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Ode to Man
Tho’ many are the terrors,
not one more terrible than man goes.
This one beyond the grizzled sea
in winter storming to the south
He crosses, all-engulfed,
cutting through, up from under swells.
& of the gods She the Eldest, Earth
un-withering, un-toiling, is worn down,
As the Twisting Plough’s year
into Twisting Plough’s year,
Through the breeding of horse, he turns.
& the lighthearted race of birds
all-snaring he drives them
& savage beasts, their clan, & of the sea,
marine in kind
With tightly-wound meshes spun
from all-seeing is Man.
Yet too, he masters by means of pastoral
beast, mountain-trodding,
The unruly-maned horse holding fast,
‘round the neck yoked,
& the mountain’s
ceaseless bull.
& the voice & wind-fast thought
& the passion for civic ways
He has taught, so from crag’s poor court
from under the ether’s hard-tossed arrows
To flee, this all-crossing one. Blocked, he comes
upon nothing so fated.
From Hades alone escape he’ll not bring.
Tho’ from sickness impossible
Flight he has pondered.
A skilled one, devising of arts beyond hope,
Holding at times an evil,
But then to the noble he crawls,
honoring the laws of the Earth, &
Of gods the oath so just,
high-citied.
Citiless is the one who with the un-beautiful
dwells, boldly in grace.
Never for me a hearth-mate
may he have been, never equal in mind
He who offers this.
Ode to Man
A BwO is made in such a way that it can be occupied, populated only by intensities. Only intensities pass and circulate. Still, the BwO is not a scene, a place, or even a support upon which something comes to pass. It has nothing to do with phantasy, there is nothing to interpret. The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to
the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0; but there is nothing negative about that zero, there are no negative or opposite intensities. Matter equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero. That is why we treat the BwO as the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs, before the formation of the strata; as the intense egg defined by axes and vectors, gradients and thresholds, by dynamic tendencies involving energy transformation and kinematic movements involving group displacement, by migrations: all independent
of accessory forms because the organs appear and function here only as pure intensities. The organ changes when it crosses a threshold, when it
changes gradient. "No organ is constant as regards either function or position, . . . sex organs sprout anywhere,... rectums open, defecate and close, . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments." The tantric egg. After all, is not Spinoza's Ethics the great book of the BwO?
Ode to Man
But human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavour of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole.
Kvond, these are interesting so-called “critiques,” but I don’t think you’ve properly gone about engaging Dr. Graham Harman, Prince of SportsExtra and reigning King of the object-oriented blogosphere. You should really check out his blog for more information on how to properly disagree with him (i.e., heaping praise upon his genius, while perhaps entertaining a few minor squabbles here and there to make things fun for him).
Thanks for directing me to more Harman lunacy. Yes, I don’t quite get the “All your points are brilliant but for this one little problem” ethic that Levi (and it seems Shaviro) and Harman share. I tried to have something of the sort of conversation that Harman recommends when in first interaction, but he first told me that Spinoza’s “stock was overated” (at the moment in the philosophy market), a bizarre non-attempt to have a discussion, and then when pressed for some coherence, that it would take him an ENTIRE book to explain why Spinoza’s philosophy doesn’t solve the problems he is facing. A whole book, and not a few sentences. The guy is just plain goofy sometimes, and I wonder why a handful of philosophy types find him or his theories interesting. I mean, I just don’t get. But if someone gets you to think, or dream, what’s to explain, I suppose. But when Shaviro opines, after having presented a critique of Harman, that it is perhaps only aesthetic differences between his and Harman’s thought, the difference between a Picasso and a Titian perhaps, this is sheer silliness. I think Shaviro was much closer when he said that Harman’s thinking is incoherent.
I have a similar negative read on Harman’s “withdrawal” of objects (what I know of it, anyway, which I’ll admit is somewhat limited). This sort of language smacks of Heidegger at his most ludicrous, fascistically dedicated as he was to the “authenticity” of being. I suppose some people like to take those weird and wacky points in a philosopher’s work and try to wrest something great and novel out of them.
I’d be content to leave the weird and wacky points in Heidegger’s work alone, myself, and consigned to the dustbin of someone else’s bad memories. (To mix metaphors…)
If you think that Heidegger is wacky in this way, you have to read Harman’s essay on causation. It was a non-essay, something a freshman student on hash would dream up, write half of, and then forget to finish. Hey, I’m all for speculative combinations of ideas. I do it all the time here. It is just the parading around as if you are somehow in the possession of the “truth”, that you have penetrated the veil, so to speak, that you are doing “real work” a “real project” with your musings (as opposed to so many others), this is what is foolish. Does anyone, and I do mean ANYONE, even an impressionable grad student, hell, a freshman student, actually think that Harman is describing objects correctly? Does ANY human being advocate his causation? Even Levi who tries to be as close as possible to Harman for it seems alliance reasons is practically embarassed to discuss Harman’s actual theory and its obvious ridiculous theory of causation. Guys, the Emperor has no clothes, and this nudity is not an “aesthetic” difference.
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I always assumed Levi didn’t discuss Harman’s actual ideas all that much because, aside from some vague talk of “difference” and labeling it “onticology,” there is no difference. Levi’s recent talk of black boxes everywhere really is just Harman’s anthropomorphization of objects with a strange (in so many ways) computationalist metaphor.
At some point, the only people who take OOO seriously will be the OOOers, and everyone else will treat it as an interesting blogospheric phenomenon, one of those things you get when conversations become too insulated and have so little at stake.
Levi was quite critical of the vaccuousness of Harman’s objects when he first encountered it, saying that he had no idea at all what purpose the concept served. Then it seems that this gave way to a kind of “polite” avoidance of the subject for the sake of alliance building. The black box metaphor is taken from Latour, not Harman (I believe), and is given to the notion of required translation, which really does nothing to require the kind of absurd concepts of causation that Harman dreams up. I agree though that “black box” does have a computationalist tone to it.
As to who will take OOO seriously, it just strikes me as a kind of branding specifically geared to the internet, much as you say. Lets set up our own pretend “peer-review” “journal”, lets talk of OOO as a “splinter group” broken from a supposedly non-splinter OOP or SR, or whatever. Its like D&D for a few outlying philosophy professors and grad students.
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