No Borders Metaphysics

The connections between metaphysics and grammar have been considered in different ways since Nietzsche. One could always believe that the descriptive metaphysics that is entailed by grammar and language rules can be put aside in a more revisionary, well-informed or speculative endeavor. But metaphysics has no other public language than ordinary grammar and its extensions, the suburbia built in it by added metaphysical propositions, like in Wittgenstein's image of an ancient city: Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses. (PU, 18) New additions are not necessarily filled with regular streets or uniform houses, but they are additions to what they found already in town. The ancient town has architectural requirements over the new parts of town. It works as a parameter on

I was thinking a bit about the image I used last week in my talk on political ecology against modernity. There I compare Latour's modes of existence - thought sometimes in terms of tools for designing new forms of common life - Christopher Alexander's patterns for architecture - oriented towards enhancing life and beauty - and sumak kawsay , the buen vivir as a political project. And I come up with this image of the moderns have been slowly preparing to leave the planet, to create a controlled environment of their own - as if they were prepared to board another planet, I called it Anthropea, which would take off the Earth and free us from all natural constraints (and all need to negotiate with anything non-human). Latour's proposal is that we stop getting ready to board Anthropea and take off and start making ourselves comfortable here in Gaia. I thought the anthropocene could itself be a rehearsal for the moderns to take off in a planet of their own: we can now match the

In the last few days I found out about three articles of mine coming out in Brazil. I like the one on queer ontology, which is called "Bodies in clinamina" and start out with speculative dermatology - skin against substance - and moves on to gender allagmatics to close with alliances beyond filiation and the ontological power of contamination. A second is on the ontology of doubts. The last is on a special issue celebrates twelve years of our philosophy and fiction colloquia. They were educational for all of us who were there from the beginning, I believe our philosophy got more and more entrenched within fiction. Not only in terms of writing (although I think this was an important part) but also in terms of topics and how they were thought through. I haven't read the last book of Meillassoux, but I like the title mentioning hors science , to qualify fiction; there is another fiction that is not informed by scientific input or gauged by scientific plausibility. To me, thi

Just finished the text of my talk tomorrow for some political ecologists and educators here in Xalapa. Spanish probably very broken but I managed to pack even accelerationist buen vivir into it. Me gustó mucho la presentación y la discussión. Gracias a quienes estuvieran presentes. Ecología Política contra la Modernidad: Una educación para el convivio con el no-humano Hilan Bensusan Arrastre el arco iris para el interrogatorio. Utilice desarmador en las nubes, si es necesario . Sujete el viento por no tener paradero. Lleve un lago al separo por retrasar cosas importantes. Condene a 30 años de trabajos forzados las flores que tienen pétalos que tiemblan. Transforme los bosques tropicales en desiertos. Ponga desiertos en prisión porque los poetas pueden ver el mundo en un grano de arena.[…] Acuse a las dunas de arena a extenderse por todas partes. Acuse a los montones de nieve de derretirse en todas partes. Ordena los pájaros que se callen y escuchen su canción. Revist

I just finished our reading course of Latour's AIME. The least chapter is dedicated to MOR, the fifteenth and last of his modes of existence. MOR is the mode of existence of the scruples and he says morality is spread everywhere. Morality is neither human nor a human second creation but rather is built from felicity conditions that feature in each mode of existence. To be sure, different modes have different norms associated to it - for the beings of metamorphosis, felicity is to stop existing, like for a trickster while for the beings of reproduction success is to persist. Persistence itself carries a felicity, but it is morality only for some modes - morality is in the world as much as its relativity. These are genuine norm, I guess, because they can be completely different within different modes that are also distinct tonalities of morality. Morality is therefore spread everywhere, and I guess it is therefore distributed - no part is the single guardian of morality. This comes w

Few years back (up till 2012) I was very much into decrepitude. I'm sure there are posts about that in this blog - for instance, about my ontology of decrepitude where everything displays advanced ages in many forms. (My interest was connected with the Heraclitus of our anarcheology book: an philosopher aggiornatto who thought from his many millennia of age.) Later, I got a bit farther from these rather Empedoclean attitude by thinking that maybe somehow one should resist and not embrace aging. But degeneration has some interesting if Beckettesque dimensions to it. Apart from the gradual realm of forgetfulness (that should be an antidote itself for resentment) that downs on one, there is de-individuation - that comes together with de-genderisation as, to be sure, Marx's notion of non-human sex didn't involve individuals and therefore a sexual difference (in Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's "Philosophy of Right", translated by Annette Joli and Joseph O'Malle