By Daniel Reuber HERE.

HERE. My favorite quote from the review:

For Pignarre and Stengers, at its most basic, capitalism is a social system which depoliticises decision-making practices or, as they state eloquently: “a politics that kills politics.” (15) Such depoliticisation, frequently disguised as a set of technocratic processes, tends to proceed through the production of “infernal alternatives,” or, “that set of situations that seem to leave no other choice than resignation or a slightly hollow sounding denunciation.” (24) The alternatives are infernal as they are the product of no centralised apparatus or coordinated logic, but rather of the convergence of the work of “many thousands of minions.” While incapable of and unwilling to question the system of capitalism itself (“being dumbstruck by a prohibition on thinking”), those minions (agents, institutions) are at the same time infernally creative, ever set on expanding the powers of capital.

Another way of saying this is that rather than being the realm of instrumental rationality and bureaucratic Reason, capitalism is in fact a “system of sorcery without sorcerers (thinking of themselves as such), a system operating in a world in which judges that sorcery is only a simple ‘belief’, a superstition that therefore doesn’t necessitate any adequate means of protection.” (40) The argument, which presumably draws on Deleuze and especially Guattari’s work on “machinic enslavement” and “apparatuses of capture,” claims that capitalism does not reproduce itself thanks to the powers of ideology/illusion or alienation. Ideology/illusion separates a theater of appearances from an objective and truthful reality, as if by a screen (43), while alienation implies the existence of non-alienated intellectuals who are going to allow the masses to “become conscious” of the forces oppressing them. (106) By contrast, capitalist sorcery operates by “capture,” through a culture of “spells” that immobilise thinking and paralyse collective action. What anti-capitalist politics needs then is not so much demystification or dis-alienation, but a counter-magic capable of protecting its practitioners and breaking the spell.

Now if we could only get the publisher to drop the sticker price of this otherwise essential looking text…

It’s the title of a fantastic looking new volume edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and is published by Oliphaunt Books (itself an imprint of Punctum Books). I am including the book’s description below, but I encourage readers to visit the official website for a downloadable PDF and more information about the authors (there’s even mention of my nascent object-oriented ecology in Karl Steel’s wonderful essay, which I just finished reading for the first time).

With the move to open-access publishing on the rise I think scholars have a unique opportunity to make science, art, and philosophy part of contemporary culture again, and I think we should do all we can to support the efforts of those involved. Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

Brooklyn, NY: punctum books, 2012. 295 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0615625355.

Animal, Mineral, Vegetable examines what happens when we cease to assume that only humans exert agency. Through a careful examination of medieval, early modern and contemporary lifeworlds, these essays collectively argue against ecological anthropocentricity. Sheep, wolves, camels, flowers, chairs, magnets, landscapes, refuse and gems are more than mere objects. They act; they withdraw; they make demands; they connect within lively networks that might foster a new humanism, or that might proceed with indifference towards human affairs. Through what ethics do we respond to these activities and forces? To what futures do these creatures and objects invite us, especially when they appear within the texts and cultures of the “distant” past?

What does metaphysics have to do with plants? What can this group of heterogeneous beings, as different from one another as a stalk of wheat and an oak tree, tell us about Being ‘‘as such and as a whole,’’ let alone about resisting the core metaphysical values of presence and identity that the totality of Being entails? A pessimistic answer to these questions is that the bewildering diversity of vegetation is reduced, at bottom, to the conceptual unity ‘‘plant’’ in a signature gesture of metaphysical violence seeking to eliminate differences, for instance, between a raspberry bush and moss, a mayflower and a palm tree. The plant cannot offer any resistance to metaphysics because it is one of the impoverished products of the metaphysical obsession with primordial unity, an obsession not derailed but, to the contrary, supported by the scientific systems of classification that, from antiquity onwards, have been complicit in the drive toward identity across hierarchically organized differences of species, genus, family, and so forth. The ontic manifes- tation of this ontological consolidation of the plant is the ‘‘monocrop,’’ such as sugar cane, which increasingly displaces varied horticultures all over the world, but, especially, in the global South. Metaphysics and capitalist economy are in unmistakable collusion, militating, as they do, against the dispersed multiplicities of human and non-human lives; economic rationality, which currently treats plants as sources of bio-energy or biofuel, converts, concretely and on a global scale, the metaphysical principles of sameness and identity into the modes of production and reproduction of material existence in toto. 

That is not to say, however, that there is nothing in vegetation that escapes this double objectifying grasp. In what follows, I will argue that, by denying to vegetal life the core values of autonomy, individualization, self-identity, originality, and essentiality, traditional philosophy not only marginalizes plants but, inadvertently, confers on them a crucial role in the current transvaluation of metaphysical value systems. From the position of absolute exteriority and heteronomy, vegetation accomplishes a living reversal of metaphysical values and points toward the collapse of hierarchical dualisms. 

- Michael Marder, “Vegetal Anti-Metaphysics: Learning from Plants”

Call for Papers: Conference on Ecopoetics
February 22-24, 2013
University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)
Contact and submissions e-mail: ecopoetics.conference@gmail.com
Deadline for panel and individual paper proposals: October 1, 2012

What is ecopoetics? What representational strategies and sociopolitical commitments might characterize this practice? How might we periodize ecopoetics and situate its modes of cultural production? This conference aims to bring scholars, poets, and creative artists into sustained dialogue on the historical and contemporary practices of ecopoetics.

We invite panel proposals or individual paper proposals that examine the various relationships—historical, material, aesthetic, activist—between poetry, poetics, and ecology. Possible topics include: ecological genres: pastoral, georgic, elegy, documentary; formal innovations in ecopoetics: sound- and performance-based practices, concrete and minimalist ecopoetics, intermedia ecopoetics; biopoetics, biopolitics, and posthumanism; pataphysics, biosemiotics, and information theory; discourses of pollution, garbage, toxicity, unsustainability, apocalypse; evolution and extinction; queer ecology; cross-cultural, indigenous, mestizo, subaltern ecopoetics; climate change and geosystems; creaturely life, life forms, nonhumans; life and non-life; site-specific poetics, bioregionalisms, transregionalisms, poetry and “sustainability”; Romantic and post-Romantic ecopoetics; Modernist and postmodern ecopoetics; the affective and ethical turn in ecopoetics; surrealist, digital, and conceptual ecopoetics; ethnopoetics; environmental justice and environmental racism; precarity, the multitude; disaster capitalism, petrocapitalism, “green” capitalism, political ecology; violence and abjection; urban and exurban ecologies; ecopoetics and object-oriented ontology; avant-gardening; poetry, activism, revolution.

Panel proposals should include a title, a rationale (250 words), and a list of presenters. For each presenter, list his/her paper title, institutional affiliation, and a brief academic bio. You may construct a traditional panel with 3-4 presenters reading 20-minute papers, or a seminar with 6-8 presenters, each reading brief position papers of 5-8 minutes.  Panels composed entirely of graduate students or of faculty from a single institution are unlikely to be accepted. You may propose a partially complete panel, and in this case, if accepted, additional presenters would be assigned to your panel.

Individual paper proposals should include a title, a 250-word abstract, 3-5 keywords, institutional affiliation, and a brief academic bio. You may propose a traditional 20-minute paper or a brief position paper (5-8 minutes) for a seminar. If your paper is accepted, you will be assigned to a panel or seminar.

This conference will also feature poetry readings, art/film exhibits, and excursions to Bay Area forests and wilderness areas. Please direct submissions to ecopoetics.conference@gmail.com by October 1, 2012. Questions may also be directed to this e-mail address.

NINTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TECHNOLOGY, KNOWLEDGE, AND SOCIETY CONFERENCE
University of British Columbia – Robson Square
Vancouver, Canada
13-14 January 2013
techandsoc.com/conference-2013/call-for-papers/

The Technology Conference is interdisciplinary in scope, and is unique in its focus on the relationships between technology, knowledge, and society.

Given its role in the recent global events, the special theme for 2013: Organize, Challenge, Re-Imagine: New Media and Social Movements

Other topics are welcome, and should focus on the use of technology in areas such as, but not limited to:
- Access to Information and Proprietary Rights
- New Learning Methods and Knowledge Distribution
- Virtual Communities and Cyber-Identity
- Global Networking and Development

The 2013 Conference is very proud to include Jesse Drew, Associate Professor of Cinema and Technocultural Studies at the University of California, Davis, as a plenary speaker.

Presenters will have the option to submit to be published in the refereed ‘International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society.’

Proposals must be in English, include a title, a 20-30 word “Short Description” (thesis statement), a 200-300 word “Long Description” (abstract), and can be submitted electronically through our website: techandsoc.com/conference-2013/call-for-papers/

Virtual Proposals/Registrations, as well as Non-Presenter Registrations are encouraged.

Upcoming Deadline: 12 June 2012. (Subsequent Deadlines will be announced on our website)

We look forward to seeing you in Vancouver in 2013.

On behalf of the Technology Conference
Email: conference@techandsoc.com

HERE.

Eric McLuhan discusses coining the term “media ecology,” a phrase I believed was attributable to Neil Postman. As recently as yesterday I stated that Neil Postman created the term, but this seems incorrect as he can only be credited for popularizing it. There is also a great discussion on why the McLuhans’ tetrad can only be applied to humans, a position I still don’t understand. In my own work I’ve expanded media ecology (and by extension elements of the tetrad) to apply to all organisms (and, like Graham Harman, to all entities; though my work in ecology tends to have me emphasizing living critters more often than not). If you haven’t checked out the Figure/Ground series yet, I highly recommend spending some time exploring the excellent work Laureano Ralon has put together over there.

[Update: A note from Laureano Ralon:

Thanks for posting this! Figure/Ground Communication is competing at Canada’s West Coast Social Media Awards. We need your support to continue growing. Casting your vote takes 5 seconds and no personal information is needed from you. Simply click on each of the links below and select Figure/Ground Communication.

westcoastsocialmediaawards.com/voting/community-builder-award/

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You can vote once a day until May 13th.

Your support is greatly appreciated!

I encourage interested readers to head on over and give your support!]

Yesterday’s talk was a great success. The full panel ran for about 90 minutes with a great question and answer session at the end. I’m posting my portion of the panel lecture below.

Ecology is typically defined as the study of relationships between organisms and environments, and the relationships between organisms to one another. This essay suggests another way forward: a re-visioning of ecology in the context of Alfred North Whitehead’s speculative philosophy. By thinking ecology with Whitehead we will be able to demonstrate a simple and surprising truth: all relations of any kind—be they between sea anemones and coral reefs or between philosophers and the world—are ecological in nature. By generalizing the definition of ecology to include relations of any kind, we expand our notions of what ecology is all about, and our ability to enact a cosmopolitics—a planetary thought for a planetary ecology—is greatly enhanced. But what, we might ask, does speculative philosophy have to do with ecology? Are we not mixing the empirical world of the natural sciences with the subjective world of a philosopher’s fantasy? I’m going to suggest that in order to actually understand the meaning of ecology—and in particular the possibility of an ecological ethics—we have to speculate, using the best of our sciences and the best of our imagination to do so.

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