(A slightly different version of this post was presented at the 2017 Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference “Out of Time,” on the panel “Collective Manifestations: Thinking Futures beyond the Dark Mountain.”) A preliminary clarification: climate change isn’t the problem. Instead, climate change is a symptom of a much deeper problem called the… Continue Reading Notes on ecopessimism (1): decathexis as a mode of futural projection
La comunidad de los espectros, I: Antropotecnia: Epilogue
My translation of Fabián Ludueña Romandini‘s monograph La comunidad de los espectros, I: Antropotecnia (The Community of Specters: Anthropotechnics) is in progress. I hope to have a completed draft by the end of AY 2019-2020. Here’s another excerpt. Epilogue (pp. 217-225) Zoopolitics: the Sixth Extinction and the spectral analytic “A zoo is a better window… Continue Reading La comunidad de los espectros, I: Antropotecnia: Epilogue
To listen objectively to the howl of a Wolfe (1931-2019)
Dr. Talos leaned toward her as he said this, and it struck me that his face was not only that of a fox (a comparison that was perhaps too easy to make because his bristling reddish eyebrows and sharp nose suggested it at once) but that of a stuffed fox. I have heard those who… Continue Reading To listen objectively to the howl of a Wolfe (1931-2019)
Wickerpunk
Toward an American psychogeography (1): Hawksmoor/Winchester
Like the Hawksmoor churches serve as privileged reference points for a uniquely British psychogeography, so the Winchester House will be the first such reference point for us. It’s the first, not the earliest, because the fundamental structure of American psychogeography consists of displacement. Of course, I mean displacement in every sense the word implies –… Continue Reading Toward an American psychogeography (1): Hawksmoor/Winchester
La comunidad de los espectros, I: Antropotecnia: Table of contents and Introduction
My translation of Fabián Ludueña Romandini‘s monograph La comunidad de los espectros, I: Antropotecnia (The Community of Specters: Anthropotechnics) is in progress. I hope to have a completed draft by the end of AY 2019-2020. Here’s an excerpt. Table of contents Introduction Part I: Ius Exponendi Anthropotechnics Beyond the history of the right over life… Continue Reading La comunidad de los espectros, I: Antropotecnia: Table of contents and Introduction
To be the ocean’s servant: on thalassocratic experience
“The mind evolved in the sea. […] When animals did crawl onto dry land, they took the sea with them.” – Peter Godfrey-Smith
Three types of epistemological hazard
Moral hazard occurs whenever an agent makes a decision to assume more risk and the potential cost of that risk is outsourced to another agent. Moral hazards can vary. For example, consider various arguments about the agency dilemma, or bailouts, or insurance. Moral hazards are a type of epistemological hazard insofar as moral hazards are… Continue Reading Three types of epistemological hazard
Notes on Althusser’s Machiavelli (1)
At the end of the first chapter of Machiavelli and Us (“Theory and Political Practice”), Althusser gives his take on a classic question that structures much Machiavelli scholarship: “whom, then, does this work serve?” (29) Answers to this question are legion, ranging from “the devil” (as the early “anti-Machiavels” were wont to accuse) to the… Continue Reading Notes on Althusser’s Machiavelli (1)
Forensic reason
Ordinarily, we aren’t very clear about what we’re talking about when we talk about reason. Hence, rationality in particular gets invoked in largely economic terms (e.g., to behave rationally is to maximize economic self-interest). Hence, reasonability gets used interchangeably with plausibility, albeit with slightly more normative force than the latter term. Hence, reasonableness gets praised… Continue Reading Forensic reason