Flat Ontology

Contemporary geographical thought is constrained by a political economic imagination rooted in binarism, which is exemplified in debates surrounding neoliberalism. Neoliberal proponents call for decentralization and increased capital flows, while Marxists respond by pairing centralization with capitalism’s abrogation. The latter view considers hierarchy necessary, a position that promotes authority and regards horizontal politics as propitious to neoliberalism. Anarchism’s coupling of decentralization with anti-capitalism is dismissed because Marxism cannot accommodate the processuality of prefigurative politics. Marxism demands a revolution with a masterplan, considering horizontality a future objective. Such a temporality ignores the insurrectionary possibilities of the present and implies a politics of waiting. The spatial implications of centralized hierarchy are also questionable, employing a vertical ontology, wherein horizontal organization is deemed inappropriate when ‘jumping scales’. Yet scale represents both a theoretical dis-traction from grounded everyday particularities and a ‘master-signifier’ by providing a point de capiton, or anchoring point, that rests on the exclusion of unconsciousness–the knowledge that is not known¬. Thus the point de capiton is the (Archimedean) point at which an essentialist illusion of fixed meaning is created, as scale is unconscious of geography’s ‘hidden enfolded immensities’. The discourse of scale accordingly dismisses the openness of rhizomic politics by predetermining the political as an arborescent register. Yet the inevitable terra incognita that scalar hierarchies produce becomes a powerful resource for the oppressed, which is why anarchist direct action often proceeds outside of authority’s view. A flat ontology has significant resonance with anarchism, imparting that politics should operate horizontally rather than vertically. This ontological shift suggests that we need not wait for the emergence of a ‘greater’ class-consciousness, as one can immediately disengage capitalism by reorienting economic landscapes in alternative ways. Consequently, a human geography without hierarchy gains significant traction when we reject scale and embrace an anarchist flat ontology.

This essay differentiates between various branches of post-human scholarship as they relate to issues of colonial inequality, social action and politics. Through their critique of human exceptionalism, through their recognition of the vibrancy of matter, and in their potential connections with politically engaged scholarship, certain lines of post-humanist thought stand to make important contributions to archaeologies of long-term and colonial Indigenous history. I argue that these qualities offer nuanced perspectives on the plural colonial past and present of New England (northeastern North America). I explore the prospects for a selectively post-human and pragmatic archaeology in connection with recent debates over stone landscapes. This approach makes room for various stakeholder narratives, finding possible common ground in a shared human condition between stakeholders, i.e. subject to 'earth flows and lively stone'. Keywords post-humanism; New Materialism; pragmatism; flat ontology; postcolonialism; archaeologies of colonialism; Native North America. .. if we waited long enough, if we could observe planetary dynamics at geological time scales, the rocks and mountains which define the most stable and durable traits of our reality would dissolve into the great underground lava flows of which they are but temporary hardenings DeLanda (1995, 8).

Learning to account for material formation as 'embodied and embedded, relational and affective' figurations amounts to nothing less than an ethical project. This paper speculates on the agentic status of material arrangements to address a certain impasse yet to be overcome in the productive understanding of the built environment. In its central parts, it respectively revisits two favorite clichés of architectural theory—the Foucauldian dispositif (apparatus) and the Deleuzo-Guattarian agencement (assemblage). Therein I will reclaim their different conceptions of arrangements with the aim to outline where architectural theory could advance a radically more productive understanding of the built environment. The paper here proposes a tactical alliance with the flat, monist, and process-ontological angles of new materialist perspectives. Proposing that there is a clear project waiting for post-critical theory, the paper concludes with some consideration on how architectural theory could affirm this new theoretical agenda.

Etica & Politica, n. 23, vol. 3, 2021, pp. 403-423.
http://www2.units.it/etica/
This paper aims at showing the consequences of Bruno Latour's endorsement of the anti-holist, "flat" ontology (an ontology that denies that difference in scale is an ontological difference) shared by many speculative realists. While this assumption presents notorious problems on the political side, it will be shown to have explicative and pragmatic potential when it comes to political ecology. After exploring his treatment of the concept of scale, which draws on Gabriel Tarde's monadological sociology, Latour's radical democraticism, for which scale depends only on the number of connections and "alliances" an actor is able to put into existence, will be compared to Timothy Morton's hyperobjects hypotheses, another ecology based on a peculiar treatment of the notion of scale, in order to show the advantages and the potential of Latour's ecology of fragility. The aim of Latour's politics is the composition of a common world, but this composition has no superior guarantor, and even Gaia, the holistic entity par excellence, cannot be brought into existence without an assembly of allies that Latour compares to a war declaration.

O presente artigo tem como proposta discutir o estatuto de uma ontologia plana para colocá-la em funcionamento no campo da comunicação. Para isso, revisamos o realismo especulativo de Levi Bryant e o perspectivismo de Eduardo Viveiros de Castro e comparamos a maneira diferente que cada um propõe para se achatar o plano ontológico. A título de exemplificação de como funciona uma ontologia plana, analisamos o filme Mistérios e paixões, do diretor David Cronenberg. Ao fim, esboçamos algumas consequências epistemológicas que uma planificação ontológica opera no campo da comunicação.Palavras-chave: Comunicação. Ontologia plana. Epistemologia. Perspectivismo. Cinema.

This paper aims to explore the spectacular forms of life in the digital environments and their ontological dimensions, by calling such conditions as ‘an ethics of flatness.’ What follows is an in-depth analysis of the Japanese experimental art collective known as teamLab (2001-current), which can be subdivided into three stages. The first is a survey of teamLab’s art historical contexts. teamLab represents a generation that has undergone a series of events which include the economic rise and downfall of the postwar Japan, and natural/social disasters such as earthquakes and the subway gas attack in the 1990s. Second, by analyzing the select works of teamLab made in the last ten years, this paper claims that their work prompts an unstable sense of community. Third, this paper proposes a theoretical framework with which to explore a world of flatness without being subjugated by its negative connotations. Bringing forth such a framework accompanies the following set of discourses: the concept of body raised by Baruch Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze, a new materialist approach to the world of experience by John Frow and Yuk Hui, and theories of the spectacle raised by Jean Baudrillard and Jean-Luc Nancy that read the Debordian idea against the grain.

The last 20 years have witnessed a deepening of the imbrication between capital and the university. This paper seeks to map one point at which this binding occurs: in critical theory. Recently scholars in strategic management have turned to processual and relational ontologies in an attempt to reimagine the logics of profit, value, and growth. These same ontologies have appealed to critical geographers as a means of reconceiving space as unfixed. Drawing on a case study of Deleuze’s appropriation in management literature, I show how such ontologies presuppose a vitalism that necessarily reproduces and obscures the structures of exploitation.

This essay argues for the diversity and promise of posthuman approaches in archaeology by dispelling blanket critiques, by differentiating between distinct lines of post- anthropocentric thought and by pointing to parallels between Posthumanism and collaborative Indigenous archaeologies. It begins by arguing that symmetrical archaeology is but one part of the diverse body of thought labelled ‘posthuman’. Next, it explores broader posthuman engagements with political issues relevant for collaborative Indigenous archaeologies, particularly concerns regarding under- represented groups in the field. Finally, it identifies flat ontologies as key components of posthuman approaches, clarifying what this term means for different lines of post- anthropocentric thought and briefly considering how the concept of flatness compares with Indigenous metaphysics.

Th is article critiques assumptions made by urban anthropologists and other scholars of cities, focusing on currently fashionable theories of infrastructure , materiality, and complexity. It problematizes how scholarship informed by actor-network theory, assemblage theory and other varieties of (post)postmodernism uses morphological optics and metaphors to represent social life, the material world, and existence itself as necessarily " flat, " " complex " or " fuzzy. " As a corrective, it proposes reorienting our social morphologies with reference to a Marxist notion of infrastructure, founded on a dynamic understanding of the relationship between determining economic base and determined superstructure. It constructs its theoretical edifice with reference to the remaking of post-1945 Warsaw as a socialist city through property expropriation and monumental architectural and planning works, and post-1989 attempts to unmake its socialist character through property reprivatization and unplanning.

Recension de Fields of Sense & Pourquoi le monde n'existe pas de Markus Gabriel, via le concept de "libéralisme métaphysique" développé par Peter Wolfendale dans Object-Oriented-Philosophy, The Noumenon's New Clothes.
Sont également discutés Graham Harman (L'Objet Quadruple), Tristan Garcia (Forme et Objet) et Bruno Latour (Enquête sur les modes d'existence)
https://www.cairn.info/revue-critique-2015-10-p-793.htm

Once again, the monthly opening of the Insignificants exhibition series takes place in virtual space due to COVID-19. Please visit https://speculativehub.wordpress.com/nonetheless/ for Insignificants in May (titled Nonetheless) and https://speculativehub.wordpress.com/about-insignificants/ for previous exhibitions in the series.

O presente artigo tem como proposta discutir o estatuto de uma ontologia plana para colocá-la em funcionamento no campo da comunicação. Para isso, revisamos o realismo especulativo de Levi Bryant e o perspectivismo de Eduardo Viveiros de Castro e comparamos a maneira diferente que cada um propõe para se achatar o plano ontológico. A título de exemplificação de como funciona uma ontologia plana, analisamos o filme Mistérios e paixões, do diretor David Cronenberg. Ao fim, esboçamos algumas consequências epistemológicas que uma planificação ontológica opera no campo da comunicação.Palavras-chave: Comunicação. Ontologia plana. Epistemologia. Perspectivismo. Cinema.

La operación crítica que se propone realizar aquí consiste en un intento de elucidar la ontología del cuerpo implicada en el desarrollo de la historia y la construcción del mundo de la novela Ygdrasil, de Jorge Baradit. Esta indagación tomará como punto de partida la relación entre el cuerpo y la mente en el mundo ficcional de la novela, cuestión que llevará a plantearse la pregunta por la ontología general de dicho mundo. En este punto de partida ya aparece un problema que se presenta como una aparente antinomia. La relación entre el cuerpo y la mente es ambigua en Ygdrasil. Por un lado el mundo del relato supone una ontología plana en donde no existen diferencias de naturaleza entre diferentes regiones o tipos de entes, pero por otro lado persiste una diferencia importante entre cuerpo y mente –o “alma”, de acuerdo con el vocabulario de la novela- que es condición de posibilidad de muchas de las situaciones que se narran. La clave para elucidar la determinación del concepto de cuerpo en el mundo de la novela depende de la mediación de esta antinomia.

The present text discusses Bronze Age rock art as an active and integrated materiality, entangled in social relations rather than be- ing a passive reflection of ideology or cosmology. A key tenet is that rock art imagery has the potential to incite actions and to affect the course of events. The main focus of the study is set on rock art along the former shoreline of the Mälaren bay in eastern central Sweden. This area comprises one of the most varied and dense clusters of Bronze Age rock art in southern Scandinavia, situated on the northern perimeter of the core area of the southern tradition. The in-between location between the northern and southern traditions of rock art implies a wider social context to the development in the area. It is suggested that the imagery emerged in concert with the shifting relations between the maritime-oriented individuals and groups of varying traditions and life-styles that moved about in the Mälaren bay. By emphasising social complexity and hybridisation, processes in which rock art took part, it is possible to bypass some of the binary thinking that has plagued rock-art research (e.g. real/imaginary, mobile/sedentary, Bronze Age/Neolithic, ritual/social). In this perspective, the imagery is also allowed to contribute to our understanding of this period in- stead of merely reflecting our pre-understandings of the Bronze Age in general.

In order to discuss potential agentive aspects of rock art, the traditional iconographic perspective of imagery as vehicles for meaning or symbolism is displaced in favour of a greater concern with what imagery in its material form actually does. The study departs from a relational ontology that focuses on the material aspects of the production, visual culture and how sites and panels progress over time. In this perspective, rock art is thus not only considered a representation of reality, but as ‘material articula- tions’ — something between materiality and practice. Instead of agency, the animacy of the imagery is emphasised, inspired by a perspectivist line of thought. It is argued that the sympathetic and apotropaic magic of the rock art over time came to encompass other, unintended effects, due to the hybrid social developments in the Mälaren bay area.

In order to circumvent the interpretative dilemma of symbolic polysemy, the rock art is analysed in terms of visual modes of material articulation. This means identifying and studying different manners of visual expression, the different ways in which images are produced and how they relate to other motifs, breaking against praxis, and in general, recognising how motifs by a special design, or set in a particular context, may incite further engagements. Such instances are examined with the aid of horizontal stratigraphy, supported by three-dimensional digital technique, in order to follow e.g. displacements in stylistic variability, alterations, re-cuts, superimpositions and how the motifs relate to the texture of the rock. Three examples of different visual modes are discussed: size and depth of motifs, ‘incomplete’ motifs and the practice of stacking motifs in columns. It is suggested that some of the seemingly incomplete or unfinished motifs actually may have been deliberately made vague and diffuse in order to encourage subsequent actions and reflection among the beholders. By sequencing the progression of two panels containing stacked motifs (Boglösa 73 and 131), it is also argued that the traditional arrangement has been disrupted and tampered with, which indicates that the visual expressions in the research area cannot be attributed to one single group, one culture or one cosmology. On the contrary, the study suggests that the imagery of the rock panels probably would have been developed in a ‘dialogue’ between different individuals or groups. The study also demonstrates how a few pecked motifs, intentionally or not, initiated a process of making more rock art in the area, which also illustrates how images can indeed both instigate action and be integrated actants in social process.

Key words: rock art, Bronze Age, materiality, animacy, visual culture.

Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology has employed a variant of occasionalist causation since 2002, with sensual objects acting as the mediators of causation between real objects. While the mechanism for living beings creating sensual objects is clear, how nonliving objects generate sensual objects is not. This essay sets out an interpretation of occasionalism where the mediating agency of nonliving contact is the virtual particles of nominally empty space. Since living, conscious, real objects need to hold sensual objects as sub-components, but nonliving objects do not, this leads to an explanation of why consciousness, in Object-Oriented Ontology, might be described as doubly withdrawn: a sensual sub-component of a withdrawn real object.

Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology has employed a variant of occasionalist causation since 2002, with sensual objects acting as the mediators of causation between real objects. While the mechanism for living beings creating sensual objects is clear, how nonliving objects generate sensual objects is not. This essay sets out an interpretation of occasionalism where the mediating agency of nonliving contact is the virtual particles of nominally empty space. Since living, conscious, real objects need to hold sensual objects as sub-components, but nonliving objects do not, this leads to an explanation of why consciousness, in Object-Oriented Ontology, might be described as doubly withdrawn: a sensual sub-component of a withdrawn real object.

Аннотация. Этот текст – попытка разработки неантропоцентристской педагоги-
ки. В её рамках развивается тезис о необходимости переомысления онтологии образова-
ния, имплицированной антропоцентристским способом мышления о социальном. Посред-
ством обращения к постгуманизму, исследованиям науки и технологий (STS – science and
technology studies), к акторно-сетевой теории (АNТ) предлагается такой тип мышления
об образовательной онтологии, который позволяет показать относительность, слож-
ность и гибридность акторов, вписанных в самый базовый (и не только) уровень существо-
вания образования.

Abstract. This text is an attempt to develop a non-anthropocentric pedagogy of things, under which a thesis is put up on the necessity of thinking over the education implied by the anthropocentric way of thinking about what is social. By the means of references to posthumanism, social studies on science and technology and, in particular, to the theory of an actor-network, a way of thinking about the educational ontology was proposed, allowing to appreciate the relativity, complexity and hybridity of actors inscribed in the most basic level of (not only) educational existence.

Through a multi-sited physical and virtual ethnography of Chinese migrant
women’s entrepreneurship in Taiwan, this paper illuminates the role of
digital migrant entrepreneurship in the making of globalisation. In the digital age of gendered migrant entrepreneurship, it challenges the long-lasting dichotomy between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ globalisation and
contributes to the theoretical debate about migrant transnational
entrepreneurship, elucidating how capitalism and globalisation can take
multiple forms. Drawing on Chinese women’s migratory biographies and the commercial geographies of the objects they trade between China and
Taiwan, it shows how our global economic system is simultaneously forged by supply-chain capitalism and migrants’ digitalised petit capitalistic practices. Chinese migrant workers firstly manufacture goods whilst working for multinational companies in China, then, after marriage-migration, they commercialise the products in Taiwan via WeChat. Findings illustrate the link between ICTs, migrant entrepreneurship, gendered social networks, and border transgressions in shaping a mutable globalisation.

This article explores three questions pertaining to ethics and flat ontology. First, what type of ethics might be appropriate to facilitating an inclusive ethics that acknowledges all interacting objects, not just the human, in the world. Second, by what method might a planning ethicist begin to achieve this understanding from a flat ontological perspective. Third, what, if anything, might a meta-ethical lens contribute to a flat ontological perspective. In addressing these questions, a type of assemblage theory called Onto-Cartography, developed by Bryant (2014), will be called on. Planning ethics are predominantly normative ethics concerned with producing a better world by articulating what ought to be done to achieve a desired future. Key here is who defines what is better and who benefits. Within vertical ontologies these are inevitably human actants. In contrast, meta-ethics is a type of ethics that seeks to comprehend the nature of ethical evaluations so as to determine how a particular ethical value position has emerged in a particular context before attempting to establish what ought to be done. Our application of onto-cartography will focus on explaining from the perspectives of flat ontology how specific assemblages in their particular contexts generate their ethical value positions. We also briefly consider if, and how, meta-ethical concerns contribute to such perspectives. We conclude with a discussion as to how to deal with the necessary role of human actants to give meaning and value to ethics and what this implies for flat ontology.

This article considers everyday experience as a defining condition of craft, which has largely escaped scholarly attention. Responding to a discursive moment in craft history in which its theoretical stance as the “other” of art and industry has been thoroughly explored, I turn to philosophical sources of aesthetic theory that encompass
the experience of ordinary making. I argue that the flat ontologies put forth by New Materialism, which can be related to older ideas in John Dewey and Indigenous thought, offer a return to a less fragmented creative landscape in which craft is the ground for all creative practice.
Drawing on art historical examinations of the counterculture and neo-avant garde movement Fluxus, I show how flattened aesthetic frameworks, what I call flat aesthetics, recognize the ordinary experience of making in relational terms, as part of a dynamic network of agential forces. I conclude by speculating that understanding everyday craft in this way holds potential to renew its relevance and pertinence to the ethical pursuit of "the good life."

The main purpose of sustainable interaction design is to meet global challenges in society, the economy, and the environment to an extent that goes beyond the well-being of human beings and attempts to promote the well-being of all beings. This paper examines the relationship between sustainable interaction design and digital humanism. Interactions as objects of design could/should be characterized as able to afford sustainable behavior for the following reasons: their very existence is sustainable, they are designed to evoke sustainability, or they are part of a sustainable system. Humanity needs to realize that every single human being is part of the humanitarian and ecological crisis. Through sustainable interaction design, we could really help users feel that they are part of the solution and that their actions can truly change lives. We seek answers related to the design, materiality, and contribution of sustainable interactions in shaping more humane interfaces.

Neste ensaio, Tristan Garcia desenvolve o primeiro principio da súa ontoloxía plana: deixar que todas as cousas o sexan de igual xeito, concibir o “algo” como o ser máis feble que poida ser concibido. O interese dunha ontoloxía coma esa é permitir elaborar unha metafísica para deixar atrás o construtivismo e o relativismo da tardomodernidade, unha metafísica que permita á vez a orde dos obxectos e impida a súa absolutización.

“Propoño, daquela, unha ontoloxía e unha metafísica nin clásica nin moderna, tampouco posmoderna, que reclasifique os obxectos sen xerarquizalos en absoluto, que abstraia as cousas sen deixar que varíen unhas en relación coas outras: non son absolutista, tampouco relativista. Tento facer xogar, mediante o pensamento, a planitude das cousas contra a orde dos obxectos e a orde dos obxectos contra a planitude das cousas.

A planitude do mundo serve, entón, de liña de medida para encontrar o senso das diferenzas, das relacións de orde e da clasificación dos obxectos no mundo. Mais a orde de clasificación e de acumulación, de progreso dos obxectos pode ser en todo momento curtocircuitada pola planitude do: “calquera cousa é igualmente algo”, o que permite á vez a orde dos obxectos e impide a súa absolutización.”

Interésalle levar ata o final a liberalidade e o igualitarismo ontolóxicos latentes na época moderna. A súa proposta, como parte do que denomina as ontoloxías liberais, entre as que sitúa os neomeinonxianos, a OOO de Graham Harman, o realismo modal e tamén o hipercaos de Quentin Meillassoux, o múltiple de Alain Badiou e o irreducionismo de Bruno Latour, consiste en levantar acta do fracaso da concepción dun ser máximo, dun ser tan forte que incluiría a súa propia negación, para para poder rexeitar así a renuncia moderna.