[...] /> “two billiard balls strike into each other, resulting in both balls flying off into the air, or fusing together, or turning into two immaculate but rather grumpy mares, or into two maroon but rather affable lilies”


(@apass)
every research agonizes about:
•the ontological status of their ‘objects’ (of enquiry)
•the epistemological status of their knowledge claims

--Campbell--> we need to “go ontological” about consumption, global warming, (hyperobjects)
hyperobjects:
•viscous (literally real, and you cannot throw it away)
•non-local
•larger on the inside than they are on the outside
•they call for forms ofjustice, ethics, politics and reason that are beyond humanist economies of identification and representation

social constructivism ==> everyone's interpretation of the real is legitimate [equal status of interpretation] =/= (Meillassoux's) speculative realism


understand the world at the level of the hyperobject <== we are creating (consumer) objects that are massive in scale and temporality

inter-generational justice (imagining till your grandchildren)


service-dominant logic (of consumer research) =/= object oriented (more than humanist/naturalist trophies)
service: that intangible value extracted from stuff by humans --to--> the increasing ability to separate, transport, and exchange information, apart from embodiment in goods and people

Meillassoux's arche fossil ~=? jinn
witnesses of the universe before humans

objects  withdraw  infinitely  from  humans
universal quality of all objects: *reserve*
==> (narcissistic) philosophy of a uniquely lonely human fate [--> popular contemporary depiction of human with one foot in animality and the other in consciousness]
----> then how *withdrawal* (should) play out in social theory?

Lingis's ‘imperative’: worlds are filled up with imperatives (human and nonhuman) that summon us --> enmeshed pre-cognitive, atavistic, technological, embodied modes in which we respond to the world --> how this does not get recuperated into the existing models of sociology

[flipside of withdrawal:] to think of capital: an  extraordinarily force overthrowing any imagination of an alternative --> there is no possibility of ‘intervention' in Capital ==> ‘accelerationism’: an inside-out radicalism, believing in unleashing productive forces of human wrought to continue its dynamism : “the only way out is to plunge further in”

Campbell: ‘withdrawal from capital' = passing through the eye of the needle

[that which is expressed in philosophy, political economy, science and science fiction, and in transhumanist, lifehacker, accelerationist movements:] *flight from consumption*
}--✕--> Campbell's *speculative consumption*
what if consumption has something relational about it?
(we must become interested in consumption @apass, Pierre, Foad, constantvzw)
*non-correlationist marketing theory* [=/= correlationism: humans doing things in the world to inanimate objects to make immaterial effects happen ~-> access]

interobjective consumption

...................................

ask anyone to give a definition of ‘food’ --> ‘a source of fuel or energy for the body’ --> most people will give you the engineer's perspective of the world when they are asked =/= the marketers know that everything we buy has a deeper, emotional motivation behind it
innocuous purchase:
•pleasure-seeking
•status seeking
•identity-building benefit
•

ask anyone to give a definition of ‘clothes’ --> ‘textile materials that we use on our skin to provide protection from heat and cold’ =/= marketer will tell you that clothes are portals to different realities

*we don't buy bread --> we buy sustenance for the soul
*we don't buy lightbulbs --> we buy illumination
*we don't buy lipstick --> we buy dreams

****food is not fuel, but fashion****
that means:
•food is a psycho-social comfort blanket
•we use it to compete for status
•we use it to define boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’


obesogenic
obesity


‘superwicked’ problem (in social policy):
-those who are causing the problem are attempting to solve it [for example food marketing's power trying to solve obesity (~= putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank)]
-time is running out

(this is absolute bullshit -->) “we simply need more education to finally understand that X (for example junk food) is bad for us”


(Campbell:) fashion brands (with their 400% growth in the last 20 years) have intensified their campaign to change the perception of clothing: from a functional investment in practical shelter to a vital projection, extension and affirmation of one's very identity

(shift in manufacturing and delivering) *fast fashion* (spearheaded by the Italian design house Benetton, but perfected by fashion brands Zara, H&M and Forever 21) mimics luxury fashion trends at very low costs

increasing efficiencies in production ==> increasing inefficiencies in consumption

*psychological dissonance*: the uneasy feeling that your laptop, car, trainers or coffee machine is no longer ‘right’ [stimulated in two principal ways in marketing:]
-1- physical obsolescence (<== down-grading the quality of product)
-2- psychological obsolescence (<== acceleration of the ‘fashion cycle’: the social phenomenon whereby a design moves through bleeding edge to mainstream to despised mainstream)
-3- ***to make clothing (or any product) a vital prop that is needed to create authentic sense of who we are*** (<== protagonist: Chanel-clad Parisian on the rain-soaked cobbles of a Montmartre morning, the sweat-soaked Nikes of a determined athlete in an empty basketball court in the Bronx, etc. disseminated through Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. [--> this works together but in reverse in film industry the protagonists wearings and style are used to sell that specific identity who wears them])
}==> *every single person cares about the clothes they wear*
-4- *to re-categorize clothing* (perceptual categories are critical to marketers, for example tourism brands worked hard for decades to change the idea of a holiday abroad from the category of luxury to that of necessity, clothes have moved to the status of a coffee to grab and go) <== equivalencing: degraded quality of the garment allows a decrease in the price [==> powerful psychological effect compounded by the retailscape: shoes in are sold on rails like packets of sweets, T-shirts offered in basins at the check-out, etc.]

***advertising (images) = secular magic***
==inducing==> a powerful desire to indulge in the fantasy of being:
•a solitary and steely-gazed athlete
•a sophisticated and urbane Parisian girl
•

Campbell: “The moment that I say that fashion brands do not affect me is the very moment that they have”

pleasurable daydreaming innate to us all

marketing is often a practice of *breaking taboos* ==guarantees==> brand success

detergent, apparel, car or cosmetics brands ==produce==> the monolithic, repetitive idea of ‘clean flawlessness’ that infiltrates our value systems

clothes = portals to different realities

*enclothed cognition*: the influential way clothes change psychological mood, the way clothes allow us to take up certain social roles more authentically

Alessi: fashion is social (its Latin root ‘factio’: a group of people acting together) =/= Campbell: i use clothes (fashion) as a social grammar to communicate with these others

universal clothing in sci-fi is such a lie, because that would remove one of the primary ways in our culture that we have for expressing ourselves


we need to change the manifestation rather than deny the yearning }--> Campbell proposes: slow fashion, re-categorization of clothing back to investment in long-term, high-quality items

...................................

[title]
nonhuman rationality

(Meillassoux's) speculative realism ==> climate change = a new world (for which we do not have categories)

Meillassoux's concepts { nonhuman + rational --Campbell--> ontologically think about climate change =/= (despondency & passivity) equivocal status of climate change }==> bleak optimism: climate change has already hap[...]