{"id":8355,"date":"2015-07-28T22:35:40","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T03:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=8355"},"modified":"2015-07-28T22:35:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-29T03:35:40","slug":"sr-or-morton-on-the-universe-of-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/07\/28\/sr-or-morton-on-the-universe-of-things\/","title":{"rendered":"SR, or Morton on The Universe of Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Morton has penned a nice (if thoroughly Mortonish)\u00a0introduction<\/a>\u00a0to a very nice introduction<\/a> (by Steven Shaviro) to speculative realism.<\/p>\n

With lines like these:<\/p>\n

“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 philosophy that some (mostly literature) scholar thought was cool sometime between 1968 and now. It\u2019s a record store full of compilations, run by a confusing array of managers who mostly only read emails from other managers about what music is hot at a given moment. Both those facts explain why speculative realism didn’t start in an English department and why Alfred North Whitehead is not on the theory radar at all. With the entire universe as his subject matter, Whitehead is definitely not in the record store.<\/p>\n

“Enter Steven Shaviro, who is both an English professor and a Whiteheadian, and the scintillating The Universe of Things<\/em>, whose title is an allusion to a poem by Shelley.”<\/p>\n

And thanks to Shaviro’s presentation of it, Tim (bless his heart) shows that he’s warming to Whiteheadian speculative realism.<\/p>\n

\"Gallery_Image_10562\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the record,\u00a0I define speculative realism this way:<\/p>\n

Realism<\/em> is the belief\u00a0in a\u00a0reality that trumps and outwits all our ideas about it; and speculative realism <\/em>is the willingness, and even eagerness, to wonder (and wander) about that reality in novel, surprising, informed, and challenging directions.<\/p>\n

That’s why I\u00a0like to take\u00a0my ecology with a dose of astrobiological<\/a> sci-fi. (And with Shelley, among others.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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:<\/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":[17807,266,16789,4426],"class_list":["post-8355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","tag-morton","tag-shaviro","tag-speculative-realism","tag-theory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2aL","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5586,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/02\/28\/process-objects-at-the-nonhuman-turn\/","url_meta":{"origin":8355,"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":8355,"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":1366,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/05\/process-relational-theory-primer\/","url_meta":{"origin":8355,"position":2},"title":"Process-relational theory primer","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the tasks of this blog, since its inception in late 2008, has been to articulate a theoretical-philosophical perspective that I have come to call \u201cprocess-relational.\u201d This is a theoretical paradigm and an ontology that takes the basic nature of the world to be that of relational process: that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2668,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/27\/sspeculative-rrealism-philosophy-as-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":8355,"position":3},"title":"s(S)peculative r(R)ealism & philosophy-as-life","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It's nice to see Speculative Realism capturing the attention of SF writer and all-round idea impresario Bruce Sterling - see his Speculative Realism as \"philosophy fiction.\" As a long-time SF lover, the idea of \"philosophy fiction\" has always appealed to me. Some of the best writing in the genre has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1410,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/12\/04\/planetary-alignment-in-claremont\/","url_meta":{"origin":8355,"position":4},"title":"planetary alignment in Claremont?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"For anyone interested in the growing dialogue between Whiteheadian process philosophy and post-Continental metaphysical realism -- a dialogue that, in my view, is at the philosophical cutting edge for ecological thinking -- the Claremont conference seems as good as it gets, perhaps even a turning point. The dialogue between hard-core\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":1099,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/07\/05\/speculative-realism-its-ecological-sympathies\/","url_meta":{"origin":8355,"position":5},"title":"Speculative Realism & its ecological sympathies","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The philosophical movement increasingly known as Speculative Realism is starting to get attention in these parts of town (the town being Academe, or at least its digital suburbs, and these parts being its ecocritical\/biocultural\/animaphilic ghettoes). News about the forthcoming re.press anthology, The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism, has been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355","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=8355"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8367,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355\/revisions\/8367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}