I have misgivings about any argument that treats politics as a question that one arrives to after settling the question of ontology (emphatically not what D&G or Hardt&Negri do & the author's hyperbole about their politics is egregious.) I know this is not what the author intends
An excellent post (recommended by @Lmorus) on the difficulties of deriving a coherent politics from ontology. The focus is on the flat ontologies of new materialism, yet the question is aptly left open: how to get from substance/being/whatever to politics?
https://sites.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/to-the-political-ontologists/ …
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You raise good points, and I agree that the author’s swipe at D&G misses the mark. I think it struck a chord with me because, when I started reading theory, I also tended to read D&G through an ontological instead of political lens. It’s an absurd caricature, but a prevalent one.
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You were right to & it is of course an inescapable concern for anyone reading philosophy, lit.critique. The piece struck a nerve that was freshly rubbed raw by something I saw on twitter earlier & I took offence to the tone & method more than the concerns that animated the post.
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The tone is snarky as hell and something of a turnoff that’s for sure.
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Author despises how Connolly & Bennett read & use D & Foucault. OK. Author alleges that D&D , H&N are naive idealists when it comes to politics; an allegation easily shown mistaken, but OK. I found the didactic mode of the exposition in the first half boiling my blood.
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I can def see that (adornians are so smug sometimes), but the thought experiment re:presocratic modes of thinking is still great imho
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True, thought experiments can be useful. The ones the author proposes are a bit disingenuous, & condescending to those invited to participate in it. Even worse, the experiments only serve to corral the reader towards the author's initial premise that ontologies forget politics.
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The way I read it it's more to do with critiquing the naiveté of thinking that Only an Ontology can save us (see Bennett quote on Human hubris), that Right Ontology allows an easy derivation of Correct Politics. "Political Ontologists" err through a Procustean approach to both.
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Forgive me...the post just reminded me of all the reasons why I find inter-disciplinary debates (regardless of the discipline-geography, polisci, cul.studies., anthro., sociology.) so unbearable. I think the author is on to something important but it gets lost in all the rancour
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FFS, I meant *intra-disciplinary* debates. Inter-disciplinary conversation & improvised collaborations are the only sanctuary one finds from the raging hellfire of inherited conflicts & the never ending melee to stake a position within a shared field of scholarship.
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The author's own thought experiment: 'how relevant one is to one's own ontological universe', can be tweaked a bit & we can get at a more worthwhile question-what is an adequate definition of politics & any political project once it ceases to be an eminently human task?
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