In an early critique of my rough draft (for which I am exceedingly grateful), the critic accuses my work of anthropomorphizing its subject and its writer for employing pathetic fallacy. The problem here is that she finds fault with my describing stones that "speak" and have "voices" and thinks I don't really mean to use anthropomorphism but, perhaps since I am still such an inchoate academic, I lack the experience/education to know not to use 'human' verbs when referring to 'objects'. Yet the papers is about the ability of stones to communicate, and it is my intent to use anthropomorphic language to describe the different ways stones communicate. I've been stressing about this matter a few days now, especially because I know that if this former instructor of mine finds fault with my use of pathetic fallacy, so too will many of the essay's readers (ie acceptance committees). However, if I don't use active verbs like "mutter" or "whisper" in describing these stones, I'm simply shoving them to the very background from which I am trying to rescue them!
This morning, as I was reviewing some recent posts to Levi Bryant's blog Larval Subjects, I stumbled upon this marvelous defense of the use of anthropomorphism when writing about objects:
These anthropomorphisms– rife also in evolutionary theory, sociology, and Marxist thought –are not intended to suggest that things really have aims and purposes, but merely to draw attention to the contributions that nonhuman things make in the world and to us. They are designed to break the bad anthropocentric habit of treating nonhumans as passive stuffs upon which we project meanings and which merely obstruct us.
Thank you Levi Bryant. Perhaps I will cite your blog early in my essay so future reviewers won't be so jarred when my stones start shouting.
Showing posts with label stones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stones. Show all posts
Monday, May 30, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Notes Towards an Introduction (3/24/11)
*Notes (or what spewed forth from my mind after a shower) towards a possible introduction for the essay I hope to use as the writing sample for my grad school applications. This means I'm pretty sure I know now what I want to write about. Of course, Fortune's fickle wheel is always a-turning, I know things might not work out the way I'm hoping, but that's no reason to start planning an evacuation just yet.
**Oh, and I'm certain to change the one-line introductions to the main theorists who inform the critical perspective of this essay, I just like the way an early introduction like this allows me to juxtapose their works immediately so the reader already has a map of the journey ahead. And those little one-liners only really refer to a single work by each author which I'll cite.
A visit to the Smithsonian’s National Gem Collection is bound to fill one with wonder and awe and the radiating beauty and delicate intricacies of precious stones and crystals. A crowd always surrounds the Hope Diamond, as fantasies of limitless riches and deep time co-mingle into an experience of the sublime. Light bounces off the collections diamonds and gemstones in a splendid dance that captivates our imaginations. The stones in this room become vibrant, alive. Unfortunately, any awareness of material vibrancy is actually and only the result of a carefully choreographed theatrical experience; the sensations we feel are pre-determined by orchestrations that dictate what we see and how we respond. We enter the theater of the collection, and each stone and mineral is framed behind clear glass, is fore-grounded against matting that seems to disappear in its contrast to the gem, light dances because bulbs are positioned to create this effect, and placards are provided to give viewers appropriate contexts of luxury or deep time. We have become blind to vibrancy, to the affecting nature of objects, and curators cautiously craft a mise-en-scene that captivates and contextualizes material vibrancy by informing us that these precious stones and hard minerals exist and perform to serve us, whether their service is dazzling us in a controlled museum environment, or to represent and display our wealth, or, as many placards tell us, to help us craft our tools and build our machines. Always anthropocentric, we miss the calling of vibrant materials until we understand what they can do for us.
The past 300 or so years of philosophy has limited the scope of ontology and foregrounded epistemology as first philosophy; as a result, perception of life and the universe consistently asserts mankind as the dominant actant and observer. Objects become secondary, they perform as tools in the service of man, if they exist at all. Occasionally they are granted an ontic status, but often they are reduced to mere phenomena and often excluded from the brackets of our consciousness. Fortunately, contemporary Continental philosophy is re-introducing a return to ontology that focuses on the true power of objects as distinct and performative whether or not they are used for human ends. Bruno Latour reminds us that objects can be actants in a network whether or not humans are operating or even present in the assemblage. Graham Harman, by means of a surgically careful reading of Heidegger, argues that we must create an object-oriented ontology to become aware that objects not only exist but act completely independent of humanity and our awareness of them. Levi Bryant gives an outline for an object ontology by defining an Ontic Principle and offering a Principle of the Inhuman. And Jane Bennett reinvigorates things with a material vibrancy and proves that only by our awareness of thing-power can we align our political concerns with the ecological care we need to restore the health of the planet.
As this new-wave of philosophy and object-ontology pushes us forward and strives to construct a future of thing-awareness, it simultaneously creates a new reading of the past. Or perhaps the past offers new ways of reading the present. Either way, there is a growing assemblage of academics and scholars aware that the literature of the medieval and pre-modern is teeming and redolent with instances of and insights into the vitality of matter and the power of things. New journals like postmedieval and conferences like the "GW MEMSI: Animal Vegetable Mineral" are engaging medieval texts in light of contemporary object-ontology. This emerging criticism argues a medieval world aware of thing-power, an era that senses the vibrancy of materials and reproduces that vitalism in its literature. The inorganic of the pre-modern world is as alive and affecting as the organic and one form of matter that is particularly vibrant in medieval literature is stone.
**Oh, and I'm certain to change the one-line introductions to the main theorists who inform the critical perspective of this essay, I just like the way an early introduction like this allows me to juxtapose their works immediately so the reader already has a map of the journey ahead. And those little one-liners only really refer to a single work by each author which I'll cite.
A visit to the Smithsonian’s National Gem Collection is bound to fill one with wonder and awe and the radiating beauty and delicate intricacies of precious stones and crystals. A crowd always surrounds the Hope Diamond, as fantasies of limitless riches and deep time co-mingle into an experience of the sublime. Light bounces off the collections diamonds and gemstones in a splendid dance that captivates our imaginations. The stones in this room become vibrant, alive. Unfortunately, any awareness of material vibrancy is actually and only the result of a carefully choreographed theatrical experience; the sensations we feel are pre-determined by orchestrations that dictate what we see and how we respond. We enter the theater of the collection, and each stone and mineral is framed behind clear glass, is fore-grounded against matting that seems to disappear in its contrast to the gem, light dances because bulbs are positioned to create this effect, and placards are provided to give viewers appropriate contexts of luxury or deep time. We have become blind to vibrancy, to the affecting nature of objects, and curators cautiously craft a mise-en-scene that captivates and contextualizes material vibrancy by informing us that these precious stones and hard minerals exist and perform to serve us, whether their service is dazzling us in a controlled museum environment, or to represent and display our wealth, or, as many placards tell us, to help us craft our tools and build our machines. Always anthropocentric, we miss the calling of vibrant materials until we understand what they can do for us.
The past 300 or so years of philosophy has limited the scope of ontology and foregrounded epistemology as first philosophy; as a result, perception of life and the universe consistently asserts mankind as the dominant actant and observer. Objects become secondary, they perform as tools in the service of man, if they exist at all. Occasionally they are granted an ontic status, but often they are reduced to mere phenomena and often excluded from the brackets of our consciousness. Fortunately, contemporary Continental philosophy is re-introducing a return to ontology that focuses on the true power of objects as distinct and performative whether or not they are used for human ends. Bruno Latour reminds us that objects can be actants in a network whether or not humans are operating or even present in the assemblage. Graham Harman, by means of a surgically careful reading of Heidegger, argues that we must create an object-oriented ontology to become aware that objects not only exist but act completely independent of humanity and our awareness of them. Levi Bryant gives an outline for an object ontology by defining an Ontic Principle and offering a Principle of the Inhuman. And Jane Bennett reinvigorates things with a material vibrancy and proves that only by our awareness of thing-power can we align our political concerns with the ecological care we need to restore the health of the planet.
As this new-wave of philosophy and object-ontology pushes us forward and strives to construct a future of thing-awareness, it simultaneously creates a new reading of the past. Or perhaps the past offers new ways of reading the present. Either way, there is a growing assemblage of academics and scholars aware that the literature of the medieval and pre-modern is teeming and redolent with instances of and insights into the vitality of matter and the power of things. New journals like postmedieval and conferences like the "GW MEMSI: Animal Vegetable Mineral" are engaging medieval texts in light of contemporary object-ontology. This emerging criticism argues a medieval world aware of thing-power, an era that senses the vibrancy of materials and reproduces that vitalism in its literature. The inorganic of the pre-modern world is as alive and affecting as the organic and one form of matter that is particularly vibrant in medieval literature is stone.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Medieval Stones and Morality
Can contemporary object-ontology breathe new perspectives of morality into medieval texts? Existing before the glass wall between man and nature (before Kant’s binary inside/outside, before the dominion of epistemology reified that binary), non-human objects existed in the same ontological plane as humans. Thus objects become a site for the question of morality. How do we read/respond to the threatening gestures of “rokkes black,” to Merlin’s preternatural sensitivity to the disruptive power of stones hiding dragons, or to scientific/magical properties of precious stones defined by lapidaries and depicted in Breton Lais and the Travels of Sir John Mandeville?
TBC…
TBC…
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