[-empyre-] Smelly Objects

[Timothy Morton]

PS--I would go as far as to say that the rippling
glass is having a glass-pomorphic version of
a human orgasm. 

Tim


http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com

On Jun 18, 2012, at 11:00 PM, "lauren.berlant at gmail.com" <lberlant at aol.com> wrote:

> Hi!  Jack, thanks for being game!  I was indeed interested in reading Transitional Objects as a piece of queer new media about the making of new mediums that destroy notions of bodily ego, identity, inside/outside, human/object, and reproduction/replication, while yet holding up a potential world that can reveal itself and be occupied (even as an atmosphere in proximity) without requiring a confidence on the other side that kills the confusion of a new sensorium right away into taxonomy.  Taxidermy against taxonomy. Even the baby on the breast has a too closeness that can't quite re-find itself in the VHS cassette  (a formerly new medium). 
> 
> We look at the insane animals that Jennifer sews, and the film compiled with her toes; we look at the abjection of making in situ, and sense something queer about making as a kind of editing, or open ended (endlessly hacked) suturing, as a process that works against being known, and therefore against death. Life is the estranged thing. We see that the making of a new medium is a gathering up of previous events of newness, all violent to the sensorium.  It made me think about Zach's queer mask surveillance work.  In both cases a known thing is reproduced as a screen against knowing; and the desires to be seen and known, and to see and know, are propped against the insecurity state any enigma forces the surveyor to occupy.  These dramas are usefully linked to camp, with its production of engimas that cannot be known but that stand in nonetheless for the desire to define objects as potentially knowable (as potentially "data," as Patricia would say).  
> 
> I also think we could talk about the affectivity of the soundtrack, out of sync with the image but not in an uncanny way:  it's very soothing when it's a voiceover reading theory, but anxiogenic when the two girlish voices are collaborating on what to call the emerging objects. But the big impact on me is in the visuals of making.  I always feel sick when I watch Jennifer both move the film with her toes and eviscerate the stuffed animals.  There is nothing more pedagogical about the being in objects than the experience of seeing the object cut into. Her version of "reparativity" is not pastoral; her version of the object is in the recognition that any impressment on consciousness does a violence to it and the object:  "Hello Object, I destroyed you, I love you...While I am loving you I am all the time destroying you in unconscious fantasy." To "respect" the being of objects here is to encounter the violence of the non-encounter that generates the pleasure and strangeness of being in relation. I think that's what the spaghetti western is doing there too: explaining aesthetics as our pleasure in bruising the object when we encounter its trace, and take away an image that is neither a reproduction, nor a replication, but a sense, an impact.   We were supposed to talk about affect this week:  about the erotics of biopower, about the aesthetics of new media producing a different kind of surfacing of impact and therefore of affect; about the Mobius strip of revelation and withdrawal that the object dramatizes.  So I thought I'd offer something like this. 
> 
> 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: Judith Halberstam <halberst at usc.edu>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Sent: Mon, Jun 18, 2012 8:01 pm
> Subject: [-empyre-] Smelly Objects
> 
> Lauren: 
> 
> I have read your post several times, watched the video by Jennifer Montgomery, read some Winnicott and also looked again at Alison Bechdel's graphic novel memoir, Are You My Mother? which contains several episodes revolving around her readings of Winnicott and even has a chapter titled "Transitional Objects." Homay mentioned Bechdel last week also.
> 
> So, here are my short comments in response, I won't go on since this is not even my week but i loved your post and found that it opened up lots of new doors...
> 
> 1. Bechdel's book is brilliant and each chapter begins with a dream and then uses material from her endless conversations with her mother to make sense of the dream. In the book's opening sequence for example, she dreams that she has trapped herself in her house's cellar while doing a home improvement project. She escapes through a small window and then jumps into a deep brook to try to find her way home again. This dream about being trapped and then getting lost recurs throughout.
> 
> After the dream, there is a mesmerizing cinematic sequence within which Bechdel is driving in heavy traffic and having a conversation with her mother. The panels tightly frame her upper body behind the wheel of the car and then slowly pull back until by the fourth panel we see that the passenger seat is empty. She has been rehearsing a conversation with her mother but in this scene the mother is (and she remains throughout the book) absent. This is a stunning illustration of what Lauren calls "the generative potential of withdrawn objects" and like the dreams that do not resolve, the absent mother keeps things moving throughout the memoir.
> 
> Bechdel seems to offer a way into the thinking about the queerness of the object - partly because she uses the comic/graphic novel format (the book's subtitle is A Comic Drama) and therefore makes the connection to the infantile in form as well as content and offers the cartoon itself as a transitional object. but Bechdel's queerness emerges out of her own transitional identity - the slippage she herself represents between male and female, son and daughter. Her gender ambiguity, she thinks, makes her unloveable to the mother and so she goes on a hunt for the good enough mother who will accept her transitional self. In the process she develops a series of (queer) relations with things...this is where she and the child in Montgomery's video overlap.
> 
> 
> 2. In the video by Montgomery, I was sort of amused by this passage from Winnicott:
> 
> "The transitional object may, because of an anal erotic organization, stand for faeces (but it is not for this reason that it may become smelly or remain unwashed)."
> 
> There is something about the use of the word "smelly" there that is disgusting but also humorous. Of course the stuffed animal is a kind of sponge (bob) in that it soaks up the child - his/her fluids - tears, milk, puke, slobber. It becomes an olefactory record of the child's misery and abjection. This is a history that smells.
> 
> When the object becomes smelly is its dirtiness part of its liveliness? is the washed object something else entirely? what is the relationship between the smelly and the loved? 
> 
> Second, in the relationship between the two voices in the video, the adult, Jennifer, who surgically cuts up stuffed animals with a razor blade and then sews them back to together again in hybrid forms, hardly acknowledges the rambling but compelling narration of the little girl:
> 
> Girl: "what is this?...no face...a teddy bear...with two hands...hands up in the sky....whatttt, no face..."
> Jennifer M: "no face"
> Girl: "why? did the face go away? what did it look like? what did it look like? a bear?"
> JM: no answer
> Girl: "what like this? this is silly? an elephant and a bunny. that's a monkey!"
> JM: "really"
> Girl: "yeah, look, it is also a bunny and a cat, a dog and a monkey, a lion. a little bit a cat, a little bit a lion, what else? that's all"
> JM: "uh huh."
> Girl: "a little bit a person...that's all...a person and a little bit a cat."
> 
> The little girl is trying to find something she recognizes in the hybrid forms that the Jennifer character makes, sort of sadistically, and so she ends up looking at one of the monstrosities (and I say this with much approval of the monstrous object) and calling it "a little bit a person and a little bit a cat."
> 
> Finding herself reflected in the hybridity of the altered object, the girl fashions a kind of identification with monstrosity...this way queerness lies. Perhaps we are little bit person and little bit cat/monkey/camel, donkey/dog etc...Lauren called us "cats" as in "Hey Cats"...
> 
> The girl, like Bechdel, finding herself blocked out somehow by the mother figure, begins to craft an intimacy with the object. It is this intimacy that might be the basis for access to the realm of what Lauren calls the "interobjective."
> 
> Anyone else watch the video? thanks for posting this and your comments Lauren...
> Jack
>  
> 
> 
> 
> On Jun 18, 2012, at 4:52 AM, lauren.berlant at gmail.com wrote:
> 
>>  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.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
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>>  
>> 
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>> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 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
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > ________________________________________
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 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
>> Attachment Follows-----
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > empyre forum
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au</mc/compose?to=empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > empyre forum
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> empyre forum
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> empyre forum
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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