Objects generate time; time does not generate or change objects. That is the central thesis of this book by the philosopher Graham Harman and the archaeologist Christopher Witmore, who defend radical positions in their respective fields. Against a current and pervasive conviction that reality consists of an unceasing flux-a view associated in philosophy with New Materialism-object-oriented ontology asserts that objects of all varieties are the bedrock of reality from which time emerges. And against the narrative convictions of (...) time as the course of historical events, the objects and encounters associated with archaeology push back against the very temporal delimitations which defined the field and its objects ever since its professionalization in the nineteenth century. In a study ranging from the ruins of ancient Corinth, Mycenae, and Troy to debates over time from Aristotle and al-Ash'ari through Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, the authors draw on alternative conceptions of time as retroactive, percolating, topological, cyclical, and generational, as consisting of countercurrents or of a surface tension between objects and their own qualities. Objects Untimely invites us to reconsider the modern notion of objects as inert matter serving as a receptacle for human categories"-. (shrink)

An important question in Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and its associated literature is how OOO relates to its competitor theories. This article is a meta-philosophical investigation into OOO and its grounding, which hopes to fully theorise this relation, deriving ultimately a “negative dialectic” that emphasises the irreducible differences between OOO and non-OOO. Beginning by analysing the use of OOO as a “starting point”, I consider Althusser’s various contributions to meta-philosophical debates. This leads me to focus on Harman’s notion of (...) “hyperbolic reading”, and on how attempts to hyperbolically ground OOO force it to immanently include its competitors. Finally, I apply these insights to systematise both the negative dialectical relation between OOO and non-OOO and the becoming-OOO of thinking, by applying Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy. (shrink)

We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. "To think a reality beyond our thinking is not (...) nonsense, but obligatory." At OOO's heart is the idea that objects--whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human, or non-human--are mutually autonomous. This core idea has significance for nearly every field of inquiry which is concerned in some way with the systematic interaction of objects, and the degree to which individual objects resist full participation in such systems. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out OOO's history, ideas, and impact, taking in art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. From Sherlock Holmes, unicorns, and videogames to Dadaism, Voltaire, and string theory, this book will change the way you understand everything. (shrink)

The essays in Object-Oriented Feminism explore OOF: a feminist intervention into recent philosophical discourses--like speculative realism, object-oriented ontology (OOO), and new materialism--that take objects, things, stuff, and matter as primary. Object-oriented feminism approaches all objects from the inside-out position of being an object too, with all of its accompanying political and ethical potentials. This volume places OOF thought in a long history of ongoing feminist work in multiple disciplines. In particular, object-oriented (...) feminism foregrounds three significant aspects of feminist thinking in the philosophy of things: politics, engaging with histories of treating certain humans (women, people of color, and the poor) as objects; erotics, employing humor to foment unseemly entanglements between things; and ethics, refusing to make grand philosophical truth claims, instead staking a modest ethical position that arrives at being "in the right" by being "wrong." Seeking not to define object-oriented feminism but rather to enact it, the volume is interdisciplinary in approach, with contributors from a variety of fields, including sociology, anthropology, English, art, and philosophy. Topics are frequently provocative, engaging a wide range of theorists from Heidegger and Levinas to Irigaray and Haraway, and an intriguing diverse array of objects, including the female body as fetish object in Lolita subculture; birds made queer by endocrine disruptors; and truth claims arising in material relations in indigenous fiction and film. Intentionally, each essay can be seen as an "object" in relation to others in this collection. Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, University of Michigan; Karen Gregory, University of Edinburgh; Marina Gržinic, Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts; Frenchy Lunning, Minneapolis College of Art and Design; Timothy Morton, Rice University; Anne Pollock, Georgia Tech; Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Columbia University; R. Joshua Scannell, CUNY Graduate Center; Adam Zaretsky, VASTAL. (shrink)

This essay calls for an independent theory of features in object-oriented philosophy. Theories of features are in general motivated by at least two interconnected demands: 1) to explain why objects have the characteristics they have, 2) to explain how regular divisions in those characteristics can be intuited. While a theory of universal properties may be the most internally consistent means of addressing these demands, an object-oriented metaphysics needs to address them without a concept of shared (...) features. This means that regular divisions of invariant features and our intuitions of them cannot be explained by the repetition of self-same characteristics or natural laws. They can instead be explained by the immanent repetition of similar features. However, this requires a new, radically aesthetic understanding of what it means to be similar in the first place, one in which similarity is an emergent process rather than a state of affairs existing between resembling particulars. (shrink)

In Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), an apparent tension arises between his pursuit of a self-proclaimed “new theory of everything,” or general ontology, and his assertion that any ontology must be able to account for distinctions among various regions of being. This paper delves into this tension between universality and specificity, particularly concerning the question of animal ontology, and examines the potential for constructing an object-oriented animal ontology. By juxtaposing Harman’s perspectives with those of Matthew Calarco (...) and other scholars, I aim to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an animal ontology using the framework of OOO. (shrink)

In this paper I will begin by exploring the context in which objectoriented aesthetics arose. I will set object-oriented aesthetics against another focus which I shall call "activity-oriented aesthetics", in which the excellence of an artistic production lies in the artist's activity. This activity is merely expressed in the finished work, even when the work is overwhelmingly admirable. Excellent artistic activity originates and persists in the artist's manner, execution and style. 1 Just as there is a special (...) case of object-oriented aesthetics in which objective beauty is the fundamental aesthetic concept, there is a special case of activity-oriented aesthetics in which artistic beauty/ a property of the artist's activity, becomes the fundamental aesthetic concept. Artistic beauty is beauty that radiates from the activity of an artist. It is visible directly in the activity itself, but it is also visible in the work through and to which it is transmitted. (The combination of activity and work I shall call 'artistic production'.). (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 6–21. The French philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia was born in Toulouse in 1981. This makes him rather young to have written such an imaginative work of systematic philosophy as Forme et objet , 1 the latest entry in the MétaphysiqueS series at Presses universitaires de France. But this reference to Garcia’s youthfulness is not a form of condescension: by publishing a complete system of philosophy in the grand style, he has already done what none (...) of us in the older generation of speculative realists has done so far. His book is sophisticated, erudite, rigorous, imaginatively rich, and abundant in worldly wisdom– despite the author’s conclusion that wisdom does not exist. The quality and scope of Forme et objet took few observers by surprise, since Garcia has been treated as an emerging philosopher to watch across half a decade of Parisian oral tradition. But Garcia was not just the subject of rumor, being already well known to the French public as a writer of fiction. His debut novel, La meilleure part des hommes , 2 was awarded the 2008 Prix de Flore 3 and has already appeared in English as Hate: A Romance . 4 His follow-up novel, Mémoires de la jungle , 5 made clever use of a chimpanzee narrator. Nor was Garcia only published as a novelist before last November: his philosophical study L’Image 6 had already appeared when the author was just twenty-six, a year before he was crowned by the muses at the historic Café de Flore. And then in 2011, just months before the appearance of Forme et objet , Garcia published a widely distributed work entitled Nous, animaux et humains , 7 with its focus on Jeremy Bentham’s ideas about animals. Given this prolific and versatile track record, an optimistic scenario might envisage the young Garcia as one of those combined literary/philosophical talents who appear intermittently in France across the centuries: Jean-Paul Sartre is merely the most famous recent case. While more time is needed to see how Garcia will channel his impressive mental energies, Forme et objet displays such breadth of insight that its author has a good chance to emerge as one of the leading philosophers of his generation. If we accept Aristotle’s dictum that the peak mental age is fifty-one, then to read Garcia’s massive book is to gain some idea of what European philosophy might look like in the futuristic-sounding 2030’s. The present article is confined to Forme et objet . At 486 pages, the work is obviously daunting in size. Indeed, it is even longer than it sounds, given that many of its early sections are printed in a smaller typeface to designate them as supplemental commentary to the main flow of the argument. But while the length of the book reportedly led to delays in French publication, and will probably slow the inevitable appearance of an English translation, the length of the book should not deter interested readers– much of it results from Garcia’s teacherly writing style. Whereas Quentin Meillassoux’s prose displays an arctic economy of means, Garcia’s style is reminiscent of the repeated lessons of oral classroom proceedings. Rarely is the reader given fewer than three or four chances to master an idea before the author moves on to the next. In practice, the style feels welcoming rather than long-winded. Otherwise, the structure of Forme et objet is surprisingly simple. There is a useful Introduction of less than twenty pages. Then comes Book I: Formally , running to approximately 135 pages. Here Garcia outlines the most basic features of a thing “no matter what it is,” or n’importe quoi , an everyday phrase that Garcia shapes into a technical term. This part of the book feels at times like a more amiable version of Hegel’s Science of Logic , a parallel emphasized further by the threefold articulation of its theme: 1. Thing; 2. Thing and World; 3. Being and Understanding. This is followed by the much longer Book II: Objectively , totaling more than 300 pages. It contains sixteen essay-like meditations on specific kinds of objects—including time, animals, humans, history, gender, and death. Here each chapter rolls smoothly into the next, making this second part of the book feel more like a different work of Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit . But these are merely analogies. Garcia is no Hegelian, even if the book contains a few dialectical flourishes that seem to reflect his early enthusiasm for the Frankfurt School. Forme et objet ends with a six-page Coda, followed by the usual page of acknowledgments. In what follows, I will briefly summarize each of these four parts of the book before ending with some more general remarks. Before doing so, it will be useful to situate Garcia biographically (as much as I am able) and philosophically. Though Toulouse is his native city, his formative years were spent largely in Algeria, where his family has deep roots. During our sole private conversation, Garcia mentioned that his parents are professors of literature. 8 As a student of philosopher Garcia flourished so early that many of his current ideas date to his teenaged years: “There are sentences in Forme et objet that I wrote when I was seventeen,” he said in response to a question on that cold night on the Canal St.-Martin. I recalled that remark when reading his brilliant account, late in the book, of the central role of adolescence in contemporary culture. While many prodigies blow through their formal academic training without serious obstruction, Garcia’s student memories are rich in tales of isolation and struggle, though equally rich in gratitude for a half-dozen or so exceptional teachers who provided the intellectual space he needed: Meillassoux and Alain Badiou are simply two of the most prominent figures on that list. Though there are many points of agreement between Garcia’s philosophical position and my own, he not only reached his position years before reading my work, 9 he arrived along a rather different path: not through phenomenology, but via the Frankfurt School, which may be one of the reasons for his profound fascination with aesthetics. Garcia’s cultural background is as broad as one could wish: he is no less informed about punk rock and European football leagues than about the spiritualist roots of Bergson’s philosophy. Curious about everything and contemptuous towards nothing, Garcia can be expected to write insightfully on dozens of topics in the years to come. Given that his philosophy is so personally tantalizing in its agreements and disagreements with my own, and given the great internal richness of Forme et objet itself, the present review is no better than a first effort at coming to terms with the challenges posed by this minstrel from the rising generation. This is especially intriguing for older Generation X’ers like me, since confrontation with the younger generation is one of the many themes treated insightfully in Garcia’s book. 1. Introduction Garcia begins in defense of a so-called “flat ontology,” in which all things are equally things. While Roy Bhaskar 10 used this term pejoratively to refer to anti-realist philosophies that flatten everything onto an epistemic plane of human access, Manuel DeLanda 11 (an admirer of Bhaskar) reversed it into the positive principle that all realities are equally realities. Similar notions can be found in the “absistence” of Alexius Meinong, 12 the “irreduction” of Bruno Latour, 13 and my own critique 14 of the undermining/overmining pair. Also noteworthy is Levi Bryant’s use of the term “flat ontology” throughout The Democracy of Objects 15 and his earlier essay “The Ontic Principle.” 16 But for Garcia, flatness is only one face of the cosmos, and one that he ultimately declares to be rather impoverished. Even so, he always remains an advocate of a flat ontology. Insofar as everything is equally something, no matter what it is ( n’importe qui ), everything is equally a thing, equally solitary in its relation with world. This is why his book abounds in those long lists of random, ontologically equivalent entities that Ian Bogost has playfully termed “Latour Litanies.” 17 The first litany in Garcia’s book runs as follows: “We live in this world of things, where a cutting of acacia, a gene, a computer-generated image, a transplantable hand, a musical sample, a trademarked name, or a sexual service are comparable things.” (7) Yet Garcia is frankly dualistic; his flat ontology only lasts until page 159 and the end of Book I (entitled “Formally”), which deals entirely with things that are equally things. Thereafter Garcia turns his attention from things to objects, which are not flat in the least, but engage in hierarchical relations with one another. In agreement with both DeLanda and the speculative realists, Garcia proclaims that his book “proposes to put to the test a thought about things rather than a thought about our thought about things .” (8) Just as ducklings are “imprinted” (9) after hatching and treat the first creature they see as their mother, philosophers are imprinted by the idea with which they begin. Hence, philosophies that begin with human access will never truly find their way back to things. This makes Garcia rather suspicious of twentieth century philosophy, since “the twentieth century—to which in some way this work proposes to bid adieu—has been a period of theorizing modes of access to things rather than things...” (9) Among other possible benefits of the philosophy of things that Garcia proposes, it is fully able to account for thought as a special variant of things, while the reverse is not possible.(10) In Book I of Forme et objet , Garcia’s “things” are so flat, so de-determined, that he is forced to renounce some of the most basic features ascribed to things by most realists. As he tells us in his foreboding third footnote: “We will maintain that the solitude [of things] is less than unity, less than identity, and that it does not imply acceptance (any more than refusal) of the principle of non-contradiction.” (11) In a contemporary world cluttered with too many things, Garcia’s flat and formal plane provides us with some breathing room: “The formal plan of thought enables or re-enables us to cut short all accumulation—whether of knowing, experience, or action—by a simplicity, an impoverished surface...” (13) As Garcia says elsewhere in responding to a Deleuzian critic of the book, his starting point in flat ontology is designed to obstruct the claims of both analytic philosophy and Hegelianism: “Hence, this work seeks to protect each thing—real, imaginary, inconsistent, contradictory—both against Ockham’s Razor and against the Aufhebung or dialectical process.” 18 Yet contrary to the equalizing spirit of many flat ontologies, “we will add to our formal ontology of the equal, an objective ontology of the unequal.” (13) But initially, Garcia joins all flat ontologists in holding that everything is irreducible: “this irreducibility, which we will term the ‘chance’ of each thing... also marks the refusal of a positive thought that reduces things exclusively to natural things, or social things, or historical things, etc.” (15) This irreducible “chance” of a thing emerges as an important technical term in the book, always paired with its inverted brother, the “price to pay” ( prix à payer ). On pages 17-19, we find the only diagrams in the book. What they illustrate is that Garcia wishes to avoid two equally dangerous extremes. The first is the philosophy of substance, featuring the thing-in-itself as a mighty river fed by attributes as if by subordinate tributary streams. This model can be found in many of the classic thinkers of West and East alike. In it, “there is obviously a hierarchization between that which is dragged towards something other than itself, and this other which serves it as an ontological support while supporting its proper being.” (16) For Garcia, the second extreme worth avoiding is the philosophy of events: “One thus conceives trajectories of being, identified as events, facts, powers, intensities, or intentionality. These vectors of being come first, bearing and supporting being, displacing it, but without ever finding a stopping point, a buffer, an objective consistency.” (17) The first model gives us a thing too wrapped up in itself, too compact . This word “compact” (the French and the English are the same) is another technical term for Garcia. But if the “compact” model of things leads us to something more than things, the philosophy of events gives us less than things, by dissolving them into a play of vectors. Garcia’s alternative lies midway between these two extremes: Being enters the thing, being comes out of it. And a thing is nothing other than the difference between the enters and the being that comes out. Thus, the circuit of being is never halted. In the thing, there is never the thing-in-itself. And the thing is never in-itself, but outside of itself. Nonetheless, being is not eventally “pollinated” by vectors: it possesses an objecting halting-point... (19) This single idea is the key to Garcia’s book: the thing is neither a self-contained durable lump nor some sort of evental flux. Instead, the thing is the difference between its various components and its relations with its environment. Or stated differently: “the price to pay for this disposition is a circulation of being that systematically distinguishes two senses of things: that which is in the thing , and that in which the thing is , or that which encompasses it and that which it encompasses,” (19) translating comprendre here as “encompass.” 19 In a beautiful description of a piece of black slate, Garcia sums up the various minerals, qualities, and shapes that compose [ comprend ] it, and calls them “that which is in the thing,” (20) noting that this tells us nothing about “that in which [the slate] is”—namely, all the various situations in which the black slate can be found. Instead, the slate is the difference between these two: the most characteristic principle of Garcia’s philosophy. 2. Formally Book One of Forme et objet , “Formally,” is concerned with the formal equality of all things in a flat world. “Two questions mark the boundaries of reflection: of what is everything composed [ composé ], and: what do all things compose?” (27) Looking downward, we wish to know what everything is made of; looking upward, we want to know the ultimate result of the combination of all things. Here we must turn our attention to the thing n’importe quoi— no matter what it is. (30) Anything with finite qualities is obviously too specific to be relevant to global ontological questions. To an equal degree, something possessing all qualities (think of Whitehead’s God) 20 would not be n’importe quoi either, since it would still be too definite, even if incredibly vast. The same holds for contradictions, since these all differ from each other. The square circle, the non-white black white, and the non-city city are all too distinct to count as the thing no matter what it is. The n’importe quoi must be devoid of all specific qualities, including contradictory ones. In one of the more intriguing points in his book, so reminiscent of Meinong, Garcia proclaims that “the ‘no matter what it is’ is neither a reality nor an abstract construction, nor both of these at once; the ‘no matter what it is’ is simply the plane of equality of that which is real, that which is possible, that which is inexistent, that which is past, that which is impossible, that which is true, that which is false, that which is bad.”(39-40) Since everything has two faces, it would be a grievous mistake to focus on just one of them at the expense of the other, as physicalism or materialism do when reducing the world to minuscule physical underpinnings. For scientistic materialism, “it is either atoms, particles, or fields of force... which are the things.” (47-48) Moreover, “these more-than-things are accompanied by less-than-things: for example, ideas or facts of consciousness are determined by the state of matter and are not autonomous things, but manifestations reduced to secondary effects of material processes...” (48) On this point, Garcia’s position is in complete accord with my own critique of undermining and overmining. 21 Where we disagree is that Garcia is more deeply suspicious of the notion of substance, which I view as salvageable with a few needed changes, while Garcia sees this operation as hopeless: “A substance, in the history of philosophy, is the more-than-thing par excellence.” (51) Another agreement between our positions is visible when Garcia claims (correctly, in my opinion) “that it is vain to distinguish between things which are material and those which are not.” (52) Yet we also find an even more important disagreement, since for Garcia withdrawal cannot be the quality of a thing. Instead, the absence of a thing is simultaneous with it, embodied in all that is not it– the absence of the sculpture of a woman is to be found in the mold that appears at the same time as it, and thus withdrawal must be viewed as an “event” rather than as something pertaining to an object. For Garcia, nothing withdraws beyond access. Since we must distinguish between “that which is something” and “that which something is,” and since the former is identified with “no matter what it is is” and the latter with “ not no matter what it is,” we can say that “everything is thus a milieu, a fragile link between ‘no matter what it is’ and ‘ not no matter what it is.’” (62) And here we find Garcia’s critique of the thing-in-itself: “A thing is never defined en bloc . We can affirm that a thing is this or that, but that does not suffice. It is still necessary to state precisely that which is this thing .” (62) Stated differently, “something is not in itself : for that which is in the thing is not the thing, and that in which the thing is is not the thing.” (62) And here Garcia and I, facing the same evidence, draw opposite conclusions. For me, the fact that nothing can be identified with either its components or its concrete location means that the thing must be something in-itself distinct from both of these. Yet for Garcia, to be in-itself would mean to be identified with just one of these two extreme terms, and hence the thing can only be the difference between them. Garcia is equally suspicious of the classical tendency to view “unity” as a property of the thing, since in his eyes unity is too relational a property to belong to things. (65) While specific things are situated determinately with respect to other things, we are still speaking here about the thing no matter what it is, and this can be viewed only in terms of solitude, which all things share: a human being, a hand, or a chair or all equally things insofar as they are on their own , not insofar as they are one . (64) A thing is alone, and relates only to the one thing that is not another thing: world. In a striking parallel to my own argument for a partial revival of occasionalism, Garcia tells us that “the things communicate only by their solitude: it is because everything is equally on its own in the world that things can be together, enmeshed in one another.” (67) Alone in their solitude, things all relate to world, which serves as a mediator allowing them to become mixed up in one another. As we have seen, one reason that nothing can be in itself is because everything is in something else. For Garcia, “to be in something and to be something are equivalent.” (69) Stated more broadly, “being is thus the difference between the two aspects of each thing: that which is it, and that which it is.” (70) And even more vividly: “a thing is almost like a sack: there is that which one puts in the sack and that which remains outside the sack.” (70) But not quite like a sack, “since a thing is not a thin skin or film. Instead, a thing is comparable to a sack that is immaterial and without thickness: it is nothing other than the difference between that which is this thing and that which thing is, between content and container.” (71) Nothing can be in-itself because everything is two selves at once. For example, we cannot say that our self is defined by our consciousness: “Everything has a self because nothing is in itself. The self is not the quality of that which is related to itself (which is conscious, for example) or which thinks itself related to itself. Nonetheless, for an entity called ‘conscious’ to be related to itself, it is necessary that this very relation should be another thing than the self to which it is related.” (71) Consciousness cannot be the self, precisely because it is other than that of which it is conscious. Nothing is able to grasp itself. The self is “the function by which being and composition [ compréhension ] are mutually excluded...” (72) The self is “the point of shadow of everything that projects some light...” (72) The in-itself faces two opposite dangers: “For something to be in-itself is to be a self. Something which is a self flies out through one of its two sides... Stated differently, being in-itself is simply the possibility of a double failure.” (73) The in-itself can be termed compact : “There remains to us a means of thinking that which does not fully enter into the world, though without exiting from it. This means is what we call the compact.” (76) In a sense, the compact is the opposite of the world. For in the case of the world, everything enters it and it enters nothing; as for the compact, it enters the world (since it is something, after all) while nothing enters it. (77) The compact marks the presence of the impossible in the world. (78) It is not impossible, but possible only on the condition that it fails. (78) The time has come to speak of where a thing is located. “The sole condition of a thing is that of being in another thing than itself, and thus in another thing than something.” (78) A condition is “that which determines something, that which forms something, that in which something is.” (78) As for humans, “the condition of someone is his situation; my social condition is that which socially determines me, my place and my function...” (79) More generally, “to be conditioned is to find oneself reduced to that in which one is.” (79) Everything is conditioned, but nothing is reducible to this condition. To determine the condition of something is to determine in what it is. A thing is located in that which contradicts it, just as a statue exists in its mold, which is precisely that which it is not. Since the thing is finite and definite, its condition or form must be infinite and indefinite. That in which all things are is the world, which Garcia also terms “the whole.” (81) “To try to be in-itself is to attempt to remain outside the world. And indeed, to try to be in-itself is only a path of entry into the world.” (83) For Garcia, “the world is not the pre-existent container of the things it contains, a priori , nor the construction by the mind of a fictional ensemble of all things, a posteriori .” (85) Instead, the world is simultaneous with all things; the two always go together. The world cannot be a determinate world, such as the physical universe or mathematical space, since these are already too specific and limited. “Every determinate world, which is in fact a universe , is a ‘big thing’ [ grosse chose ]: it is a set, however vast, of composite things which itself embodies a thing.” (85) Every determinate world is really just a “big thing.” Stated differently, “it is nothing other than a balanced milieu between the things that compose it and the thing that it composes.” (85) We generally picture the world as a physical univer. (shrink)

The object-oriented ontology group of philosophies, and certain strands of posthumanism, overlook important ethical and biological differences, which make a difference. These allied intellectual movements, which have at times found broad popular appeal, attempt to weird life as a rebellion to the forced melting of lifeforms through the artefacts of capitalist realism. They truck, however, in a recursive solipsism resulting in ontological flattening, overlooking that things only show up to us according to our attunement to them. Ecology and (...) biology tend to get lost in the celebration of “thingness,” which puts on par artifacts, trash, and living beings. Such abstractions fail to understand the political, ethical, and ontological implications of eliding the animate/nonanimate distinction, which from the opposite direction (of flattening) reproduce the same violences of historical colonialism (hierarchical humanism). I argue that ontological flattening entails epistemological narcissism, fails to take into account plural (interspecies) perspectives, and propose biosemiotics can address these shortcomings through becoming-with nonhuman knowledge. (shrink)

This paper is focused on the possibility of a dialogue between Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and phenomenology, a dialogue concerning the problem of objects and relations. In the first part, the author shows what is interesting in OOO from a phenomenological perspective and why it should be considered as a challenge for contemporary philosophy. The second part develops the phenomenological perspective of the author, a perspective based on Merleau-Ponty’s “carnal” phenomenology, as well as some suggestions coming from the (...) Italian school of Gaetano Kanizsa. The third part is dedicated to the objections of the author to the OOO view regarding the separation between objects and relations: a separation which leads to Harman’s quadruple object. In the concluding portion, the author shows that, despite evident differences between phenomenological and OOO’s views of relations, OOO offers new starting points for phenomenological reflections, thanks to its specific focus on objects and its pluralistic view of reality. (shrink)

There have been several criticisms of Object-Oriented Ontology from the political Left. Perhaps the most frequent one has been that OOO’s aspiration to speak of objects apart from all their relations runs afoul of Marx’s critique of “commodity fetishism.” The main purpose of this article is to show that even a cursory reading of the sections on commodity in Marx’s Capital does not support such an accusation. For Marx, the sphere of entities that are not commodities is actually (...) quite wide, including all the beings of nature not subject to exchange, as well as bartered goods, and tithes and rents paid in kind to feudal lords. In short, the theory of commodity fetishism is a theory of v a l u e, not an anti-realist theory of b e i n g, and thus does not touch on OOO at all. In closing, I make some brief comments on Marx’s relation to Kantian formalism and to Heidegger’s famous account of present-at-hand and ready-to-hand. (shrink)

Abstract:Niki Young speaks with Graham Harman about his Object-Oriented Philosophy in relation to his understanding of Heidegger's tool-analysis, and more.

In this paper, object-oriented ontology is attempted to be applied to play. First, from the anti-reductionist approach of OOO, some former interpretations of play in science and philosophy are reviewed. Then, because of the conceptual similarities of art and play, the already existing OOO of art is consulted. Based on the works from the field of Human-computer interaction, Graham Harman’s theatrical interpretation of a metaphor, and Eugen Fink’s interpretation of the play, who sees it as a mixture (...) of Being and illusion, play is analysed in the end as a speculative “I”, tension between a real object and sensual qualities, and an interrelationship of elements of the quadruple object. In the pursuit of the link between play, art, philosophy, metaphor, and theatricality, a search as an answer to the encounter with the mixture of Being and illusion is recognised. (shrink)

By comparing Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and Baudrillard through the lens of a study of the notion of withdrawal in Heidegger’s tool analysis and “The Question Concerning Technology”, this article explores the extent to which an Object-Oriented Baudrillard is possible, or even necessary. Considering an OOO understanding of Mauss’s gift-exchange, a possible critique of duomining in Baudrillard and a revision of Baudrillard’s understanding of art, the prospects of a new reading of Baudrillard and interpretation of OOO’s genealogy (...) are established. These lines of comparison qualify the role of withdrawal in Baudrillard and symbolic exchange for OOO, and lead towards the conclusion that an Object-Oriented Baudrillard is possible, but may not, conversely, be considered necessary. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion and critique of G. Harmon's interpretation of Ortega 's work, as set out in Harmon's "Guerrilla Metaphysics." I argue that while Harmon is right to point out Ortega 's critique of idealism, Ortega nevertheless remains a 'philosopher of access.' Ortega 's disagrees with the idealist i claim that we access reality through ideas, but agrees with the more basic point that philosophy ought to give an account of how we access reality.

In this article, we discuss the insights object-oriented ontology (OOO) offers in understanding the photographic process. Following Kant’s distinction between noumena and phenomena and Heidegger’sGeviert, Harman’s OOO focuses on the real versus sensory aspects of all objects of experience. In our analysis, we explore its implications for intentionality, signification and revelation in photography. OOO locates being within all objects and stands in opposition to the post-Cartesian correlationism influential in the continental tradition. In Heidegger’s terms, the still camera exhibits (...) both presence and readiness at hand. However, this readiness at hand is so ubiquitous that it is easy to overlook what makes it unique amongst the tools at our disposal. We argue that in the field of visual experience, the camera does what Kant believed impossible. It has the potential to reduce epistemic loss and transform the phenomenology of conscious experience into the noumenology of non-conscious awareness of the real object. (shrink)

The aesthetic theory of Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) revolves around the concept of allure, a nonliteral experience of an object’s displacement from its qualities that draws attention to a deeper reality. But applying allure to aesthetic interpretation is hampered in two ways. First, OOO necessarily moves between the constrained viewpoint of experience and a more global perspective. Yet mixing these “inside” and “outside” views can risk ambiguity. Second, the phenomenological difference between the parts and qualities of (...) an object must be clarified before Harman’s model of wholes and parts can be incorporated into OOO aesthetics. Addressing these two ambiguities will make it possible to further develop OOO’s resources for aesthetic commentary. For instance, one conclusion is that allure itself has two varieties: a tension between the object and its qualities (“allusion”) and a tension between the whole and its parts (“collusion”). These options parallel Harman’s twofold critique of reductionism. Another conclusion is that the literal needs an explanation within the framework of OOO insofar as it is a genuine feature of experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology prioritises aesthetics as first philosophy, and finds increasing interest from those working across art, architecture and the humanities in general. This article tests the application of Harman’s ideas by applying them to a thorny issue related to the domain of serial art, and serially developed drawing in particular. The issue concerns the productive role of the beholder in constituting the serial artwork as a unified thing, wherein it appears manifestly deeper than the (...) sum of its physical parts. Referring to an artwork produced by contemporary artist Stefana McClure, I build upon prior propositions on serial art put forward by Christy Mag Uidhir and Nicolas de Warren to make the case for seeing serially. This uses Harman’s understanding of aesthetics to claim that imagined iterations constitute an integral element to serial drawing, brought into play when the beholder reflects upon the loose relationship between the array of qualities the artwork palpably presents and its withdrawn reality as a unified object. (shrink)

This paper contains a discussion of striking similarities between influential philosophical concepts of the past and the approaches currently employed in selected areas of computer science. In particular, works of the Pythagoreans, Plato, Abelard, Ash’arites, Malebranche and Berkeley are presented and contrasted with such computer science ideas as digital computers, object-oriented programming, the modelling of an object’s actions and causality in virtual environments, and 3D graphics rendering. The intention of this paper is to provoke the computer science (...) community to go off the beaten path in order to find inspiration for the development of new approaches in software engineering. (shrink)

This paper examines the connection between Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence and Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology. The claim is that Harman’s position provides a conceptual apparatus that can beneficially address some basic ontological points in Kierkegaard about actuality, the self and the reality of individual subsisting mind-independent entities. On the other hand, Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the human self as a place situated in existence can provide a supplement to Harman’s realism which implicitly relies on topological notions. If we (...) define an entity, in a broad sense of the term, as something in its own right irreducible to its being-in-a-relation, but we do not want to end up in a frozen universe of isolated monads, we must revisit the notion of relationality in terms of vicarious causation (Harman) or indirect communication (Kierkegaard). (shrink)

This book offers a novel account of grace, framed in terms of Bruno Latour's "principle of irreduction.

This essay conceives ecological life as radically dependent, vulnerable, and horrific. Epistemologically speaking, we are quite ignorant of the web of dependency that sustains our lives. Our ecological condition often prevents us from locating and identifying our dependencies and the many ways our actions impact the environment. This is the terror and danger that plagues the Anthropocene. Our ignorance bears an ontological weight that can be drawn out with the concept of trust. Trust, I argue, is not a choice. Trust (...) is a necessity to which we are riveted, and one that is always conditioned by our vulnerability and ignorance. The picture of ecological trust that I paint is not a hopeful one: it is dark, pessimistic, and urgent. It opposes visions of our future that are superstitious and optimistic about our ability to respond effectively to climate change. (shrink)

In this paper we recount several research projects conducted at ImaginationLancaster a Design-led research laboratory, all of which consider Object-Oriented Ontology. The role OOO plays in these projects is varied: as a generative mechanism contributing to ideation; as a framework for analysis; and as a constituent in developing new design theory. Each project’s focus is quite unique—an app, a board game, a set of Tarot cards, a kettle and a living room—however they are all concerned with developing new (...) understandings relating to the ubiquitous, networked, ‘smart’ technologies which are often referred to as the Internet of Things. Through our reflexive account of these research projects the aim of this paper is to provide insights into, and promote new discussion about, the relevance and scope for OOO in socio-technical Design Research, and beyond. (shrink)

Objects are inert, passive, devoid of will, and as such bear no intrinsic value or moral worth. This claim is supported by the argument that to be considered a moral agent one must have a conscious will and be sufficiently free to act in accordance with that will. Since material objects, it is assumed, have no active will nor freedom, they should not be considered moral agents nor bearers of intrinsic ethical vale. Thus, the apparent “moral neutrality” of objects rests (...) upon a kind of subject/object or mind/body dualism. The aim of this paper is to explore two paths by which western thought can escape this dualism, re-valuate the alleged “moral neutrality” of material objects, and initiate a sort of “object oriented ethics,” albeit with surprising results. To do so, this paper explores the work of Arthur Schopenhauer and Baruch Spinoza to interrogate both the claim that material objects have no will and that freedom is the necessary condition for ethical responsibility. This paper concludes by arguing that not only should objects been seen as bearers of their own ethical value, a determinate judgement can be made regarding that value through a basic understanding of the laws of physics. (shrink)

The intended title was “Universe Oriented Ontology” or “Multiverse Oriented Ontology”, or “Universe or Multiverse Metaphysics”. I mention this as it gives an idea about the meaning and intention of the title and the work as well as the titles I considered and why I moved away from them to the present one. The sub-title provides a further hint towards the intentions of the work, namely: ” Beyond Earth- and Human-centricity’. I opted for ‘transcending’ rather than beyond, as (...) I am still in the process of describing the process of transcending and many of the ideas I am obliged to use from our conceptual system and practices are still earth- and anthropo-centered, And, they have not yet gone to a state beyond those two -isms. I say something about universe-centeredness, then about planet earth as point and frame of reference and anthropo-centricity. The socio-cultural practice of philosophy and the doing of philosophy is merely one of many human, social and cultural practices. I post different notions of philosophy by a number of writers, some of them philosophers. These notions are about their perceptions of what philosophy is. Few of them go into detail about the subject-matter of philosophy. No one really deal with the aims, purposes and objectives of the discipline and none deal with the nature of the doing of philosophy or philosophizing. Activities that I suggest resemble certain features of the processes of theorizing. I end with explorations of possible characteristics of original- and creative thinkers. I do this by mentioning a number of themes of meta-philosophy listed and described by Peter Suber. I make a number of comments in them and highlight aspects relevant to these type of thinkers. One find them of course in all disciplines and socio-cultural [racticesand disciplines be they the arts,humanities, sciences, etc. I am of course specifically concerned with original andcreative thinkers inthe Western tradition of philosophy. As I am a radical and absolute sceptic, I end with an article on this theme. It is said by everyone, for example Hume, Russell and Pascal, that such a radical position is psychologically impossible and that it cannot be lived 24/7. Pascal for example opted for believe or faith and he and a number of writers suggest that that is the only way out and the final position of radical sceptics. I disagree with him. (shrink)

This is a review of this new field touted by Harman as THE best thing to happen to academic philosophy in recent times. The review tests Object-Oriented Ontology against various yardsticks and finds it wanting in rigour.

Programming languages have developed significantly over the past century to provide complex models to think about and describe the world and processes of computation. Out of Alan Kay’s Smalltalk and a number of earlier languages, object-oriented programming has emerged as a preeminent mode of writing and organizing programs. Tracing the history of object-oriented programming from its origins in Simula and Sketchpad through Smalltalk, particularly its philosophical and technical developments, offers unique insights into philosophical questions about objects, (...) language, and our digital technologies. These early attempts to understand objects as basic elements of computation demonstrate the ways in which language, while firmly planted in the material reality of computation, must delimit objects from each other. This essay critically explores this history and explicates a theory of objects suggested by the development of object-oriented programming languages, which insists on the importance of language for representing and delimiting objects. It argues that the philosophies behind object-oriented programming are ultimately opposed to the claims of object-oriented ontology and find themselves more closely allied with philosophies that insist on the mediation of what exists through language. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss the need for a theory of essences within Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and then formulate one. I will do so by drawing on Graham Harman’s work on OOO and Martin Heidegger’s thought on the essence of being, presented in his Introduction to Metaphysics. Harman touches on essences, describing them as the tension between a withdrawn object and its withdrawn qualities, but fails to distinguish between essential and inessential qualities within this framework. To (...) fill in the gaps, I will turn to Heidegger’s explication of phusis in order to show that an essential aspect of being is how one enters into causal relations and continually reveals oneself to other beings. In bringing OOO and Heidegger together, I will find that each object has a unique way of exerting itself in the world and that the domestic relations that make up this unique profile are essential to it, while other domestic relations, those that do not influence its particular way of exerting itself, are inessential. Thus, the essence will be found to be the set of domestic relations that make up the determinate form, or unique causal profile, of the object. (shrink)

This essay aims to explore the impact of Object-Oriented Ontology (O.O.O) within the realm of pedagogy, critically examining its departure from humanistic and traditional paradigms. Simultaneously, it presents an alternative perspective on education that decenters the human as an inevitable ground. In a contrasting move, attention is directed towards Bruno Latour and Graham Harman, elucidating key facets of their ideas. This shift also signifies a departure from the conventional realm of “critical pedagogy”, as championed by Brazilian pedagogue Paulo (...) Freire. However, it is crucial to acknowledge and appreciate the contributions and significance of Freire’s work. This essay adopts a left-wing stance, with no intention of launching moral attacks on Paulo Freire, as is sometimes witnessed when reactionaries and conservatives enter the academic arena. Criticisms within these pages focus on the content of Freire’s writings, tracing the trajectory from his seminal work, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, published in 1968, to his final piece, “Pedagogy of Autonomy” written in 1996. The aim is not to exhaust all arguments put forth by Freire but to engage with select ideas, since his oeuvre is extremely complex and full of different layers. It is essential to clarify that the critique presented here does not target the character of Paulo Freire but rather delves into some of the theoretical references behind the scenes, particularly the anthropocentrism associated with his ideas. Consequently, this essay emerges as an interdisciplinary endeavor, a conjunction between philosophy and social theory. What doors will this discussion open? What new field of possibilities awaits us? I invite you to dive into this debate, exploring the potential for an Object-Oriented Pedagogy (O.O.P) on the horizon. (shrink)

In his Prince of Networks, Graham Harman reconstructs Latourian critique of concepts of potentiality and virtuality with which he claims to agree. This seems striking because Latour’s arguments seem to be exactly those Harman rejects in his other writings as overmining. Furthermore, this critique of potentiality and virtuality creates a dividing line between Harman and Bryant’s Democracy of Objects, where the concept of virtual plays a central role. In this article, I will explore this debate, focusing on how the concept (...) of virtuality works in the context of the ontological realism that Object-Oriented Ontology is. To do this, I will first present Bryant’s notion of virtuality focusing on the problem of the individuality of the object. Then I will explore Latourian–Harmanian arguments against virtuality and show that the main issue Harman has with virtuality has to do with the agency of objects. Therefore, I claim that the main dividing line between Bryant’s and Harman’s versions of Object-Oriented Ontology is the difference between the two notions of agency. (shrink)

This paper presents a juxtaposition of the understanding of objects in Jean-Luc Nancy’s postdeconstructive realism and Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology, particularly with reference to their respective notions of touch. Nancy incorporates a tension between the phenomenological accounts of touch and embodiment given by Merleau-Ponty, who focuses on the relationality of the flesh, and Levinas, who focuses more on non-relational alterity. Furthermore, Nancy does not accept the anthropocentric assumptions whereby phenomenology accounts for objects insofar as they correlate to human (...) existence. Following the deconstruction of sovereign humanity, Nancy approaches what Derrida calls “post-deconstructive realism,” accounting for touch with regard to the relationality and alterity of all objects, human and nonhuman. However, abjuring the metaphysical interiority posited by panpsychists, Nancy admits that his philosophy cannot account for the discrete, atomistic differences between beings. Graham Harman agrees with much of Nancy’s philosophy, but he criticizes Nancy on this point, offering a corrective supplement in the form of his object-oriented ontology, which avoids panpsychism while nonetheless accounting for the discrete differences between objects. (shrink)

Object-oriented ontologists understand relations of cause and effect to be sensory or aesthetic in nature, not involving direct interaction between objects. Four major arguments are used to defend an indirect view of causation: 1) that there are analogies between perception and causation, 2) that the indirect view can account for cases of causation which a direct view cannot, 3) an Occasionalist argument that direct interaction would make causation impossible, and 4) that the view simply fits better with (...) class='Hi'>object-oriented ontology’s own premises. However, each argument is fallacious or otherwise unconvincing. The first affirms the consequent. The second fails because the relevant cases can easily be accounted for with a direct view. The third makes false assumptions about the relation between parts and wholes. And the fourth can also be used to argue against object-oriented ontology. Many of these problems can be traced to the methodological aspects of object-oriented ontology and might be avoided by emphasizing the role of non-argumentative justification in metaphysics. (shrink)

The conceptualization of the notion of subjectivity within the Anthropocene finds in Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism one of its most explicit and profuse modulations. This essay argues that Braidotti’s model powerfully accounts for the Anthropocene’s subjectivity by conceiving the “self” as a transversal multiplicity and its relationality to the “others” and the “world” as non-hierarchized by nature–culture distinctions; however, by being ontologically grounded on a neo-Spinozistic monism, Braidotti’s model blurs the notions of finitude, agency, and change, obscuring the possibility of critical (...) dissent while decreasing the overall theory’s consistency. An alternative ontological model capitalizing on these elements can be found in Object-Oriented Ontology and its notion of withdrawal. By associating OOO’s non-onto-taxonomical pluralism with Braidotti’s posthuman subjectivity, this essay aims at ontologically discretizing the latter in order to overcome these limitations. Grounded on this association and invoking a narrative imaginary propelled by the Greek terms xenos and xenia, the article paves the way for a form of subjectivity deviating from Braidotti’s ecological model and defined as xenological, arguing that, within the context of the Anthropocene, it constitutes an adequate alternative to Braidotti’s subjectivity. (shrink)

I talked to my chair for hours, without it responding—and then I heard its voice, its desire, its rhetoric: sit in me.A new specter of materialist thought, conveniently cloaked in "realism," now haunts philosophy and rhetoric—object-oriented ontology and object-oriented rhetoric.1 Ostensibly, OOO arrives as the logical next step for theories of anti-, extra-, and post-humanism that have, over the past several decades, sought to destabilize the privileged position of human exceptionalism....

Open peer commentary on the target article “From Objects to Processes: A Proposal to Rewrite Radical Constructivism” by Siegfried J. Schmidt. Upshot: This commentary asks if Schmidt’s latest process-orientated philosophy is based on a vicious infinite regress argument. The commentator uses recent literature on the distinction of vicious and benign infinite regresses (from Claude Gratton and Nicholas Rescher) and tries to show that – taken verbatim – there is a serious logical problem in Schmidt’s argumentation.

This paper investigates the consequences of taking seriously the metaphysics of Object-Oriented Ontology, as defined by Graham Harman, in the field of literature. Acutely focusing on just one possible mobilisation and application of the theory, the essay deploys OOO to read two major writers of the late 20th century, Don DeLillo and Murakami Haruki, in novel configurations made possible by applying an Object-Oriented method to the genre of Magic Realism. Using this method, the essay unearths an (...) unarticulated avenue for studying the genre and these authors against established national, cultural, and canonical boundaries in literature, putting into conversation various literary traditions based on formal characteristics found in the texts through OOO’s metaphysics, and suggesting wholly untested paths for literary study in the wake of Object-Oriented philosophies. (shrink)

Despite the applicability of assemblage theory to extreme events, the relational ontology that assemblage thinkers employ makes it hard to ground the potential of artefacts to undergo substantial change. To better understand how artefacts can be unexpectedly destroyed, and thereby catch managers by surprise, this article draws on Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology. This approach is used to explain how artefacts, as concrete objects, have the capacity both to cause and to exacerbate calamities. By contrast, assemblage theory is shown (...) to provide insight into post-disaster organizing dilemmas. An analysis of artefact-based surprise at a disaster-prone New Zealand port illustrates the complementarity of the two approaches. Minimizing surprise was a major impetus behind attempts by port managers to make sizeable artefacts more disaster resilient. Yet there are limits to this process that stem from a gap revealed by the philosophical distinction between an artefact’s design plan and its maximum plan. Object-based surprise at the port also sparked tension between the competing imperatives of centralization and decentralization in post-disaster recovery. How this problem played out at the grassroots level is best explained, however, in assemblage-theoretic terms. (shrink)

This article poses a question for Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) in general and Harman’s position in particular. It is Heidegger’s question: “How do matters stand with nothingness?” First, I present the basic outline of Harman’s OOO which is presented as a theory of everything. In order to pin down the question of nothing, I begin by asking about “something”: what is an object? And what does it mean that objects exist? Then I pursue by identifying two notions of (...) nothing in OOO: the withdrawal of objects and the in-between of two objects. The first, I call infrastructural nothing. The second, I call interrelational nothing. The latter is derived from the former. I argue that OOO is very close to Kierkegaard’s account of nothing as the space of possibility of possibilities, since an object is defined as its own interior space which must hold something in reserve in order to allow for change and emergence. Nothing is not merely nothing but something – a bounded openness. (shrink)

One of the main criticisms of object-oriented ontology in its current formulation by Graham Harman is that it includes a notion of time that, upon closer inspection, renders the overall theory inconsistent. I argue that while this is indeed the case, Harman’s notion of time can be modified in a way that leaves the framework of object-oriented ontology intact. More specifically, Harman’s theory of time as a single surface tension between sensual objects and their qualities should (...) be expanded into a theory of time as a twofold of related yet irreducible temporalities. Such a theory can already be found in Gilles Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense. I argue that much of the latter theory is already tacitly presupposed in Harman’s ontology, and show that the proposed modification successfully addresses the most salient criticisms that have been voiced at Harman’s notion of time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT To address challenges to the primacy of the subject in speculative realism, we put Levi R. Bryant's object-oriented ontology in conversation with Jacques Lacan's register theory. In so doing, we recuperate an autonomous materiality for itself, providing a reading of the debate between Slavoj Žižek and Ernesto Laclau over the Lacanian Real and simultaneously providing a rich map of the being of subjectivity and modes of the rhetorical. We systematize Žižek's claim that each element of the register (...) resonates with the others to produce an ontical cartography: a map of the different intersections of the materially autonomous Real with the Symbolic and Imaginary elements of the Lacanian subject. By delimiting the characteristics of these intersections, we can better understand the different valences in which rhetoric operates without foreclosing the agency of objects and the objectivity of subjects. (shrink)