[-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[Jacob Gaboury]

No worries, it's an important discussion and I'd imagine Michael and
others will want to contribute later tonight. I'll forward you some of
the earlier threads so you can check them out.

- Jacob




On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Ian Bogost <ian.bogost at lcc.gatech.edu> wrote:
> Jacob,
>
> Thanks for this clarification. I apologize if I was thread-hijacking.
>
> Not sure if you're aware, but the empyre list website is very slow to
> respond, and I can't find any archives thereon, so it's hard to go back and
> see the conversation that's already taken place...
>
> Ian
>
>
>
> On Jun 14, 2012, at 4:02 PM, Jacob Gaboury wrote:
>
> Hello Ian. Thanks for joining the discussion, and for your
> contributions. The goal of this week's conversation is a larger look
> at computation and the nonhuman, and the broader theme of this month
> is queer new media. SR/OOO is clearly important to any discussion of
> the nonhuman, and I think one of the goals was to think through what
> queer theory has to say to that field specifically, both in supporting
> and critiquing it. This may explain the focus participants have made
> on what is missing, rather than what is there.
>
> That said there are other ways of discussing these issues, such as
> Micha and Jack's conversation on the Queerreal and the Transreal, or
> our earlier discussion of uncomputability and the failure of technical
> objects. I think it's useful to continue this conversation but my hope
> is that it doesn't stop other people from chiming in about the other
> topics and questions we have covered this week, or even to hear what
> you have to say about these other approaches.
>
> It seems like part of the debate here is the notion that queer theory
> and the tradition of continental philosophy focus a great deal on
> issues of identity as they relate to the human. Part of our earlier
> discussion was an attempt to theorize those nonhuman objects and
> practices that we might productively understand as queer. That is, to
> decouple the human, identity, and human-embodied experience from the
> field of queer theory and apply it to the nonhuman and the
> computational. Not as a way of "queering" these things but as a way of
> understanding them as already queer to begin with. My impulse is to
> look to uncomputable processes and super-Turing machines, Jack looked
> to specific types of nonhuman objects such as animation or "stuffed"
> objects in what I read as a continuing application of a kind of "low
> theory".
>
> I don't know if this gets us outside this debate over the different
> canonical/historical approaches of these two disciplines, but I think
> it's a useful way of bringing them into conversation. I'd love to hear
> more from all of you on this approach.
>
> - Jacob
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 3:31 PM, Ian Bogost <ian.bogost at lcc.gatech.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Look, I'm new here, but is this really the level of conversation this list
>
> strives to support?
>
>
> If this is just a place where like-minded folk pat each other on the back,
>
> please let me know so I can unsubscribe.
>
>
> Ian
>
>
> On Jun 14, 2012, at 2:57 PM, Rob Myers wrote:
>
>
> On 06/14/2012 07:02 PM, Ian Bogost wrote:
>
>
>
> As for queer and feminist formulations, I agree with the spirit of what
>
>
> you say, but I'll reiterate my observation that SR/OOO is moving in a
>
>
> slightly different direction—one that concerns toasters and quasars as
>
>
> much as human subjects (note the "as much as" here). Why not take this
>
>
> work for what it is, at least for starters, rather than for what it
>
>
> isn't?
>
>
>
> The "as much as" is precisely the problem.
>
>
> Galloway's critique of OOO that Zach mentioned explains why:
>
>
> http://itself.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/a-response-to-graham-harmans-marginalia-on-radical-thinking/
>
>
> But I wouldn't lump Meillassoux in with Harman. I think Meillassoux's
>
> philosophy can indeed be interesting for this debate because of its
>
> embracing of contingency and possibility.
>
>
> - Rob.
>
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