Energy Research & Social Science (ERSS) emerged in response to an identified lack of social science energy scholarship. The first publication in this journal asked ‘What can the social sciences bring ...to energy research?’. Since then, ERSS has become a home for articles that have explored this question in a multitude of ways. In this Perspective we want to reflect, and stimulate debate, on the question we see as the other side of the coin: ‘What can energy research bring to the social sciences?’ We develop our reflection, first, by exploring energy’s unique features: what a focus on energy makes visible and thinkable that other entry points do not. We subsequently introduce a ‘menu of possibilities’: areas of scholarship where a focus on energy has enabled or could enable different ways of understanding the world. We conclude with the suggestion that by changing the object of analysis, energy scholars can develop both new conceptual insights, and emphasise our connections with issues explored outside of energy scholarship.
Object Oriented Environs is the lively archive of a critical confluence between the environmental turn so vigorous within early modern studies, and thing theory (object oriented ontology, vibrant ...materialism, the new materialism and speculative realism). The book unfolds a conversation that attempts to move beyond anthropocentrism and examine nonhumans at every scale, their relations to each other, and the ethics of human enmeshment within an agentic material world. The diverse essays, reflections, images and ephemera collected here offer a laboratory for probing the mystery and potential autonomy of objects, in their alliances and in performance. The book is the trace of an event-space crafted over a day of conversation in two seminars at the Shakespeare Association of America meeting in 2014 in St. Louis and offers its nineteen essays as the end to the work-cycle of the collective we crafted that day. It is a noisy collation, full of bees, bushes, laundry, crutches, lists, poems, plague vectors, planks, chairs, rain, shoes, meat, body parts, books, and assorted humans (living and dead), and also a repertoire of dance steps, ways of configuring the relations between subject and object, actors or actants (human and otherwise). It is also a book that asks readers to ponder their environs, to consider the particularities of their world, of their reading experiences, and to consider what orders of meaning we might be able to derive from attending closely to all the very many things we come into being with.
Abstract
According to Viveiros de Castro, comparison as ontology defines the ontological turn in anthropology. It presents a necessity for philosophy to approach the matter with comparative strategy. ...Morten Pedersen claims that ontological turn should be interpreted as a fulfillment of an anthropological version of Husserl’s method. Thus, phenomenology enters the field of interest along with its critique in Speculative Realism. In this article, we will see clearly why this selection is not accidental but rather unavoidable. Amerindian perspectivism necessitates the philosophical reconceptualization of perspective in general, which is to be taken as a challenge for the established discourses. The need arises to rethink the problematic of Kantian perspectivism and its offspring. Amerindian perspectivism proposes cosmological deictics that hold a spatiality of the perspective of the other, of the in-itself, thus it comes into an opposition to Kant’s system. Phenomenological perspective, as one of the Kantian offspring, faces a predicament that is interwoven with the critique of correlationism arriving from Speculative Realisms. The synthetic character of phenomenology allows enough flexibility for it to traverse these recent charges. We will draw a comparative picture of dynamic co-evolution of strains of recent thought, striving for a synthetic multiplicity, permeated by a common perspectival thread.
New materialism and object‐oriented ontology have recently gained widespread attention. Taking as exemplary the work of Jane Bennett and Graham Harman (yet also drawing on other figures within these ...materialist fields), this paper argues that the theories are self‐contradictory and rooted in what I label
semiophobia
(an unease with human reality as embedded in a semiotic reality). In addition, I argue that Harman's poetics (weird realism) and Bennett's strategic anthropomorphism are inconsistent and fail to deliver what they promise. Finally, I argue that in spite of its honorable intentions new materialism entails undesirable ethical and political consequences.
Abstract
Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) is a contemporary form of realism concerned with the investigation of “objects” broadly construed. It may be characterised in terms of a metaphysical pluralism ...to the extent that it recognises infinitely many different kinds of
emergent
entities, and this fact in turn leads to a number of questions concerning the nature of objects and emergence in OOO: what is the precise meaning of an emergent entity in OOO? How has emergence been denied throughout the history of Western thought? Is there a specific object-oriented account of emergence? What is the causal mechanism which provides the conditions of possibility for the generation of emergent entities? In this article, I aim to answer all these questions by constructing the first extensive account of real emergence in the context of Object-Oriented Ontology, and I also seek to tie this analysis to the notion of “vicarious” or indirect causation.
Worldwide followers of the late Chinese Christian reformers Watchman Nee and Witness Lee share a central concern with human-divine ‘oneness’, but there are different understandings in different ...localities about how such oneness works. I utilize one such difference by analyzing group unity in Euro-America using Taiwanese understandings of oneness, which involve things (selfsame unities) but not relations. Experimenting with Dumontian, Strathernian, and object-oriented anthropologies, I show that anthropological analysis is currently possible (a) by emphasizing things, (b) by emphasizing relations, and (c) entirely without relations. Anthropology entirely without things, however, has not yet been achieved. I conclude by suggesting reasons why we might want to attain this final possibility in our approach to things and/or relations.
invisible belfast was a research-driven indie alternate reality game (ARG) that ran for 6 weeks during the spring of 2011 in Belfast and was subsequently adapted, 5 years later into a fictional ...documentary for BBC Radio 4. The ARG is a participatory and dispersed narrative, which the audience play through. The text expands outward across both physical and digital platforms to create a mystery for the players using everyday platforms. The ARG is a product of media convergence and at its heart transmedial, defined by its complexity and modes of participation. The fictional radio documentary which remediated the ARG into a more simple linear structure, but possibly a more complex narrative form, retells parts of the story for new audiences. The premise of invisible belfast – the game and later the documentary – is itself an adaptation of writer Ciaran Carson’s novel The Star Factory (1997): a postmodern adventure through the complex psychogeography of Belfast. A trail through the labyrinthine text, which paints the history of Belfast in poetic prose. This article will map the concept’s journey from novel to game to radio, contextualising its development within its political and urban landscape and charting the remediation of the narratives as they fold out across multiple media and complex story arches. The article will draw together ideas from previous publications on ARG, transmediality and complex textualities from the authors and reflect on the textual trajectories that the remediation of the narrative has taken from the original book, through the ARG, into the radio documentary. Building upon recent approaches from environmental philosopher Tim Morton and games theorist Ian Bogost, the authors argue that Belfast’s history propels medial adaptations of a particular kind, characterised by a ‘flat’ ontology of space and time and a sort of diffuse and dark urban experience for designers/producers and players/listeners.
The lurker in the object Rose, Alexander S.
Consumption, markets and culture,
20/5/3/, Letnik:
23, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
A peculiar note from a neighbor of a consumer culture theorist stationed at Miskatonic University who has gone missing arrives for you. The Arkham police have tasked the neighbor with sorting out ...some seemingly-incoherent academic notes left behind by the professor. In particular, they have tasked him with reaching out to you in order to determine the meaning of a peculiar phrase, "the lurker waits in the object" scrawled into the missing professor's desk. The notes concern several topics, but seem, in the neighbor's opinion, to revolve around object-oriented ontology, horror reality, genre horror, and information by allusion. The neighbor emphasizes that the missing professor may have suffered some mental illness or other tragedy, but has no other viable leads aside from the phrase and notes and begs your expert advice on the topic.
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