tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1703983863002652001.post3742157281003704515..comments2024-03-21T08:50:20.533-07:00Comments on Pirates & Revolutionaries: Can We Critique with Our Feet? Terence Blake on Object Oriented OntologyCorry Shoreshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10021754334885248079noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1703983863002652001.post-35930724413719581902014-04-17T23:19:09.861-07:002014-04-17T23:19:09.861-07:00Hello again Jake! That sounds interesting actually...Hello again Jake! That sounds interesting actually. Can you say more how it might be useful to treat literary texts as material beings in space? Also, I read your excellent post on Harman's Literary Criticism http://jtriley.blogspot.com.tr/2013/09/harmans-literary-criticism.html. Was that in reference to his article "The Well-Wrought Broken Hammer?" We read it for a film theory seminar recently. I find the proposed literary method of experimental subtraction disappointing. I do not see yet what use it could be for interpreting a text, which is a problem I think because he is critical of methods that are very effective for textual interpretation. And also, I do not understand how his method is possible in the first place. It would seem that certain subtractions would be admissible to some readers and not to others. It would be a matter of which critical perspective you are taking in determining the text's meaning in the first place. But I am not sure I am talking about the same thing as you are, when you mention depth in your post. I am just curious if you think there can be a useful or even viable application of OOO in literary criticism, because I cannot see one yet.Corry Shoreshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10021754334885248079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1703983863002652001.post-84949293129549383202014-04-17T22:46:01.442-07:002014-04-17T22:46:01.442-07:00Many thanks to you Terence for your comments and a...Many thanks to you Terence for your comments and all the great work you do and make freely available. After reading yours and other comments I now see better how I am oversimplifying your situation to fit my dichotomy. Your other blog Xeno Swarm looks great and very interesting. I will surely be reading it. I notice also your mention there of Harman, so I am seeing better that critique can be conducted without getting mired. The tai chi meditation on the hill top sounds incredible! And I realize also now that I misrepresent what you were saying about feeling. So I added to the blog a notice at the beginning asking readers to check the comments so to be aware of these problems. I also now realize I do something similar with Clifford Duffy. When I have scholarly questions about Deleuze and Guattari, I often turn to him and learn a great deal from him. I do not mention that along with being an amazing poet he as well is a very accomplished scholar and philosopher. I read his PhD dissertation a while ago, and I was very impressed. As well, I am probably being unfair to Harman too. I do not substantiate anything that I say regarding his ideas, so that is another problem. At any rate, whether my post conveys this or not, I am very sympathetic to your situation, and given the quality of your work, I believe it will all pay off in the end. Let's see what comes of this chapter Harman says he plans to devote to your commentaries!Corry Shoreshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10021754334885248079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1703983863002652001.post-88734255712656369652014-04-17T09:57:46.867-07:002014-04-17T09:57:46.867-07:00I think Corry is right but he has also to see that...I think Corry is right but he has also to see that Terry has decided to permanently fight against an ontologization of some academic idiotic proceedings: a vicious scholastic point of view: a very narrow minded practical sense which has reified itself as a well-seen tendency, thanks to a pragmatic validation between pairs who share the same pale interest regarded to meritocracy and public-self-ish-ing. I have fought OOO with Terry many times, and it is a good exercise to sharp our shades and skills for critique: OOO is an easy too evident target. But we know that there are other much more cancerous impostors out there, better positioned and much more prolific, who deserve to be ripped out from the field of philosophical production. And for that we need many people like Terence Blake. All the power to Terry's critique.Naxoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04850461718344000918noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1703983863002652001.post-22940613766110993972014-04-17T06:11:57.451-07:002014-04-17T06:11:57.451-07:00I too give a lot of importance to feelings, but I ...I too give a lot of importance to feelings, but I was objecting in the passage you cite to the attempted psychologistic reduction of my arguments to the expression of merely personal feelings.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1703983863002652001.post-56204709242870185172014-04-17T06:00:57.316-07:002014-04-17T06:00:57.316-07:00Great post, Cory! I know its been awhile since we&...Great post, Cory! I know its been awhile since we've made contact, but I am also inspired by Blake's posts on OOO. The only thing OOO has done for English departments (my own field) is as a kind of philosophical precedent for a turn toward thinking of the "object." That is, to return to dealing with "things" not just as texts, but as material beings in space. The details of Harman's philosophy, minus his, in my opinion, boring reading of Heidegger (turning him into a philosopher of the present-at-hand rather than a philosopher of existence), are rarely mentioned in scholarship in my field. This kind of poaching from philosophy makes English scholars particularly susceptible to weak philosophical work (including me -- I spent a lot of time evaluating and testing it too, but not with the philosophical acumen of Blake). Jtrileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05982512687346949724noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1703983863002652001.post-16409992354700585402014-04-17T05:54:21.079-07:002014-04-17T05:54:21.079-07:00Hello Cory, I feel your dilemma too. Faced with th...Hello Cory, I feel your dilemma too. Faced with the dangerous doses of negativity that I deal with I have even decided to create a new blog where I “D nce n ked with my body on the high hill of happiness”, devoted mainly to philosophy and SF, with a very Deleuzian bent: http://xenoswarm.wordpress.com/. However, my original blog is full of far more positive posts than critical ones. I take seriously Deleuze's idea that one of the tasks of philosophy is to "strike a blow against stupidity", and that Deleuze and Guattari's polemic in print against psychoanalysis lasted 9 years (from ANTI-OEDIPUS 1972 to A THOUSAND PLATEAUS 1981). And sometimes when I am critiquing OOO I am dancing, some of it is good. Further, I have been ignored by the OOO crowd for a long time. Once again I am reminded of Lacan's telling his followers to avoid any reference to ANTI-OEDIPUS, and so ensure that it would sink without a trace. No doubt this strategy had already been employed with success on other dissidents and critics, but this time it did not quite work. OOO has used the same technique. For example on the now defunct blog: http://kvond.wordpress.com/. The more recent strategy has been for lower-ranking OOO followers to tell me earnestly that I should go and devote myself to something I like. So I am being told by the people I critique to stop, in the name of positivity. Yet they are busy propagating a false image of Deleuze, a deformed stupid caricature of his thought.<br /><br />Anyhow, I was feeling down, and I had just been talking with my wife about how unfulfilling my engagement with OOO has been, when I saw your post linking to Clifford's poem. It described my state exactly, and invoked the same medicine that I always use, and had begun to apply again: more Deleuze. <br /><br />I may add that I live in Nice, not far from where Nietzsche used to lodge and only five minutes from its Castle Hill. I often go to the top where there is a small group I can practice tai chi with; So I do dance with my body on the high hill of happiness, and even if I'm not physically naked, meditation in movement is nakedness.<br /><br />Thanks for giving echo to my enterprise, and for the just assessment that I am expressing a problem rather than a solution.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com