One great reason not to have a TV is that you don't get sucked in to rubbernecking ideologyvision, I mean the news. It's come to my attention that CNN et al. are doing their usual thing, which they call "objectivity." In other words there are "two sides" to the Egypt revolution, two "opinions" about what it is.
This is infuriating. As in the global warming debate, naive default empiricism cancels out anything threatening, life-changing or just plain correct. There are not two sides in the revolution. There is the revolution, and those who are opposing it. There are not two sides in global warming. There is global warming, and those who oppose policies that address it.
In both cases what we have is a news coverage version of correlationism. Real reality is inaccessible, and all we can do is debate the validity of different modes of access to it. Crap!
In both cases, we have fascinating and unusual entities, both hyperobjects: a massively distributed revolution without a leader, coordinated by Twitter and Facebook; and a massively distributed system of weather change coordinated by derivatives of local human actions such as a burning fossil fuels.
Do we get to understand these things when we attend to a debate about different sides? No, we get to misunderstand and remain blind.
Now do you see why OOO is the first truly new philosophical view? And why it's incredibly important, politically?
13 comments:
"Now do you see why OOO is the first truly new philosophical view? And why it's incredibly important, politically?"
Perhaps this is a bit dense of me, but I'm not sure what you mean here. How is correlationism in the news evidence of OOO's originality? (Tangentially, is OOO even "the first truly new philosophical view?") And could you explain it's political importance in a little more detail? Graham is relatively silent on that front, and many have leveled the charge that OOO is a-political, so I'm curious to see what your view is on the matter.
"Real reality is inaccessible, and all we can do is debate the validity of different modes of access to it. Crap!"
Tim - I have to agree with Zachary's question here... Aren't you just arguing that there is in fact an empirical ("underlying") reality after all, as opposed to perspectives, modes of access, Baudrillardian simulations, or whatever else that either does or doesn't have any relationship to such a reality? (Baudrillard would say they no longer do have such a relationship; others, from critical realists to social constructivists, would generally grant that they do, but that they aren't qualify to comment on it. ANT and all the process-relational folks would, and have, argued that these dichotomies are misleading and stultifying.) What is the OOO position on that, and how is it "truly new and incredibly important, politically"? Convince me, mate (without forcing me to read too many books)...
And doesn't Harman specifically argue that we do NOT have access to the real objects, because they withdraw - we only have access to the sensual objects that arise at the interface of real objects? (Which sounds a little like "Real reality is inaccessible, and all we can do is debate the validity of different modes of access to it," no?) If your hyper-objects ALSO withdraw, then we can't come to know them directly. Or is your take on this completely different from Harman's?
Cheers,
Adrian
Maybe you should be watching Al-Jeezera English, streamed on the web. With clips on YouTube. Al-J has a clip of an interview with Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar, and Slavoj Žižek, which I've included in a blog post:
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/02/uh-oh-hosni-mubarak-and-wile-e-coyote.html
My post takes off from a Žižek reference to Tom and Jerry cartoons. He suggests that Mubarak is like the character who's walked off a cliff, but hasn't yet looked down (and look at Ramadan smiling as Z drives it home).
Thanks--I shall watch it.
Zachary, yeah--you might want to re-read it. That wasn't my point.
Adrian, since it seems nothing I say here will be convincing enough for you yet, and since you may still have some confusion, why not read Tool-Being and get back to this? The answer is elementary but I think you'll understand faster if you read Tool-Being.
What was your point, then?
I see some interesting reflections regarding the ramifications of correlationism on news television---namely, the presentation of "two sides" such that "all we can do is debate the validity of different modes of access"---and how these ultimately lead us into ignorance. Ok, fine, I'm kind of with you here. However, you conclude with questions that seem to indicate that what you've just discussed should show us that OOO is a new philosophical view and that it's politically important. I mean, the "Now do you see . . . ?", as though you've waived it in our faces, certainly seems to lead the reader to believe as much. So, as I asked, could you explain? I am particularly interested in hearing about a OOO-informed politics, in light of Harman's general avoidance of the topic and others' accusations of OOO being apolitical.
Honestly, I wasn't trying to provide a challenge to OOO; I only intended to seek information.
Your original question was wrongly posed, which is what I was pointing out. I guess I'd prefer it if you figured out yourself why I might be making such a claim. The answer is pretty much in the post, but I sometimes like to leave things a little suggestive. It has to do with a gigantic big picture, the last two hundred years, otherwise known as "modernity," and the dominant philosophical view (correlationism).
Well, ok. I have been aware of and/or involved with people of the SR persuasion for long enough to guess at what you meant. I myself have thought of the potential for an OOO politics, and can easily recognize what you find suggestive of OOO in the Egyptian revolution. However, I don't see that the events there definitely (or only) conform to an OOO schema. My own anarchism, which is concomitant with what would probably be termed my lava-hose-lamp metaphysics, could account for it. My main interest here, though, was to find out how you might conceive of an OOO politics. Yes, you have left hints---hyperobjects, lack of leader (no Leibnizian dominant monad), etc.---but I was hoping you might expound on it a bit. However, if that's not something you're interested in doing, that's understandable. These blogs can be rather turbulent.
Oh, and just to acknowledge---Yes, my original comment was rather ill put. Mea culpa.
Zachary, this is a big question and I'd like to talk about it some more. Thanks for asking and I'll see if I can post on it fairly shortly.
Great. I'll look forward to seeing that.
Tim - I've read Tool-Being, and liked it. I still have disagreements with it (as I've written about before), and I'm not sure that it has a satisfactory answer to my question to you, but it's helpful that you point to it in this context (in part because that tells me where you stand in relation to GH). I have more problems with the way SR folks have swallowed Meillassoux's critique of "correlationism" whole, and the way that serves to constrain our understanding of modern philosophy into a single overarching narrative, but that's another matter...
Just saw your politics post - nice. I could almost get on board with you @ an anarchist OOO - just wouldn't call it an OOO (since that would be inconsistent with my own ontology). (The anarchism delights my 18-year-old self, actually, and doesn't perturb my 30-y.o., or even my current self too much. Anarchism is a rich tradition.) That makes sense to me, and I suspect it's another point on which OOO and PRO (shorthand for what I'm working on, not for lava-lamp anything) lean very much in the same direction. Of course we're all products of a certain time, which accounts for some of it, no doubt.
Keep flogging Zizek - I can't wait for Buddhaphobia to come out...
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