two upcoming talks

I’ll be giving a couple talks this November, both of which will explore aesthetic themes in Levinas and Deleuze. The first talk, ‘Out of Step with Reality: Levinas and his Spectator’, which I’ll give to the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (at SPEP in Rochester), will look at sensation, affect, and spectatorship in Levinas and then draw some comparison with Deleuzian aesthetics. Rancière will appear too.

On November 14 I’ll talk about sensation in Levinas and Deleuze at Northwestern University. I’m honored to have been invited to speak in ‘The After-Life of Phenomenology’ workshop series, which is co-sponsored by the department of philosophy and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. I think my talk will be called ‘What Sensation Does for Levinas and Deleuze’.

I should really write a book about Levinasian aesthetics.

embodied values conferene – edinburgh

Well, if this isn’t a conference I’d love to participate in, I don’t know what is:

Sensory Worlds: Environment, Value and the Multi-Sensory, 7-9 December 2011

It is through our senses that we investigate, navigate and know the world around us and the other beings, forces and phenomena that constitute it in its rich and lively variety. To consider the nature of sensory being is to be confronted by questions that examine the ways in which we engage with our environments and those that interrogate the very nature of embodiment. Constantly at work and yet often undervalued, the sensorium is broader and more complex than the traditional Western classifications of the five senses allow. Intermingling and constantly shifting with our attention and experiences, our senses orient us in the world (though sometimes they also disorient us). We sense the world and are at once both part of it and other from it. Moving through a terrain, feeling the resistance of the ground beneath our feet or the push of the crowd, or smelling the fumes of diesel and the throbbing heat of a machine engine, or quietly tracing the intricate lines of wood carvings made by another hand in another time, or tasting the sharp or bitter flavours of foods unfamiliar to the palate, or re-imagining the suffered pain of an ugly injury; all such episodes and more raise the question of how our senses play a role in human flourishing and well-being. Furthermore, they illuminate the ways in which our actions, values and ways of understanding the world are rooted in our sentience – which is ever becoming and allowing of us to exceed ourselves.

Sensory Worlds engages with these and other issues; considering ‘worlds’ in a particularly ecological light in order to ask: what contribution can a sensorially-engaged Humanities make to environmental thinking and action? The conference will examine the multi-sensory and will reflect upon the historical, contemporary and possible future relations between the senses (from balance to taste to the haptic and beyond). It will be an interdisciplinary, interrogative and exploratory meeting that will make space for sensorially-engaged scholarship and practice, and will facilitate discursive and constructive meetings between a variety of scholars working on themes related to embodiment, ecology and value. Contributions are invited from those working within the humanities, arts and social sciences. We are interested in contributions that will themselves embody alternatives to the presuppositions common to Western twentieth century engagement with the world such as anthropocentrism, mind-body dualism, and isolated subjectivity.

levi’s response to my plasticity

Levi’s got a great response up to some concepts I’m using in my own work. He draws some parallels to his own branch of OOO, and shows me a thing or two about how to expand my own thinking. Check his post out here.

what is an object?

This is a question I’ve begun to answer here and here. It’s certainly a metaphysical question, but one that I am inclined to think about in aesthetic terms. The short answer is this: an object is a conspiracy of sensations (or, if you prefer, qualities). For me, a quality is a sensation. It’s a mistake to see sensations as mental events. Sensations do not reside in the mind; they are external to it. An object, then, is what an empiricist might call a bundle of sensations, so long as we are clear that these sensations inhere in the extramental world.

From the phenomenological perspective, there is no need to posit a substance below the sensations. Objects appear to us and seem to enjoy a kind of independence from one another. This independence seems only phenomenal, however, because as soon as we begin to consider the relations in which the object is caught at any moment (physical laws, semiotic systems, affective attachments, etc.) we are led to what Tim Morton calls “the ecological thought.” Does that mean that objects reduce to ecological relations? Not at all. It just means that at the material level they never act alone; they always conspire with other objects. Whatever power they possess is an assembled, a ‘confederation’ in Jane Bennett‘s words. Consider how the object differentiates itself, or finds itself differentiated, from other objects at the aesthetic level. Levi’s blue mug would stand out from the red wall of my study not because from my perspective the wall forms a horizon upon which the blue mug is projected, but because blue and red (not to mention the wall’s texture and the mugs contours) contrast with one another and mark their differences, yielding a scene in which my sensorium is forced to acknowledge the existence of a mug, a wall, a scene, a room… It is not that the room and the mug are internally related, but that their manifestation is contingent upon a relation, some relation. This is not to say that their existence is relational, for the mug is never fully absorbed by any one of its relations–it withdraws from any particular relation, as Graham puts it.

But red and blue are the result of how light affect my eyes, right? Yes and no. The physical explanation of color calls for another account, one which considers the material conditions that ensure that our visual world is multicolored. This is neither a physical nor a phenomenological question, but a metaphysical one. When someone points out that the Indigo Bunting is not really blue, they are making a physical point (I take this example from Sartwell’s Six Names of Beauty). But it is also more than that. It indicates that there is a dark side of the visual realm, one which effects what we see without resembling what we see.  It would be wrong, I think, to say that this dark side is devoid of aesthetic aspects. Indeed, it is the reality of the aesthetic. [Levi calls color an 'exo-quality', and I think I'm in agreement on this point.]

An object’s independence is asserted when it escapes absorption into any single relation, but it is also asserted when it effects some other object. An object’s identity/independence is determined by its effects. This is a point I borrow from Spinoza. A brick passing through a window enters into a relation with that window, causing that window to shatter. The brick may remain intact, the window not so much. The solidity of the brick and the fragility of the window, which are both aesthetic features–sensations–conspire at the moment of impact to create a singular event, even if not a singular thing. The window suffers more of a transformation than the brick, but neither’s reality is reduced by the event. Aesthetically speaking, the window is radically altered, but arguably not materially.

What is meant here by ‘materially’? Matter is perhaps nothing more than a conspiracy of qualities, or a set of sensations that unite for some time into a disposition. Fragility, then, is explicable at the molecular level, but also at the aesthetic level. Tap two crystal wine glasses together: you can hear their fragility. The difference between steel and wood can be described in aesthetic terms, how they feel, look, smell, etc., when a person encounters them with her senses. But we must also keep in mind that steel and wood interact with each other and manifest themselves relationally in ways that we cannot fathom, just as we do not know what it is like to be a brick at the moment that it impacts a window. Our ignorance does not entail that there is nothing to be said about the aesthetics of this event. Fragility is not in the eye of the beholder.

Working from the premise that objects interact not only physically, but aesthetically (consider the reflection at the top of this blog), along with the premise that sensations affect us and induce us to do things (see, for example, Saito’s Everyday Aesthetics or Johnson’s The Meaning of the Body), I would like to open speculation about the world of sensations untamed by the human sensorium. What would an object-oriented aesthetics look like? It would have to entail an account of the ecology of qualities, as well as an account of how humans find themselves animated by those qualities. A review of the history of sensation, impression, qualia, and so forth would have to be undertaken. Harman includes a chapter in Guerrilla Metaphysics on Levinas’s idea of ‘qualities without substance’. Levinas is a great resource thinking the independence of qualities, as is Deleuze’s book on Bacon.

for those dropping in for the first time

Whenever Graham links to my blog, I get tons more traffic than usual. Tonight Levi–in the midst of a post that included a small commentary on Andy Clark’s Being There–made some flattering comments about my current attempt to rework the concept of sensation into a new branch of Object-Oriented Ontology. Let me first thank Levi for his kindness and encouragement. Let me also welcome anyone who’s navigated their way to my blog for the first time.

You will find some bits of information about my project here, but, despite my intentions when starting this blog, most of my work is still being done the old fashion way: in print, articles, hard texts. Perhaps I will now find the time and desire to work out more of my position here, but it is also likely that interested parties will have to wait a bit for well-defined statements and arguments regarding my, if you will, ‘speculative aesthetics’.

In any event, thanks for checking me out. If I don’t post as prolifically as some of the others associated with OOO, perhaps dropping me a message will provoke me into doing so. You can reach me here: tomsparrow@gmail.com

fossil dinosaur color established

The National Geographic article relates evidence for the reality of of dinocolor.

what, then, is a quality?

The question is Peirce’s, from his “The Principles of Phenomenology.” His answer is one I endorse, but I would quibble with him about it is one born out of phenomenology. Against those who would have qualities depend upon the mind of their observer, Peirce thinks of qualities as dispositions inherent in objects. He does not use the language of disposition, but rather the language of potentiality. But he is clear that by ‘potentiality’ he does not mean potentiality as lack of actuality, but potentiality as a real capacity, and not merely some dormant can-be-actualized-but-that-depends-on-actualization. His whole discussion hooks up with Shaviro’s recent commentary on Molnar’s Powers, and works in support of my account of sensations. Here’s Peirce:

[A quality] is not anything which is dependent, in its being, upon mind, whether in the form of sense or in that of thought. Nor is it dependent, in its being, upon the fact that some material thing possesses it. That quality is dependent upon sense is the great error of the conceptualists. That it is dependent upon the subject in which it is realized is the great error of all the nominalistic schools. A quality is a mere abstract potentiality; and the error of those schools lies in holding that the potential, or possible, is nothing but what the actual makes it to be. (‘The Principles of Phenomenology’, in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. Justus Buchler, Dover, 1955, pp. 84-85)

Peirce argues in the following way: an object that is red in the light is, by common sense, believed to be red when the lights go out. Now, if you believe that they are no longer red in the dark, then you must hold that they assume some other color in the dark, or that they become indeterminate with respect to their properties. Or you may believe that the object is no longer red, but that it has taken on some other determine color in the dark. In the latter case, there is no reason to suppose a specific quality that is not red; under the former, you still maintain the the object has some qualities, in which case you believe that the object possesses qualities that are not dependent on the perceiver.

As to the question of the indeterminacy of unperceived qualities, he reasons thus:

If, however, you hold that the bodies become indeterminate in regard to the qualities they are not actually perceived to possess, then, since this is the case at any moment in regard to the vast majority of the qualities of all bodies, you must hold that generals exist. In other words, it is concrete thins you do not believe in; qualities, that is, generals–which is another words for the same thing–you not only believe in but believe that they alone compose the universe. Consistency, therefore, obliges you to say that the red body is red (or has some colour) in the dark, and that the bard body has some degree of hardness when nothing is pressing upon it. (p. 85)

I’m in agreement with this ideas that red and hardness persist as real qualities even when no one is around to perceive them. It coheres with my idea of what sensation is, as I began to outline in brief here. What I’m keen to defend is the view that sensations really reside in things; that things emanate to radiate sensations, and that an object is in one respect a conspiracy of qualities whose autonomy is embodied in its singular capacity/disposition/power to effect other objects. In the end–and this will constitute my attempt to think objects in their own right–I’m working toward a speculative aesthetics that will try to imagine a world where qualities conspire into objects and exchange sensations without the facilitation of humans or other sentient creatures. Peirce, I think, is an ally in this project, although his phenomenology is not really an object-oriented ontology.

speculative aesthetics

As readers of this blog know, I’ve been working on the concept of sensation in phenomenology, particularly the texts of Levinas and Merleau-Ponty. In fact, I’ve got a manuscript complete. At this moment it’s called ‘Plastic Bodies: Rebuilding Sensation After Phenomenology’. Now, it’s part commentary and part original line of argumentation. It’s got affinities with the SR/OOO/OOP folks, although it is far from the kind of treatise we see appearing from the rest of the crew. That’s work I’m reserving for a later date.

However, if I had to give a name to what I’m up to, I’d be tempted to call its speculative aesthetics. I’m a fan of the reality of aesthetics properties, the autonomous and democratic life of sensations, the sensuous as the basic building block of experience, and the aesthetic write large as constitutive of identity (human, nonhuman, animate, inanimate bodies). What I’ve done in the manuscript is sketch the beginning of a metaphysics of sensation. Once there’s time and security, I’ll try to make good on that promise.

michael’s full response

To my recent posts. Is here. I missed this, so I’ll try to get around to it soon and answer Michael’s extensive reply to my remarks on sensation.

objects and sensations

Michael at Archive Fire has a couple generous responses to my recent posts on sensation. You can find his remarks here and here. First, I want to say what I like about his own contribution to the discussion. Second, I’ll clarify a few things about my own position.

Michael writes: “What you want to call a thing’s “qualities” I call its immanent properties. I prefer to use the term ‘properties’ because the word ‘quality’ carries with it the connotation of ‘being perceived’ by the subject. In fact, I argue that entities are temporal assemblages of immanent properties – and thus vulnerable to a myriad of affects (assailing and being assailed) on multiple scales, and from various angles, depending on the circumstances obtaining within the wider ecology of forces, flows and things.”

I’m perfectly fine with the term ‘property’ instead of ‘quality’, and in fact I’ve used property and quality alike. Sometimes interchangeably, but now I’ll be sure to make a distinction or avoid quality altogether. As I said, I take an objects disposition to be constituted by its singular gathering of properties, or what Michael calls a ‘temporal assemblage of immanent properties’. For his part, I’d like to hear a little more about what temporality entails here, as well as why ‘immanent’ is used as a qualifier here. Are there transcendent properties of objects?

Michael also wants to know what I think objects are. Provisionally, I’ll say that objects are singular composites of properties with the power to effect sensations.  Indeed, they are assemblages without a substantial core. No core is needed, properties simply hang together for some time until they can no longer do so. The identity of an object is determined by its capacity to affect other bodies. In this sense, I like Michael’s suggestion that my understanding of objects has a resonance with the Latourian notion of actant. Likewise, my understanding of objects derives from Spinoza’s conception of bodies given in Part II of the Ethics, the so-called ‘brief preface concerning the nature of bodies’ (at P13). Bodies are identified by the effects they can produce, or what they can cause. This capacity derives from their disposition, which I see as dictated by a given state of their plasticity (their capacity to give and receive form [James], or affect and be affected [Spinoza]). For me, I’d like to talk about what sensations a body can produce; the language of cause may be too strong for me. Sensations are caused, it seems, but they are more than mere effects. Their conditions of actualization require more than the presence of some sentient creature. (The language of ‘disposition’ I borrow from Stephen Mumford’s book Dispositions.)

As to the point that we need to be able to distinguish between sentient and nonsentient bodies. I agree, there must be a distinction. I think its a difference of degree, not of kind. So, on my broad definition of sensation all bodies or objects are sentient, but humans have a more complex sentience than, say, a stone. However, the sentience of humans is not more complex than a community or an ecosystem–far from it. The confederation of bodies in an ecosystem renders that system’s sentience drastically more complex and multidimensional. This is my attempt to avoid anthropocentrism about sentience, despite admitting that humans have a greater degree of sentience than stones. In addition, I’d say that humans have perception, which perhaps only some other animals have, and cognition. It is at these levels that I would distinguish them from other entities.

If you read this, Michael, I’d like to hear more of your reasons for disavowing the ‘inter-mediate gap between entities’ where qualities would appear to one or the other of these entities.