{"id":7078,"date":"2013-12-01T07:30:59","date_gmt":"2013-12-01T12:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=7078"},"modified":"2013-12-01T07:33:31","modified_gmt":"2013-12-01T12:33:31","slug":"ontologies-of-bilocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/12\/01\/ontologies-of-bilocation\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontologies of bilocation"},"content":{"rendered":"

For interdisciplinary scholars, it’s always a challenge to decide which conferences to attend and which to forgo. The problem is particularly acute when the conferences are held at the same time, as occurred last week with the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and American Academy of Religion (AAR).<\/p>\n

As I’ve been attending both of them off and on for years, the decision hinged for me around the fact that I had organized the Latour session at the AAR.<\/p>\n

Latour himself, however, would be attending the AAA. (We tried to get him to bilocate, but didn’t succeed.) And it turns out that his session, “The Ontological Turn in French Philosophical Anthropology<\/a>” — featuring an all-star cast of Philippe Descola, Marshall Sahlins, Michael M. J. Fischer, Kim Fortun, and Latour — was scheduled for the very same time<\/em> as our panel.<\/p>\n

It also turns out, as Rex relates at Savage Minds,<\/a> that ontology was “the big theme” at the AAA<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n

(Here’s another<\/a> big-name ontology session, featuring Latour collabs Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Annemarie Mol, Helen Verran, and others. I expect ontology to be a big theme at the AAG<\/a> in April as well.)<\/p>\n

Some of the comments at Savage Minds reflect that this “ontological turn” is not uncontroversial. (Surprise, surprise.) It seems that Fortun, the lone woman on the panel, was particularly critical of Latour.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, we had trouble replacing Jane Bennett when she pulled out of our panel. Several women were approached, who for one reason or another — scheduling conflicts, overcommitment, etc. — were not able to join. The AAA panel<\/a> demonstrates that gender representation isn’t necessarily an issue with these efforts, but one could speculate that ontology, metaphysics, and philosophical speculation still tend to be “guy topics” more than other themes. Discuss. (Theme for next year: Not “querying” but “queering” ontology.)<\/p>\n

One can follow some of the debates on Greg Downey’s Twitter feed<\/a> and at #AAA2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Latour’s talk from the AAA is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

For interdisciplinary scholars, it’s always a challenge to decide which conferences to attend and which to forgo. The problem is particularly acute when the conferences are held at the same time, as occurred last week with the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and American Academy of Religion (AAR). As I’ve been attending […]<\/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],"tags":[16795,16770,16788,692664],"class_list":["post-7078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academe","tag-anthropology","tag-interdisciplinarity","tag-latour","tag-onto_epistemology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-1Qa","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6722,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/06\/19\/aar-panel-on-latours-gifford-lectures\/","url_meta":{"origin":7078,"position":0},"title":"AAR panel on Latour’s Gifford Lectures","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The AAR panel responding to 2013 Holberg Prize winner Bruno Latour's Gifford Lectures has now been scheduled. Information is as follows. QUERYING NATURAL RELIGION: IMMANENCE, GAIA, & THE PARLIAMENT OF LIVELY THINGS Session A23-203 (Co-sponsors: Social Theory & Religion Cluster and Religion & Ecology Group) Saturday November 23 - 1:00\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"http:\/\/lh5.ggpht.com\/--xAfcTWGDjA\/S7Vkj9ggieI\/AAAAAAAFu-4\/tPWceZDV1UI\/Bosch%25252C%252520Garden%252520of%252520Earthly%252520Delights%2525201510.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lh5.ggpht.com\/--xAfcTWGDjA\/S7Vkj9ggieI\/AAAAAAAFu-4\/tPWceZDV1UI\/Bosch%25252C%252520Garden%252520of%252520Earthly%252520Delights%2525201510.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7032,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/11\/20\/imminently-in-baltimore\/","url_meta":{"origin":7078,"position":1},"title":"Imminently in Baltimore","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Get ready for the lively parliament of immanent Gaianly agents... \"Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things\" will take place this Saturday afternoon in the Baltimore Convention Center (right after Karen Armstrong's plenary in the same room, on \"The Science of Compassion\"). The revised speaker line-up\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\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/eFUHXJF9wVE\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7038,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/11\/24\/querying-natural-religion-responses-to-latour\/","url_meta":{"origin":7078,"position":2},"title":"Querying Natural Religion: Responses to Latour","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The following are my notes from \"Querying Natural Religion: Immanence, Gaia, and the Parliament of Lively Things.\" (Live-blogging did not work, as we didn't have a live internet connection.) These notes are followed by a brief set of post-event summary comments. The setting: an airplane hangar of a hall in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/0.academia-photos.com\/24090\/7811\/7448\/s200_adrian.ivakhiv.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6873,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/08\/22\/latourian-inquiries\/","url_meta":{"origin":7078,"position":3},"title":"Latourian inquiries","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Bruno Latour fans will know that the French anthropologist's long-awaited follow-up to 1991's game-changing theoretical provocation We Have Never Been Modern was released in its English translation just a few weeks ago. The book is called An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence (and is becoming better known by its acronym\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\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51zsdOn5Y6L._SY300_.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8278,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/06\/09\/harmans-reply\/","url_meta":{"origin":7078,"position":4},"title":"Harman’s reply","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Graham Harman's reply to my critical response to his book Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political, which appeared as part of\u00a0a book symposium in\u00a0Global Discourse\u00a0earlier this year, is readable\u00a0online,\u00a0here.\u00a0 I won't address the details of that\u00a0reply here. Some of them relate to our divergent\u00a0interpretations of Latour, and since Harman has\u00a0now written\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":8017,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/02\/08\/ontology-across-the-disciplines-reading-group\/","url_meta":{"origin":7078,"position":5},"title":"“Ontology Across the Disciplines” reading group","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm participating in a reading group here at the University of Vermont entitled \"Ontology Across the Disciplines.\" (More than just participating... I've been gently arm-twisted by the organizers, anthropologists Parker Van Valkenberg and Ben Eastman, into chairing the discussions. Thanks, guys ;-) ) Since I know there are folks out\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\/7078","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=7078"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7084,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7078\/revisions\/7084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}