Weird Media and Tiny Ontology

I’m behind in keeping up with my corner of the philosophy blogosphere. In part I’ve been distracted by cow clickery, but more so I’ve been spending as much time as possible writing Alien Phenomenology, which I fully intend to complete before the end of August. I’m thus offering two teasers today, in lieu of earnest content.

The first is related to the project on McLuhan that Levi Bryant and I plan to undertake. He’s already completed his OOO book, The Democracy of Objects, so he’s a bit ahead of me. As such, I’m going to let Levi do the teasing, by pointing you to his post on weird media. There Levi points out our fundamental interest in McLuhan: a “medium” is just his generic name for a thing that man relates to. But, as you’ll no doubt guess, Levi and I wish to push this understanding of media beyond its relation to man.

The second is related to the Alien Phenomenology project itself. Lately I’ve been working on my account of flat ontology, and I’ve just finished penning the first version of it. It bears similarity to both Graham and Levi’s positions on being, but I’ve got my own take of course. I’m calling it tiny ontology, both for pragmatic and aesthetic reasons. Pragmatically: being is dead simple, and any ontology that belies such a claim is likely to be flawed. And aesthetically: despite the fact that I’m writing a book about it, I’m increasingly unconvinced that more description leads to more clarity. I want an aphoristic ontology. One that can be rendered via screen print on a trucker’s cap.