A strange review of Alphonso Lingis's 1998 book
Jean Georges is one of four Michelin Three Star restaurants in New York city. It’s very French, so French that you’re just as likely to hear the language spoken as English. That and the environment in the main dining room—a single, enormous, plush chamber on the ground floor of the Trump International Hotel—make the place feel monarchal and exotic. The… read more
How do scholars want to read and write?
There’s been a flurry of discussion in the speculative realism corner of the blogosphere over the last week about the nature of blogging as an academic pursuit. There are more posts than I can link or summarize (a point to which I’ll return), but for now, you can read Adam Robbert, Levi Bryant, Tim Morton, and Graham Harman on the… read more
A review of Adam Kotsko's book
Adam Kotsko’s little book Awkwardness is a pleasurable and insightful read, yet another reminder that Zero Books is quickly becoming the trusted source for short, punchy works on philosophy and cultural theory. In the book, Kotsko offers a tiny theory of awkwardness: “The tension of awkwardness indicates that no social order is self-evident and no social order accounts for every… read more
Geoffrey West and Urban Withdrawal.
There’s a terrific article in today’s New York Times about theoretical physicist Geoffrey West’s attempt to build a general-purpose logical model of cities. The way West describes his motivations, “I’ve always wanted to find the rules that govern everything,” offers an elegant summation of why I find procedure a more compelling object of concern than process. These are the laws,… read more
Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference of the Whitehead Research Project
This is a short, first version of a paper presented at the Fourth International Conference of the Whitehead Research Project, which had the theme Metaphysics & Things: New Forms of Speculative Thought. The paper explains an important difference between process philosophy and object-oriented ontology, by contrasting process with procedure. As an added bonus, the paper also coins the term firehose… read more
My Indiecade "Project Next" Talk
In addition to getting to exhibit (and collect two awards!) for A Slow Year at this year’s Indiecade festival, I was also invited to do a talk at the conference portion of the event, in a session called “Project Next.” Jon Blow, Chris Hecker, Alex Neuse, Paolo Pedercini and I all gave short talks about the new games we each… read more
At the 2010 Society for Literature Science and the Arts Conference
Last week at the Society for Literature Science and the Arts conference, Katherine Behar organized two back-to-back panels on Object-Oriented Feminism (OOF). There were six papers total, and a response to each panel by Katherine Hayles and myself, respectively. To participants, Behar posed the question, “What would a program for Object-Oriented Feminism (OOF) entail?” The first panel attempted general responses,… read more
OOO at the RMMLA
It was particularly appropriate to come to Albuquerque to speak on object-oriented ontology with Levi Bryant and Tim Morton. Why? Well, you’ll have to wait for Alien Phenomenology to understand, but it will be clear on the first page. The RMMLA was lively and fun, much unlike it’s bigger brother (sister? crazy uncle?) the MLA. I enjoyed meeting folks for… read more
In Facebook and Philosophy: What's on Your Mind?, edited by D.E. Wittkower
In Facebook and Philosophy I received two degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, but Facebook won’t let me join the UCLA network. A Facebook network is an organizational category that allows my profile to come up when someone searches or browses in a particular group. At different stages in the life of the service, networks have been organized… read more
Philosophy as Engineering
Harman offers the following provocation over two posts this week: Building a philosophy is more like trying to build the world’s best subway system than like trying to be an ascetic monk –or revolutionary, for that matter– standing in a lofty tower and bemoaning the filth and disease of the world. We should want more coverage for the subway network… read more