In a shocking change of pace, I actually finished a nonfiction book. And the review turned out to be pretty substantial in itself (disproportionately so, given the book's main content is only 140 pages), I thought I'd just post that. Review of Graham Harman's The Quadruple Object, after the break.
Graham Harman goes into depth on his version of object-oriented
ontology, including the philosophical movements it's responding to, what
it is, and what it does. I have to say, I've been reading my Graham
Harman books all out of order--I read Circus Philosophicus and Weird
Realism: Lovecraft and Philsophy before I was able to track down a copy
of 4X Object. The book consists of ten chapters. The first explains the
basic problem, that theories of philosophy tend to dismiss objects,
either by undermining them and saying that they're composed of some
smaller universal unit or overmining, treating objects as only relevant
in so far as they manifest in the mind, or are part of some event that
affects other objects. The second chapter goes deep into Husserl's
version of the object, where its real features lie in tension with its
shifting sensual features. The third is the object via Heidegger, where
the tension becomes the difference between the sensual features of the
object and the real object, which always withdraws from being entirely
known. There's a lot of Heidegger's Tool-Being, for those familiar with
that discussion. In fact, those who come into this book with a lot of
Heidegger and Husserl under their belt will have a distinct advantage;
you don't need either to fully get Harman, but they don't hurt. Chapter 5
expands on the polarities that have been established thus far, creating
four categories--real objects, sensual objects, real qualities, and
sensual qualities, noting that, given these configurations, there are
ten basic ways objects can interact.
Half way through! In chapter
six, Harman returns to Heidegger, tackling his four-fold concept. The
trick, he argues, is that the four shouldn't be taken literally, but as
ways of thinking about the difference between being and beings, or
absence and presence. Ultimately, though, this fourfold is insufficient,
and so Harman creates his own. Having established the four terms
previously, this chapter looks at the tensions between each of them.
Sensual objects, for example, have sensual qualities, but these change
over time, the first tensions. And the real object is different from its
real qualities, which is a tension of essence. And then he tosses in
ANOTHER four terms, for when those tensions are ruptured, or objects
merge. A rupture in time is a confrontation. Ruptures involving essence
is an issue of multitude. Chapter 8 clarifies some points, that the
sensual is not just human and animal experience, and that real and
sensual aren't fixed sites; every real object is composed of relations
between component objects, and the hammer is a sensual object in
relation to them, and vice versa. Chapter 9 solidifies the sets created
in chapter 7 into further systems. And Chapter 10 clarifies Harman's
position with regards to the larger Speculative Realism movement.
Having
read those previous Harman works, I'm already familiar not just with
some of the terminology Harman's using, but how it actually plays out
when he applies it--something that's missing a bit from the book at
hand. But it was still extremely useful to see the ideas worked out in a
more expanded manner. I'll admit, the book loses me toward the end. The
explication of previous object approaches is great (if a bit fast if
you're not familiar with continental German philosophy) as is the
original explanations of the fourfold. But somewhere around the tension
ruptures, the terms start proliferating a little too quickly for my
tastes. I will say that my favorite part is chapter 4, where Harman
directly addresses one of my favorite philosophical questions, how can
we think about the world outside of human thought? Harman's answer:
there's a difference between saying there's no world without thought and
saying there's no thinking about a world without thought. And that, in a
nutshell, without bringing all the definitions into it, is the real
value of OOO to me--taking philosophical and real-life questions that
are inherently, often unconsciously, human-centered, and offering a
different perspective.
And there you go. I have to say, even though I've read a few heavy philosophy books at this point--between Harman and Stiegler, they don't come much heavier--I don't think I'll ever be comfortable arguing the pros and cons of theory by itself. For me, it's always something that comes up in a given object. That is, I find some game or book that seems to speak to a given philosophy, and then I can critique both the object and the philosophy. From Harman, the negative way of viewing that is that I'm perpetuating the real/sensual split, or the mind-body problem--I can't talk about something as "insubstantial" as theory without an object to ground it. Personally, I prefer to think of it in terms of tension--I'm most interested in things when there's a rupture going on.
Later Days.
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