This article covers three objections I have to Hilan Bensusan's otherwise interesting book Indexicalism: Realism and the Metaphysics of Paradox. First, I assess Bensusan's fruitful combination of the ...philosophies of Whitehead and Levinas and point to some small problems with the way this is done. Second, I respond to his critique of my own philosophical position, object-oriented ontology (OOO). Third, I review his allegiance to the "multinaturalist" position of Bruno Latour, Philippe Descola, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, challenging the idea that specific ontologies can be correlated with particular political results. KEYWORDS: Bensusan; Object-oriented ontology (OOO); Multinaturalism
This paper examines visual texts by the Sri Lankan artist S. P. Pushpakanthan, whose art is positioned at the intersection between the effects of war and its material effect on objects. Two research ...questions frame this paper: what knowledge(s) about violence do Pushpakanthan's texts produce as reflecting, reflected objects? how do these texts challenge anthropocentric views of objects and violence and create an esthetics of the "democracy of objects," as Levi Bryant would put it? To answer the first, I turn to what Steven Miller has called "violence worse than death." Miller proposes that violence targets more than the death of a single, delimited life, and sees violence as being directed toward the totality of the living and non-living world. To answer the second, I draw on Object-Oriented Ontology, implied closely by the artist's own description of his work as being about the "ontology of the object." In Pushpakanthan's art, objects function as a visual coda for violence; they are traces, not only of the immediacy of killing, but the totality of the violence against all things. The esthetics of such an ontology is a formal reflection of the affective effects of violence of war that destroys much more than mere life.
Abstract
De-anthropocentrism is the leitmotif of philosophy in the twenty-first century, encouraging diverse and competing thoughts as to how this goal may be achieved. This article argues that the ...method by which we may achieve de-anthropocentrism is ethical rather than metaphysical – it must involve a creation of the self, rather than an interpretation of the given human conditions. Through engagements with the thought of Nietzsche, Levinas, and Foucault, and a close reading of Baudelaire’s poem “La Beauté,” I will illustrate three ethical commitments essential to de-anthropocentrism: to abandon the claim to knowledge associated with human reason, to remain in perpetual quest of an object, and to transgress the given perceptual structure through aesthetic experience. In contrast to Kantian philosophy built upon universal human reason, art is the ethical arena where each artist creates their own way to relate to the object, while de-anthropocentrism occurs – this article argues – when the artist includes the self as the field of creation. Object-Oriented Ontology in my assessment is the only branch of philosophy that truly achieves de-anthropocentrism.
This brief paper has basically two aims. First, it intends to introduce object-oriented ontology (OOO), a branch of contemporary thought which regards everything as an individual “object” of equal ...standing, as a potentially effective theoretical framework to examine a literary text, especially in order to explore the complexity of interactions between/among both human and nonhuman objects on a horizontal plane. Second, it analyzes how the narrator of A Tour on the Prairies, one of the long-neglected texts of Washington Irving, gradually begins to question the naive human/object binary and broadens his horizons through an encounter with another object. Specifically, I examined a series of the contacts which the narrator makes with buffaloes, and then demonstrated how he, though taking a naïve, human-centered schema in the beginning, gradually attains the liberal perspective through the recognition that the object before him is a being that is ontologically equal with him. I concluded the argument by attesting that the text, albeit in a gentle manner, invited us to see the world and existences in it with a more liberal—i.e. object-oriented—perspective.
The main idea of the article is to show how the concept of faith could resolve problem, which is created in modern ontologies. Under the term «modern ontologies» we understand concepts of Latour ...(ANT), Harman and Meillassoux (speculative realism), Kerimov and Krasavin (heterology). Within the framework of these ontologies, the world is described as a field of unexpected connections between equivalent entities. New participants and relationships are produced and changed by the process of that interaction. The world and its laws are contingent, they can change, and change at any time. Modern ontologies put us in front of an absolutely unknown future and deny certainty in predictions or calculations. Science is no longer able to predict the changes taking place in the world, society, and our identities due to the process of the world's permanent creation from the connections between a multitude of equal participants. As a result, we have a practical problem: it is not clear how to act reasonably in the world, which constantly gets out of control. Therefore, it is necessary to find ways of correlating our actions or our way of living with being given as «any being». The concept of faith brings us closer to the solution of this problem. Based on model of faith of Kierkegaard, James, Derrida, and Bishop, we can treat faith as practical attitude to any future. Faith is an act or activity, which correlate with the object of faith. Faith has a practical nature. And in the same time, faith implies acceptance of any future as a value and a blessing.
In this essay I scrutinize the non-anthropocentric discourses used by the social sciences and humanities narratives and critiques of the Anthropocene. Although not always predominant within the ...academic Anthropocene debate, such discursive strands remain politically and ethically inspiring and influential in that debate and for the public discourse concerning the epoch. I stress that these discourses inherit the hope for human progress that characterizes critical theory of the Frankfurt school, i.e. ‘critical hope’, a type of hope that renders the non-anthropocentric discourses self-contradictory. Even when they manage to escape the hold of critical hope, these discourses, I argue, suffer from ethical and political failings due to their inherent lack of focus on human–human relations and largely ahistorical nature. I conclude the essay by advocating an Anthropocene archaeology that remains critical of and learns from the ethical and political shortcomings of non-anthropocentric perspectives and making a related call for a slow archaeology of the Anthropocene.
Abstract
This article has two parts. The first one compares the ontological and epistemological implications of two main philosophical stances on how reality relates to appearance. I call the first ...group the “plane of superficiality,” where reality and appearance are the same; there is no gap between what a thing is and how it manifests itself. I call the second group “volume of representation,” in which reality is beyond appearances; there is an insurmountable gap between the thing and its phenomena. The second part of the article focuses on Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) as the second group’s contemporary position. Within the OOO epistemological model of “knowledge without truth,” Harman’s schema of the observer’s participation in the object’s knowledge production is questioned. Alternatively, based on the notion proposed here of “flat representativity” in which each appearance is equally valuable to represent different aspects of the object, I argue for the full spectrum of the sensual as the basis for “knowledge without truth.” In particular, the aesthetic method, excluded from Harman’s concerns about knowledge, is suggested as another contribution to the episteme.
This paper takes up the challenge set down by the review work of Hess and Sovacool (2020) and Sovacool et al. (2020) and joins the conversation about future research agendas where STS is aligned ...towards humanities and social science research of energy solutions. We identified two under-representations in these review papers: 1) New materialism and object-oriented ontological (OOO) approaches and 2) how fictive imaginaries develop the link between OOO and public engagement with energy challenges. We propose that ontology of objects and non-human worlds is central to cocreation work in energy research where there exist assemblages of the Anthropocene. We argue that an ethical, engaged, object-oriented ontology that links with fictive imaginaries is crucial whichever direction STS takes in energy research.
In the article, the author offers an original version of the solution to the problem of the atomicity of social events. The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that it is indivisibility that ...makes it possible to distinguish an event from other social phenomena/processes. From the author’s point of view, the event must have a certain duration, which is atomic. As the first step, the author, relying on a wide range of sources that include the views of various theorists, considers the problem of the indivisibility of social events in the current theory of events. The author notes that logical-semantic interpretations of the indivisibility of events have become more widespread than the statement of ontological atomicity. Furthermore, the author dwells, in detail, on the interpretation of atomicity by observation. Analyzing the views of D. Davidson, A. F. Filippov, and others, the author proves that in the case of atomicity, by observation: (1) the criteria for this atomicity are rather blurred; (2) the event is a consequence not only of the observer’s figure, but also of his system of distinction and motives; (3) the complexity may be related to the spatial factor; and 4) the event itself is confused with the fact. The author also believes that limiting social events only to what is available to the human eye is not in line with modern trends. Additionally, the author shows the productivity of understanding the event as an object. In contrast to the participants in discussions aimed at distinguishing an event and an object, the author uses object conceptualization offered by object-oriented ontology. Events, which as objects are capable of change while retaining their indivisibility and stability, can be associated not only with the material but also with the ideal sphere, and have a system of distinctions. The proposed scheme allows us to assert the impossibility of negative events, gives a reason not only to talk about the atomicity of the event but to also emphasize the ontological foundations of this atomicity, and also offers the possibility of thinking about the social beyond the observed.
PDF
