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May 13, 2013
Seeing Ultraviolet
Man sees beyond the normal human visual spectrum after cataract surgery
Alek Komar had cataract surgery and now he can see the ultraviolet spectrum. Read about it here. One of the more interesting aspects of the article to me details why this ability might offer an alien phenomenology of certain animals: Komar's case is interesting for multiple reasons. It's a demonstration ...
April 14, 2013
Well, what's your solution then?
David Graeber on thinking about ideas
Lately, it's common to see critique—even smart, detailed critique—answered with a crass dismissal: "Well, what's your solution then?" As if the very idea of raising a concern is invalid on its own. Among boosters, no critique is deemed valid without a complete alternative program. This David Graeber article is about ...
April 1, 2013
Two Reviews of Alien Phenomenology
By Sandy Alexandre and Cameron Kunzelman
For those of you interested in such things, here are two interesting and (to me) very gratifying reviews of Alien Phenomenology. First, a review in Invisible Culture by Sandy Alexandre, which considers (among other things), how literary practice relates to carpentry. I'll let you read to her conclusion on that ...
March 19, 2013
Carpentry vs. Art: What's the Difference?
A preview of an answer that might be forthcoming
Shortly after Alien Phenomenology was publsihed, Darius Kazemi asked: what's the difference between carpentry and art? Carpentry, for the record, is my name for the philosophical practice of making things, of which articles and books are but one example. I borrowed and expanded the term from the ordinary sense of ...
December 10, 2012
On Human Dangers
Prosperity and austerity in contemporary philosophy
I've had the pleasure of visiting with a number of classes recently after they've read Alien Phenomenology. Very different groups as well, from freshmen to graduate students. A common question that arose in many of these conversations relates to the consequences of object-oriented ontology. This question usually takes a form ...
November 10, 2012
Digging for Gold in a Turd
My "Fuck this Jam" Keynote
Rami Ismail and Fernando Ramallo have organized a game jam called Fuck This Jam, in which participants are invited to build a game in a genre they hate. Given our experience making games in genres we hate, Rami and Fernando invited me (Cow Clicker) and Zach Gage (Spelltower) to deliver ...
September 16, 2012
I Know! Let's Talk about Politics and Ontology Again!
Some responses to some responses to some responses
All right, this one of those posts that responds to conversations taking place on multiple blogs and on Facebook, so it's going to be confusing if you haven't read everything. Let me try to give you the backstory: First, Levi wrote On Ontology, another account of the difference between ontology ...
September 12, 2012
Ritual and Fashion
Žižek on "radical" academics
This excerpt from a 2008 article by Slavoj Žižek has been sitting in my notebook for a while, and I thought I'd post it. My personal experience is that practically all of the "radical" academics silently count on the long-term stability of the American capitalist model, with the secure tenured ...
August 21, 2012
Images of Things
A quick image litanizer
You may be familiar with my Latour Litanizer, a simple example of what I call "carpentry" in Alien Phenomenology. It uses Wikipedia's API to assemble randomized lists of objects of the sort I refer to as "Latour Litanies." If you've read Alien Phenomenology, you may also remember a related example, ...
August 19, 2012
Get Well, Galen
A lesson in fiction and reality
My kids just delivered some hand-made get-well cards. I was instructed to deliver them to Galen, the main character in the Wizard 3000 videogame series, a series of my kids' invention which is not only fictional but fictionally fictional. Pop culture being what it is, Hollywood has started to make ...
July 16, 2012
The Great Pretender
Turing as a Philosopher of Imitation
July 6, 2012
Why Time is on the Inside of Objects
More on Harman on Time
I recently described time as a phenomenon "on the inside of objects." Peter Gratton objects that time is "at the surface level of objects" for Harman, because the latter describes it as the tension between sensual objects and sensual qualities. Gratton argues, "if time is at the surface of where ...
July 4, 2012
Time, Relation, Ethics, Experience
Some responses to the Alien Phenomenology reading group
Following the discussion of chapter 1, Darius Kazemi has posted discussion notes for chapters 2 and 3 of Alien Phenomenology—Ontography and Metaphorism, respectively. I thought I'd make a few comments on the topics discussed there. Time Time is discussed as a particularly mind-bending topic in OOO. AP doesn't offer a ...
July 2, 2012
BIT.TRIP Sisyphus
Camus said, the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. ...
July 1, 2012
Two Takes on Alien Phenomenology
From the Italian news and an online reading group
Today yields two humbling approaches to Alien Phenomenology. First, an article by Evan Selinger in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, L'anima delle cose ("the soul of things"). It's in Italian, but I'm sure you can figure out how to read it somehow. Corriere della Sera is a very old ...
June 29, 2012
Irish Joys and Noisemakers
Ontographs by Gregory Blackstock
Via Marina Zurkow via Greg Borenstein, a ">series of very lovely images that collect different sorts of similar things together, by Gregory Blackstock. They're the kind of images I call ontographs, works that catalog the rich variety of being. You'll find Irish joys, noisemakers, monsters of the deep, historic homes. ...
June 26, 2012
A Toaster is Not an Octopus
Consequences of poststructuralism
Today I posted a reply to a mailing list which has been discussing OOO off and on. One complaint registered was that OOO is not "fuzzy" enough, and fuzzy or "soft" things are more desirable. It may not seem a very substantive comment, but I think it hits on ...
June 20, 2012
Nuts to that! Yay things!!!
A comment on Alien Phenomenology
I was recently shown this comment by Daniel Joseph from a discussion of chapter 1 of Alien Phenomenology. The thing that Ian is doing here is positing that philosophy can be practiced for the pure joy of things, as a way into the thing for it the thing itself. It ...
June 15, 2012
OOO and Politics
A response to Cameron Kunzelman
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly sure what blogging means to me these days. But whether by accident or design, I've been avoiding some of the back-and-forth debate that both helps and hinders the work of philosophy online these days. That said, this is one of ...
May 19, 2012
A Game of Throwns
For some reason I made this...
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