[...]ontology

(objectivity =/= obliqtivity)
Harman's immaterialism: realism without materialism : objects can only ever be captured obliquely

object-oriented ontology's development:
•characterised by a consistent lament for how post-Kantian philosophy in general (Continental philosophy in particular) has abandoned hope of describing objects as objects
•the real: absolute autonomy of objects (withdraw from subjects)
◦objects: sleeping giants holding their forces in reserve
•prefer the excess of the aesthetic over the reduction by the scientific (materialism's tendency to reduce objects to a primary substratum ==> rendering them susceptible to mathematical capture) --Campbell--> *aesthetic foundationalism* [==engender==> an attitudinal response to objects] (@apass, this is also a problem in artistic research):
◦aesthetic appreciation above the reduction of the phenomenon achieved by science --> “art (art criticism) is a style that gets us closer to the nature of objects” (+ bad example of Clement Greenberg)
◦(to make the invisible deep conditions of objects perceivable) prioritize *allusive style* above *literal description*
•claims to post-phenomenological sovereignty
•over-mining approach to knowledge production =/= objects's surplus of reality
◦methodological approach which encounters objects as objects (=/= actor network theory's manner of focusing upon an object's effects) [+ bad example of Dutch East India Company]--Campbell--> object-oriented social theory produces a rudimentary narrative with no discernible innovation on the level of:
◾objects --> the actors are recognisable companies, personalities, infrastructures
◾relations --> the major symbiotic moments are legal contracts, infrastructure and formative moments in a human's life
◾time --> there is standard chronology from birth to death, with emphasis on human-centric causes and effects
•“social theory = a mode of knowledge production” (=/= a decontextualised reflection of the world) ==> withdrawal: a psychological alibi, an aesthetic (=/= cognitive concept) ==stimulate==> an attitudinal response: humility [+ passivity?] in the face of overwhelming non-human existence [~ appeal ==produce==> a paternalistic-arrogant-instrumentalist attitude to the nonhuman =/= *appeal ==foster==> responsibility* (a norrnativity that withdrawal cannot) ---> go to Haraway + Campbell]

}=/= posthuman relationism: realists who draw on contemporary advances in disciplines like geology, biology, mathematics and neurology to make the case that non-human reality is not a sub-set of human reality -->
•commitment to an object-oriented realism (~= Harman)
•occupy an *anthropic* event horizon: their social analyses occur in the shifting, impossible ground hetween the human and the nonhuman (=/= Harman)
•dialectic of object **withdrawal + appeal** (=/= Harman's object withdrawal) ~ ***interaction between objective withdrawal & subjective appeal***

(Moss) earth as making an appeal --Freud--> a demand for work
“when the attention of an experienced person is drawn to the child's state by this path of discharge, [the path of discharge] ... acquires a secondary function of the highest importance, that of cornmunicalion
--> initial helplessness of human beings is the primal source of all moral motives
(child's) creaming and kicking --> appeal (made by the earth) is a combination of demand + accusation


contemporary social theorists are turning towards objects
<==Bennett== object produce a ‘gestalt shift’ in perception
}==Tsing==> (amounts to) a political act <== (turning towards objects) requires us:
•to re-divide the world
•to re-prioritise matler(s)
•to create different causalities
•to follow new agencies
•to produce new spacetimes
•to interrupt the ‘mind-lulling presence of common sense’
}----> acknowledge the importance of traditional *social theory* in identifying gross inequalities + advocate a posthuman relationism that moves *from critique to production* ==> *new and surprising connections between modes of existence* (for example)
•did the typical American diet play any role in engendering the widespread susceptibility to the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq?
•do sand storms make a difference to the spread of socalled sectarian violence?
•does mercury help enact autism?
•what if serious adoption practices for and by the elderly became common?
•what if nations that are worried about low birth rates (Denmark, Germany, Japan, Russia, white America, more) acknowledged that fear of immigrants is a big problem, and that racial purity projects and fantasies drive resurgent pronatalism?


posthuman: a mode of listening for the nonhuman + simultaneously acknowledging the impossibility of fully hearing it --> impossible position ==expand==> our range of socialities, causalities, temporalities and ethics because it contains the **stubborn anthropomorphic residual** within any ‘new’ theory of society
--> (not infinite) co-constitution of the social + the extra-social (vaccines & markets, planetary systems & telescopes, catastrophes & laws, etc.)

feminist science studies *demand a normative responsibility* towards ontological inclusivity and humility

(now that there is no objective -->) interrogatives are object-makers

*strangeness (of nonhuman life) [acts as a guide] --> mobilising new prepositions of connection ==> to think differently about the social ==> new conceptions of society (as planetmate, messmate, natureculture, mindbody, thing-power, odd kin, etc.)


parallels drawn between theories of evolution & theories of social change:
•Gould --> concept of punctuated equilibrium
•Serres --> ontology of the social as parasitism
•Hayles --> translation of epigenesis and technogenesis
•

{phenomenon of serial endosymbiosis theory <-- social theorists deploy this in the search for accounts of how change and creativity originate}--> (bio-econornic context) *symbiosis* has long been recognised as a theory which demonstrates the co-constitution of the social and the biological
=/= Darwinian story of: small variations, random mutation, long time scales, natural selection, fitness and incremental development:
•complexity derived by brute mechanical climbing from the base already built by the efforts of earlier climbing
•unit of change: the gene, or individual organism, the zoocentric, ‘big like us’ epistemic culture of both science and social science (=/= weird worldings of protists, archea, eukaryotes [Wertheim])

bacteriology ==> new organisms were often stemmed from profound and prolonged symbiotic relationships that have proven difficult to analyse =/= discrete
•traits are inherited outside of sexual dissemination (digestion, infection, donation, other complex forms of partnerning) --> consortia: amorphous symbiotic complexes (metabolic energetic networks) =/= organism: anatomically bounded objects (systems of information and exchange)
}==Margulis==> focus on how perceptual, political, social and scientific conditions precede objects: *objects = boundary-work*
--> differential speeds of change (sudden and unlikely mixes + slow and causal)
--> deconstruction of individuality

(co-constitutive bio-econornic-political-social context:)
**ideological contest between individualism and collectivism in political economy <==> intellectual development of symbiosis theory**
•socialist and anarchist concept of mutuellisme in the mid 1800
•Hobbesian-Malthusian-Darwinian bio-economic concept of struggle for existence in zero-sum games of all-against-all
•Kropotkin's symbiosis as evidence for the benefit of global cooperation towards the common good, the division of labour, protection of elements and interdependent organisation
•evolutionary theory used to champion individualism and the social policies of laissez faire

Campbell --> what Harman misses is the elementary starting point for sociologies of science: *that social science translates science* just as science translates “reality”

serial endosymbiosis theory ==>
1. no theory of social change is going to be value-free (endosymbiosis is a process that is always already highly charged with rich metaphor, entailing a ‘host’ that is in an ‘exchange,’ ‘relation’ or ‘merger’ with a ‘guest’ --> a form of ‘living together’ that becomes ‘close’ over time)
2. extraordinary range and nature of these relations can act as strateg[...]