Short and sweet. What an incredible gift this evening was. I hold that art should be a little bit evil and this was it! Perfect way to start the Earth Day (un)celebration...
I ran my new line of argument—it seemed to go down okay. Nothing like as good as the music though.
Very nice and to the point. Thanks for posting this. One question, though: how does the notion that ecological awareness consists in the realization of connectedness in a world in which "there are no clear boundaries" (as I believe you put it here) square with the ontology of objects, which, as I understand it, is an ontology of clear boundaries par excellence? (Please note: I'm genuinely interested in your answer to this, and I have no hidden agenda in asking.) It does seem, though, that a lot of the disagreements over processual or relational as opposed to object-oriented ontologies turns precisely on this question of whether entities are clearly parsed on a metaphysical level. Sometimes it seems that the debates turn to epistemological questions of whether we can see or know the world as having or not having clear boundaries around the objects that populate it, but it seems you are saying that our current ecological realizations, i.e. epistemological and/or affective events, are indeed indexed to an ontological situation in which a lack of clear boundaries obtains. Does this only apply to boundaries between human, animal, and other nonhuman agencies, or does it also apply to inter-object relations? If the latter, doesn't it make sense to say that the debates over processes vs objects are in a sense undecidable, or that these determinations depend on some sort of non-foundational perspectival selections, which need not be mutually exclusive? I'm just thinking through options here, and I'm really interested to hear your response. Also looking forward to hearing your talk at the Nonhuman Turn conference in Milwaukee!
ReplyDeleteBest,
Shane Denson
Cool - Jim Haynes is great - I've known him for years. Great to know all this happened. Yay! And great slate of music!
ReplyDelete