[-empyre-] Hello Object, I destroy you, I love you.
lauren.berlant@gmail.com
lberlant at aol.com
Mon Jun 18 21:52:48 EST 2012
Hi cats! I have
been trying to figure out how to respond to so much of this without dilating in
bloated paragraphs that become unreadable. I will try therefore to stick
to the genre of the prompt (as opposed to genres of exegesis) so that we can
always point to outsides with which we can read/relate and therefore continue
talk later.
I am also going to introduce this week artists I would like to bring into the conversation--Doug
Ischar, Tina Takemoto, and today Jennifer Montgomery, in case watching their
work might clarify some questions, e.g. make them more questionable.
Here is thebackground for today's prompt: Jennifer Montgomery's brilliant Transitional
Objects (from which the title to my post is taken). http://vimeo.com/21270312
11. The structural zeitgeist: Patricia points out that we're undergoing a transformation in the ways we think about structure,
and as Zach and Jacob will attest, I've been going around for the past year saying this too, and the first sentence of my next book is "This book
offers a concept of structure for transitional times. All times are transitional, but at some times, like this one, politics is defined by the
collective struggle to determine the terms of a transition in relation to collective social existence." This is how I have long understood the
OOO discussion as a prompt for thinking not just being but for a new structural understanding of relation from which worlds can be described.
Interobjectivity replacing intersubjectivity as the new ethical/political/analytical scene. I think Christina McFee’s work is
extraordinary in this way, an aesthetics of attention dedicated to an analytic of modeling that never subtracts from itself a scenicness for sensual
absorption.
22. Laplanchean psychoanalysis, which props relationality on the impersonal intimacy of beings passing their enigmatic
signifiers (affects of the encounter that is not an event) between each other, I have
long thought, has something to contribute to the image of the withdrawn object
whose very resistance to a sufficient coding can open up dark, maybe even
queer, passages of relating and mutual extension (that might even be thriving).
34. The idea of a transitional environment for the relating
that always involves losing the habit that appears to be sovereign, for
producing change without the melodrama of a trauma that appears to be a
sufficient coding, is what Jennifer’s piece is about: making. Winnicott: “In
relation to the transitional object the infant passes from magical omnipotent
control to control by manipulation involving muscle eroticism and coordination
pleasure.” He doesn’t sound too different
from Ian.
4. 4. Is the “object” in (imaginative) psychoanalysis
the same as the “object” in OOO? Neither
external nor internal, but holding up an environment/world? In my work the object
has nothing to do with that which is held together by the apparent skin of a
thing but it’s a cluster of investments, of attention and attunements, that
make a scene (an affectively overwhelming situation) that demands an
aesthetic/coding.
5. 5 What’s queer about all this? In our first weeks
of discussion “queer” seemed a name for the erotically invested non-normative
procedure or orientation. Is that sufficient? What’s the fantasy investment in
calling the appearance of a withdrawn thing queer? My second post will focus on the play of
security/insecurity re this, but I’d love to hear from the subjects who wrote
towards/from the queer.
Bye! LB
Lauren Berlant
George M. Pullman
Professor
Department of English
University of Chicago
Walker Museum 413
1115 E. 58th. St.
Chicago IL 60637
-----Original Message-----
From: Clough, Patricia <PClough at gc.cuny.edu>
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Sun, Jun 17, 2012 1:15 pm
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] the real and reality in speculative realism and OOO/P
I have just finished
reading a piece by Latour on big data for
a paper I am
writing with three students (Josh Scannell, Benjamin Haber and Karen Gregory
who are lurking on the
site). One of Latour's points is that
the two level
analysis carried on in
sociology (but everywhere else as well)
of individual
and structure are the
result of technologies for navigating sets of data. He
also proposes that
digital technologies--the way they collect and circulate data
or the way they navigate
data sets-- is eating away at both elements of a two
level analysis allowing for another way for
understanding social order. Of
course Latour has in mind
his own ANT approach and something close to a flat
ontology But I am really interested in what his
proposal makes us think about
the concepts we have
been using like individual and
structure and how they are
an effect of or a
compensation for the ways we "do
data," including
narrative, performance
but cinema television--or writing technologies generally
speaking and carrying a
bit of Derrida along here as to the sensibilities coming
with his use of
Writing. I have been thinking that when
there is noise
produced in
philosophical circles (especially when it produces an aporia between
epistemology and
ontology as noise probably always does) like OOO/SR is making
but which
poststructuralism also made (still makes) it is because technology is
giving another way of
doing data. And when I say we have to
know how that is
working in order to
critique it, I mean we will have to
critique it in the
terms of the constraints
and freedoms of that very technology. I
don't believe
there can be another
ontology then the one that arrives with a technology, our
differences in how to
articulate it notwithstanding .(so that is how I read
Combes on Simondon)
Indeed I think ethics or politics
comes with inserting
noise in the aporia
produced by the provisions for data navigation given with a
technology and that
the differences between us --- how we
are articulating
ontology ethics etc.
are already noise. I am not sure
those differences
should be so easily
resolved but taken as widening contrasts
at any moment.
So when I take up OOO/SR
in my work I also use poetic form or
sound scapes to
contrast with
OOO/SR as some of the poetry is
autobiographic performing
something close to a
confessional subject some quite
Deleuzian more a body
without organs some
psychoanalytic. very much a body and queer. I don't
believe these things are
compatible and if I were just making an
argument they
could not all be in one
piece But when composed artistically they can be near
each other and
become contrasts. What holds the
pieces together is the
modulation of affect
that the composition hopes to be its effect.
I think the
current interest in
affect is about digital technology in that it is asking us
to rethink these two levels of individual and
structure and asking us to think
about how we present our
thoughts or ideas how we compose them.
Also the way technologies shape the way we do data
is not just a matter of
method or analysis, it is at the same time about governance and economy and
I think these words are
changing what they refer to and what
they can do when
we use them as new ways of navigating data are arising. And so too what we
mean by life. I love Eugene Thacker's book After Life just to show the many
ways (all impossible) we
have tried to define life in
relationship to living
starting with
theology. Eugene writes such a book
just at a time when the
definition of life
is undergoing a change in relationship to living.
________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au]
On Behalf Of frederic
neyrat [fneyrat at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 17,
2012 4:02 AM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-]
the real and reality in speculative realism and OOO/P
Hi Patricia,
1/ You wrote: "They
are lively before or without human consciousness.
I think this arouses more respect for the
environment and the cosmos
not to mention human
beings and other living things":
I'm not sure about that.
I would like, but I'm note sure. I'm just
thinking about the
hunter killing the living prey. Or about Sade in
his dark castle. I think
it's not possible to pass directly from
ontology to ethics or
politics. It depends a/ not only on the
definition of life
(first problem: if everything is alive, who cares
about life? because if
Yellowstone trees die, no problems, there still
will be stones, yellow
and washing machine) but b/ on the politics
built on this
definition.
2/ may you explain this
sentence: "If those technosciences we worry
about are doing what
they are doing that worries us we need
to
imagine an ontology that
meets their capacity in order to think the
possibilities of
politics". Because I was thinking: maybe the
technosciences ontology
is wrong. Maybe - for example - life is not
only a pure matter on
which I can put a patent. Maybe - as Muriel
Combes says in "La
vie inséparée" - a living being cannot be separated
from its form. Maybe we
need absolutely another ontology to fight this
one.
Best,
Frederic Neyrat
2012/6/17 Clough,
Patricia <PClough at gc.cuny.edu>:
> I am not sure this
got through since I am also missing
some of Tim's I
think but I will put it here below but first. Just to say that objects in OOO
are not
objectifications or mere things or
commodities. A turn to ontology
(whether OOO or feminist
queer ones) is to give us a sense that objects differ
from themselves; they
exude temporality. They are lively
before or without
human
consciousness. I think this arouses
more respect for the environment and
the cosmos not to
mention human beings and other living things.
This seems
especially important in
raising questions about the boundary between species and
organic and
nonorganic. If those technosciences we
worry about are doing what
they are doing that
worries us we need to imagine an
ontology that meets their
capacity in order to
think the possibilities of politics.
But of course
OOO/SR isn't everything
that is needed. And so I am interested
in how we write
or argue or
philosophize We need poetry a
> nd
artistry so we can have hesitancy
and allusion where causality is
alluring.... And so the reference by Michael ( I
think) to transitional
objects is something I
want to take up. I prefer Bollas's transformational
objects that Lauren
Berlant makes such good use of in her
work recently again
in Cruel Optimism. Patricia
>
> (repeat maybye )
> Well starting off
in the last week is difficult. So much
going on over the
last three weeks. Thanks to Zach and Micha for the invite
and to everyone
else offering some great
thoughts to ponder.
>
>
> As for discussion
around feminism, queer and OOO/ SR There
are (still/even
more) worrisome issues of oppression, exploitation and
repression that come
to mind with queer,
feminist, postcolonial, anti-race, debility
theoretical/political
formations but there also are troubles
which are before
us, feminist neoliberalism or pink washing and queer, for examples.
Politically,
institutional arrangements are much more complicated than identity
politics sometimes
presented itself as being in the demand
for subject
recognition which led to decades of debate on the truth
of representation and
the deconstruction
of the authority of discourse with a
hesitancy to reference
the real in
support. Here a certain
Althusserian/Lacanianism played a weighty
part and then add
Derrida Spivak Butler Foucault
Berlant, Sedgwick and
more. For many of us
this work has been a go to intellectual and political
resource for some
time. Clearly these authors put philosophy intimately i
> n play with a politics (often Marxism, and then Marxism plus) that was
easily felt in their
work. In OOO/SR , this tight connection is less
obvious
if there at all. What I do not want to overlook however is
that OOO/SR came
when the former (not
necessarily the thinkers themselves) was not easily working
as an intellectual
resource in the face of several issues:
what to be said
about political economy
except to say again and again neoliberalism or even
biopolitics (even though
I keep saying those); what is to be said
about
subjectivity and the
unconscious after deconstruction and along with a profound
transformation in social
media; what is to be said about the
human, the
organism as figure of
life, about matter after posthumanism
and with the
development of various
technologies we should call biotechnologies (but now all
technology seems to have
always been) or even more incredible nanotechnologies?
What to say about the
persistence but varied forms of racism oppre
> ssion exploitation? How to let all this feed back to rethinking
our
philosophical
assumptions?
>
> I think that for
some of us OOO/SR made us think again about the intellectual
resources for our work
and how to address some of the questions I just raised by
turning us to
ontological issues beyond constructivism asking us to critically
address the assimilating
act of human consciousness embedded in most of our
materialisms (thus the
new materialisms and a recent paper by
Liz Grosz on
matter and life is
exquisite here) . This new materialisms comes in part as a
response to recent
developments in technoscience and as a
social scientist (of
sorts) I am so aware
that social science leans on scientific assumptions if not
ideals that need
updating to say the least. But I think this is the case for
many of our
materialisms. This rethinking of technoscience including digital
technologies has in part
raised interest in OOO/SR and that is the case for
me. But I am not sure that the elective affinity between digital
technologies, the growth of computational studies and al
> gorithm studies etc. and OOO/SR yet has been well stated. I do not think
that all OOO/SR thinkers
find this to be central while some
do. Debates
around OOO/SR with which
Steven Shaviro is involved usually speak to digital
technology (and Bogost of course) All this to say that the 'affect' that I
have most written about
is the Spinoza Deleuze Whitehead Masssumi
Parisi
version (although I want
to talk more about feelings and emotions this week).
The Spinoza Deleuze
Whitehead Masssumi Parisi version of
affect I believe has
always required an
ontological shift (which is central to the Affective Turn
volume). That ontological shift has everything to do with
the way affect is
experienced through a
technological intensification since it
is otherwise
preconscious if not
nonconscious and a-social While
language generally is an
intensifier I have been more interested in intensifications
that did not
necessarily raise to
consciousness but simply intensified experience
> inciting resonances rhythmicities oscillations etc. and which then could
be about bodies other
than human ones or organic ones--queering body.
This
seemed to require an
ontological shift, one involving
matter. I have been
arguing for some time
that matter is affective or informational (well maybe we
should just say energy)
and this led me to OOO/SR. But before checking out
OOO/SR I was much indebted to Deleuze and the
others and since
studying
OOO/SR I feel the noteworthy tension between Deleuzians and OOO/SR (although
there are those trying
to negotiate the tension as I am).
During the next week
I want to offer some
thoughts (and can't wait for response and interventions)
about this tension in relationship to affect. I hope we can discussion more
the recent focus on
aesthetics which has enabled me to think in the tension
rather than against
it and find a way as well to dwell in rather than simply
put an end to the aporia between ontology and ep
> istemology that affect and non-human
perception produces. I think
aesthetics and the turn
to Whitehead's rereading of Kant points to a way to
engage the liveliness
of what Eugene Thacker calls a world
without us or not
for us.
>
> Finally, during the first week I much enjoyed all the sites to which I was
sent and all the efforts
to make stuff, queer stuff, with digital
technology as
well as with other
technologies. This doing along with
thinking (crude way of
putting it) seems
important to a critical engagement with what we once would
have called knowledge production. Looking forward to ongoing
conversation(s)
Patricia
>
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> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au]
On Behalf Of Michael
O'Rourke [tranquilised_icon at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Saturday,
June 16, 2012 7:40 PM
> To:
soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re:
[-empyre-] the real and reality in speculative realism and OOO/P
>
> Hi Tim! Cheers for
your thoughts. Take a look at Christina's work here:
>
> http://www.christinamcphee.net/
>
> I think it
resonates in many ways with yours.
>
> M.
>
>
>
> --- On Sat, 16/6/12,
Timothy Morton <timothymorton303 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: Timothy
Morton <timothymorton303 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re:
[-empyre-] the real and reality in speculative realism and OOO/P
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Date: Saturday, 16
June, 2012, 23:25
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> This is my first
(or possibly second if the other got through) message to the
list, and I'm responding
to a brief discussion of the notion of flat ontology
initiated by Michael
O'Rourke (hi Michael!) and Frederic Neyrat.
>
> OOO comes in
various flavors and is not necessarily flat. Mine and Graham
Harman's has two levels.
Levi Bryant's and Ian Bogost's have one, but differ in
how that one level
works.
>
> Other forms of
realism such as Manuel De Landa's are flat, or flatter, than
OOO.
>
> Frederic I'm a
Derridean and the idea of the singularity is my idea of the
strange stranger, which
is Derrida's arrivant.
>
> Just apply this
notion of arrivant to non-life and you get the OOO "object."
>
> You can have all
the singularities you want in a non-all and by definition
non-hierarchical set,
which is the OOO universe.
>
> Yours, Tim
>
>
> --
>
> Ecology without
Nature<http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/>
>
>
> -----Inline
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>
>
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