This paper puts forward a new way of thinking about objects, worlds, and events. The philosophical contribution of the paper pivots around the idea that objects are force-full: smoldering furnaces of affects that are capable of creating, policing, and destroying the very contours of existence. The paper begins with a problem, which is how to account for objects, worlds, and events outside of human consciousness or ‘in-themselves’. It answers by constructing an ‘evental geography’ from the ontologies of Martin Heidegger, Alain Badiou, and Graham Harman. A ‘geo-event’ names the transformation of a world – from galaxies to nation states to ecosystems – by ‘inexistent’ objects and the forces they unleash. The paper is situated at the busy crossroads of (object-oriented) philosophy, non-representational theory, and actor-network theory.
Violent conditions burn in the background of daily life. Consider the slow wounds of ecological violence, the crumbling cityscapes of austerity, or the mental trauma inflicted by capitalism. In this paper, we provide an account for understanding violence in and through conditions, drawing on the work of Johan Galtung and Gilles Deleuze in particular. Violent conditions are not the property of individuals or monolithic structures: they are the existential climates by which localized subjects and worlds condense into being. In making this argument, we not only advance scholarship on the geographies of violence, but also make a sustained case for how and why condition is an important social, political, and ontological heuristic. Our examination is framed by unearthing the complex conditions and discontents of capitalism. Violent conditions forcefully constrain, traumatize, and poison, the very resources of our becoming. Accordingly, we provide a map for exploring the geographies of violent conditions across four interrelated sections. (1) The Virtual, (2) Truncated Life, (3) Time, (4) Common Sense. Collectively, these explain how violence is embedded in the flesh and bones of our worlds. The paper finishes by discussing the injustices of being and the possibilities for peace.
This paper critically assesses the CIA's drone program and proposes that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is driving an increasingly paramilitarized U.S. national security strategy. The paper suggests that large-scale ground wars are being eclipsed by fleets of weaponized drones capable of targeted killings across the planet. Evidence for this shift is found in key security documents that mobilize an amorphous war against vaguely defined al-Qa'ida "affiliates". This is further legitimized by the White House's presentation of drone warfare as a bureaucratic task managed by a "disposition matrix". Such abstract narratives are challenged through the voices of people living in the tribal areas of Pakistan. What I call the Predator Empire names the biopolitical power that catalogues and eliminates threatening "patterns of life". This permanent war is enabled by a topological spatial power that folds the environments of the "affiliate" into the surveillance machinery of the Homeland.
In this paper we construct an object-oriented approach to power and politics. Building on the work of Graham Harman, we argue that objects are engines of power, able to fully shape the contours of existence through the production of difference and affectivity in the world. We present four key points to underpin our argument. First, we define an object by expanding on the Heideggerian idea that objects are split between their 'present qualities' and 'absent qualities' . Second, we discuss why objects are irreducible to scientific naturalism or social relativism. Third, we contend that the world is 'policed' by objects that act as phenomenological viruses. And finally, we explain that such policing is never exhaustive and autonomous forces are constitutive of new commons. We conclude that a speculative metaphysics is vital for building new geographic understandings of objects and power, and a politics of action -one brick at a time.
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