Diaries of a Casual Holobiont #2
On hyperobjects, hypersubjects and the retroactive fantasies of mine
Nature, climate change, etc., is/are not a hyperobject(s), as Morton insists. They are not, especially the former, a hyper-subject either, as the traditional interpretation insists. Nature can be revealed beyond and within both notions. It might sound similar to Jasper’s pereichontology. But I don’t see any noteworthy theological implications whatsoever here. Of any kind, even in Jaspers himself.
Be as it may, if one wants to be intellectually honest, this is a fundamentally Spinozian claim. It was precisely Baruch, the kicked-out Jewish-Christian that influenced Islam, but mostly Deleuze, as well as the contemporary theory of multitudes, assemblages, etc., who first spurred this idea within the modern tradition — the notion of Being as both encompassing and enclosed, both within and beyond.
I’m pretty sure if I dig sturdy enough in my notes from that now decade-old quest into the depths of Medieval philosophy, I’ll find it even further back, but that’s not the point.
The point is that even though our material context looks like a scientifically observable event that we can constantly work with to improve our material situation, that doesn’t mean it’s not always already slipping. If that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t be able to move our scientific understanding further.
In that sense, firstly, even if it’s a type of hyper-object, it’s also one of a hyper-subject, and at the same time, it’s none of them. It’s the former, cause we cannot grasp it intellectually. It’s unintelligible. Especially within the confines of a single mind, a single generation, or the whole of our historical efforts.
On the other hand, it’s a hyper-subject, cause we always think we’ve reached a point where there’s no beyond, that this subject, even though autonomous and unpredictable at times, is within our sweep, as a being of sort, someone we can interact with consciously and meaningfully, someone we can speak with and is alike, someone we share a reasonable number of traits with.
One can relate, to a great extent, with almost everything that’s either entirely or not quite alive. One can somehow ally with viruses, for example, and their evolutionary strive to persist, not to kill their host. One feels like a plant each time one goes to the shore or appreciates a cloudless winter day. This vegetable soul that the medieval thinkers, influenced by Aristotle, were so concerned with is overtly present. There’s no point in referring to animals at all.
I can likewise see how Morton’s assertion makes sense — that the subjective, or even the intersubjective, experience is nothing more than a special instance within a much broader, appearance-guided and fundamentally physicochemical inter-objective being of things.
Is climate change a hyper-object, a hyper-subject, or something in-between, then? Who knows. What I know is that we still collect fresh tomatoes and peppers from plants we’ve planted by the beginning of March. In that sense, it’s something that I can see and feel while hanging shirtless in the garden in mid-November.
At the same time, I want to get into the dirt of the surrounding landscape to comprehend myself, our community, the socio-political and economic situation that doesn’t recognize the threat, to understand the fungi, and the sheer fact of life.
I won’t, rather sure I won’t get it all.
But the goal isn’t — and it never was — to reach or even strive for the absolute truth now, is it?
The point is to keep on going. Fill that backpack of yours with whatever berries and mushrooms you find on your path. To advance this understanding in order to present justice not solely for us but for non-human entities alike. At least the hope for a better, or, if you wish, possible future.
A chance not of the negatively connotated utopian no-where, but of positively experienced and recognized now-here.
I see the irony here, though. It’s in front of me. As Morton himself claims elsewhere,
Our notions of place are retroactive fantasy conÂstructs determined precisely by the corrosive effects of modernity. Place was not lost, though we posit it as something we have lost. Even if place as an actually existing, rich set of relationships between sentient beings does not (yet) exist, place is part of our worldview right now — what if it is actually propping up that view? We would be unable to cope with modernity unless we had a few pockets of place in which to store our hope.
I agree. But this retroactive fantasy of mine, one that I’m both imagining and living right now, this little homestead at the edge of modernity…
It feels so good to be in it.