Best OOO Papers and Books?

Posted on April 1, 2010
Filed Under Heidegger, Peirce, Philosophy | 14 Comments

So after I finish my Hegel and Badiou I wanted to get deeper into Object Oriented Ontology. Now I read quite a few blogs that engage with OOO such as Object Oriented Philosophy , Hyper tiling, Deontologistics, Larval Subjects and so forth. (Sorry, too lazy too look them all up) What I really want is a good set of papers or books to engage with a little more carefully. There are a bunch of podcasts of Graham Harman available. And of course there are his books Prince of Networks and Tool-Being.

What I wonder is what readers think would be the best place to dive in?

I’m honestly quite curious to how the movement compares to figures like C. S. Peirce who I think avoids the overly consciousness focused aspect of a lot of Continental thought. (I think Peirce anticipates a lot in Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida and company and what he doesn’t anticipate can easily be reconciled with his thought to provide a slightly clearly presentation) Of course Peirce was a physicist which perhaps explains some of the differences between his pragmatism and the pragmatism of William James. As a physicist though he was quite aware of objects and their interrelations. I think his general semiotics allows both the Heideggerian insights and then an approach to objects more common in physics to be addressed.

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Comments

14 Responses to “Best OOO Papers and Books?”

Could Marion’s “Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness” be considered a work that discusses some of the concepts that OOO sees as important? I’ve only read slices of it, but Marion essentially argues, I think, that where Husserl reduced phenomena to consciousness, and Heidegger reduced phenomena to Da-sein, Marion argues for a reduction to givenness, where phenomena appear unconditionally and show themselves from themselves, as opposed to being shown only through Da-sein or in relation to Da-sein. This sounds like the OOO creed that all phenomena or objects are not merely tools for Da-sein, nor do they exist merely hermeneutically. Of course, I could be misremembering/misinterpreting Marion here. Thoughts?

I’ll be interested in what you find. I’m giving a talk at the M4 Philosophy of Science meetings next month on object oriented representations of ecological processes. Object oriented simulations are thought to capture complexity in ways mathematical models cannot and in some sense assume that object and object interaction are the way reality operates. I’m not sure if OOO is covering the same territory as the philosophy of science interests and concerns but I’d be interested to hear what they’re up to.

My understanding of the saturated phenomena of Marion is that it is related to phenomenology but is about how more is given than can be appropriated into a phenomenal experience. The way I read Marion may not be correct. But it’s what I arrived at especially after reading his debate with Derrida. To me it is akin to the difference between firstness and thirdness in Peirce’s phenomenology. Thirdness is the experience in terms of signs and firstness the experience as it is purely in itself. There will always be an overflowing of the firstness that isn’t captured in thirdness.

This is different from what I understand of OOO which is very much ignoring phenomenology altogether in preference to a discussion of object relations in general. Of course I don’t quite understand OOO so I might be getting that all wrong. My understanding is that its more akin to Whitehead in its broader nature. Of course I suspect some OOO folks might say it’s broader than phenomenology but includes phenomenology. I think that comment applies to Marion and to Derrida and even to Heidegger. (With the later that is why Richardson titled his famous tome as From Phenomenology to Thought) But with all three its still oriented around a kind of phenomenology, just broader. With OOO (and I’d argue Peirce) it is even broader than that going beyond any Dasein kind of relationship into say the relationship of two rocks to each other.

Of course it is my interest in Peirce and the early pragmatists that makes me so intrigued with OOO. The parallels between Peirce and Whitehead are quite apparent and I suspect there will be parallels between OOO and Peirce’s semiotic realism. (Although Peirce also liked Schelling’s term objective idealism)

Thanks for the clarification Clark. So, do you see OOO as standing over against phenomenology, i.e., it is strictly opposed to the tasks and methods of phenomenology, or that OOO is inclusive of phenomenological epistomologies but that phenomenology simply does not go far enough?

I don’t know enough about it to say. I know what I’d say as a Peircean, but then Peirce sees all existence as quasi-mind like which is why he takes that label up from Schelling.

I think that Levi and Graham’s forthcoming mammoth collection of essays The Speculative Turn will be a must read.

By the time you get around to it, Levi’s Democracy of Objects may well be out :)

Also, Meillasoux’s After Finitude is an important book. Latour’s Irreductions (in The Pasteurization of France) is probably essential. And Roy Bhaskar’s A Realist Theory of Science is very important for Levi.

You might also consider Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound.

And, as you point out, Harman’s The Prince of Networks is probably the place to begin.

I’d be more than a little tempted, though, to also include Jacob’s suggestion of Being Given as belonging to this oeuvre. But this suggestion is probably tainted with more than a bit of personal bias.

Adam, you do see Marion as related? I’m curious as to how you read him in this regard.

I would start with Graham’s Guerrilla Metaphysics before moving on to Prince of Networks. There are also a number of great essays that used to be available on Speculative Heresy that I can only assume will be a part of his Towards Speculative Realism collection, so that is definitely worth checking out once released from Zero.

As for Marion, I don’t see Being Given as really having much to do with object-oriented philosophy. His reduction to givenness is still entirely within correlationism as givenness implies a being-for structure which necessitates being-given-for-us.

There’s a bit of a debate going on this on LDS-Herm now. I’m just not versed enough on OOO to have much of a valuable opinion. To me Marion is primarily focused with the experiencer – object relationship whereas what I find most interesting about OOO are object – object relationships. I think that’s a problem that has been in Continental philosophy for a while. There have been moves, and I think Badiou is one example.

I do find some of Marion’s approaches interesting, although I think Derrida did a lot of it before (in terms of focusing more on the object rather than the experiencer).

Michael, yes, that’s one issue with Marion I had as well. I think his basic stance could be expanded somewhat to get beyond the “for the sake of which” issue. Personally I think Derrida provides some of the tools for that already (to the degree he also moves beyond phenomenology).

Clark, The Speculative Realism Pathfinder includes a list of websites, books, articles, etc on OOO:

http://courseweb.lis.illinois.edu/~phettep1/SRPathfinder.html

I’ll look those up. Thanks Jacob. I have a few books ready for order too. Although I’ll finish Badiou first. I just decided to start from the beginning again and reread the first four chapters. My sense is that there is something wrong with how he treats being. But that may just be the Heideggarian in me coming out.

13 Frank Lundt on April 16th, 2010 1:54 pm

Good luck with your search, but I have to say you will be disappointed. OOO/OOP is an internet phenomena by far. Yes, Graham Harman mentions “object-oriented philosophy” but does not really have a definitive work (Guerilla Metaphysics is disappointing, it’s a collection of random observations about philosophers, there’s no real theory of “object-oriented philosophy” and Latour book is a long presentation of Latour’s ideas with some stuff in the back that still is only hinted at).

As far as I can tell, all of the OOO/OOP is on the blogs, mostly Larval Subjects.

Well, I just picked up Harman’s Latour book. I’ve read the intro but haven’t done much else. I’m waiting to finish my reading on Hegel first.

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