Monday, January 27, 2014

The Pluralism Wars!

For whatever reason, I am doing my best to keep up with all the links of The Pluralism Wars!™. What follows is mostly links, which I do think are interesting.  I want to make a couple of points. (1) If you are writing about this and I missed it, sorry. Please let me know. (2) For a discussion about pluralism, the participants at the blog level are remarkably non-pluralistic in character. We are almost all men, and white, as far as I can tell. The participants are mostly trained in philosophy or anthropology, and we also represent only a few countries. I find this bothersome, and worth noting.


The Pluralism Wars!™,  is my mock name, because of the earlier so-called Derrida Wars (and process vs. object wars, and the Theory's Empire wars, fought by the partisans of long sundays and valves. Academically blogging is weird, and silly). And of course, those wars are references to other wars (perhaps, in particular, the so-called science war). But as Latour has put it, "Qui vis pacem…declare war."Okay, to the links, in order of posting, as best as I am able:

Preamble: Latour, "What Is the Recommended Dose of Ontological Pluralism for a Safe Anthropological Diplomacy?"


Struggle Forever, "The Value of a Turn."
Larval Subjects, "Pluralism and Realism"
Circling Squares, "Ontological Conflicts, Political Pluralism"
Critical Animal, "Pluralism and Realism: A Jamesian Rejoinder"
Larval Subjects, "More Remarks on Pluralism: First World Philosophies"
Struggle Forever, "Pluralism, Ontology, and Composing a Common World"
Circling Squares, "Cosmopolitics and Blasphemy"
After Nature, "Orientational Realism"
Agent Swarm, "Pluralism, Historicity, and Realism", "Imaginary Pluralism and Secondhand Realism", "Latour on Invisible Entities", "Latour's Pluralism of Entities"
Footnotes 2 Plato, "Life in the Pluriverse"
Larval Subjects, "Different Senses of Pluralism and Ontology"
Agent Swarm, - "Pluralism is not relativism" One, Two, Three, Four.
Enemy Industry, "Pluralism, Good Manners, and the Idea of the Common World"
Struggle Forever, "Ontology Politics"
EDIT:
Footnotes 2 Plato, "Pluralism as the Choreography of Coexistence, with William James and Co."
Agent Swarm, "The Haunting Question of the Ontological Status of Ghosts"
Critical Fantasies, "Ian Hacking's Historical Ontology as a Realist Pluralism"
Synthetic Zero, "Background Ontology, Ecological Politics and Infrastructure"
Archive Fever, "Pluralism as Realism?"
Synthetic Zero, "Policing the real: the Pluralism Wars as a 'police action'"
EDIT:
Critical Animal, "Pluralism Wars: Strike Back Against the Empire"
EDIT:
Agent Swarm, "Pluralism is Not an Abstract Category"
EDIT:
Circling Squares, "Pluralism and Realism, a Second Attempt."
EDIT:
Larval Subjects, "A Tragic Pluralist Dialogue."
Circling Squares, "Morton's Hyperobjects and Pluralism"
Knowledge Ecology, "Three Types of Pluralism."
EDIT:
Circling Squares, "Reply to Levi on Pluralism, etc."
Intra-Being, "My Addition to the Discussion on Ontological Pluralism"

"In particular, I shall not forget that my side of the divide is still marked today not only by this epic story, but also, and perhaps more crucially, by its moral correlate: “thou shalt not regress.” Such a moral imperative confers another meaning on my decision to stand on the side I belong to. Indeed, there is some work to be done on this side. We can by addressing the moral imperative that mobilizes us, as it produces an obscure fear of being accused of regression as soon as we give any sign of betraying hard truth by indulging soft, illusory beliefs. [...]
Learning to smell the smoke is to acknowledge that we have learned the codes of our respective milieus: derisive remarks, knowing smiles, offhand judgments, often about somebody else, but gifted with the power to pervade and infect—to shape us as those who sneer and not among those who are sneered at." -Isabelle Stengers, Reclaiming Animism.


EDIT: When I use to do the Post of Links (which I should bring back), I use to post songs, too. I figure I should do that here. I some how feel that Amadou & Mariam's Sénégal Fast Food is entirely appropriate. It is a great jam, and if you haven't heard it before, I cannot suggest it enough.