Alejo Stark
Alejo Stark is an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah's Department of World Languages and Cultures.
His research explores the relations between science, art, and politics. It specifically situates itself at the intersection of Indigenous and Latin American cultural studies and the history and philosophy of science.
His research explores the relations between science, art, and politics. It specifically situates itself at the intersection of Indigenous and Latin American cultural studies and the history and philosophy of science.
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Palabras clave: Jacques Lezra; Marx; materialismo aleatorio; ciencia; Lucrecio.
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Abstract. In his book On the Nature of Marx’s Things Jacques Lezra inherits another Marx and another materialism. It is an aleatory materialism: a materialism of the dynamic contingency of Marx and his “things”. This “subterranean current” of aleatory materialism is excavated by Lezra in his swerve through the letters, notebooks, and “private notes” of a young Marx working on his doctorate thesis. Following Lezra’s necrophilological thread –which encounters Lucretius and his “things”– we find that, in a parallel fashion, Marx is also searching for a concept of science in his dissertation. This is what here is tentatively called a science of contingency. This science – though not in the usual disciplinary sense– opens the possibility of an alliance with Karen Barad’s performative materialism that displaces the humanism of the “new materialisms” by thinking alongside another science of contingency, also of a certain Lucretian inheritance, and which Marx did not get to think: quantum mechanics.
Keywords: Jacques Lezra; Marx; Aleatory Materialism; Science; Lucretius.
Abstract: The late-time cosmic acceleration of the universe is one of most profound mysteries of physical cosmology. What is at stake with this discovery is the following: either our universe is composed of some exotic "dark energy" which drives the dynamics of the acceleration or our general relativistic theory of gravity must be radically transformed. Clusters of galaxies, some of the largest gravitationally-bound objects in our universe containing hundreds of galaxies, have been fruitful sites from which to study the consequences of our cosmological models and the gravitational theory from which these models are derived. In this work, we derive and test a novel model that takes into account the effects of our accelerating universe at the scale of galaxy clusters. More specifically, the theoretical observable we work with in this dissertation is the escape velocity profile of galaxy clusters. Our model implies that in an accelerating universe, the escape velocity profile of galaxy clusters is lower than what is expected from a universe that is not accelerating. Put differently, if the universe is accelerating, galaxies confined to their clusters have an easier time escaping them. However, testing the implications of this model is difficult given that observations can only allow us to infer the projected escape velocity profiles. Here, we study how the observed profiles can be de-projected via a function that depends on the cluster velocity anisotropy profile. To that end, we also develop a novel approach to derive cluster velocity anisotropy profiles with joint dynamical and weak lensing data. We further show that our cosmology-dependent model of the escape velocity profile can be utilized to constrain cosmological models. In particular, with the Fisher matrix formalism we show that our theoretical observable has the capacity to set competitive constraints on relativistic cosmological models of the accelerating universe in the near future. Lastly, we drop the presupposition that general relativity is the only way to describe gravitational phenomena and develop a novel probe of gravity that utilizes the sensitivity of our theoretical observable to changes in the gravitational potential.
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Palabras clave: Jacques Lezra; Marx; materialismo aleatorio; ciencia; Lucrecio.
- - - -
Abstract. In his book On the Nature of Marx’s Things Jacques Lezra inherits another Marx and another materialism. It is an aleatory materialism: a materialism of the dynamic contingency of Marx and his “things”. This “subterranean current” of aleatory materialism is excavated by Lezra in his swerve through the letters, notebooks, and “private notes” of a young Marx working on his doctorate thesis. Following Lezra’s necrophilological thread –which encounters Lucretius and his “things”– we find that, in a parallel fashion, Marx is also searching for a concept of science in his dissertation. This is what here is tentatively called a science of contingency. This science – though not in the usual disciplinary sense– opens the possibility of an alliance with Karen Barad’s performative materialism that displaces the humanism of the “new materialisms” by thinking alongside another science of contingency, also of a certain Lucretian inheritance, and which Marx did not get to think: quantum mechanics.
Keywords: Jacques Lezra; Marx; Aleatory Materialism; Science; Lucretius.
Abstract: The late-time cosmic acceleration of the universe is one of most profound mysteries of physical cosmology. What is at stake with this discovery is the following: either our universe is composed of some exotic "dark energy" which drives the dynamics of the acceleration or our general relativistic theory of gravity must be radically transformed. Clusters of galaxies, some of the largest gravitationally-bound objects in our universe containing hundreds of galaxies, have been fruitful sites from which to study the consequences of our cosmological models and the gravitational theory from which these models are derived. In this work, we derive and test a novel model that takes into account the effects of our accelerating universe at the scale of galaxy clusters. More specifically, the theoretical observable we work with in this dissertation is the escape velocity profile of galaxy clusters. Our model implies that in an accelerating universe, the escape velocity profile of galaxy clusters is lower than what is expected from a universe that is not accelerating. Put differently, if the universe is accelerating, galaxies confined to their clusters have an easier time escaping them. However, testing the implications of this model is difficult given that observations can only allow us to infer the projected escape velocity profiles. Here, we study how the observed profiles can be de-projected via a function that depends on the cluster velocity anisotropy profile. To that end, we also develop a novel approach to derive cluster velocity anisotropy profiles with joint dynamical and weak lensing data. We further show that our cosmology-dependent model of the escape velocity profile can be utilized to constrain cosmological models. In particular, with the Fisher matrix formalism we show that our theoretical observable has the capacity to set competitive constraints on relativistic cosmological models of the accelerating universe in the near future. Lastly, we drop the presupposition that general relativity is the only way to describe gravitational phenomena and develop a novel probe of gravity that utilizes the sensitivity of our theoretical observable to changes in the gravitational potential.
Talk: “The right to not gestate: Ectogenetic technology, antiwork politics, and the abortion struggle.” April 7 at 5 pm (MLB 4th floor commons).
Workshop: “Revisiting the trajectory of ecofeminism, xenofeminism, and family abolition.” April 6 at 4 pm (RSVP to https://forms.gle/mHEd5EiwZC4MjZpQ9)
This essay was originally published in 1970 in the structuralist Argentine magazine Los Libros and has recently been republished in Malamud's Escritos-edited and introduced by Marcelo Starcenbaum. The communist philosopher and militant Mauricio Malamud was asked to comment on what had become at the time a key book within left academic circles: Oscar Varsavsky's book Science, politics and scientism (Ciencia, política y cientificismo). In this short polemical book published in 1969, Varsavsky, an Argentine chemist and mathematician, argued in favor of an anti-colonial and national "rebel science" which opposed the apolitical "scientism" of his scientific co-workers. The historical-political conjuncture was the dawn of the "golden age" of Argentine science-periodized by Varsavsky to be between the end of Perón's second presidency to the Onganía coup. This period was violently ended by the infamous 1966 "Night of the Long Batons." That night, just months after the coup, the federal police entered the buildings of the University of Buenos Aires and sovereignly suspended a long tradition of university-based political autonomy by brutalizing students, faculty, and staff, in particular, those in the "natural and exact sciences." Varsavsky's intervention in this conjuncture was to pose the question of the relationship between science and politics. Malamud argues that although Varsavsky's intervention was worth considering, the scientist posed the problem poorly. Through a detour via Althusser's distinction between historical and dialectical materialism as well through Bachelard's "Rationalist Materialism" Malamud deactivates the false opposition between "a scientism without politics" and "a politicism without science." At stake is the need to specify the means to correctly define the relationship between science and politics.
Audio recording by Rustbelt Abolition Radio. Transcription and introduction by Tatiana Oliveira. Translation by Alejo Stark.