Veg(etari)an Arguments in Culture, History, and Practice by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030532802
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

In the Skin of the “Strange Stranger”

Timothy Morton writes of the relevance of OOO to ecology by arguing “OOO is a form of realism that asserts that real things exist—these things are objects, not amorphous ‘Matter,’” (Morton 2011, 165). Morton extends Jane Bennett’s concept of the vital materiality of matter and the binary we humans tend to impose upon things as “passive stuff” as contrasted with ourselves, which we tend to view as vital and vibrant by comparison (Bennett 2010, viii). New materialist theorists including Bennett and Bruno Latour assert that as humans, we are active in complicated networks of being or assemblages. Bennett argues that all matters are “vibrant,” and as such coexist with human actors in the web of our collective existence (13). Because OOO, as a complex emerging field of study, is impossible to treat in great depth here, I turn to a couple of OOO’s key concepts to connect it to the ontology of AGS and the role of non-human actants in establishing agency over the anthropocene. Two key principles of OOO are particularly valuable in analyzing AGS in the philosophical context of speculative realism and phenomenology: the rejection of the centrality of humans to ecology and our inability to “know” an object absolutely. Each of these principles is embodied in the understanding and analysis of AGS, for the illness is epitomized in OOO’s rejection of the anthropocene and the profound affirmation of the unknown.

First, OOO’s rejection of anthropocentrism is central to this analysis. The principle that humans are the focus of ecology is a concept that OOO dismisses for speciesism, defined as the privileging of one’s own species above others. Rather, OOO asserts that humans and non-humans exist on an equal ontological footing with each other in complicated webs of being. The relationship of ticks to poodles, pollen, windmills, or paper clips is no different to the kind of interactions these objects have with each other because they exist independently of human perception (Harman 2005, 1). In the realm of existence, objects—from parasites, pennies, E. coli, to hurricane winds—exhibit agentic influence over humans and non-humans alike because all objects deserve equal attention. In consideration of AGS, a disease-carrying tick exhibits its life-altering agency over the life of human, whose body cannot adapt to the changes its bite inflicts apart from substantial dietary and lifestyle alterations. A tick wields enormous influence over the alpha-gal body through the molecular contents of its saliva, which, in turn, wreaks systemic havoc within its susceptible victim—even as the tick goes about its business of eating, living, and being.

Secondly, OOO asserts that objects have an unknowable, irreducible dark side. Morton writes that “object is profoundly ‘withdrawn’—we can never see the whole of it, and nothing else can either” (Morton 2011, 165). Morton offers the example of a coin, whose underside we never see as the underside; we always already see this side of a coin, which perpetually produces yet other undersides as it is flipped (165). In many ways, the AGS

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.