Skip to main content

Stengers, Heidegger, Descola, (Kraus) and what is cosmopolitics

My own notion of cosmopolitics is slightly different from that Stengers has been proposing and examining. I tend to add to her notion, grounded on the idea of an ecology of practices, two other elements that, it seems to me, make the notion more dramatic and still more crucial. I take the ecology of practices is about the conflicts, indifference, collaborations and alliances between practices of knowing, intervening and keeping company. The ecology of practices is the very cosmic scenario where any epistemic endeavor takes place - but also what the epistemic endeavor sponsors (and maintains, instaurates, brings about) in its surroundings. To the ecology of practices, I would add the history of being in the sense of Heidegger: what makes nihilism a cosmopolitics is that it names an attitude of intelligence extraction towards the rest of the cosmos - including the very protagonists of intelligence-extraction. The history of nihilism and of whatever precedes and succeeds it is cosmopolitical, it is an adventure in the realm of controlling things and letting them be. One of the consequences of nihilism - and of our modern practices - is the anthropocene or whatever is the name for the current impact on the planet's geology the current regime around humans has. I also add what Descola calls a disposition of being, in the context of the anthropology of nature: naturalism - as much as animism - is a cosmopolitics. In this sense, it is explicitly about the relationship humans hold with non-humans and how the former craft a form of life among the latter. The issue of the connections between modernity, nihilism and naturalism elucidate the three of them.

Ludueña understands cosmopolitics in terms of spectrology. He cites Karl Kraus saying that as there are no more than shadows and puppets left, then the banalest events should be considered from a cosmic viewpoint. Ludueña adds that, conversely, "it is not possible to understand any aspect of the cosmos without paying attention to the seeming details of the deceased human world" (La comunidad de los espectros III: Arcana Imperii, 26. My translation).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Meta-m

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I