Jussi Parikka on OOO

He’s finally weighed in, HERE.

For the past couple of years, whenever passing through the UK, I’d hear anecdotes that Jussi Parikka was saying critical things about OOO, but no one could ever tell me clearly just what his criticisms were (except that he was saying that Simondon is better than we are).

Now he’s posted some of those criticisms, prefaced with this statement: “I can’t claim that I know too much about object oriented philosophy. It’s often more about my friends or colleagues talking about it, enthusiastically for or against. Indeed, I have been one of those who has at best followed some of the arguments but not really dipped too deeply into the debates…”

His blog comments don’t cite any OOO writings at all, though the questions he raises are already openly addressed in most of them. A more productive means of engagement, I think, would be actually to read the OOO arguments in favor of an object-oriented approach and then say why one finds them lacking. Here are a couple of places for readers to start…

My own book The Quadruple Object is quite short and a pretty easy read. Even the first 20-30 pages would provide Parikka with a good foothold for debate with us, and then he would not have to rely on things he’s heard from others (and I would hope those others are not the same people found in his comments thread).

Levi Bryant’s The Democracy of Objects is recently in print, and is as clear as can be, though it’s a bit longer.

I look forward to having a productive debate with Parikka at some point.