[PREV - OOONT]    [TOP]

HARMANS_WAY


                                    December 06, 2018

                                        OOONT
I gather that Levi Bryant got the
flat objects of OOO rolling back in
2011 with his book "A Democracy of
Objects" but since then I think he's
moved on to other (and one hopes,        Checking with Uncle Wikipedia, I
saner) pastures, leaving the field to    think that was a forlorn hope:
the likes of Graham Harman, whose
publicity photo up on his wikipedia        "Later Bryant, concerned with the
page shows him posing with a lolipop       doctrine of withdrawal and the
and smirking at his cleverness.            non-relationism of object-oriented
                                           philosophy, departed from the
 (A dorkosity alert is in effect.          object-oriented ontology movement
 Please proceed to the nearest exit.)      and developed a machine-oriented
                                           ontology that argues being is
                                           composed entirely of machines or
                                           processes."

                                                             [link]
Harman has a new book out, titled
"Object-Oriented Ontology: A New
Theory of Everything".

This is a *new* theory!
Totally *neeEEw*.

  Though in the introduction he immediately
  backs off from the idea that it's actually
  new, which is no doubt why he chose to
  emphasize the point in the title.

                                 EVERY_OOONT
                                                                             
                                               But then, as Harman           
    As I think Wittgenstein put it,            comments in an interview:     
    about that which we cannot speak,                                        
    we must write PhD theses, and              "In 1998 I began to read Bruno
    somehow Graham Harman has me               Latour, and the next year I   
    contemplating the unspeakable.             corresponded with him and     
                                               finally met him, near         
    Perhaps it's the fact that Harman          London. His approach to objects
    wrote a book on the philosophical          further influenced my own     
    implications of H.P. Lovecraft--           developing theory, and his    
    See, Lovecraft wrote about some            witty, irreverent tone        
    stuff beyond human comprehension,          certainly soaked into my own  
    and Harman wants to argue that             voice as a writer."           
    everything is beyond human                                               
    comprehension.  It's a natural fit.            Perhaps I just              [link]
                                                   don't get the joke.
      One might wonder about Harman's
      comprehension, but snide a
      cheapshot like that would be
      beneath the dignity of any
      serious author except me.


             But remember the oath:
             First, do no Harman.




--------
[NEXT - EVERY_OOONT]