OOO, ya don't say?

Follow this link to learn more about a one-day symposium on April 23rd at Georgia Tech on Object Oriented Ontology [OOO, as the shorthand now goes].

According to the symposium website, OOO, a term coined by Graham Hartman, who is also the figure most associated with this philosophical movement, "puts things at the center....Its proponents contend that nothing has special status, but that everything exists equally—plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD players, and sandstone, for example. In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as constructions of human behavior and society (social relativism). OOO steers a path between the two, drawing attention to things at all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their nature and relations with one another as much with ourselves."  Among the scheduled participants, Levi Bryant has written a series of manifestos for the movement, available here and here.  For another such manifesto, see Ian Bogust, who is also the webmaster for the symposium.  Bogust's post also connects with the early January f(l)ury over the present sordid state of the humanities (i.e., as registered at MLA '09 and thereafter).

I still haven't taken a position on OOO myself yet, but I find something in and about it compelling, not least it's thoroughly ontological de-centering of the human.  What probably bothers me most is its repeated claims to some form of "realism," especially insofar as OOO finds comrades in "speculative realism" (e.g., Ray Brassier, Ian Hamilton Grant, and Quentin Meillassoux).  Indeed, Hartman is very much the shifting figure associated with both movements, and at least in some readings, OOO is a sub-field of "speculative realism" (see here, e.g.)  As always, it would be interesting to trace the intellectual genealogy that these thinkers claim for themselves (e.g., behind Hartman there stands a certain acknowledged influence of his teacher Alphonso Lingis), including an important (revisionist?) reading of Deleuze.  Indeed, Levi Bryant and Steven Shaviro have probably written the most on Deleuze in relation to this question, although I wonder how Manuel DeLanda's reading of Delueze as putting forth a "realist ontology" might connect with OOO more generally.  It's also worth thinking about how, at least in the circles of literary criticism, something like "thing theory" works in conjunction with OOO, although I don't think that the former posits any kind of realism, ontologically understood. 

CFP: Inaugural Issue of "Speculations"

The below CFP, first posted in December, is for a new online journal, Speculations: The Journal of Object Oriented Ontology. While I don't share its apparent alliance to "speculative realism," I am interested in new forums for the renewed study of "ontology" and the exploration of "post-continental philosophy" (a neologism whose usage I'm only familiar with through the work of John Mullarkey).

Speculations: The Journal of Object Oriented Ontology

CALL FOR PAPERS

Speculations invites articles on topics related to object oriented philosophy, speculative realism or post-continental philosophy for its inaugural issue. Articles should not exceed 8000 words and should conform to the author’s guidelines outlined on the website. Submissions can be sent electronically via the journal website or directly to the following e-mail address: speculationsjournal@gmail.com

Speculations is an open-access peer-reviewed journal. The deadline for submissions is February 28th 2010. Issue one is due to be published in early 2010 and will include submissions from Graham Harman, Ian Bogost and Levi Byrant.

Website: http://speculationsjournal.org
Inquiries and submissions can be sent to: speculationsjournal@gmail.com

For further information contact:
Paul John Ennis (Editor): paul.ennis@ucdconnect.ie

CFP: MLA 2011 -- "Emotion at the Renaissance Court"

The following CFP information has been making its way around the blogosphere and has already been posted on the UPenn site, but I wanted to do my part to support a colleague's work. The session organizer, Brad Irish, is a UT Austin doctoral student specializing in Tudor literature and history. He also just successfully delivered a paper at the 2009 MLA conference. The title of this proposed session keys directly into his own dissertation research on "powerful feelings" at the Tudor Court.

Emotion at the Renaissance Court, MLA 2011
(January 6-9, 2011; Los Angeles)

Proposed special session seeks papers considering emotion and affect in the early modern courtly sphere. The emotional life of a courtier, emotional displays at court, emotion in courtly literature, etc. Abstracts by Mar. 2 to Bradley J. Irish (birish@mail.utexas.edu).

CFP: Boston College Philosophy Grad Conference on "Power"

Take note that the deadline (January 19th) for Boston College's 11th Annual Graduate Student Conference is fast approaching. The conference dates will be March 19-20, 2010. Please recognize that the January 19th deadline is for the submission of completed papers (4000 words maximum). For those not accustomed to this procedure, it's a pretty standard activity for academic philosophy conferences (e.g., it's the only way to get on the annual program at SPEP). It is, quite literally, a call for papers. The theme for this year's conference is "Power." Here's the description the organizers offer:

The formation of states, violent revolutions, and peaceful elections all show power's influence on human events. Philosophers traditionally have examined the dynamics of power as part of understanding social and political affairs. Other thinkers have called our attention to power as a hidden force in human life. Beyond government and politics, they argue, power quietly determines social institutions and culture -- even knowledge itself.

What is the fundamental meaning of power? How is it structured and what is its mode of operation? What moral responsibility do we have with respect to the powerful and the powerless?

We invite papers that consider how these and other questions concerning power have been address in the history of philosophy as well as what contemporary philosophy can contribute to the discussion.

Among the conference's three keynote addresses will be BC's own James Bernauer (a long-time scholar of Foucault and Arendt), Francisco de Roux, a Columbian Jesuit economist, social activist, and human rights advocate.

Palinochio Take the Prize

(updated: 12/27/09)

As reported yesterday by Countdown's regular fill-in host Lawrence O'Donnell, Sarah Palin has garnered the "Best Life of the Year Award" from Politifact for her outrageous and morally repulsive Facebook falsity about "death panels." In the segment below, O'Donnell discusses the runners-up (including the nonsensical "birther queen" Orly Taitz and the conspiracy-finding idiocy of Glenn Beck) with Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News. Carlson puts it appropriately, saying: "We live in a time when...politicians are not just entitled to their own opinions. They're entitled to their own facts."

So, because the embedded video from MSNBC won't stay up,
here's the link to the segment. Let me know if it stops working, and I'll correct it.

CFPs: Politics and Waiting, Deleuze and Ethics, Foucault and Animals

Check out these really interesting CFPs. The first two are for conferences; the second is for a book project.

• Waiting for the Political Moment: June 17-19, 2010 in Rotterdam and Utrecht (deadline: January 4, 2010)
• Deleuze: Ethics and Politics - April 9-10, 2010 at Purdue University (deadline: January 15, 2010)
  
• Foucault and Animals - This is a call for abstracts for collection of essays to be edited by Matthew Chrulew and Dinesh Wadiwel. Deadline: February 28, 2010 (500-word abstract); the accepted essay, sometime in late 2010.
  

From Dickens to Obermann: "With Growing Amazement and Multiplying Anger the True State of Our Healthcare"

For several months now, MSNBC's Keith Obermann has focused his journalistic eye with laser-like precision on the debates -- and more often, nonsense -- surrounding health care reform efforts, including and up to this week's ongoing debacle of a Senate bill. I have previously lifted up as essential to any thoughtful member of "The Left" (however self-designated membership within its roster may be) Obermann's commentatorial work. Some of my friends like to chide me by saying that Obermann is very often is too seduced by his own rhetoric and presumptive critical voice, citing as the most egregious example of such self-seduction his ongoing usage of Edward R. Murrow's (in)famous tag, "good night, and good luck." I make no recoil when hearing such an attempted rebuke; instead, I embrace it. We need more commentators with the journalistic integrity and social conscience of an Edward Murrow -- a list on which I would happily and proudly append the names of both Keith Obermann and Rachel Maddow.

What I find most powerful in Obermann's commentary on the (failed and failing) attempts at health care reform is the passion of his rhetoric: he speaks not only from the heart of an American social conscience, but most poingantly from the heart of one who has experienced and seen the worry and hurt and sorrow and pain of this country's health care system. It is for this reason that I wish to encourage everyone to listen to the hour-long "special comment" he offered back in October. His words are as vital to hear now as they were more than two months ago. There is so much I could say about his remarks: about how they left me nearly tearing up as they compelled me to recall what it was like four years ago dealing with the doctors at the bedside of my own dying brother. But such reflections must still wait, their rawness still too new even after so much time as passed and the extraordinary comfort of so many has been offered.

I think it's also appropriate for us to recall this comment now for two additional reasons: medievalists will not fail to hear Obermann putting to productive use an analogy with the English Courts of Chancery, and literary critics will not fail to attend to Obermann's powerful evocation of the Victorian era's social conscience, Charles Dickens, and his beloved (and today overly sentimentalized) novella A Christmas Carol, which was published on 19 December 1843.

Embedded below is only the first six minutes of Obermann's commentary. See here to watch the remaining parts, or here to stream the entire episode.

"Do NO Harm": Or, How Health Care Reform Has Been Perverted to Benefit the American Insurance Cartel

updated: 12/18/09 at 6pm CST

This will be my first attempt at imbeding videos, but I wanted to share Keith Obermann's December 16th, 2009, special comment on the perverted efforts at health care reform. I rally behind Obermann, who, along with Rachel Maddow, remain for me the single best, most thoughtful, most journalistically authentic, and rhetorically sensitive of commentators -- along with them being among the most compelling voices we now have on "The Left" (whatever such a construct can mean in an America always and seemingly forever suspicious of such a thing). Yes, I'm a proud Leftie!

Note also the brief posts on the "kill the bill" movement at Critical Animal and An und fur sich