[-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

Ian Bogost ian.bogost at lcc.gatech.edu
Mon Jun 25 11:08:50 EST 2012 

There is no reason why holding that everything exists equally entails "reducing all that can be known about a being to a simple recognition of being."

Ian


On Jun 24, 2012, at 5:44 AM, davin heckman wrote:

> I agree, this is a good starting point....  that all things that exist
> have being as their common condition of existence (that is, they are
> not "not beings"), which is a sort of foundational ontological
> similarity.  But if the only significant ontological claim we can make
> about things is either yes or no, do they exist or not, then this
> means all things carry this single quality, which is to say that there
> is no difference between things.  If we admit difference, then we must
> account for those differences in meaningful ways.  For instance,
> waffle #1 differs from waffle #2 in a different way than waffle #1
> differs from a toaster (or waffle #1 changes in the course of being
> eaten, it is still in one meaningful sense the "same" waffle after it
> has been bitten, but in another sense, it is a different waffle, too.
> While both toasters and waffles are different from something like an
> idea or a "memory" rendered in media (a waffle recipe or story about
> waffles) or a process habituated in muscle memory (the habit of making
> a waffle or eating one).
> 
> My concern is that if we reduce all that can be known about being to a
> simple recognition of being, we commit to a kind of abstraction and
> alienation from being of the sort that happens when markets try to
> mediate everything through the common denominator of dollars.
> 
> Davin
> 
> On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 4:46 PM, Timothy Morton
> <timothymorton303 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Davin,
>> 
>> We obviously treat different entities differently.
>> 
>> But this is not the same as saying that these entities are ontologically different.
>> 
>> Yours, Tim
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com
>> 
>> On Jun 20, 2012, at 5:51 AM, davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Thank you Ian, for these thoughts.  My initial encounter with this
>>> work came via a brief discussion of "flat ontology," which I found
>>> somewhat offputting.  I followed up by reading through the re:press
>>> book.  What I like the most, I suppose, is the sense that the
>>> discussions are in motion with a lot of people participating.
>>> 
>>> Reading some of the discussion of mereology, I find they resonate with
>>> one of my favorite passages from Hegel.  Pardon me for cannibalizing
>>> another piece of writing (a draft of which can be found here:
>>> http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/paper/disturbed-dialectic-literary-criticism).
>>> *
>>> In The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel describes the dialectical process:
>>> 
>>> "The bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one
>>> might say the former is refuted by the latter; similarly, when the
>>> fruit appears, the blossom is shown up in its turn as a false
>>> manifestation of the plant, and the fruit now emerges as the truth of
>>> it instead. These forms are not just distinguished from one another,
>>> they also supplant one another as mutually incompatible. Yet at the
>>> same time their fluid nature makes them moments of an organic unity in
>>> which they not only do not conflict, but in which each is as necessary
>>> as the other; and this mutual necessity alone constitutes the life of
>>> the whole." [1]
>>> 
>>> Viewed from within the Hegelian process, the Real is positioned
>>> outside its present manifestations, consisting, rather, of the dynamic
>>> processes that comprise its totality.
>>> 
>>> This insight, crucial to critical practice, requires revision in light
>>> of technical change. By revision, I do not mean that we need to
>>> fundamentally alter Hegel’s argument, I only mean to suggest that we
>>> see this passage with respect to new temporal modalities that have
>>> shaken up the pursuit of knowledge.
>>> *
>>> I come at many of the same issues, but my inclination lead me to
>>> embrace a kind of "humanism," but one which cannot easily understand
>>> as we continually muddle the conversations of humanism with an
>>> ontology that is expressed in our metaphors.  One grip I have with the
>>> use of Deleuze or McLuhan, is the idea that our capacity to
>>> personalize prosthetics has a tendency to be reduced to a situation in
>>> which it becomes possible to imagine that we see machines,
>>> interpersonal relationships, people with tools, etc. as the same
>>> thing.  When, in fact, my psychic investment in my bike or computer,
>>> while deep, is not nearly as deep or as complex as my psychic
>>> investment in my (which I can only refer to as mine with a sense of
>>> obligation to, rather than ownership over) child.  If my bike decided
>>> to bite me.....which it can't, even if it can hurt me....  I would not
>>> feel so simultaneously restrained in my response AND emotionally
>>> florid as I would if my 8 year old bit me for some crazy reason (but
>>> with my three year old, I he is only a missed nap away from engaging
>>> in something so obvious and horrible as biting someone).  A bike, on
>>> the other hand, can hurt me a lot more than a bite from a toddler, and
>>> I suppose I am not above kicking a bike and yelling....  but I have
>>> very limited feelings about a bike malfunction or hitting my thumb
>>> with a hammer.  On the other hand, a bike goes wherever I want it to
>>> go (except when there's an accident).....  a toddler, not so much....
>>> an eight year old, he usually comes with a counter proposal (and it is
>>> a monstrous adult that would treat kids like a bike, insist that they
>>> only go where told, speak when it is demanded).  A lot of really deep
>>> thinking about human subjectivty simply does not go this far....  and
>>> part of this has to do with a poor understanding of objects.  What is
>>> worse is when this understanding infects interpersonal relationships
>>> in the context of a Randian sort of world where there is "no such
>>> thing as society, only individuals" (yet, bosses treat workers like
>>> bikes and bad boyfriends treat their partners like robots).
>>> 
>>> I am very excited to read more.  I feel like it is important to free
>>> our thinking from patterns and habits of the past.  In particular, the
>>> culture of academic citation has gone from being about finding good
>>> ideas where they are to deriving authority from the aura of the great
>>> figure.  I also have no problem with accumulations of wisdom that
>>> translate into an inherited perspective, but this can't close us off
>>> to thinking.  So....  thank you for this!
>>> 
>>> Davin
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Ian Bogost <ian.bogost at lcc.gatech.edu> wrote:
>>>> Davin,
>>>> 
>>>> I'm about to disappear into a mess of meetings, but let me offer a brief
>>>> response:
>>>> 
>>>> What you're touching on here is what Levi Byrant sometimes calls the "weird
>>>> mereology" of OOO. The song isn't "just" the sound waves (what Harman calls
>>>> an underming position) nor is it just the social context of creation and use
>>>> (an overmining position). A song is a song, and indeed, the song in an MP3
>>>> file is a different thing than the song as an abstraction in human culture.
>>>> Neither is more object nor more real (well, "real" has a different meaning
>>>> for Harman than it does for Levi and me).
>>>> 
>>>> I talk about this a bit in the first chapter of Alien Phenomenology, and
>>>> Levi does as well in the mereology section of Democracy of Objects. Also,
>>>> here are a  blog post from Levi on the subject that weaves the two
>>>> together: http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/more-strange-mereology/
>>>> 
>>>> I'm not answering sufficiently but wanted to get something out to you
>>>> rapidly.
>>>> 
>>>> ib
>>>> 
>>>> Ian Bogost, Ph.D.
>>>> Professor
>>>> Director, Graduate Program in Digital Media
>>>> 
>>>> Georgia Institute of Technology
>>>> Digital Media/TSRB 320B
>>>> 85 Fifth Street NW
>>>> Atlanta, GA 30308-1030
>>>> 
>>>> ibogost at gatech.edu
>>>> +1 (404) 894-1160 (tel)
>>>> +1 (404) 894-2833 (fax)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Jun 15, 2012, at 4:11 AM, davin heckman wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Ian,
>>>> 
>>>> Since we are on the topic of OOO, I was wondering what the ontological
>>>> status of something like a song is?  I have to admit, I have a real
>>>> hard time swallowing a pure ontology that essentially defines the
>>>> subjective as outside of being, as a sort of on or off proposition, as
>>>> opposed to also a turning on (or is it being turned on? Or simply to
>>>> be turned or to turn?) (I am generally skeptical about a variety of
>>>> posthumanisms that go beyond a critique of a monolithic Humanism,
>>>> because I think that consciousness carries specific tendencies that
>>>> seem to fundamentally frame all possibilities for knowledge).  However
>>>> it is entirely possible that I am missing out on a discussion that has
>>>> been unfolding without me.
>>>> 
>>>> But here's my thought:  With a song, you have something that can be
>>>> rendered in "objective" form....  maybe an mp3 file or a sheet of
>>>> notes or record or something.  If this is what we mean by a song,
>>>> then, fine, that's an object.  But a song only really starts doing
>>>> something when it is unfolding within the context of memory and
>>>> anticipation.  It only is a song when it is listened to by a subject,
>>>> which is to say it is an object that has a singular temporal being as
>>>> it is listened to, which is distinct from how it is being listened to
>>>> and replayed even by the same user.  (And we aren't even beginning to
>>>> talk about non-recorded music).  The only way a song becomes a purely
>>>> discrete object is when it is removed from its temporal existence and
>>>> understood as a totality, and detached from an audience.  And while we
>>>> can sit around and all talk about, say, "Another One Bites the Dust,"
>>>> after we squeeze it into a conceptual file type and label it, the fact
>>>> that we can discuss something that can only mean something if is
>>>> experienced as a process AND an object within the context of a
>>>> experience, suggests that sometimes being is realized by the relations
>>>> of things, rather than the things themselves.  My suggestion is that
>>>> the ontological nature of the song cannot be described in objective
>>>> terms without missing what a song is.  Without the non-objective
>>>> component of its being, a song is just sound.  If we say, well, "Hey,
>>>> when this sound occurs, people do X, Y, and Z," we can find ourself
>>>> thinking that these effects are produced by the object, but this sort
>>>> of thought experiment only gives us half an understanding of the
>>>> object's being.  You also have to think of that song in relation to
>>>> the current context, to itself over time, to the individual and
>>>> collective experience of its audience, to the culture, etc. Again, a
>>>> great means to produce estrangement, but not the complete account of
>>>> what the thing is.  At the risk of sounding chauvinistic, I can see
>>>> that it might be expedient to regard a distant moon without regard to
>>>> its historical relationship to the human.  It's useful to think of a
>>>> distant moon as a quantity of data.  But the closer we get to human
>>>> existence, the more likely we are to encounter types of things that
>>>> exist, but that cannot be understood properly as a bundle of discrete
>>>> data.  Maybe there are some texts that address precisly these sorts of
>>>> concerns.
>>>> 
>>>> This is where I think ontology cannot simply be objective.  It must,
>>>> of course, be able to establish the differences between things, to
>>>> render those things it claims to understand in discrete form, insofar
>>>> as they can be considered as such.  On the other hand, we know that
>>>> most of what the world is made of is common and that the laws of
>>>> physics, for instance, harness discrete things under a kind of
>>>> continuity.  So, along with the conditions of radical difference that
>>>> a philosophy of objects implies, there are the conditions of radical
>>>> connectivity.  Both features are equally present, which is to say they
>>>> offer us little in the way of productive knowledge EXCEPT insofar as
>>>> we can bind and sever, cut or tie, digitize or analogize within this
>>>> framework of matter.  The 21st century loves digitizing things.....
>>>> it helps computers see the world, it helps them count us, predict our
>>>> behavior, weigh it, value it, direct it, etc.  But the digital is only
>>>> half of our existence....  the analog process is equally present in
>>>> language and cognition....  and it is just as equpped to help us
>>>> understand the world by creating categories of things and identifying
>>>> common qualities.  In "Notes on the Uncanny," Freud identifies this
>>>> struggle as productive of a kind of unsettling (the person that acts
>>>> like an object/the object that acts like a person)...  but it does not
>>>> simply have to be a "scary" process....  the move from discrete to
>>>> connected or from one into multiple can also be deeply satisfying and
>>>> reassuring of being.  If both processes are equally useful, then what
>>>> presides over these two tendencies?  Temporal consciousness that can
>>>> mobilize processes of digitization and analogy?  Another place to
>>>> think through this is in relation to a variety of attempts at
>>>> taxonomy.  At some point, a poodle has to be a poodle and a wolf has
>>>> to be a wolf, but in relation to squids, both can be canines.  We
>>>> could say that well, we are talking about layers of qualities that
>>>> enable us to categorize this object or that object.  But without the
>>>> history of the poodle we don't really know how one canine can be a
>>>> fashion accessory and the other is a part of a wild ecology, all of
>>>> which (domesticating work dogs, turning tool animals into fashion
>>>> animals, thinking about animals as people, killing wild animals,
>>>> restoring wildness, etc) radically alter the parameters of being based
>>>> on thoughts about being.  To take it back to queer thought, around the
>>>> bend of singular identities is the knowlege that such queerness does
>>>> not preclude deep relationality.  My reading is that the fruits of
>>>> this thought are an affirmation of the idea that the well-worn paths
>>>> of prescribed human behavior do not necessarily lead to earnest
>>>> relationships, it is not to reject relationship itself in favor of
>>>> individualism because capitalism has been doing this since the
>>>> transformation of labor into commodity.
>>>> 
>>>> Why does this matter?  I care about politics, but I am not going to
>>>> say that OOO cleaves to this or that kind of politics....  it doesn't
>>>> matter.  If a statement is discernibly true, then I have an obligation
>>>> to bend my ideas around the true statement.  And my sense, based on
>>>> very limited reading, is that OOO is trying to figure out what we can
>>>> know about being.  So, while it is worth considering the political
>>>> implications of speculative thought, I think Galloway is a bit wrong
>>>> to suggest that something is "bourgeois" or something just because
>>>> financial markets also offer a flat ontology via capital.  The only
>>>> thing that really matters is whether or not a philosophy can get us to
>>>> a mutually agreed upon knowledge of the world that can be transmitted
>>>> effectively from one context to another and continue to be useful.
>>>> 
>>>> I have been lazy about following this month's discussion, but I like
>>>> the idea of queering technology, of the productively broken tool.  It
>>>> is an area that has affinities with regards to my own reading of
>>>> electronic literature.....  taking Jakobson's discussion of poetics up
>>>> through Darko Suvin's discussion of "cognitive estrangement," and
>>>> looking at the ways that digital literary practices perform a similar
>>>> process with regards to instrumental languages. My thought is that OOO
>>>> is productive in that it asks us to engage in a thought experiment
>>>> about pure objectivitiy, and in doing so, reveals the critical
>>>> necessity of subjective and intersubjective aspects of human being
>>>> that are embedded in our broader assertions about being.  I think that
>>>> a lot of the "posthumanisms" try to simply go beyond something that we
>>>> have never understood in the first place: that being human is
>>>> essentially a kind of queer existence, all the much more so when we
>>>> insist that it is not. For my part, I want my human rights.  So while
>>>> I am sympathetic, generally, with many of the aims of the
>>>> posthumanists I encounter, I generally think that "Humanism" has yet
>>>> to adequately describe being human.  Like Habermas said of modernity,
>>>> it's daunting and messy and incomplete (like most things worth doing).
>>>> Living in Norway right now (moving in a couple weeks, unfortunately),
>>>> humanism seems to be working out pretty well here.  The problems of
>>>> the world do not stem from a love of humanity, they stem from our
>>>> growing estrangment from humanity and increased clustering into
>>>> paranoid, exclusionary enclaves (Why do you think everyone watches
>>>> Zombie movies? Blasting away at legions of dirty anthropoidal morons
>>>> trying to eat what you have, a perfect gospel for post democratic
>>>> capitalism).  In a world of Darwinian evolution, we are not entirely
>>>> selected, we alter the landscape of an objective process through our
>>>> dialogue with an objective sphere that exists, that we inhabit, and
>>>> that we think about, but which does not simply constitute us.
>>>> 
>>>> I admit these thoughts are poorly formed....  and I am very busy these
>>>> days....  so I might not be able to reply as quickly as I would
>>>> normally.  But am very interested in these conversations.
>>>> 
>>>> Davin
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 4:16 PM, frederic neyrat <fneyrat at gmail.com> 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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