Object Oriented Panel

Here’s a pic from this morning’s panel at the RMMLA. From left to right, Ian Bogost, Tim Morton, Levi Bryant (speaking), and Jeff Bell (chairing). It could also be called an Apple-Oriented panel, since all three took out some Apple product during the presentations…

Bryant spoke on the politics of structuralism and how his onticology works differently (attuned to objects, not to gaps in structures where transformation can happen). Inasmuch as I think–which is part of what I spoke about yesterday–the focus on the exception and the evental has meant an estrangement in some quarters from actual political engagements or being informed by them, his paper had a lot to offer. (I’m not convinced I recognize the structuralism he portrays, but that’s less important than getting a handle for how this portrayal accent helps to mark out his own approach.)

Ian Bogost presented on how object oriented ontology may mean thinking about thinking of ways of philosophizing other than through the written text. And Tim Morton’s paper was a counter-example to the bad writing Bogost was discussing. It was an excellent meditation on the problems of the notion of the world in ecological thought and seeing how the notion of the world was once going to be a book project of mine (before I realized that wouldn’t make sense without a thorough-going account of time), I also think he’s right. I think there are counter-examples to the type of thinking he cites (if it’s a world, it’s reason enough to be respected), but he again, as in The Ecological Thought, extends out how a certain thinking coming out of Heidegger (the worldhood of the world) has been damaging to ecological thinking.