A friend of mine was kind enough to share some of his political worries with Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology. Some of my readers might find my response of interest as the question of politics comes up often in relation to SR. I understand your worries about the de-politicization of ontology, but I also can’t help but feel that Meillassoux and Badiou are making a very political point that they’re trying to ground in ontology. It seems to me that throughout the history of philosophy, one way of distinguishing the revolutionary from the reactionary is that the latter always argues that there is 1) a necessary order to the social world to the social world and that therefore 2) the social world can be organized in no other way. In other words, the reactionary always argues that the social world is either naturally or divinely decreed. By contrast, the revolutionary always argues that the social world is contingent or that things are capable of being otherwise, that our identities, classes,
modes of production are, as you put it, “historical”. I take it that when Badiou, Meillassoux (and not incidentally myself!) are interested in contingency to ground this very point: the world does not have to be this way!
I realize I’m not a target of your remarks, but I wanted to briefly clarify some of my own positions. First, the issues you raise about the project of critique in queer theory, feminism, post-colonial theory, race theory, Marxist critique, etc., are very close to my own thought and are constant themes in my own writing. I have attempted– whether or not I’m successful is another question –to develop a theoretical apparatus capable of integrating these modes of critique. In particular, chapters 4 and 5 of The Democracy of Objects attempt to develop the resources for retaining the discoveries of critical theory broadly construed, while my article “Of Parts and Politics: Queer Theory and Onticology” (forthcoming, Identities), details the application of these concepts in greater detail. I have no intention of abandoning the discoveries of critical theory or embracing some form of identity essentialism that “naturalizes” identities. In other words, all of this remains in my thought.
Second, I consider myself both a Marxist and a materialist. I have tried to argue that those that continue to deploy the nature/culture opposition have not yet followed through on the implications of the Darwinian revolution. What Darwin disclosed, in my view, is that the natural world, far from being a world of essences and necessity, is historical. This thesis has reverberated throughout the natural sciences to such a degree that even “natural kinds” such as iron are now understood to be the result of a production, a history, that takes place in the core of stars, rather than fixed and eternal essences. In other words, the reactionaries can no longer even appeal to natural ontology to ground their essentialist claims. Part of the reason for my engagement with biology and the other physical sciences has been to diffuse the residual essentialisms (such as we find, for example, in sociobiology).
So if I consider myself a Marxist materialist then why am I embracing realism? Part of the reasons arise from the very sort of critical historical meditation you bring up in your remarks. In my view, the move beyond Fordist modes of production consisted in a shift to media/knowledge/information production roughly at the behest of biopower. Nonetheless, this form of production– while itself tarrying with the incorporeal –is grounded in a physical infrastructure. Flows of capital and the ability of capital to exercise its power literally needs highways, satellites, trains, farms, land, fiber optic cables, ocean going ships, and so on. Without these channels of transportation and information transfer, coupled with sources of calories and energy to run these engines, capital is unable to continue itself for, as Harvey points out, capital only exists in the motion of capital. For me this Marxist thesis about motion and being is true of all objects. Consequently, if you wish to smash an object you have to find a way to halt its internal motion or the process by which it sustains, continues, and propagates itself.
Now, for whatever reason, it seems to me that there’s a strange way in which this shift from factory production under Fordism to immaterial knowledge-production in a post-Fordist regime has simultaneously been seen in most variants of Marxism while nonetheless remaining unseen (in much the same way that a neurotic, and especially an obsessional like Hamlet, might endlessly talk about his symptom without quite seeing it or moving to the act). Here I have in mind the shift in much Marxist theory to cultural Marxism or critique of ideology, largely forgetting the physical world or things like fiber optic cables and soil conditions. However, while I believe that ideology critique and cultural critique are absolutely indispensable, I also feel that they often lack any political efficacy because they simply tarry at the level of signs and discourses, ignoring the material infrastructure upon which this form of production relies to perpetuate, continue, and sustain itself. Thus what I’m trying to do is both retain cultural critique while also drawing attention to this material infrastructure. If we ignore that
dimension, I think, we leave the basic coordinates within which this system functions intact. We need better cartography so we develop better strategy. This cartography and the practice that accompanies it is what I’ve called “terraism”.
To get a sense of what I’m talking about, take the example of OWS. I am absolutely on the side of the OWSers, but I also find myself frustrated as it seems to me that much of it is unfolding at the level of an ideology critique (cultural Marxism) and a desire to persuade these governmental and corporate forces that is doomed to fall on deaf ears. Occupations are taking place everywhere except, I think, in the places where they would have a chance to make a real difference and produce real results. If we think of capitalist social systems as being akin to an organic body, then these social systems will have a circulatory system and a nervous system. The nervous system of a capitalist social system would be the various mediums through which information is transmitted (internet, phones, television, newspapers, etc) as well that the events that take place in those systems (images, songs, reports, narratives, articles, etc), while the circulatory system would be the various paths of distribution and production the system requires to produce this sort of social structure such as highways, trains, airports, portions of the internet used for monetary exchange, farms, shipping lanes, etc. The political goal of the critic of capitalism requires causing capitalism to have a stroke or a heart attack (continuing with the metaphor of circulatory systems). But if that’s to be done, it’s necessary to occupy not a park in front of Wall Street or a governors office, but rather the arteries capitalism needs to survive. Why not occupy the highways? Why not occupy the ports (Oakland was a good move)? Why not occupy the internets, finding ways to block commerce traffic? My view is that if all focus is on the nervous system, these infrastructural dimensions are entirely missed and we end up with a form of political engagement that is merely one more form of information production leaving the basic structure of the system intact. This is why I’m an object-oriented ontologist.
December 1, 2011 at 4:22 pm
“…But if that’s to be done, it’s necessary to occupy not a park in front of Wall Street or a governors office, but rather the arteries capitalism needs to survive. Why not occupy the highways? Why not occupy the ports (Oakland was a good move)? Why not occupy the internets, finding ways to block commerce traffic?”
It’s happening. Expect us.
December 1, 2011 at 4:53 pm
I would like to see a journal–on-line, multi-lingual, but important to have cheap & easily reproduced and distributed print version (physical copy can be taken & read independent of electric digital wireless infrastructure access)–maybe networks of POD capable sites to reproduce on-line issues (see “Long Term Proposal for (Post encampment) Revolutionary Action”
Occupy Thought!
… on critical theory philosophy political analysis… moving beyond street chants and clever sign sloganeering–though all these would themselves make good subjects for analytical essays–even necessary — to keep theory engaged with action & action informed by critical thinking.
Multi-disciplinary. Drawing on whatever background writers bring to the effort, but, like Occupation process–thinking form the ground up, working to construct thought from experienced reality, building on what is new and contingent with emerging situations–not forcing the movement into existing ideological boxes; eclectic over orthodoxies. LIke the Occupation camps–embodied, physical, materialist & action oriented rather than idealist and abstract.
December 1, 2011 at 6:03 pm
One need only read someone like Hobbes or Spinoza to see how ontology and politics can emerge seamlessly from thinking about what is. Heidegger’s got a line somewhere that complains about how often people mistakenly believe that an ontology without an ethics “tacked onto it” is a deficient ontology. Is that what we do? Work out a theory of what exists, then figure out what politics we should adopt in light of this ontology? Do all ontologies generate their own politics? What if your ontology generates a politics that you find distasteful? Does that mean your ontology is no good, or that you should reject the truth of that ontology? Is that what we do: examine all the ontologies on offer and then pick the one with the rosiest politics?
Sorry, I’m ranting. I should get back to working on political ontology.
December 1, 2011 at 8:10 pm
I have to run to a debate trip, so I cannot do something longer, but:
Levi, I really like this post, a lot.
Tom: Yeah, I need to figure out my way of articulating my rejection of first philosophy, but your questions have something to do with my unease about first philosophy.
December 1, 2011 at 8:16 pm
“However, while I believe that ideology critique and cultural critique are absolutely indispensable, I also feel that they often lack any political efficacy because they simply tarry at the level of signs and discourses, ignoring the material infrastructure upon which this form of production relies to perpetuate, continue, and sustain itself.”
In other words, cultural critique reduces the injustices of capitalism to ideology, and, as a result, it often ends in defeatism: critique has failed to change, therefore, ideology must be totalizing (there is nothing outside of ideology) and change is not actually possible.
OOO and realist theory is not, as I understand it, inherently uncritical. The “strange realism” you all are putting together is far more revolutionary than anything the critical theorists came up with precisely because it doesn’t reduce to either the material or the semiotic. It allows us to actually understand what’s going on much better so that we can actually make a difference.
December 1, 2011 at 11:46 pm
Scu,
Yeah, I can see someone being wary of first philosophy, and for political reasons. Just as someone might be anxious about Heidegger because they believe that his Nazism is somehow built into his question of Being. But I think there’s the constant danger of advancing a position that is effectively saying, “Yes, that may be true, but it’s ugly, therefore I will not acknowledge that truth.” It’s like the classical rejection of materialism: it must be wrong, or at the least suppressed, because it yields nasty truths about God, the soul, immortality, and miracles. That said, I’m happy to entertain alternative attractive truths, and I hope you’re one of their producers!
December 2, 2011 at 3:17 am
I gotcha. But I think that what you are talking about simply makes ethics or politics first philosophy, which is what you are uncomfortable with. I think that is problematic as well. I honestly believe that nothing is first philosophy. That all we are doing is second philosophy. Really and truly. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, and honestly I don’t have a great articulation of this feeling, but it is where I stand right now.
I also think that Heidegger’s Nazism is really problematic, but it doesn’t mean that every idea from Heidegger is tainted by Nazism (though Nazism is so vile an intellectual investment, I would certainly always keep that in mind when working with Heidegger). But I am as likely to be bothered by Heidegger’s anthropocentrism as I am his Nazism, when judging his philosophical concepts.
December 2, 2011 at 8:10 am
I think my main fear with OOO as a political ontology is the insistence on its anti-relational qualities as a way to talk assert its distinction (freedom?) from correlationist philosophy. I think the idea that objects are sealed off from each other, always already withdrawing from access, to use Harman’s terms, is a perfect picture of the social alienation of individualist, neo-liberal capitalism. It is incredibly hard for me to imagine a progressive map of the social ungirded by this ontological map.
I would welcome further discussions on this issue, as to how a world predicated on these terms – as a fundamental – if not essential? – cartography of what ‘is’ can function differently to the appalling wreck of history ‘we’ have inherited and flounder in (sorry just having a negative day!)
I also think that unless these post-anthropocentric, nonhuman ‘onto-epistemological’ interventions radically transform knowledge production – i.e., it does not just become another form of critique (see Stengers) that is subsumed into the abstract, rational thought of a master humanism – it will remain at the level of culture, signs, representation – which makes its co-option, on some levels, seem inevitable.
December 2, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Hi Deborah,
Within my framework it’s not that relations don’t exist, but rather that they are always external to objects. By that I mean that relations can be broken or severed such that entities can enter into new relations. I see this as a necessary condition for any political change. If entities were nothing more than their relations then no change would ever be possible. I think your remarks about neoliberalism miss the mereology of object-oriented ontology. Mereology investigates the relationship between parts and wholes. One of the central theses of OOO is that objects are composed of other objects and that objects exist at a variety of different levels of scale. The neoliberal hypothesis, as famously articulated by Thatcher, is that societies don’t exist, only individuals and families. Based on this hypothesis she can then say individuals are entirely responsible for whatever they are and accomplish because no entities like societies exist influencing them. But that is exactly what OOO denies. For OOO there are larger scale objects– what Morton calls hyperobjects –amongst which we would find societies. Often these societies capture individuals, drawing on them in unjust ways to reproduce themselves for their own aims. The twist is that individuals are never consumed by the societies that capture them and retain the capacity to challenge and contest these hyperobjects either through individual acts or through the formation of other hyperobjects like revolutionary collectives. This gives you, I think, all the relationality you might like. Far from being a reactionary thesis that justifies neoliberalism, OOO is a hopeful thesis that articulates the conditions under which it might be possible to challenge something like neoliberalism. It’s also notable that the entire idea of transcendental cartography consists in an investigation of spatio-temporal relations and how they’re structured in particular local situations. This is undertaken for the sake of severing oppressive relations and building new formations.
December 2, 2011 at 4:27 pm
hi Levi,
thanks for replying – this does help to clear some things up somewhat – and offers some practical explanation of what a politics could look like, which is what I need.
I still maintain that there is a danger that the most resonant, or clearly argued thesis of ooo can be taken as something quite cold and anti-social. But as you suggest, there are relations, they are external to objects…
but so often when an idea becomes distilled (repeated, shared, cited) its most basic properties are passed around reductively – so there is a need to state things very clearly I think to ensure the onto-epistemological intervention is not flattened by language and the academic industry.
On a related, but different point, I think a major problem with correlationism is the presupposition of relation when it is questionable whether the ‘relation’ that exists between a human who represents an idea of a tree is in fact, a relation at all. Or a man representing a woman, a subject an object.
I just wonder politically what is at stake in refuting that constellation as ‘relational’ when it is more akin to a power disparity, a fantasy, a form of control….
December 2, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Deborah,
Can you point out in this post or in other of my political writings where I have attempted to refute something because it’s relational? All of my work is geared towards the investigation of relations and in particular networks that are unjust and oppressive. You’re focusing on the withdrawal thesis, but for me, at least that’s secondary (and I understand it in a rather different way than Harman). What’s important here is taking into account material agencies that organize human and environmental relations in a variety of ways. Contemporary continental theory has been dominated almost entirely by a focus on the discursive, linguistic, semiological, and ideological. As a result it is almost entirely blind to these material agencies. That blindness leads to an impotent politics.
December 2, 2011 at 5:18 pm
Apologies, Levi, I will do some more reading and get back to you on this stuff when I have constructed something more precise!
I am just relaying my general wariness and its probably not an appropriate space. I am a slow reader and sometimes get ‘stuck’ with concepts because they shake my internal systems – the anti-relational is one of those things. I think I encountered it in the intro in your book, and in Harman.
Take care ! d
December 3, 2011 at 8:07 pm
“Why not occupy the highways? Why not occupy the ports (Oakland was a good move)? Why not occupy the internets, finding ways to block commerce traffic?”
Hey, in Italy we’ve done our best as students movement in the last years, at least concerning railroad and highways. My friends and have had some debates concerning the actual effects of these political practices though. They were often more of a symbolic action, very powerful concerning the imaginary (does this word – imaginary – exist and make sense in english?), but not so effective concerning the actual block of the capitalistic machine. So we discussed and asked ourselves what kind of political subjectivity should organize and make this type of actions. Should there be some solid structure to organize it? If yes what should it be like? If no, then how does this should happen?
I don’t know OWS well, do you think they could have the strength and the capacity to sustain such type of occupation? Cause when you start dealing with the actual blocking of profits, then the reaction against you gets stronger and it’s not easy to stand up to that.
I still haven’t got a clear answer to those questions. But maybe it didn’t work so good because of some contingent side aspects of the students movement. Still debating. They were good years, politically speaking and it was the first time in decades that in Italy some sort of political extra-parlimentary subjectivity gained room in the public debate.
Ciao!
December 4, 2011 at 2:49 am
From a cartographic standpoint OWS started as Occupy Zuccotti Park. Why Zuccotti Park? It was their second choice, because the first park was closed. These privately-owned, public open spaces (POPOS) are open 24 hours a day by contract, in contrast to most city parks that close after dark. The space to occupy was chosen because it didn’t break the law! Does that sound like revolutionary activity?
OWS from its cartographic beginnings attempted to disturb without disturbing.
December 4, 2011 at 4:13 am
We may not be there yet… but it’s coming
December 15, 2011 at 7:55 am
[…] The proximate cause was remembering a comment Scu of Critical Animal made at Levi’s blog Larval Subjects, which I had re-read shortly before deciding to make this […]
December 30, 2011 at 7:28 pm
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