Thursday 10 September 2009
Review of Tool-Being and Prince of Networks
There is a brilliant review and analysis of Harman's Tool-Being and Prince of Networks over at Immanence. In many ways Immanence has similar concerns about Harman's metaphysic as I have and seems to be at a similar point in reading and thinking about his work; plus we both seem to be similarly impressed and attracted (perhaps that should be 'lured', but I haven't acquired Guerrilla Metaphysics yet (pricey), so can't say) by Harman's writing. I may use Immanence's posts as a leaping off point for my own first review of Harman's work in the next few days, although it is taking a little thinking through. I clearly want to have my cake (object) and eat (relate) to it too; more specifically, I want to have my OOO while keeping process and relationism in play in a manner that OOO doesn't seemingly permit.
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Hi Paul - Yes, we're clearly working along similar trajectories here. I agree that Graham's (Harvey's, not Harman's) animism - as well as David Skrbina's panpsychism - offer useful tools toward a oxxxxx-centered ontology. I resist the word "object" there, crossing it out Heiddeger-style as best I can in this comment box, for reasons you can guess; but I'll acknowledge that animism, unlike pantheism, would seem to favor an entity-centeredness over a pure relationalism...
If we can get people thinking philosophically about animism, pantheism, and the like, that alone would be a bit of a coup. At the moment there's so little out there that's current and philosophically sophisticated (a few books on panpsychism, thanks to Skrbina's efforts, a little on panentheism, Michael Levine's book on pantheism, and then there's the Whiteheadian industry which often seems in a world of its own, but not a lot more). I think the animism stuff needs some more thought, aided by anthropologists like Descola and Viveiros de Castro (and Latour) perhaps, but there's promise there. I used to make use of the term "animist liberation theology" and maybe it's something I'll come back to.
Cheers, Adrian
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