant have stepped into the fray of the debate over the relative virtues of object-centered versus relation-centered ontologies. (Among others, e.g. kvond, Peter Gratton, Graham Harman of course, and see the commenters to Levi's posts on Harman and Whitehead). With some\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":2589,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/08\/whitehead-media-theory\/","url_meta":{"origin":6516,"position":2},"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":8355,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/07\/28\/sr-or-morton-on-the-universe-of-things\/","url_meta":{"origin":6516,"position":3},"title":"SR, or Morton on The Universe of Things","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Tim Morton has penned a nice (if thoroughly Mortonish)\u00a0introduction\u00a0to a very nice introduction (by Steven Shaviro) to speculative realism. With lines like these: \"Theory class, in other words, needs an upgrade. Theory class is pretty obviously quite narrow in any case. \u201cTheory\u201d is basically (mostly continental) philosophy or derivatives of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gallery_Image_10562","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/07\/Gallery_Image_10562-275x206.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4151,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/05\/25\/the-beatnik-brotherhood\/","url_meta":{"origin":6516,"position":4},"title":"The beatnik brotherhood","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Graham Harman's note reiterating his position that Whitehead, Latour, Deleuze, Bergson, and Simondon (among others) do not make up a coherent philosophical \"lump\" -- \"pack\" or \"tribe\" might be more colorful terms here (if philosophers were cats, how herdable would they be?) -- makes me want to clarify my own\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\/tumblr_ljsf0kvMnF1qgjltdo1_500-275x248.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1032,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/02\/23\/kauffman-shaviro-goodwin-et-al\/","url_meta":{"origin":6516,"position":5},"title":"Kauffman, Shaviro, Goodwin, et al.","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Complexity theorist Stuart Kaufmann recently gave a talk here from his book Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion, which is getting more press these days than most books with a Spinozian\/Whiteheadian take on the emergent nature of intelligence, complexity, spirituality, and all that. Talking to\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\/6516","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=6516"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6521,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6516\/revisions\/6521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}