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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2017

Object Oriented Ontology's Performativity Paradox: writing from a zero-person perspective

Résumé

Speculative realism's and object oriented ontology's [here we will mainly refer to Graham Harman's] projects are caught in a performative contradiction. They intend to reach a zero-person perspective ("the essence or intrinsic nature of any entity apart from any access we might have to it" (2005, p.253), but at least the author is anything but a person; they are dealing with the objects' essence, but the essence is always receding, and they do not want to stick to a form of negative ontology. Of course, Graham Harman is aware of this contradiction, and calls for oblique accesses to the objects' essence. However, we would like to examine the various performative strategies to sidestep this contradiction. 1/ One possibility would be to try to speak from the object, independently of human perception or frames. It is partly what Francis Ponge tries to accomplish in The Voice of Things. However, as Derrida clearly demonstrated, Ponge's texts are signed up, and if each text is singular, the singularity rather lies in Ponge than in the object itself. 2/ A second possibility, praised by Harman, is Alphonso Lingis's "carnal phenomenology", with whom we "encounter the lascivious warmth of the sun and air and the mastery of strange flashes at midnight" (Harman, 2005, p.2). This strategy appeals to how we contact the sensual world, the allures, and is therefore more adapted for sensual objects. However, of course, with Lingis human affectivity is central to the research endeavour. 3/ A third possibility might be indicated by Matthieu Brosseau's poetry. This French poet writes from the "central animal", and the "çaction", "the conscience of the possibility of intertwining sutures, those which tie the acting silence with the holed absence of the passived self." Self is rendered passive to let "him as an object" write. However the perspective is of somewhere between the first and he third person, not the zero-person Harman is referring to. 4/ A fourth possibility would be Latour (2013)'s. By multiplying the modes of existence through which the object is described, each social-relational perspective is relativized. However, the objects is known through its effects inside the various modes' realms, not per se. The aim of this proposal is to propose a close look at Graham Harman's own strategy, in regard to the ones listed above. We will draw on his text about the Dutch East India Company (VOC) (Harman, 2016), which represents one of his very rare example of actually studying an object. He makes many moves in search of a zero-person perspective. For instance, he takes an object he has personally no direct contact with (the organization died more than 120 years ago). He did not really choose the object, the object was given to him by a text from Leibniz. In his depiction, he shows no personal affects or personal perspective. The human beings' actions, up to those of Governor-General Coen are deemphasized, in favor of the context and of symbioses, etc. But do we have a zero-person perspective on the object, or rather an author defending a very personal theory?

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Philosophie
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Dates et versions

hal-01570967 , version 1 (01-08-2017)

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  • HAL Id : hal-01570967 , version 1

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Jean-Luc Moriceau. Object Oriented Ontology's Performativity Paradox: writing from a zero-person perspective. CMS 2017 : The 10th Critical Management Studies Conference. "Time for another revolution?", Jul 2017, Liverpool, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-01570967⟩
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