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Search Results for 'object-oriented ontology process relations harman'

Process-relational theory primer

Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , , , on November 5, 2010 | 12 Comments »

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 “process-relational.” This is a theoretical paradigm and an ontology that takes the basic nature of the world to be that of relational process: that is, it understands the basic […]

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in defense of relations (again)

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , on August 21, 2010 | 19 Comments »

In response to my last post, Levi is arguing, as Graham has before, that relational ontologies have had their day, that “it is relational and processual thought that has become a habit that prevents us from thinking, not object-oriented thought,” and that “For the last century we’ve repeatedly said ‘things are related’ to such a degree that claims about interdependence, relation, and interconnection have lost a good deal of meaning” and “become stale metaphors and worn coins.”

[…]

My belief, if it needs reiterating, is that we -– society at large -– still have not developed a nuanced enough understanding of the nature of relational process, including the many different kinds of relational processes that make up the world. This is why we still put animals in cages (as if the jaguar in a cage is the same as the jaguar in a forest) and dump toxins on our farms (as if the final product is the pest-free corn and not the health of the soil), still produce objects that are guaranteed to be obsolete junk in a few years (as if their making and disposal wasn’t an integral part of them), still buy those objects (as if they will satisfy our cravings for something new and exciting), still send soldiers to war and forget about them when they come back (leaving their partners and kids without health insurance, as is the case with a friend of ours who lives up the road), still expect that we can “win” wars (as if they won’t breed the resentment that will lead to even worse wars), still define people according to fixed gender identities and racial categories, and put people away for life (in this country at least) because they don’t have the means to live in ways that would exercise their creative potential, and so on and so forth. […]

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the politics of objects & relations

Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 29, 2010 | 5 Comments »

The objects versus relations debate has revved up again over at Larval Subjects, in the commentary responding to Levi Bryant’s Questions about the possibility of non-correlationist ethics. The debate, as I would describe it, circles around the following question: If we agree that traditional philosophy has been too centrally premised on the relationship between humans […]

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Things slip away… (on Harman’s Latourian object lessons)

Posted in Eco-theory, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , on September 9, 2009 | 33 Comments »

Continuing from yesterday’s post on Graham Harman… (Warning: This post is long.) Where Tool-Being presented a Heidegger flushed clean of his anthropocentrism, Prince of Networks takes Bruno Latour for a ride on a philosophical adventure toward a world not of actors and networks but of objects, pure if not so simple. The book’s first half […]

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Harman’s object-oriented philosophizing

Posted in Philosophy, tagged , , , , on September 8, 2009 | 1 Comment »

I’ve been reading Graham Harman’s Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects and Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. More accurately, I’ve been dipping into and sipping from the first and systematically digesting the second. Given the amount of blogging that goes on under the rising star(s) of ‘object-oriented philosophy,’ ‘speculative realism,’ and Graham […]

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R.i.p. Tom Verlaine (relationalism & earth jazz redux)

Posted in Music & soundscape, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 29, 2023 | Leave a Comment »

Television guitarist and songwriter Tom Verlaine has passed away. In his honor, I’m reposting something I wrote back in 2010, a version of which made it into Shadowing the Anthropocene. Much of it deals with the objects-versus-relations debate that was occupying the then very active “speculative realist” (“new materialist”) blogosphere. The first video captures Verlaine […]

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Vitale throws down the gauntlet…

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged on January 14, 2011 | 5 Comments »

Chris Vitale has “thrown down the gauntlet,” as he puts it, to the object-oriented ontologists to finally respond in a satisfactory way to process-relational critiques. (I admire his Sicilian bravado!) Chris is obviously writing in a somewhat feverish mode, blogging at the speed of thought rather than in the tempered and cautious tone written philosophy […]

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On anthropomorphism: making humans, pencils, & souls

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , , on December 29, 2010 | 8 Comments »

Tim Morton has recently been suggesting that just as humans anthropomorph (that’s a verb), so pencils pencilmorph. I love this idea, though I’m not sure about its implications, which I want to think through here. Anthropomorphism #1 (traditional, & its extensions) The traditional definition of anthropomorphism is something like “the attribution of human characteristics to […]

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conversions & convertibles

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , on December 5, 2010 | 4 Comments »

(I try not to edit things once they’re published, but I couldn’t resist adding a Chevy Impala to this blog.) It may not quite be Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, as Graham Harman’s blog post title suggests, but Chris Vitale has clearly had a change of heart, a dropping of resistance that’s resulted […]

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strange strangers, or just weird friends?

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged on August 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

One of the challenges of blogging is that, if one is to do it respectfully and well, one must be prepared to respond to one’s critics, and in such a high-speed medium this can lead to a pace that is unsustainable over time. The coming days won’t allow me much time for such exchanges, but […]

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almost a real Paris

Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , on August 18, 2010 | 5 Comments »

I haven’t wanted to tread into the recent Speculative Realist debates over Derrida, in part because I haven’t had time for them (and my internet access has been a little unreliable), but in part also because I think they’re mostly reiterating themes that have already been well covered. OOO makes a valid and important point […]

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relationalism, earth jazz, & the solstice

Posted in Music & soundscape, Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , on June 20, 2010 | 9 Comments »

If there’s a musical demonstration of relationalism, and by extension (as Skholiast points out) of ecology, it’s the kind of improvised music that the Dead are supposed to have excelled at (and occasionally did). The universe gives rise to many wondrous entities in its long history of spontaneity, relational responsiveness, habit-formation, and form-building. The habits start as rhythms, melodic chirps that turn into territorial refrains and calls, and that gradually maneuvre their way into verse patterns, melodies, harmonies, polyrhythms. Distinct songs develop for particular purposes and gradually get freed from those purposes, taken up into improvisational routines and performances, some of which crystallize into larger-scale architectonics, but only ever temporarily.

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