The Democracy of Objects is coming along at a nice clip and I should have the initial draft completed in the next couple of weeks. Right now I’m working on chapter 5, and am right around 73k words. Depending on whether or not I decide to write a chapter on space and time, the book will be six or seven chapters, coming in, I believe, around 100k words. The chapter breakdown is as follows:
Introduction– Towards a Finally Subjectless Object
1. Grounds for a Realist Ontology– Here I draw heavily on Roy Bhaskar’s arguments for transcendental realism and develop the basic framework for the structure of objects.
2. The Paradox of Substance– Drawing on Burke’s critique of substance in The Grammar of Motives I argue that the structure of substance is such that it simultaneously withdraws and self-others itself in qualities. There’s a lot here on Aristotle, Locke, and Kant as well.
3. Split Objects– This chapter develops the relationship between virtual proper being and local manifestation and draws heavily on Deleuze’s account of actualization while revising his concept of the virtual in such a way as to treat individuals as more basic than the virtual and arguing against the thesis that the virtual is a whole or one-All that is then split up into discrete objects.
4. The Interior of Objects– Drawing heavily on Luhmann’s autopoietic theory, I here develop an account of how objects are operationally closed and how they relate to one another through selectively open relations to their environment. There’s also a nice section on the Lacanian clinic in this chapter, showing how it can be understood in terms of object-oriented ontology.
5. Regimes of Attraction and Parts– This chapter tackles the question of constraint or how objects can be constrained by other objects when they are operationally closed and also fleshes out issues of object-oriented mereology. Additionally there’s a nice section in here on temporalized structure that shows how the autopoietic conception of structure allows us to move beyond structuralist and post-structuralist conceptions of structure while maintaining their best features. There are lengthy discussions of developmental systems theory, Luhmann, and Badiou in these sections.
6. Flat Ontology– Here I outline what is entailed by the concept of flat ontology, drawing out my mereological points and working heavily with Lacan’s graphs of sexuation to make the case that objects are essentially “feminine”.
Conclusion
Appendix: Principles of Onticology– The appendix will include my article for The Speculative Turn with a brief discussion of how my ontology has evolved since I formulated the ontic principle (which I’ve now abandoned as a foundational starting point).
If anyone is interested, I could really use some help with the thankless task of putting together the bibliography and/or the index. The latter project won’t come until I have the offprints for the book, but it should be possible to write up a bibliography once the initial draft is completed.
July 13, 2010 at 8:08 am
Levi,
This point has been made before, but I genuinely believe that you are creating unnecessary future battles and misundertandings for yourself if you go down the Lacanian line in chapter six ‘to make the case that objects are essentially “feminine”‘. We know that OOO is not about objectification in the second wave feminist sense. But anyone with an awareness of feminist philosophy will be sensitive to the manner in which the “feminine” and “female” have been identified with “matter”, “bodies” and “corporeality” in the history of Western (and Eastern) thought. This is largely the reason many feminist philosophers are very suspicious or critical of metaphysics and ontology in the first place. That is, the association of the female with the denigrated pole of a set of binaries/dualisms is viewed as a central feature whole systems of oppression and exclusion.
My concern is that any conceptual association between “feminine” and “objects” will draw considerable criticism and, in a Latourian sense, lose you many potential allies. It doesn’t really matter how you re-interpret or re-inscribe this, you will lose a lot of readers at the first hurdle (i.e. they will read “feminine”, “essentially” and “objects” together and you will be cast in the role of masculinist, arch patriarch philosopher and will have a serious battle to extricate yourself from this categorisation). Strategically and stylistically, I really think that this a theoretical position that you should reconsider. Its hazardous and for many feminists would appear toxic, another textbook example of masculinist metaphysics at work.
July 13, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Good for you for asking for help with the tedium! Only credit will redound to those who answer the call. Levi, I hope you’ll take another picture of the manuscript soon. I see it in Tux and Tails–très elegant.
July 13, 2010 at 3:59 pm
All good points, Paul. The description in the post is misleading. What I’m referring to is Lacan’s graphs of sexuation which I interpret ontologically to schematize ontologies of withdrawal (the feminine side) and ontologies of presence (the masculine side). Additionally I treat the one side as truth and the other as semblance. The discussion isn’t really about sex or gender at all (and isn’t pitched in such terminology), but about certain formal structures.
July 13, 2010 at 4:39 pm
I, for one, can’t wait to read this section. When I was wading through Lacan’s Écrits and secondary literature a few years ago, I often turned to this blog and the Lacan group on Yahoo to read your various interpretations, especially about the byzantine graphs of sexuation, and I don’t think I would have found nearly as much value or power in them if I didn’t embrace your ontological reading of them. In fact, I don’t think it’s crazy to say that if you don’t read them ontologically, they really make very little sense, and the “sexual” terms grafted on to them really do obscure the content.
July 13, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Levi,
I very much appreciate that, as you note, the “discussion isn’t really about sex and gender at all”, my concern is that any schema that forms associations between the masculine as presence and/or the feminine as absence (or withdrawal, in your case) can, nonetheless, be problematic in feminist and gender theoretical terms. The association, trope or metaphor of sex/gender can still cause much trouble, particularly when connected to an ontology or metaphysics. I am just concerned that the masculine and feminine language could land you in some difficulties.
July 13, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Very much understood, Paul. Part of the rhetorical strategy here, however, is to lay the groundwork for a feminist and queer ontology. The graphs allow for a critique of the very things you’re rightly criticizing, and allow a linkage of ontologies of presence to totalitarian social structures, phallocentrism, and patriarchal thought all linked to transcendence. The side of withdrawal, by contrast, is characterized by immanence and a relation to difference qua difference. The “feminine side” it turns out, is the active pole, not a passive pole awaiting form from some other agency. Such a view of the feminine can only arise from the perspective of the masculine side.
July 13, 2010 at 6:28 pm
In which case, I’m as interested in the final chapter as I am in the preceding five, which is to say, very much indeed. An exciting gambit, to use the final chapter as a spring board or pointer towards a future OOO ethic.
July 14, 2010 at 2:38 am
I just posted on this…
July 14, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Levi,
The table of contents is fantastic. I’m really excited about this book.
Jon
July 14, 2010 at 9:51 pm
I was just flicking thru Zizeck’s Parallax View (as you do) and came across his take on Autopoiesis. I guess your quite familiar with it…
It’s interesting how he uses the term ‘virtual’ for autopoietic organization. A relational/virtual property. (p.205).
But this is still not quite your ‘virtual’ which is what is not currently manifest…
In fact, I see some of your approach in Lawrence Cahoone’s ‘The Dilemma of Modernity’. “Things are plural, complex, never exhausted by knowledge and experience…’
In this approach there is genuine encounter with the thing itself – just not ‘all’ of it. And it is, in this approach, poss to have partial knowledge of wholes…
Cahoone draws on the Thomist notion of ‘esse intentionale’ which has little in common with Husserlian ‘intentionality’ except the name.
This kind of being – the being of relation (and Heidegger’s Dasein) is what enables genuine encounter with indep existing entities – where ‘appearances’ are not nothing but appearances and not every relation is a ‘distortion’….something is keep constant thru the translations…
Not a ‘stage-play’ about inaccessible ‘things in themselves’.
I am looking forward to reading Souriau’s ‘The different modes of existence’. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in Claremont in December. It could get intense (smile).
July 14, 2010 at 11:52 pm
That chapter should definitely stay and I too can’t wait to read it. However, you might consider a disclaimer or introductory paragraph to discourage the readers from having such a misconception. Frankly, if a poster can misunderstand it merely from the description on a blog, it can clearly be similiarly frustrated by anyone picking up the book.
July 14, 2010 at 11:53 pm
correction: “to prevent the readers from having such a misconception”
July 16, 2010 at 2:47 am
Levi: If you’re still looking for someone to help out with the references and indexing, I have some time free ahead and would be happy to help out.
July 16, 2010 at 3:51 am
Just thought I’d say thanks for the blog – it makes me think – not such a bad thing
July 19, 2010 at 7:07 am
You once referred to your approach as ‘the nominalist wing’ of OOO.
Obviously you know history of this term. So why do you use it?