I just noticed this post over at Graham’s place responding to a post by Vitale (can anyone tell that I’m laying about sick today trying to distract myself?). Vitale writes:
“What I’m asking, if indirectly, with my Hjelmslevian excursus, is the following: sure there are lots of Parises (my Paris, Graham’s Paris, Henry IV’s Paris, etc.). But is there an ontological Paris, a ‘real’ Paris underneath all these, for OOO? If so, I can’t get on board. Because then I feel that OOO brings a God’s eye view (which is a version of ‘our’ own filters) through the backdoor, in the name of ontology… So my question for Graham – is there A REAL Paris? If so, I just can’t jump on the wagon. But if not, if there’s an infinite number of potentially incompossible graspings layered on the spacetime location of Paris, then sign me up!”
To this Graham responds (with some really interesting, yet allusive, follow-up on what an object-oriented theology would look like) remarking that,
The problem with Chris’s passage here is his claim that believing in Paris entails a “God’s eye view.” But that’s precisely what it does not entail. The object is not a view at all.
This is probably one of the most succinct articulations of one of the key claims of OOO I’ve ever come across. Objects are not a point of view, full stop. They are not one object’s point of view on another object. They are not God’s point of view on them (objects, as Judge Schreber observed, are even withdrawn from God). They are not even points of view on themselves (those objects characterized by reflexivity still do not have unadulterated access to themselves). Objects are just objects. They exist perfectly fine without being seen by another object, God, or themselves. Not only that, it is impossible for any object to be seen by another object or itself precisely because objects withdraw from one another and from themselves.
I realize I drive people up the wall by constantly harping on the difference between epistemology and ontology, but this gets to the heart of the issue. Epistemology revolves around questions of how we know objects or, in Vitale’s language, how “point-of-view” maps on to objects. Ontology revolves around issues of what things are regardless of whether or not objects are graced by our gaze. However, as Harman emphasizes further on in the post, no matter how many points of view on the object you enumerate, even if they go to infinity and eternity, you will never have an unadulterated access to the object precisely because objects are withdrawn.
Do we have points-of-view on Paris and only have points-of-view on Paris as Vitale argues? Absolutely. OOO has argued this all along. The best one object can ever do in relation to another object is translate it and, as Derrida compelling argues, translations always differ from the originals that they translate. Does that warrant the thesis that objects are their translations by other objects? No! This, I think, is where OOO differs most profoundly from Vitale. We can happily endorse nearly all of Vitale’s claims about perspective, yet we all insist nonetheless that an object is never identical to how it’s translated by another object (this is also why I reject the endless referral thesis of Derrida… It conflates the epistemological with the being of objects).
My favorite part in Graham’s post?
So, looks like Chris and I will remain on different sides for at least awhile to come. Table’s always set for you, friend.
Yep, the table’s always set… But not just as an invitation to come on board, but in general discussion regardless of whether we agree or not.
August 18, 2010 at 9:57 pm
I also think Brassier has a nice way of putting it in the Collapse proceedings. I know it is not an explanation but I just like it for its conciseness:
‘What’s striking about Graham’s account is that you don’t need to explain how objects are synthesized, because you simply take objects as nested within one another. You have this kind of infinite nesting of objects within objects within objects’ Collapse III, 316, Brassier.
I think it is a nice way of putting. I think he also calls it ontological univocity. Incidentally I still think the causation essay in Collapse II is the best account of OOO out there though I know Graham has some reservations about it.
August 18, 2010 at 10:27 pm
[…] HIS REACTION to my exchange with Chris […]
August 18, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Because it is brief and pointed and seems definitive, this post may be very useful for me at least. You say “Objects are not a point of view, full stop. They are not one object’s point of view on another object. They are not God’s point of view on them (objects, as Judge Schreber observed, are even withdrawn from God). They are not even points of view on themselves (those objects characterized by reflexivity still do not have unadulterated access to themselves). Objects are just objects.” Let’s take the last first: objects are objects. To me, his seems to be just the identity function again. Its content is not ontological at all but purely deductive, an assertion of a rule which lacks content apart from that rule, it has no inductive or experiential character of any sort nor — as far as I can tell — do any of the elaborations that stem from it. OOO has a logic of objects for which the real is a surplus. To me, OOO asserts a position that not only in the abstract, but theoretically, seems to be sealed against the things it wishes to address, like the scholastic who could deduce what things must be from a rational god. Obviously, the complex literature of reference and its failures might be brought to bear here though maybe OOO can shunt those over to that epistemic realm with which OOO will not put. I think the Derrida view would be fun to keep pushing here — and not because I am a D guy — but because I think the trace is his version of the “object” as an ontological turbulence, a kind of vortex, and not a representation or an normative object but just the current current. IAC, that wanders perhaps too far from what is at hand. Let me focus a bit. Even the claim “an object is an object” seems to make some attributes — like those resident in the identity function — about cohesion, duration, and permeability or does it? If not, how can an object be an object?
Mostly I just lurk here because my stupidity is such that I do not even understand why my concerns are stupid but I would welcome a little a little light.
August 18, 2010 at 11:36 pm
[…] and Vortex Posted by larvalsubjects under Uncategorized Leave a Comment In comments, Dan writes: Because it is brief and pointed and seems definitive, this post may be very useful for me at […]
August 18, 2010 at 11:40 pm
[…] OK, I know I’ve been posting a lot of responses to various of Levi’s posts. However they’ve been quite helpful for drawing out various things I’ve been thinking about the past few years. This will probably be among the last for a little bit as I want to return to a few more religious topics. Today though Levi had a fantastic post that brought up an issue I’ve worried about a long time: Metaphysics and the god’s eye view. […]
December 14, 2010 at 2:18 am
[…] that aside, the recent exchange between Chris, Levi, and Graham has piqued my interest. In fact, Levi’s and Graham’s point about there […]