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Object-Oriented Philosophy as Ponzi Scheme: On Financial and Metaphysical Bubbles
I was inspired by Kvond’s excellent post at his blog Frames /sing—please do read it—responding to my informal comments over at this Perverse Egalitarianism thread, where I wrote a brief critique of the work of Graham Harman and the object-oriented philosophy (henceforth, OOP) movement that has recently coalesced around him, to formalize them a little bit into a post here at the Howler.
On the topic of Steven Shaviro and Graham Harman’s recent conversation/debate about object-oriented aesthetics, Mikhail Emelianov over at Perverse Egalitarianism perspicaciously notes:
If I understand Shaviro’s point about OOP being an essentially aesthetic position (and Harman himself, I think, said that much), then it doesn’t seem as though anyone is really pretending to sell anything to anyone. I think there’s a certain amount of realpolitik going on here, especially in terms of Harman’s advices on how to become a successful philosopher – all those things are true, it’s just that they are usually discussed behind-the-scenes and not on blogs. Maybe he is doing us all a service with his advice columns? I mean his real advice columns, not that stuff when under the mask of giving advice he simply describes his own way of doing things (like the disappointing “Composition of Philosophy” series that I followed for a bit until I realized I’m reading Harman’s writing diary and don’t see how it would apply to me at all).
My real point is simple – I do sometimes react in a way that shows
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