This is just a quick post to point you to a few early reactions to Alien Phenomenology.
First, Levi Bryant has two posts up, From an object’s point of view and A brief note on units and operations. Substantive stuff as usual. Levi draws productive connections to Jakob von Uexküll, for example.
Second, Alex Reid discusses the connections between alien phenomenology, rhetoric, and pedagogy. He offers a quick summary of my book and an extended consideration of its implications for object-oriented rhetoric, a topic Alex has been working on for some time now: “From the perspective of alien phenomenology as a kind of philosophical engineering or carpentry, the question of rhetoric becomes how does one employ symbolic behavior to speculate.”
Third, Darius Kazemi wrote a short review that’s really more of an initial reaction, but again one with considerable substance. First he says some very nice things about the style of the book, which is really gratifying to hear. Then he wonders about how satisfactorily the book addresses the difference between carpentry and art, to which I’ll have to respond in the near future. Then he muses on game engine development as a kind of ontology.
Fourth, Karl Steel channels AP in a discussion of Derrida’s infamous encounter with his cat. “What if Derrida’s cat had been, not a worm, but, say, Levi’s blue coffee mug? And what if Derrida had been a table?”
And fifth, Greg Borenstein writes extensively about the connections between alien phenomenology and The New Aesthetic as a part of a Creators Project response to Bruce Sterling’s recent and widely-circulated essay on that subject. I’m hoping to find the time to pen my own thoughts to this one, since I think there are both similarities and significant differences between my brand of carpented object-oriented ontology and the new aesthetic. Soon, I hope!
More generally, it’s been gratifying to see many other, briefer mentions on Twitter from those who have finished the book. I remember the first time I noticed readers talking about “finishing” my books online, and I vowed to write shorter, better written books as a result. I hope Alien Phenomenology proves to be such a one.