OOP between Politics and Ethics
Yesterday and today, the online discussion around politics and SR peaked, due to some blogposts (mainly Reid’s and Levi’s reply) on the topic and some comments (1, 2, 3, 4) to Nick’s paper (now online for all to download) on ‘framing militancy’ presented the other day at the Goldsmiths mini-conference (which, by the way, was quite a pleasant event).
The question is the usual: can a flat ontology which is openly against anthropocentrism be compatible with politics? In fact, the accusation is often that OOP is apolitical, or worse in some sort of secret connivance with capitalism (or neo-liberalism).
To very roughly summarize in one sentence the general mood of those who replied to this accusation, let me quote Levi:
the claim that questions of ontology are distinct from questions of politics is not equivalent to a rejection of politics
The argument goes on and Levi ultimately arrives to the claim that actually OOP can be politically propositive, since
Only where objects can be detached from their relations, only where objects can separate from their relations, is it possible to envision the emergence of new forms of order or organization that depart from established regimes.
Now, I personally agree with the rejection of the accusation political acedia, and I do believe that the focus on networked objects (and their autonomy) can be successfully applied to political discussions about the chain of production and around the checks and balances within social structures. Still, this is not my territory, so I will not even attempt to forumlate any sort of constructive proposal here.
What I would like to highlight, however, is that when we talk politics we cannot avoid talking ethics. Given its critique of human-centered ontology and given the common misunderstandings that this position produces (Harman recently wrote: ‘But of all the objections to OOO so far, the one I am least able to grasp is this: “if you’re saying that humans aren’t the center of ontology, then you must be saying humans are worthless.”’) OOP must first engage with the problem and thematize its relation to ethics and then give its support or ontological insight to politics. We cannot just take for granted the system of ethics which underlies the project of anti-capitalist political renovation and invokes the emergence of a new (more just) form of social order.
I am not saying ‘OOP is an-ethical’ (or worse, un-ethical) therefore it cannot be compatible with any form of political action. What I am saying is: before engaging with politics OOP must clarify its relation with ethics. I don’t expect this to be an easy nor a straightforward task, for the suspicion of what I would call ‘intellectual genocide’ will keep arising in the minds of those who will come in contact with OOP’s aversion towards correlationsim and the ontological priority of human thought on objects.
Still, I believe that this can be done, and successfully, and I also believe that an OOO-based ethics could be quite promising. Personally, I think that the main pole of discussion about ethics should be the concept of Otherness in general and Levinas’ work in particular (with the problems arising from his ‘ethics as first philosophy’ motto), possibly with some critical awareness of the modifications which cybernetics imposes on social interaction, and I am planning to look in that direction in a contribution for the forthcoming cross-blog event organized by the Speculative Heresy and the Inhumanities guys, which, if what I have argued so far is true, will be a really momentous step for the development of SR as a whole.
Fabio Cunctator
I agree that the OOP movement would do well to clarify its position on politics and ethics, rather than just saying they’ll get around to it later. Being a mere dabbler in OOP I can only speculate, but as we’ve recently witnessed, this sort of speculation can run afoul of the authorities…
There’s an implicit, and at times explicit, linkage between reality and power in this ontology. Per Levi Bryant, an object becomes “more real” to the extent that it effects more changes in the world. Is becoming “more real” a good thing ethically or politically? Per Graham Harman, interactions between objects are asymmetrical in terms of power relations. Object A emits an allure, drawing the intentionality of object B, which sucks object A into an interactional plasm centered around, and dominated by, object B. It’s almost as if the alluring object is asking for it. If one real object overpowers another object, either absorbing or destroying it, then that one powerful object’s increasing reality is achieved at the price of forcing other real objects to be changed. It’s asserted that objects have some essence that withdraws from interaction, the implication being that whatever changes object B imposes on object A, B can’t really touch object A at its core. On the other hand, Graham says that object can go out of existence: presumably the flame really does burn up the cotton that attracted the flame’s attention so alluringly. How many asymmetrically forced translations of an object does it take before that object isn’t the same thing any more because its hidden essence has been destroyed?
An alternative version of “more real” presumably unfolds at the level of reality as a whole. Differences are what makes something real. The more different objects emerge inside the universe, the more real it becomes in terms of sheer multiplicity of differences. This sense of emergent multiplicity would seem to operate in tension with the hegemonic force of strong objects becoming more real by absorbing alluring but weak other objects until, conceivably, only the single most powerful object in the universe remains real.
Surely it’s possible to extrapolate some political and ethical implications from these ideas. Do we ally with the powerful hegemonizing differences? By supporting the multiplication of differences, are we inadvertently enabling the divide-and-conquer strategy of the hegemonically powerful? Or are all of these implications an inappropriate extension of ontology into realms about which it has no direct relevance? Of course I’m at risk of distorting the essence of OOP, but hey, I’m just interacting here. That’s why the spokesmen for the movement probably ought to get around to drawing their own inferences.
Sorry for carrying on so long, Fabio, this being my first comment here and all.
Don’t apolozize at all, I think your observations are spot-on!
You say that “Differences are what makes something real” and a comment to one of your own posts that:
“If different-from is what makes something distinct from whatever it is not, then its essence would be the totality of its different-from-ness, wouldn’t it? If that’s not the case, then either difference isn’t different-from, or else difference isn’t the mark of a thing’s distinction.”
In both cases you are confronting yourself with a ‘Levian’ (forgive the neologism) definition of ‘real’ is what makes a difference. Personally I think that this definition is necessary only insofar you want to keep some meaning of ‘essence’ as ‘something which has independent existence’, which is why Levi talks about ‘differencing’, as what unitary and coherent objects/vectors (objectiles) do. I feel much more latourian here, and I think that all this talk of substances and essences is really not necessary. Yet even against latour, i think that we cannot talk about reality as a byproduct of making a difference. Coherency would want that not only we deny substances and essences, but that therefore we deny differences as well. Which is why I prefer talking about perturbations rather than differences. (But this is my general problem with ontology: I like ontology minus being. No substance, no process, no necessity. Which is why I kind of like Meillissaux).
Nonetheless, as you observe, if we just concieve of actors/objects as being more ‘real’ the more alliances they have (neglecting essences) this can become an interesting political statement, as linked to dynamics of power. Is the actor ‘capitalism’ more powerful than the actor ‘feminism’ because of its network of alliances? Sure. But must we jump to say that it is also more ‘real’?
I agree with Paul’s division regarding political interest, yet I suppose you are right when you say that the ‘canonical’ answer would be ‘hey, this is ontology which is not necessarily linked to politics’. Quoting Levi himself: ‘Insofar as realist ontologies reject correlationism or the thesis that objects can only ever be thought in their relation to a subject and that subjects can only ever be thought in relation to objects, it follows that the being of beings is an issue that is independent of politics. Were the being of beings always bound up with the political, we would not have a realism, but rather a correlationism. Why? Because beings would necessarily be bound up with the human.’
[I surely am a big fan of anti-correlationalism, yet I fail to see how certain actors are not intrinsically human-bound and hence politic: yes, capitalism is bound with factories, metals, woods and highways, and their interactions are independent of human access. But would capitalism really survive to the extincion of the human race? Is it that bad to claim that there are some ‘abstract’ actors which *are* dependant on human beings? Fire’s hotness does not have to be dependant on human’s access, since cotton might generate the same secondary quality, but when it comes to political constructions, I do not see how they can have this independence.
As a matter of fact, I think that OOP could in principle serve as a base for new forms of political organization. But. Say that in 2020 ‘latourian object-oriented libertarianism’ overthrows capitalism. Will this new actor be independent of human access? If the human race gets wiped away in 2018 will this actor ever enjoy any reality (i.e. since real=makes a difference will it affect other actors)? Am I giving the human actor the hegemonic role on capitalism? No. Of course, humans alone could not ‘make’ capitalism, as history shows. But yes, humans are a necessary condition for the actor/event/objectile ‘capitalism’ to exist=to have effects on other actors human and non humans alike.
So ok, the reality of Sirius B the white dwarf is independent of human access yet completely dependent on a network of actors which includes Sirius A, the degenerate electrons which compose it, gravity, Pauli exclusion principle, hydrogen nebulae etc, where each actor is modified in the translations between them and enjoys no durable essence. But can we say the same of capitalism? Badiou’s count-as-one comes to my mind here: yes, but who’s counting? Does this all matter? Yes it does: do we really want to say ‘capitalism’s existence is independent on human access’?
Sorry I have gone too far, as your question was more like ‘what kind of politics can be produced by OOP?’, and I have gone generally astray. Moreover I am sure I got something wrong with the capitalism example. My main problem here is that I am quite looking forward to both the Speculative Turn and the Democracy of Objects, so that it will be easier to draw the lines between Levi and Harman…
Moreover, in all this I kept ethics outside. As I say in my post, I do not see how we can want to change anything (politically speaking) until we share a common ethical ground. And given the prominence of the human ‘other’ in ethics, I think this is a problem that must be faced before deciding whether or not OOP supports neo-liberalism or revolutionary socialism.
You’re right: I was purposely embedding myself in Levian reality, trying to explore that space from the inside rather than critiquing from outside. “Perturbations” — have you written about this idea, Fabio?
I’d think that an ontology of power could be just as compatible with Marxism as with capitalism. While Latour’s networkings seem to suit his own neoliberal bent, Hardt & Negri and Agamben among others look to a more emergent networked version of Marxism. So I’m not sure whether either the power-to-hegemony or the emergence-to-multiplicity version of OOP necessarily leads to a particular political position.
I wish I knew the eliminative position better. I’m sure the OOP guys would grant reality to politics and ethics, even if they’re not privileged. But as you say, their reality requires human participation, so I could picture the Brassier contingent regarding politics and ethics as ontologically unreal and thus irrelevant. I suspect I’m wrong about that inference. I agree: let’s hear from Levi and Graham about these matters.
Written? No, that is actually a term that Harman uses quite often in his book on Latour (I’m not sure its a latourian term itself, I should check). Me I’m still trying to come up with an original take on this all, I got something boiling up but I won’t release it until I feel it makes some sense
Of course, I was using ‘capitalism’ because it’s the term of choice when you have to be polemic about something… Exactly the same would apply to any other political position/construction.
As for the ‘Brassier faction’, I cannot really say much about it, because I did not go much farther than reading his book, but I suspect that Reid has some way to keep eliminativism and marxism on the same table.
I suppose as someone who takes OOO seriously but is not one of the OOO thinkers my position is not all that important but I do think there is a schism between Levi and Harman/Bogost on this point. Levi is clearly more likely to try outline an ethics because he is overtly political (from what i can discern he is a broad progressive) whereas both Harman and Bogost are sort of apolitical or at least more ‘mundane’ in their politics. I suppose there is a kind of liberal streak here that would annoy followers of the Zizek trend but I also consider myself generally apolitical or at least liberal in that ‘weak’ way Zizek always targets it. So I suppose OOO might have a certain apolitical allure.
Hi,
I have to say that this issue is very important. I think that any philosophy that wants to deal with ethics and with politics needs to embrace the question “who” and the question “how”, so to let its ontological departure grasp its own ethical status. So who is doing philosophy and how this philosophy is done? What is the ethical status of an ontology and how does this ethical status affects or should affect the philosopher that is formulating it? In the case of any philosophy: would not this ethical status affect the philosopher in the way that it shall be also an applied criteria to who is coining it, and in the sense to let him/her exercise a healthy objectivification of his/her practice, the practice that is actually giving birth to such an ontology?
Regarding to the quote that points out to “the claim that questions of ontology are distinct from questions of politics”, and despite it also affirms that such a claim “is not equivalent to a rejection of politics”, i truly think that this statement of distinction should be also questioned by the one who is doing philosophy and that is coining an ontology that hopefully will be further referenced on his/her behalf, mostly if such ontology is pretending to introduce and not avoid the ethical status it implies at the end of the day. To my mind, any ontology that wants to introduce the ethical question and that may want to deal with the questions of politics, in order to not to fall into a naive statements, should start to question this ontological distinction, as this distinction is all the way concerned to these questions as well.
In the original post written by Levi Bryant and that is linked here, I made a critical comment regarding to this specific issue, pointing out how Levi falls into this kind of ontological naivety. While the comment was frontal, frank, and with no harsh, unfortunately, Levi decided not to publish it as he meant to take it personal, even though i begged him not to take it like that. Obviously, the comment was certainly criticizing and pointing out, from a perfectly exposed bourdieuan point of view, to the lack objectivification of his practice as a philosopher that proposes (not without a bit of irony to my taste) an object oriented ontology (OOO).
So Fabio, just to show how these kind of issues are indeed related to ethical and political struggles (in this case, the unpublished comment is the perfect example of it) I would like to have your permission to post my comment in this section, as it is worth to do so and to read regarding to the issues your are posing here. Anyway i will understand if you consider that it is not the case to go that far.
cheers
No problem for me. And I am sure none will get offended if I publish your comments on my blog. As a matter of fact I think it is good for the conversation as a whole to link to your own post/comment to Levi: http://naxos.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/conversacin-en-larval-subjects/
Thanks, I will post it then, as I truly feel it is fair both to my comment and to the content of this post. Thanks again
[...] OOP between Politics and Ethics [...]
This is the comment that Levi Bryant did not published on his original post at Larval Subjects:
Levi,
I can recognize that the whole defense of your claim is supported by the idea that:
Then you spare a complement to this assertion saying that what this distinction:
These two assertions, far from being really true, their distinction is just pronouncing something that, in general, is not meant to be taken as something purely related to ontology itself. Of course it is expected from philosophers to take for granted the arguments that give autonomy to their disciplines and practices and that give sense to their views and therefore, while exercising this philosophical practice, that present as such like something meant to be embodied and naturalized, in order of course, to develop academically what they do as they are meant and expected to know how to do it. But in the real world, and to this point any realist ontology is included, to affirm that the mentioned questions are distinct, is something very naive. But why is naive? To say that these questions are distinct is a must-be that can only be applied and can only makes sense to philosophers, of course: as it is a very important and elemental part of the practical interests they share inside their field: the field of philosophical production. But outside this field, in the real word, this issues do not apply nor make the same sense, for example, to a sociologue. If you can notice, this specific issue it is by itself political, it remarks by itself a political ground that is already determining the production of philosophy in academic terms. This means that the autonomy that holds the field of philosophical production is relative and not absolute. The effect of any field of production, in this case, the effect concerned to the inner coercions of the philosophical discourse above the production of philosophical contents (and to my guess, I have to say, that you pronounced perfectly when saying rigorously that
..is what gives an objective foundation to the illusion of an absolute autonomy, in order to separate, for example, what it is not philosophical (what is not ascribed to certain philosophical traditions and therefore, is taken as subversive), from what it is philosophical and serves academically to the conservation and perpetuation of the field and its discoursive production and reproduction. This means indeed a double rejection: the rejection of the philosophical contents that recuse the illusion of the absolute autonomy, in one hand, and in the other: the rejection of any other external content which mainly will reduce the philosophical production to the conditions of its own production and reveal all this conservative and rejective mechanisms.
So, as I have said before, its very naive to say that these questions are distinct as if they were distinct by their nature. But why is naive? As i am trying to get clear through this comment, from a discoursive point of view everything is political: this is meant to say, that everything that means something is irreversibly political. So, taking this point of view as valid for the present disoursive departure, would not be ontology something political as well? or better would not be this particular philosophical discipline something political per excellence, as it is meant to mean what is meant to mean (so far, let say, what it mean as “being”)? So again, to say that these questions are distinct is just naive and, as i have explained here, this is the kind of naivety of a philosopher that does not establish the right margins concerning to what he/she do at the time of what he/she says to do, actually, or in other words: the naivety of the philosopher that does not any objectivification of his/her exercise and therefore that is blinded by his/her own sense of practice while he/she is in fact practicing it. Further more, what should be expected at least as something to state with a bit of hesitation (and i cannot read anything of it in your post, on the contrary, you don`t allow anyone to doubt about your primal argument while you reproduce it with rigor and without noticing the intellectual and prude naivety it implies) is to say that the questions of ontology *should be* internal to ontology itself. But we don`t receive that vehement and honest reflection from you as philospher that suits the philosophical investiture (although it could be the inversed situation: i mean, that the philosophical investiture is suiting you from behind without you getting to notice) no! we receive the philosophical subjectiveness brought and sponsored by your lack of objectivification (which is something interesting to get to note for a philosopher that promotes the OOO`s stuff). To this point, considering that you are a sensitive philosopher, I beg you not to take this as an attack to your person, on the contrary: while i am being faithful to my points of views, the points of views that you are starting to know, I am just pointing out to a constructive critic on the table, for you philosophical sake.
So it is still naive to say that these questions are distinct, if we suspect that there might be prominent cases in history as well, where the ontological questions were suspiciously decided by the political questions. I guess the most representative example of this might be Heidegger, but not I am not very sure. As you might know better than me, or might not, i don`t really know (I am not fond on Heidegger`s work, sorry) and while i don`t avoid either that all this kind of strange suggestions can always be refuted as a rumor, which is ok to me (but then again if that is so, it would not change anything of what i just said above): it is well known then even as a rumor, that Heidegger`s philosophy did struggle with his nazi beliefs and commitments, and this was somehow reflected in his ontology. Just to take a possible and a tentative example: one might think that his tendency to germanize traditional philosophical terminologies through a series of almost never ending variations and declinations that the beautiful and ductile German language allows to compose, may be something that show us how his work was influenced by the nazi regime, of course, in order to institutionalize and naturalize their philosophical fascism. Or even out of the text, talking discoursive: his final reactive deception against the vulgarization of nazism, which made him take write and publish other kind of philosophies at the end of his days (on Nietzsche, for example): this is also something that may show us his huge influence in the philosophical institutional academical tendencies (this time for good and in a positive way to philosophy itself, i may say). Anyway if so, this specific case might be examplificatory in both ways i have exposed: in one hand, to say that the distinction between the ontological questions and the political ones is rather the refractive effect of the illusion of an absolute autonomy in the philosophical fields (as Heidegger was, by the way, one of the most prominent institutional sentinels and coiners of academical autonomy, and all his political-ontological mastery points out to build this refractive illusion). And in the other hand: to say that he never could hide his political commitments with nazism (while his infamous reactionary case makes us doubt about the statement that holds that the questions of ontology are purely internal to ontology).
To this point you now might wonder: where in hell all these presumptions that i am sharing here actually come from? I then i answer that they are not presumptions invented by me: all these things that i have written can be read and easy deduced from a very little book titled “The political ontology of Martin Heidegger” wrote by Pierre Bourdieu. So while i know with full certitude how you might not be aware of this book, i thought then how interesting it would be, at any rate of course, to show you how, if we give the bourdieuan point of view the authority it actually deserves, you are deeply and blindly reproducing the ontologically naivety song i have described so far regarding to the questions of ontology and the questions of politics, even with their own supposed “distinctiveness”.
Thanks to Fabio, for letting me air this up
Graham has said before (in the discussion after his talk at Zagreb if I’m not mistaken) that his ethics would be a kind of revival of Aristotelian ethics, with the emphasis on character, virtue, and capacity rather than duty, law, or justice. I’m quite happy with this, being somewhat of an Aristotelian when it comes to ethics myself. I think it comes quite naturally out of Graham’s work, with the darkness within all things being virtually unknown except for rare glimpses, like when someone shows tremendous courage in a hard situation for example. It also restores the category of virtue to its Aristotelian usage, since Aristotle did not use it exclusively for humans but spoke of virtuous dogs or knives.
I can see how people would be upset with this since many of us are still victims of Kant’s “What ought I to do?” meaning we naturally connect our ethics to our politics. I think OOP is a much more humble project in that it begins with ontology and metaphysics and builds up from there. The point being that our politics should not dictate our ontology, but our ontology should show what politics are possible. I take this to be the point when Graham will mention the fact that with good metaphysics spring many politics (we can see this in right- and left-Hegelians for instance, but also in Nietzscheans and Lacanians). We shouldn’t begin by attempting to build a metaphysics in order to ground our already conceived political beliefs, nor our ethical beliefs. I think Graham’s work is much more “innocent” in the same sense that Derrida used to describe the work of Deleuze in The Work of Mourning: simply following the thought wherever it goes and being genuinely excited by the results, whether you expected them or not.
Michael,
of course, I completely agree when you say that ‘our ontology should show what politics are possible’. All I am saying is that an ontology as ‘revolutionary’ as OOO will have to eventually go through a movement of self-reflection leading towards some pronouncements (or even a system) about ethics (first) and politics. Harman’s work has got the merit to have recovered Latour as a philosopher and to have offered a foundation for OOP. It would be naive to expect him or anyone else to have already explored all possible developments and directions of it. That is work that will be done in the coming years. Still, I believe that it is necessary to mention this necessity.
Hi, Michael, I read you.
I have to say that by introducing Bourdieu to this issue I just to wanted to point out that while doing this OOP practice, and despite you may think that your or anyone else`s politics should not dictate OOP`s ontology: it is the practice by itself that is already dictating it, because doing such practice implies this bourdieuan idea of sense practique: which is referred to all the things that are taken for granted and reproduced blindly in the exercise of such a practice. This points out to the scholastic vices that are reproduced in the philosophical field.
So, talking about ethics and politics: it is needed to exercise the objectivification of the practice, instead of exercising the reproduction of the vices it implies, as they are so taken for granted, and this, to objectively avoid their reproduction and institutional perpetuation in the field. The sociology of Bourdieu is relational and allows us to think this problems mostly concerned to the logic of practices. Bourdieu himself denounced all these problems all through his work: and he even talked specifically about the philosophical and the scientific fields.
So to my mind, Bourdieu`s work implies a relational ontology that is referred to the social, and that should be considered ontologically. The problem is, that this kind of consideration may imply by now a subversive content inside of the philosophical fields, as it is meant to put on the table the conditions of production of the philosophical discourse.
[...] October 4, 2009 at 5:01 pm [...]