Scan barcode
A review by casparb
Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World by Timothy Morton
ok whirlwind this is quite the piece and absolutely one of my favourite books I've read this year. Tim has been on the radar for a little while and seems to be growing. Glad I got here now!
To get this out of the way, Tim works with and in OOO (Object-Oriented Ontology) which is a bit of a battlefield in contemporary philosophy as I understand it there are strong feelings from everybody I'm not here to wade in on whatever side. But this was my official intro to OOO! I really enjoyed what was happening with Heidegger here, partly because Tim keeps distancing and then returning to it, it feels very love-hate! It's entertaining!
Also a note that Tim's love for Percy Shelley is just v cute I like the punctuating appearance of PS
My highlights are truly on every page & that is because it felt necessary! TM's style is accessible with the nods to pop culture we find in a lot of pop-philosophy (contradiction in terms? ;) ) but then that's batted out of the air with a Derrida/Heidegger reading of interobjectivity and indeed Hegel makes his appearance toward the end (weirdly I didn't hate this reading of Derrida I felt it was v sophisticated). Not a fan of Nietzsche & I think for the N quote pulled that's valid - imo the most exciting Nietzschean (non)ecology is found in The Will to Power but that's not established as a 'canonical' text yet! grr. Ridiculous breadth! We're spinning in Roman Jakobson (my love) as a means of understanding weather Events with a good splash of quantum theory & relativity in the beginning. V funny stabs at Deleuze maybe it's philosophical schadenfreude by this point
Discussion of the future-art critical too. Too relevant. Hegel makes his grand entry here.
You have to wonder whether your poem about global warming is really a hyperobject’s way of distributing itself into human ears and libraries. Art becomes an attunement to the demonic.
...
Art in these conditions is grief-work. We are losing a fantasy—the fantasy of being immersed in a neutral or benevolent Mother Nature—and a person who is losing a fantasy is a very dangerous person. In no sense then should art be PR for climate change.
I want to reread very soon I like TM
To get this out of the way, Tim works with and in OOO (Object-Oriented Ontology) which is a bit of a battlefield in contemporary philosophy as I understand it there are strong feelings from everybody I'm not here to wade in on whatever side. But this was my official intro to OOO! I really enjoyed what was happening with Heidegger here, partly because Tim keeps distancing and then returning to it, it feels very love-hate! It's entertaining!
Also a note that Tim's love for Percy Shelley is just v cute I like the punctuating appearance of PS
My highlights are truly on every page & that is because it felt necessary! TM's style is accessible with the nods to pop culture we find in a lot of pop-philosophy (contradiction in terms? ;) ) but then that's batted out of the air with a Derrida/Heidegger reading of interobjectivity and indeed Hegel makes his appearance toward the end (weirdly I didn't hate this reading of Derrida I felt it was v sophisticated). Not a fan of Nietzsche & I think for the N quote pulled that's valid - imo the most exciting Nietzschean (non)ecology is found in The Will to Power but that's not established as a 'canonical' text yet! grr. Ridiculous breadth! We're spinning in Roman Jakobson (my love) as a means of understanding weather Events with a good splash of quantum theory & relativity in the beginning. V funny stabs at Deleuze maybe it's philosophical schadenfreude by this point
Discussion of the future-art critical too. Too relevant. Hegel makes his grand entry here.
You have to wonder whether your poem about global warming is really a hyperobject’s way of distributing itself into human ears and libraries. Art becomes an attunement to the demonic.
...
Art in these conditions is grief-work. We are losing a fantasy—the fantasy of being immersed in a neutral or benevolent Mother Nature—and a person who is losing a fantasy is a very dangerous person. In no sense then should art be PR for climate change.
I want to reread very soon I like TM