an Agamben follow-up

The Lingis anecdote inspired someone to send this very nice passage from Agamben’s latest work:

“In the firmament that we observe at night, the stars shine brightly, surrounded by a thick darkness. Since the number of galaxies and luminous bodies in the universe is almost infinite, the darkness that we see in the sky is something that, according to scientists, demands an explanation. It is precisely the explanation that contemporary astrophysics gives for this darkness that I would now like to discuss. In an expanding universe, the most remote galaxies move away from us at a speed so great that their light is never able to reach us. What we perceive as the darkness of the heavens is this light that, though traveling towards us, cannot reach us, since the galaxies from which the light originates move away from us at a velocity greater than the speed of light. To perceive, in the darkness of the present, this light that strives to reach us but cannot – that is what it means to be contemporary. As such, contemporaries are rare. And for this reason, to be contemporary is, first and foremost, a question of courage, because it means being able not only to firmly fix your gaze on the darkness of the epoch, but also to perceive in this darkness a light that, while directed toward us, infinitely distances itself from us. In other words, it is like being on time for an appointment that one cannot but miss.”

-Giorgio Agamben, What is an Apparatus? (2009: 46)

reposting a Lingis anecdote

Today I’ve been in touch with another reader of this blog who is an Alphonso Lingis fan. Ironically, my favorite Lingis story is one that I did not witness myself, but is so obviously Lingisian that I take it at face value. I posted this during the first incarnation of the blog, but it’s sufficiently inspiring to be worth a reposting now and then.

The story is that Lingis told one of his classes at Penn State this:

Go outside on a starry night, and try to get a sense for the vastness of the universe. Then look at your fingerprint, and consider that it’s enough to make you unique out of all of that. And then consider how much more complicated your brain is than your fingerprint. Your brain is wired to do something that nothing else in this universe can do. And if you don’t do it, it’s not going to get done.

“how to blurb Hegel”

SEE FOR YOURSELF.

Comp. of Phil. postscript

I’ll probably just do one more section of Chapter 3 tonight, and then call it a day. The reason is that the remaining three sections of Chapter 3 are all too short, which means I want to put a bit of early-morning fresh thought into what is missing from them right now.

That means that, by day’s end today, I’ll have around 35 pages of the book more or less ready for press. That’s about a week behind where I wanted to be, but things are still moving fairly quickly, and there is now nearly zero risk that the book won’t be finished on schedule. And that’s important for a number of reasons. As late as July 15, not a single word of this book had been written. Ten days later, it’s well on course for completion.

There’s a certain stylistic spice missing from the completed pages so far, but the spice is the easiest thing to add.

It occurs to me that writing with all the constraints that exist on this project is almost like writing with a co-author. That’s not a bad principle, in fact… Every book should have a co-author, even if not a human one. Why? Because left to our own devices, we all tend to repeat ourselves too much. We all know only a certain number of jokes, hang out in a certain number of restaurants, and have read only a certain number of books. It’s from translating our own concerns into those of others, or vice versa, that we jump out of the ruts that fate always prepares for us if we aren’t careful.

the size of the thing

To get some taste of just how large Suárez’s project was, THE WHOLE OF THE LATIN IS ONLINE HERE.

Those of us who aren’t in Leibniz’s fortunate position of being able to read Suárez’s Latin as if it were a novel have to content ourselves with smatterings of existing English, French, and German translations.

Normally I don’t read philosophy at the same time as writing it. It is too easy to become contaminated by the concerns of others and imagine that they are intimately one’s own. And though a large part of development in philosophy is about reading the concerns of others and growing into them so that they become our own concerns, the midst of writing one’s own work is not the best time to do that. (This is why I’m studiously avoiding digging into Meillassoux’s L’inexistence divine just yet, even though I have it set up in a special place on the dining room table.)

I make an exception in Suárez’s case, partly because he’s such a far-off figure that there’s little risk of starting to write or think exactly like him at the wrong moment, and partly because he’s a great motivator– I can’t think of anyone who took systematic metaphysics more seriously than he did.

Suárez was born in 1548, the same year as Giordano Bruno. Has there ever been a case of two philosophers born in the same year who were so utterly different in all intellectual and personal respects? 1859 was the birth year of Bergson, Dewey, and Husserl, a very good year for philosophers, but whatever their differences you can find some pretty obvious points of similarity between them. But Suárez and Bruno belong on two different planets.

is this a good idea?

I don’t think so. (Hat-tip, Levi.)

Robot ‘not a corpse eater’

Inventors of a US military robot that powers itself by devouring everything in its path are trying to quash publicity that it will feed on human or animal flesh.

The Guardian says that the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot ploughs through trees, grass and even, according to reports, dead bodies.

Headlines have labelled the machine a “corpse eater” and “creepy”. The machine’s inventors say that it does power its engine by digesting organic material.

“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” said Harry Schoell, the chief executive of Cyclone Power Technologies, one of the companies behind the machine. “We are focused on demonstrating that our engines can create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant matter.”

Ennis’ latest interview

Today it’s Adrian Ivakhiv of the University of Vermont.

A quick response to these words from Ivakhiv:

“I haven’t become familiar enough myself with the ‘speculative realists’ to know exactly what the term means, other than its referring to work that’s speculatively ontological (in the sense that Deleuze’s and Whitehead’s work was) and non-anthropocentric (which can also be said of Deleuze and Whitehead). Perhaps we’ll have to see if ‘OOP’ or ‘SR’ becomes more unified and more specific than that, or if it’s more a kind of wave of interest that’s revitalizing philosophers’ ABILITY to deal with the ‘things of the world’ again, and in new ways. Either way, I’m all for it…”

There’s no chance of Speculative Realism becoming more unified and specific. It was always a pretty wide net, and some of the original members are traveling in almost opposite directions now. I would agree that both Deleuze and Whitehead were speculatively ontological. Whitehead was certainly non-anthropocentric. In Deleuze’s case the latter point is more controversial, but I’m willing to go along with it to some extent. I think the important thing about Deleuze and Whitehead, as well as Latour, is that none of them are really “continental” figures. That’s pretty obvious in Whitehead’s case. The reason I wouldn’t put either Deleuze or Latour (or Bergson, for that matter) in the continental basket is that continental philosophy was always largely determined by Kantian presuppositions, which all of these figures somehow aspire to outflank. That is utterly explicit in the cases of Whitehead and Latour, and in my opinion clear enough in the other two cases, or at least arguably so.

Object-oriented philosophy is a slightly different case. Levi and I really do have a lot in common, though we’re more likely to orbit each other for awhile like binary stars than to formulate a common platform. But the shared ancestor here is Latour. There’s never really been a Latour-inspired wing of continental philosophy, but I think it’s coming.

reversing theory & praxis

Olivier at the Sorbonne just sent the following nice passage:

“In speculation, the subject is subordinated to the object, the I lets itself be determined by the non-I in order to represent it, the world is reflected in the spirit; while in action it is the spirit that imprints its mark on the world, the I that bends the world to its needs, the subject that commands the object. Hence there is nothing more valid than to recognize an idealist attitude in the practical attitude, and a realist attitude in the speculative attitude.”

– R. Blanché, Les Attitudes Idéalistes, Presses Universitaires de France, 1949, p.104.

Composition of Philosophy. July 25.

It’s only 5:30 PM, so there’s still plenty to be done today. But here are some statistics. (It can be counterproductive to worry too much about this in your own case, but having never before “timed” myself while writing a book, I was curious to know exactly how many physical hours of writing it takes.)

For those who missed some of the earlier posts, when the French use the term signes they apparently mean the number of characters including blank spaces. And luckily, my old American version of AppleWorks is able to count in that currency.

Introduction
writing time from zero to final draft= 1 hour, 6 minutes
length= 1,982 signes

Chapter 1
writing time from zero to final draft= 6 hours, 31 minutes
length= 24,713 signes

Chapter 2
writing time from zero to final draft= 3 hours, 50 minutes
length= 24,587 signes

If it’s hard to intuit the meaning of a given number of signes, Chapters 1 and 2 are both around 14 pages in double-spaced Times New Roman.

A couple of things worth nothing…

*The Introduction was by far the least efficient in terms of words per minute. That is to be expected. We (meaning most humans) are always cautious and careful with Introductions. We want to set the right starting note, and we haven’t built up momentum yet. Besides, it was only an hour and six minutes out of my life, so even if inefficient the damage isn’t too severe.

*Notice the big difference in time elapsed on Chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 2 will probably be the fastest of the entire book. It’s the Husserl/Heidegger chapter, I know my take on those two exactly, have done it many times, and generally enjoy the topic. So, little surprise that it went so quickly.

By the end of the book, it’s possible that a few of the difficult chapters will take 10 hours or so from zero to finish.

Total elapsed time so far (counting only finalized chapters) would be eleven and a half hours for nearly thirty pages of pretty good writing. Not great yet, but already presentable.

The key point here is that there’s no shame in approaching polished work by stages. Trying to write really good material directly from zero is much more stressful than the method I now use: write correctly arranged slop, then clean up the slop, then polish a few more times. Morale is always higher if you have something done, even if it’s not yet fully cooked.

Think of it this way… By the end of the week I should have right around 70 pages of pretty good “final” material. By “final,” I mean I wouldn’t be embarrassed if others read it. But it could still be even better. And over the next month, whenever I have some free time, I can reread those pages and continually improve them, trying to make them an actual pleasure to read, rather than leaving them as a sufficient fulfillment of dutiful academic rigor.

I also want to emphasize that this method, of approaching excellence by a series of many drafts, is completely counter-temperamental for me. That is to say, at a younger age I frowned on it and was even incapable of it. I used to wait for inspiration, and used to expect perfect wording on the first try.

The problem was, that instinctive method is the one that led me to spend 3 years continually rewriting the first 50 pages of my dissertation. Project that level of productivity over the course of a lifetime, and it wouldn’t have been the sort of life I had in mind.

It should be remembered that “productivity” does not refer primarily to filling lines on a c.v. It refers to forcing yourself into confrontation with surprising and difficult subject matter. If a specific author confuses or bothers me, the first thing I think is: “I need to write an article about this.” Why? Because that’s the best way to force yourself to figure out what’s going on with the material.

Coming up: the Chapter 3 revisions. The last three sections of that Chapter are actually too short right now, which means I’ll be adding new material while going along, and of course that will be a big slowdown. This Chapter may take even longer to finish off than Chapter 1 did.

another AF review

Copies of Pli are hard to come by in Egypt, but I just noticed this entry from Volume 20:

“After the Subject: Meillassoux’s Ontology of ‘What May Be’” PETER GRATTON