[-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

Fri Jun 15 12:15:46 EST 2012

Ian - I am reading and enjoying very much your book Alien Phenomenology right now so no offense meant in terms of the masculinity orientation of many of the OOO conversations. But to try to flesh out why we might worry about such an orientation and to respond to Michael briefly here are a few elaborations on that theme:

1. As I said the archive of citations does matter and the fact that many of the female and or queer authors mentioned by me earlier and by Michael below don't surface as often as they should is not the problem in and of itself so much as a symptom of a larger problem. 

2. What is that larger problem? Well, as any Feminism 101 course will show us, the gender hierarchy that assigns male to the 1 and female to the 0 in the binary coding of gender, also assigns male to the status of subject and female to the status of object. Hence, having occupied the status of "object" for some time within both the symbolic and the imaginary of the cultures within which we participate, surely the category of "female" should allow for some access to the question of what is it like to be an object. 

3.  Think of Butler's critique of Lacan here - in the lesbian phallus, she basically takes on those who would argue that feminist and queer critiques of Lacanian psychoanalysis miss the point. Arguing that if all bodies lack and female bodies are deployed metaphorically to represent that lack, and if all phallic bodies only possess the phallus contingently but male bodies are deployed metaphorically to represent that possession, Butler points to a heteronormative foundation to Lacan's mapping of the subject. Offering instead a "lesbian phallus" that is both detachable and mobile (what does OOO have to say about lively objects such as the dildo?), Butler shows that male narcissism leads to a) misrecognition of the penis as the phallus and b) the inability to theorize the object and the abject. After Butler, object oriented philosophy, it seems to me, would have to pass through the gendered territory of the subject/object relation. 

4.  And since Michael believes that the onus of representation/critique falls to those who say they have been left out, one word: Fanon! Indeed, again, as with Butler, we have an elaborate racial critique of the subject/object relation already mapped by Fanon in the "Fact of Blackness" and in Fred Moten's work on the elaboration of the Black subject as commodity and in Hortense Spiller's work on the "American Grammar" of race that assigns whiteness to the subject position and blackness to the perpetual object. 

 So, ok, if women and racialized bodies have all too often been rendered as "things" in the marketplace of commodity capitalism, and if a lot of the work on on Object Oriented Philosophy leaves the status of the human unmarked even when rejecting it in favor of the object and relations between objects then surely we need a queer and or feminist OO philosophy in order to address the politics of the object. 

--What are the relations between slaves and farm machines?

--How might a dildo elaborate a sexuality of the object that does not presume a master subject?

--What is the phenomenology of the queer - see Ahmed - and what orientations are queer and which are straight. A better way of answering michael's question about who can do queer theory. 

 ps. Is Zizek doing "low theory" - in a word, no. Even his low archives are put to work to prove Lacan "right."

 I hope this counts as a "carefully worked out critique" in Michael's words. And I look forward to more alien phenomenology. 

 Jack

On Jun 14, 2012, at 6:30 PM, Ian Bogost wrote:

> Sorry to try to kill two birds with one stone, but I hope my previous post may answer this question indirectly.
> 
> In any case, despite Galloway's comments, it sounds like that Animal Farm quote but it isn't—not at all.
> 
> Ian
> 
> On Jun 14, 2012, at 4:16 PM, frederic neyrat wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I would like - if possible - to get one or two examples about the
>> objects concerned by your statement:"all objects equally exist, but
>> not all objects exist equally." I guess - but I just guess - that the
>> first part of the sentence is ontological and the second part could be
>> political, but maybe I'm wrong. Thanks in advance.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Frederic Neyrat
>> 
>> 2012/6/14 Ian Bogost <ian.bogost at lcc.gatech.edu>:
>>> Ok, sigh, let me try this again.
>>> 
>>> The "as much as" is not a judgement of value, but of existence. This is the
>>> fundamental disagreement that played out in the comments to Galloway's work
>>> and in the many responses elsewhere. The world is big and contains many
>>> things. I've put this principle thusly: "all objects equally exist, but not
>>> all objects exist equally."
>>> 
>>> It's possible that such a metaphysical position isn't for everyone. But if
>>> your idea of "being political" is as exclusionary and deprecatory as both
>>> Galloway's post and my limited experience thusfar here on empyre, then
>>> perhaps you can explain why that a model worth aspiring for? Why that is
>>> virtuous and righteous?
>>> 
>>> 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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>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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