It’s come to my attention that, in my already-published article, and soon-to-be-published book, Post-Cinematic Affect, I appropriated my colleague Jonathan Flatley’s notion of “affective mapping” (which is indeed even the title of his fine book) without citing him. Now, my entire method of writing is based upon appropriating and hijacking textual material as widely as possible. But I always try to acknowledge my sources and points of indebtedness. And in this instance, I egregiously failed to do so. So let me offer my profound apologies to Jonathan, and alert my own readers to the deep extent to which my own work has been informed and affected by his.
Category: Personal
Whitehead and Levinas
An essay of mine, “Self-enjoyment and Concern: On Whitehead and Levinas,” has just been published in the new volume Beyond Metaphysics?: Explorations in Alfred North Whitehead s Late Thought, edited by Roland Faber, Brian G. Henning, and Clinton Combs. Since the price of the volume is beyond ridiculous (US$101 list and at Amazon, or marked down to US$67.68 at Barnes and Noble), I am making my own essay available here (pdf).
There’s lots of good stuff in the volume aside from my essay, I wish it were all available at a more reasonable price.
I feel that my own essay is a bit underdeveloped; there is much more to be said about Levinas than the brief and cursory discussion I offer here; but, for what it’s worth, I stand by my basic argument.
Belorussian translation
My posting on Kathryn Bigelow has now been translated into Belorussian by Patricia Clausnitzer. I am honored, as my words have never been translated into this language before.
The Universe of Things
“The Universe of Things,” my talk at last month’s Object-Oriented Ontology symposium, is available in audio-recorded format, together with all the other talks, here. (Direct mp3 link).
However, I have since revised the talk; I am much happier with the text as it now stands, and can be downloaded here (pdf).
New Writings
I still need to revise, slightly at least, the talk I gave at the Object-Oriented Ontology symposium. That is why I have not posted it here yet.
However, my talk at the Debt conference is available here (pdf).
Additional note: the papers from the Debt conference are supposed to be published as an edited volume. But according to the schedule that the conference participants were given, publication will not occur until January 2013 (!!!). This is because the schedule involves endless rounds of reviews and revisions, plus the fact that the eventual publisher (Indiana University Press) works at a glacially slow pace. This seems completely, outrageously unconscionable to me — there is absolutely no excuse, either for the sclerotic and overly baroque review process, or for a press that processes books at so slow a speed, it is as if the technologies of the last thirty years didn’t exist. So I have decided, in protest, to withhold my text from this volume (just as I have already started the practice of withholding texts from volumes that are published at outrageously high prices).
The fact is, that many academics (especially younger academics) are compelled to publish work under ridiculous conditions (taking way too long to appear in print, or appearing in volumes that nobody can afford) because they have to — they need such publications on their Vita in order to get tenure or promotion, or to survive in academia at all. However, I am in a position where I can afford to neglect such considerations. Which is why I have decided, as has been the case several times before, to simply publish the article in question on my website, list it in my Vita as an “electronic publication,” and refuse to collaborate with a decrepit academic publishing system. If I don’t do this, who will? And if nobody does this, how will the system ever change?
Open Access
When I was in Denmark last month, I was interviewed by Hans Emborg Bünemannon on the topic of open access publishing for academic research. The article that resulted from the interview is here.
Object-Oriented Ontology Symposium
I will be speaking in Atlanta on Friday, in the Object-Oriented Ontology Symposium, alongside (among others)Â Graham Harman, Levi Bryant, and Ian Bogost. The title of my talk is “The Universe of Things”; unfortunately I haven’t quite finished writing it yet. Should be fun, though. I will post the text of my own talk here after the conference.
Post-Cinematic Affect
The new issue (14.1) of the open-access journal Film-Philosophy is now online.
Featured in this issue as an “extended article” (it comes out to 100 pages!) is my latest: “Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales.”
The article is freely available for download; it comprises about two thirds of my forthcoming book Post-Cinematic Affect, appearing sometime later this year from Zero Books. (The book version will include two additional chapters: one on Neveldine/Taylor’s Gamer, and a general conclusion).
Lecture on GAMER
I will be at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, later this week, to give a talk:
“Some Years From This Exact Moment”: Neveldine/Taylor’s Gamer and the Control Society
Thursday, February 18, 7 pm, Holt Center, Trinity University.
For more information, see http://transmedia.trinity.edu
Peter Watts alert
Peter Watts is a brilliant science fiction writer — I have written about all four of his novels on this blog (Starfish, Maelstrom, Behemoth, and (at greatest length) Blindsight).
Earlier this week, returning home to Canada from the US, Watts was assaulted for no good reason by US Homeland Security guards at the border, and charged with a felony for supposedly assaulting a Federal officer. Cory Doctorow has the whole story at BoingBoing, here. Watts’ own account of the incident is here.
Watts was released on bail, and is back home in Toronto, but he needs money for his legal defense. I am going to make a contribution, and I urge all everyone reading this to do likewise. (There are details on how to contribute on the BoingBoing page I cited already).
This is something that could happen to anybody, given how security mania connected with the so-called “war on terror” has become so completely excessive and out of control. But it sort of hits home when I see this happening to somebody whose work I greatly admire. (I do not know Watts personally, though I exchanged email messages with him once).