an especially good post from Levi

Here he has A RESPONSE TO SHAVIRO that turns out to be a lot more than that. You get some more of Levi’s views on how OOO relates to Deleuze, and also Levi working out where he and I agree and disagree.

I wouldn’t put my views on potentiality in quite the way he describes them at the end, but they’re close enough that I can recognize myself there. And anyway, I want to wait until he publishes The Democracy of Objects before formulating an official response.

One definite difference between us is which has been on the table for awhile is that, for me, contact between objects is an all-or-nothing affair. Since objects are units, you’re either in contact with them or you’re not. You can’t perceive 30% of an apple’s qualities, because an apple is just not built up out of qualities like that.

In my model, real objects never make contact with each other (because they withdraw from such contact) and sensual objects never make contact with each other (because they only exist as figments of the experience of real objects). The only thing capable of making contact is a real object (a “perceiver”, but for me this includes inanimate things) is in unilateral direct contact with sensual objects. There is no hiding at all in this case (it is simply false to say that intentional objects “hide” for Husserl, no more than a boy who was playing in the mud is “hidden” beneath the mud on his body: you can see him perfectly well, he’s just covered up with grime and muck that his parents need to clean off in order to see him clearly).

But again, let’s wait for Levi’s book. Debate is best conducted between statuesque positions, frozen in time in printed works. The debate can then make way for new fixed positions. Trying to argue too much in real time can simply cause confusion (for the debaters and others) if done too often.