[-empyre-] Hello Object, I destroy you, I love you.

Tue Jun 19 15:03:54 EST 2012

Thanks Lauren    I did fear my post was too long.    So short.   good night and tomorrow I hope. Patricia
________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of lauren.berlant at gmail.com [lberlant at aol.com]
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2012 7:52 AM
To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: [-empyre-] Hello Object, I destroy you, I love you.

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<mailto:empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
[empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au<mailto:empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>]

On Behalf Of frederic
neyrat [fneyrat at gmail.com<mailto: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<mailto: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

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> ________________________________________

> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au<mailto:empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
[empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au<mailto:empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>]

On Behalf Of Michael
O'Rourke [tranquilised_icon at yahoo.com<mailto: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<mailto:timothymorton303 at gmail.com>> wrote:

>

> From: Timothy
Morton <timothymorton303 at gmail.com<mailto: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<mailto: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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