Hi friends,

Here is my latest post from module 5 of Matthew Segall’s course, Process and Difference in the Pluriverse:

Whether we designate its emergence as before or simultaneous, a Cosmopoetics is essential to the development of a true Cosmopolitics. A politics without a poetics—I imagine—would be a schizoid performance; truly split. Regardless of the rhetoric, I (and I extend this to an invitational “we”) typically know a genuine performance when I feel it. Truth (however contingent) is much more than the neutral enumeration of facts. This is Bruno Latour’s call to arms! We are at war! The bounty? A conceptual framework:

Instead of a difference in principle between the world of facts and the world of values…we see that we have to become accustomed to a continuous linkage of actions that begin with facts that are extended into a warning and that pointtoward decisions…This claim of descriptive neutrality made it possible to forget that one never plunges into description expect in order to act, and that, before looking into what must be done, we must be impelled to action by a particular type of utterance that touches our hearts in order to set us in motion — yes, to move us (49).

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of Latour’s critics disparaged his writing as hyperbolic; to such statements I would say: you missed the point. And what is the point? The needle that pricked Sleeping Beauty’s finger, the needle that sent she and the rest of the Kingdom to sleep! The point is the historical severance of Nature from Human Culture, Fact from Value. But “from now on,” Latour resounds throughout Facing Gaia(in an electrifying mission of italics and exclamation points), “if you speak of any part of the Earth to humans…we all find ourselves in the same boat — or rather on the same bus” (48).  What does this mean? This means the claim to neutrality is null: there is no view from nowhere. And so, to combat the climate skeptics, the climate scientist must be—simultaneously—poet (or join ranks with one) and honestly fuse the pathos of her/his knowledge with its description. As Latour echoes Haraway, scientists must become response-able. They must aesthetize themselves.

But if there is no longer a neutral point of view from which to derive the laws of Nature, what happens to objectivity? That we find ourselves in a moment of collective dissonance—wherein facts are held against “alternative facts” and the word “natural” blurs into head scratching as we shop for groceries—indicates the need for a redefining of objectivity: “objectivity,” Latour tells us (in footnote ¹⁴ on page 47), “is neither a state of the world nor a state of mind; it is the result of a well-maintained public life.” Implicit in his understanding of objectivity is a process-relational metaphysics. Facts are facts because the measurements from which they derive stand firmer than other statements against objections arising from their community of origin. Knowledge, as Matt described per an aesthetic ontology, consists of appearances all the way down. There is no final, gleaming jewel of Truth at the core of the Universe that we are to extract and possess! Rather, in a Pluriverse, “Truth” is always contingent; partial; situated. Moreover, it is multi-faceted, necessitating (until, perhaps, a more synthetic means of communicating arises) constant translation across the different streams of knowing (e.g. poetic, religious, etc.).

In the quest to realize a Cosmopoetics, the central question one must ask—I think—is: what does it feel like? The profuseness of my post this module expresses the freedom I have progressively grown into over the course of this semester as we make our process-relational descent. What does it feel like to live into a process-relational metaphysics? For me, this means no longer being so stressed out when I read philosophy, or when I go about learning anything for that matter. Released from the illusion of objective Truth as Neutral, I can trust that my partial perspective is enough, that Knowledge is not something I am to conclusively uncover and possess (and maintain, in competition against other perspectives). Rather than fear exposing my thinking to others, I can look forward to and genuinely engage with others, knowing that my partial perspective is always informed by the metamorphic field and enriched by entangling with the perspectives of others. I have nothing to hide, nothing to lose, for everything I am is forged in relationship anyhow! Each of us possesses a unique vantage point, a unique jewel never to be repeated. We are all little bubbles of seafoam, sparking forth to shine out a never-to-be-repeated perspective. What a gift to be in philosophical dialogue! To be in community in general!

What does it feel like? It feels like much more than I wish to take any more of your precious time describing. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, Latour’s suspenseful (and hilarious) prose had the aestheticizing effect he calls us ourselves to create. Suffice it to say that I feel mobilized, broken of the spell of Providence. If Gaia is sensitive, fragile, “touchy,” we must take care. I have begun to see the World (I still like the word Nature, especially if we extend Culture to all other forms of actual occasions) with new eyes. Enjoined back with “the family of things,” I feel like Aurora awakened, wiping away slumber crust, like when, in “Sleeping Beauty, all the servants in the palace, until then passive and inert, awoke from their sleep, yawning and began to move frenetically about — the dwarves and the clock, the trees in the garden and also the knobs on the doors. The humblest accessories henceforth play a role, as if there were no more distinctions between the main characters and the extras” (93).

Latour’s comparison of re-enchantment, of realizing the animation of the World (and, consequently, a partial de-animation of the ratiocentric human identity) with Sleeping Beauty was especially profound for me; it was the fairytale I connected most intimately with during a period of self-discovery and artistic transmutation. In 2016 I underwent a rite of passage in the process of making my capstone film, Areté Already, a project I consider to be the most mature example of my creative life and thought thus far. Through it I sought to ritualistically enact a movement from disenchantment to re-enchantment. My life has never been the same since. Eventually I will write more about it.

I spent the last weekend alone, saturated with Latour’s ideas, and went to Point Reyes where I had experiences that contributed more to the question, “what does it feel like?”  Below you will find a video wherein I express those feelings as I recorded them in my journal during my time there.

Much love,
Ashton

References

Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia. Medford: Polity Press.