Object-oriented ontology

Object-oriented ontology (OOO) is a metaphysicalmovement that rejects the privileging of human existenceover the existence of nonhuman objects.[1] Specifically,object-oriented ontology opposes the anthropocentrismof Immanuel Kant’s Copernican Revolution, whereby ob-jects are said to conform to the mind of the subject and,in turn, become products of human cognition.[2] In con-trast to Kant’s view, object-oriented philosophers main-tain that objects exist independently of human percep-tion and are not ontologically exhausted by their relationswith humans or other objects.[3] Thus, for object-orientedontologists, all relations, including those between nonhu-mans, distort their related objects in the same basic man-ner as human consciousness and exist on an equal footingwith one another.[4]

Object-oriented ontology is often viewed as a subset ofspeculative realism, a contemporary school of thoughtthat criticizes the post-Kantian reduction of philosophicalenquiry to a correlation between thought and being, suchthat the reality of anything outside of this correlation isunknowable.[5] Object-oriented ontology predates specu-lative realism, however, and makes distinct claims aboutthe nature and equality of object relations to which notall speculative realists agree. The term “object-orientedphilosophy” was officially coined by Graham Harman,the movement’s founder, in his 1999 doctoral dissertation“Tool-Being: Elements in a Theory of Objects.”[6] Sincethen, a number of theorists working in a variety of dis-ciplines have adapted Harman’s ideas, including philoso-phy professor Levi Bryant, literature and ecology scholarTimothy Morton, video game designer Ian Bogost, andmedievalists Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Eileen Joy. In2009, Bryant rephrased Harman’s original designation as“object-oriented ontology,” giving the movement its cur-rent name.

1 Founding of the movement

The term “object-oriented philosophy” was formallycoined by speculative philosopher Graham Harman in his1999 doctoral dissertation “Tool-Being: Elements in aTheory of Objects” (later revised and published as Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects), thoughhe had considered delivering an object-oriented talk at theUniversity of Toronto a year earlier, in 1998.[7] For Har-man, Heideggerian Zuhandenheit, or readiness-to-hand,refers to the withdrawal of objects from human percep-tion into a reality that cannot be manifested by prac-

tical or theoretical action.[8] Furthering this idea, Har-man contends that when objects withdraw in this way,they distance themselves from other objects, as well ashumans.[9] Resisting pragmatic interpretations of Hei-degger’s thought, then, Harman is able to propose anobject-oriented account of metaphysical substances.Following the publication of Harman’s early work, sev-eral scholars from varying fields began employing object-oriented principles in their own work. After encounter-ing speculative realism in the blogosphere, Collin Col-lege philosophy instructor Levi Bryant proposed a vol-ume of collected essays on the topic. Called The Spec-ulative Turn, the project involved Harman and Nick Sr-nicek as co-editors. While completing the compilation,Bryant began what he describes as “a very intense philo-sophical email exchange” with Harman, over the courseof which Bryant became convinced of the credibility ofobject-oriented thought.[10]

Other advocates for object-oriented ontology include lit-erature and ecology scholar Timothy Morton and videogame designer Ian Bogost. Morton became active in themovement after his book Ecology Without Nature wasfavorably compared to some aspects of object-orientedphilosophy.[11] Bogost, on the other hand, had read Har-man’s Tool-Being while finishing his doctoral dissertationat UCLA and subsequently applied object-oriented ideasto gaming, media, and technology studies.[12]

2 Basic principles

While object-oriented philosophers reach different con-clusions, they share common precepts, including a cri-tique of anthropocentrism and correlationism, a rejectionof philosophies that undermine or “overmine” objects,“preservation of finitude” and “withdrawal”.

2.1 Anthrodecentrism

The rejection of post-Kantian privileging of human exis-tence over the existence of nonhuman objects. Beginningwith Kant’s “Copernican revolution,” modern philoso-phers began articulating a transcendental anthropocen-trism, whereby objects are said to conform to the mindof the subject and, in turn, become products of humancognition.[2] In contrast to Kant’s view, object-orientedphilosophers maintain that objects exist independently ofhuman perception, and that nonhuman object relations

1

2 3 METAPHYSICS OF GRAHAM HARMAN

distort their related objects in the same fundamental man-ner as human consciousness. Thus, all object relations,human and nonhuman, are said to exist on equal ontolog-ical footing with one another.[4]

2.2 Critique of correlationism

Related to anthrodecentrism, object-oriented thinkersproblematize correlationism, which the French philoso-pher Quentin Meillassoux defines as “the idea accordingto which we only ever have access to the correlation be-tween thinking and being, and never to either term con-sidered apart from the other.”[13] Because object-orientedontology is a realist philosophy, it stands in contradis-tinction to the anti-realist trajectory of correlationism,which restricts philosophical understanding to the cor-relation of being with thought by disavowing any realityexternal to this correlation as inaccessible, and, in thisway, fails to escape the ontological reification of humanexperience.[14]

2.3 Rejection of undermining and “over-mining”

Object-oriented thought holds that there are two princi-pal strategies for devaluing the philosophical import ofobjects.[15] First, one can undermine objects by claim-ing that they are an effect or manifestation of a deeper,underlying substance or force.[16] Second, one can “over-mine” objects by either an idealism which holds that thereis nothing beneath what appears in the mind, or as in so-cial constructionism, by positing no independent realityoutside of language, discourse or power.[17][18] Object-oriented philosophy rejects both undermining and “over-mining”.

2.4 Preservation of finitude

Unlike other speculative realisms, object-oriented ontol-ogy maintains the concept of finitude, whereby relationto an object cannot be translated into direct and com-plete knowledge of an object.[19] Since all object rela-tions distort their related objects, every relation is saidto be an act of translation, with the caveat that no ob-ject can perfectly translate another object into its ownnomenclature.[20] Object-oriented ontology does not re-strict finitude to humanity, however, but extends it to allobjects as an inherent limitation of relationality.

2.5 Withdrawal

Object-oriented ontology holds that objects are indepen-dent not only of other objects, but also from the quali-ties they animate at any specific spatiotemporal location.

Accordingly, objects cannot be exhausted by their rela-tions with humans or other objects in theory or practice,meaning that the reality of objects is always present-at-hand.[21] The retainment by an object of a reality in ex-cess of any relation is known as withdrawal.

3 Metaphysics of GrahamHarman

In Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects,Graham Harman interprets the tool-analysis contained inMartin Heidegger’s Being and Time as inaugurating anontology of objects themselves, rather than the valoriza-tion of practical action or networks of signification.[22]According to Harman, Heideggerian zuhandenheit, orreadiness-to-hand, indicates the withdrawal of objectsfrom both practical and theoretical action, such that ob-jectcal reality cannot be exhausted by either practical us-age or theoretical investigation.[23] Harman further con-tends that objects withdraw not just from human interac-tion, but also from other objects. He maintains:

If the human perception of a house or a treeis forever haunted by some hidden surplus inthe things that never becomes present, the sameis true of the sheer causal interaction betweenrocks or raindrops. Even inanimate things onlyunlock each other’s realities to a minimal ex-tent, reducing one another to caricatures...evenif rocks are not sentient creatures, they neverencounter one another in their deepest being,but only as present-at-hand; it is only Heideg-ger’s confusion of two distinct senses of the as-structure that prevents this strange result frombeing accepted.[24]

From this, Harman concludes that the primary site ofontological investigation is objects and relations, insteadof the post-Kantian emphasis on the human-world cor-relate. Moreover, this holds true for all entities, be theyhuman, nonhuman, natural, or artificial, leading to thedownplayment of dasein as an ontological priority. In itsplace, Harman proposes a concept of substances that areirreducible to both material particles and human percep-tion, and “exceed every relation into which they mightenter.”[25]

Coupling Heidegger’s tool-analysis with the phenomeno-logical insights of Edmund Husserl, Harman introducestwo types of objects: real objects and sensual objects.Real objects are objects that withdraw from all experi-ence, whereas sensual objects are those that exist only inexperience.[26] Additionally, Harman suggests two kindsof qualities: sensual qualities, or those found in experi-ence, and real qualities, which are accessed through intel-lectual probing.[27] Pairing sensual and real objects andqualities yields the following framework:

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• Sensual Object/Sensual Qualities: Sensual ob-jects are present, but enmeshed within a “mist ofaccidental features and profiles.”[28]

• Sensual Object/Real Qualities: The structureof conscious phenomena are forged from eide-tic, or experientially interpretive, qualities intuitedintellectually.[29]

• Real Object/Sensual Qualities: As in the tool-analysis, a withdrawn object is translated intosensual apprehension via a “surface” accessed bythought and/or action.[30]

• Real Object/Real Qualities: This pairinggrounds the capacity of real objects to differ fromone another, without collapsing into indefinitesubstrata.[31]

To explain how withdrawn objects make contact with andrelate to one another, Harman submits the theory of vi-carious causation, whereby two hypothetical entities meetin the interior of a third entity, existing side-by-side un-til something occurs to prompt interaction.[32] Harmancompares this idea to the classical notion of formal cau-sation, in which forms do not directly touch, but influ-ence one another in a common space “from which all arepartly absent.” Causation, says Harman, is always vicari-ous, asymmetrical, and buffered:

'Vicarious’ means that objects confront oneanother only by proxy, through sensual profilesfound only on the interior of some other en-tity. 'Asymmetrical' means that the initial con-frontation always unfolds between a real ob-ject and a sensual one. And 'buffered' meansthat [real objects] do not fuse into [sensual ob-jects], nor [sensual objects] into their sensualneighbors, since all are held at bay through un-known firewalls sustaining the privacy of each.from the asymmetrical and buffered inner lifeof an object, vicarious connections arise occa-sionally...giving birth to new objects with theirown interior spaces.[33]

Thus, causation entails the connection between a real ob-ject residing within the directionality of consciousness,or a unified “intention,” with another real object residingoutside of the intention, where the intention itself is alsoclassified as a real object.[34] From here, Harman extrapo-lates five types of relations between objects. Containmentdescribes a relation in which the intention “contains” boththe real object and sensual object. Contiguity connotes re-lations between sensual objects lying side-by-side withinan intention, not affecting one another, such that a sensualobject’s bystanders can be rearranged without disruptingthe object’s identity. Sincerity characterizes the absorp-tion of a real object by a sensual object, in a manner that“takes seriously” the sensual object without containing or

being contiguous to it. Connection conveys the vicariousgeneration of intention by real objects indirectly encoun-tering one another. Finally, no relation represents the typ-ical condition of reality, since real objects are incapableof direct interaction and are limited in their causal influ-ence upon and relation to other objects.[35]

4 Expansion

Since its inception by Graham Harman in 1999, a num-ber of theorists working in a variety of disciplines haveadapted and expanded upon Harman’s ideas, includingphilosophy professor Levi Bryant, literature and ecologyscholar Timothy Morton, video game designer Ian Bo-gost, and medievalists Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and EileenJoy.

4.1 Onticology (Bryant)

Like Harman, Levi Bryant opposes post-Kantian anthro-pocentrism and philosophies of access.[2] From Bryant’sperspective, the Kantian contention that reality is acces-sible to human knowledge because it is structured by hu-man cognition limits philosophy to a self-reflexive analy-sis of the mechanisms and institutions though which cog-nition structures reality. He states:

For, in effect, the Copernican Revolutionwill reduce philosophical investigation to theinterrogation of a single relation: the human-world gap. And indeed, in the reduction ofphilosophy to the interrogation of this singlerelation or gap, not only will there be exces-sive focus on how humans relate to the worldto the detriment of anything else, but this inter-rogation will be profoundly asymmetrical. Forthe world or the object related to through theagency of the human will becomes a mere propor vehicle for human cognition, language, andintentions without contributing anything of itsown.[36]

To counter the form of post-Kantian epistemology,Bryant articulates an object-oriented philosophy called'Onticology', grounded in three principles. First, the On-tic Principle states that “there is no difference that does notmake a difference.”[37] Following from the premises thatquestions of difference precede epistemological interro-gation and that to be is to create differences, this principleposits that knowledge cannot be fixed prior to engagementwith difference.[38] And so, for Bryant, the thesis thatthere is a thing-in-itself which we cannot know is unten-able because it presupposes forms of being that make nodifferences. Similarly, concepts of difference predicatedupon negation—that which objects are not or lack whenplaced in comparison with one another—are dismissed as

4 4 EXPANSION

arising only from the perspective of consciousness, ratherthan an ontological difference that affirms independentbeing.[39] Second, the Principle of the Inhuman assertsthat the concept of difference producing difference is notrestricted to human, sociocultural, or epistemological do-mains, thereby marking the being of difference as inde-pendent of knowledge and consciousness.[40] Humans ex-ist as difference-making beings among other difference-making beings, therefore, without holding any special po-sition with respect to other differences.[41] Third, the On-tological Principle maintains that if there is no differencethat does not also make a difference, then the making ofdifference is the minimal condition for the existence ofbeing. In Bryant’s words, “if a difference is made, thenthe being is.”[42] Bryant further contends that differencesproduced by an object can be inter-ontic (made with re-spect to another object) or intra-ontic (pertaining the in-ternal constitution of the object).[43]

Since Onticology construes anything that produces dif-ferences as being—including fictions, signs, animals, andplants—all being in the same sense real, albeit at differ-ent scales, it is what Manuel Delanda has called a “flatontology.”[44] Within an onticological framework, ob-jects are composed of differences coalescing into a sys-tem that reproduces itself through time. Changes in theidentity of an object are not changes in substance (de-fined by Bryant as “a particular state attained by differ-ence”), however, but shifts in the qualities belonging to asubstance.[45] Qualities are the actualization of an object’sinhered capacities or abilities, known as an object’s pow-ers.[46] The actualization of an object’s power into quali-ties or properties at a specific place and time is called lo-cal manifestation.[47] Importantly, the occurrence of lo-cal manifestations does not require observation. In thisway, qualities comprise actuality, referring to the actual-ization of an object’s potential at a particular spatiotem-poral location among a multitude of material differences,whereas powers constitute virtuality, or the potential re-tained by an object across time.[48] As objects are dis-tinct from local manifestations and one another, referredto as withdrawal, their being is defined by the relationsforming their internal structure, or endo-relations, and re-tained powers.[49] This withdrawn being is known as thevirtual proper being of an object and denotes its endur-ing, unified substantiality.[47] When relations external toan object, or exo-relations, consistently induce the samelocal manifestations to the extent that the actualization ofqualities tends toward stability (for example, the sky re-maining blue because of the constancy of Rayleigh scat-tering on atmospheric particles), the set of relations formsa regime of attraction.[50]

Onticology distinguishes between four different typesof objects: bright objects, dim objects, dark objects,and rogue objects. Bright objects are objects thatstronglymanifest themselves and heavily impact other ob-jects, such as the ubiquity of cell phones in high-techcultures.[51] Dim objects lightly manifest themselves in

an assemblage of objects; for example, a neutrino pass-ing through solid matter without producing observableeffects.[52] Dark objects are objects that are so completelywithdrawn that they produce no local manifestations anddo not affect any other objects.[53] Rogue objects are notchained to any given assemblage of objects, but insteadwander in and out of assemblages, modifying relationswithin the assemblages into which they enter.[54] Politicalprotestors exemplify rogue objects by breaking with thenorms and relations of a dominant political assemblagein order to forge new relations that challenge, change, orcast off the prior assemblage.Additionally, Bryant has proposed the concept of 'wilder-ness ontology' to explain the philosophical pluralizationof agency away from human privilege. For Bryant,wilderness ontology alludes to the being of being, or com-mon essence “characteristic of all entities and their rela-tions to one another.”[55] Resisting the traditional notionof wilderness that views civilization (the “inside” worldof social relations, language, and norms) as separatefrom wilderness (the “outside” world of plants, animals,and nature), wilderness ontology argues that “wilderness”contains all forms of being, including civilization.[56] Ac-cordingly, the practice of wilderness ontology involvesexperiencing oneself as a being amongst, rather thanabove, other beings. In generalizing the agential alterityof being as a foundational ontological principle, Bryantposits three theses:[57] first, wilderness ontology signalsthe absence of ontological hierarchy, such that all formsof being exist on equal footing with one another. Second,wilderness ontology rejects the topological bifurcation ofnature and culture into discrete domains, instead hold-ing that cultural assemblages are only one possible set ofrelations into which nonhuman entities may enter in thewilderness. Third, wilderness ontology extends agencyto all entities, human and nonhuman, rather than castingnonhuman entities as passive recipients of human mean-ing projection. Employing these theses, Bryant pluralizesagential being beyond human finitude, contending that inso doing, the intentionality of the nonhuman world maybe investigated without reference to human intent.[58]

4.2 Hyperobjects (Morton)

TimothyMorton, the Rita Shea Guffey Chair professor inEnglish at Rice University, became involved with object-oriented ontology after his ecological writings were favor-ably compared with themovement’s ideas. InThe Ecolog-ical Thought, Morton introduced the concept of hyperob-jects to describe objects that are so massively distributedin time and space as to transcend spatiotemporal speci-ficity, such as global warming, styrofoam, and radioac-tive plutonium.[59] He has subsequently enumerated fivecharacteristics of hyperobjects:

1. Viscous: Hyperobjects adhere to any other objectthey touch, no matter how hard an object tries to

5

resist. In this way, hyperobjects overrule ironic dis-tance, meaning that the more an object tries to resista hyperobject, the more glued to the hyperobject itbecomes.[60]

2. Molten: Hyperobjects are so massive that they re-fute the idea that spacetime is fixed, concrete, andconsistent.[61]

3. Nonlocal: Hyperobjects are massively distributedin time and space to the extent that their totality can-not be realized in any particular local manifestation.For example, global warming is a hyperobject thatimpacts meteorological conditions, such as tornadoformation. According to Morton, though, objectsdon't feel global warming, but instead experiencetornadoes as they cause damage in specific places.Thus, nonlocality describes the manner in which ahyperobject becomes more substantial than the lo-cal manifestations they produce.[62]

4. Phased: Hyperobjects occupy a higher dimensionalspace than other entities can normally perceive.Thus, hyperobjects appear to come and go in three-dimensional space, but would appear differently toan observer with a higher multidimensional view.[61]

5. Interobjective: Hyperobjects are formed by rela-tions between more than one object. Consequently,objects are only able to perceive to the imprint, or“footprint,” of a hyperobject upon other objects, re-vealed as information. For example, global warmingis formed by interactions between the Sun, fossil fu-els, and carbon dioxide, among other objects. Yet,global warming is made apparent through emissionslevels, temperature changes, and ocean levels, mak-ing it seem as if global warming is a product of sci-entific models, rather than an object that predatedits own measurement.[63]

According to Morton, hyperobjects not only become vis-ible during an age of ecological crisis, but alert humansto the ecological dilemmas defining the age in which theylive.[64] Additionally, the existential capacity of hyperob-jects to outlast a turn toward less materialistic culturalvalues, coupled with the threat many such objects posetoward organic matter (what Morton calls a “demonic in-version of the sacred substances of religion”), gives thema potential spiritual quality, in which their treatment byfuture societies may become indistinguishable from rev-erential care.[65]

4.3 Alien phenomenology (Bogost)

Ian Bogost, a video game researcher at the Georgia Insti-tute of Technology and founding partner of PersuasiveGames,[66] has articulated an “applied” object-orientedontology, concerned more with the being of specific ob-jects than the exploration of foundational principles.[67]

Bogost calls his approach alien phenomenology, withthe term “alien” designating the manner in which with-drawal accounts for the inviolability of objectal experi-ence. From this perspective, an object may not recognizethe experience of other objects because objects relate toone another using metaphors of selfhood.[68]

Alien phenomenology is grounded in three “modes” ofpractice. First, ontography entails the production ofworks that reveal the existence and relation of objects.[69]Second, metaphorism denotes the production of worksthat speculate about the “inner lives” of objects, includinghow objects translate the experience of other objects intotheir own terms.[70] Third, carpentry indicates the cre-ation of artifacts that illustrate the perspective of objects,or how objects construct their own worlds.[71] An exam-ple of carpentry in practice would Bogost’s design of the“Latour Litanizer,” a digital program that generates La-tour litanies (lists of heterogeneous and often counterin-tuitive objects that resist representative homogenization)using the MediaWiki software platform.[72] By rapidlydispersing a diverse array of results, the litanizer acts asa philosophical artifact that inhibits the reduction of thebeing of listed items to a governing prototype or truthvalue.[73]

Bogost sometimes refers to his version of object-orientedthought as a tiny ontology to emphasize his rejection ofrigid ontological categorization of forms of being, includ-ing distinctions between “real” and “fictional” objects.[74]

5 Criticism

Some commentators contend that object-oriented ontol-ogy degrades meaning by placing humans and objects onequal footing. Blogger and cosmotheandric philosopherMatthew David Segall has argued that object-orientedphilosophers should explore the theological and anthro-pological implications of their ideas in order to avoid“slipping into the nihilism of some speculative realists,where human values are a fluke in an uncaring and funda-mentally entropic universe.”.[75] Other critical commen-tators such as David Berry and Alexander Galloway havecommented on the historical situatedness of an ontol-ogy that mirrors computational processes and even themetaphors and language of computation.[76][77]

Cultural critic Steven Shaviro has criticized object-oriented ontology as too dismissive of process philos-ophy. According to Shaviro, the process philosophiesof Alfred North Whitehead, Gilbert Simondon, andGilles Deleuze account for how objects come into ex-istence and endure over time, in contrast to the viewthat objects “are already there” taken by object-orientedapproaches.[78] Shaviro also finds fault with Harman’s as-sertion that Whitehead, Simondon, and Iain HamiltonGrant undermine objects by positing objects as manifes-tations of a deeper, underlying substance, saying that the

6 7 REFERENCES

antecedence of these thinkers, particularly Grant and Si-mondon, includes the “plurality of actually existing ob-jects,” rather than a single substance of which objects aremere epiphenomena.[79]

6 Key texts

• Bennett, Jane (2010). Vibrant matter: a politicalecology of things. Durham, North Carolina: DukeUniversity Press. ISBN 9780822346197.

• Bogost, Ian (2012). Alien Phenomenology, or WhatIt’s Like to Be a Thing. University of MinnesotaPress.

• Bogost, Ian (2006). Unit Operations: An Approachto Videogame Criticism. MIT Press.

• Bogost, Ian (2011). How to Do Things withVideogames. University of Minnesota Press.

• Braver, Lee (2007). A Thing of This World: AHistory of Continental Anti-Realism. NorthwesternUniversity Press.

• Bryant, Levi (2011). The Democracy of Objects.Open Humanities Press.

• Bryant, Levi (2014). Onto-Cartographies: An Ontol-ogy of Machines and Media. Edinburgh UniversityPress.

• Bryant, Levi; Srnicek, Nick; Harman, Graham(2011). The Speculative Turn. re.press.

• Ennis, Paul (2010). Post-Continental Voices: Se-lected Interviews. Zero Books.

• Harman, Graham (2002). Tool-Being: Heideggerand the Metaphysics of Objects. Open Court.

• Harman, Graham (2005). Guerilla Metaphysics:Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. OpenCourt.

• Harman, Graham (2009). Prince of Networks:Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. re.press.

• Harman, Graham (2010). Towards Speculative Re-alism: Essays and Lectures. Zero Books.

• Harman, Graham (2011). The Quadruple Object.Zero Books.

• Harman, Graham (2011). QuentinMeillassoux: Phi-losophy in the Making. Edinburgh University Press.

• Harman, Graham (2011). The Prince and the Wolf:Latour and Harman at the LSE. Zero Books.

• Harman, Graham (2013). Bells and Whistles: MoreSpeculative Realism. Zero Books.

• Latour, Bruno (1988). Science in Action: Howto Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society.Harvard University Press.

• Latour, Bruno (1993). We Have Never Been Mod-ern. Harvard University Press.

• Latour, Bruno (1999). Pandora’s Hope: Essays onthe Reality of Science Studies. Harvard UniversityPress.

• Latour, Bruno (2004). Politics of Nature: How toBring the Sciences into Democracy. Harvard Univer-sity Press.

• Meillassoux, Quentin (2008). After Finitude: An Es-say on the Necessity of Contingency. Continuum.

• Morton, Timothy (2010). The Ecological Thought.Harvard University Press.

• Morton, Timothy (2013). Realist Magic. Open Hu-manities Press.

• Morton, Timothy (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophyand Ecology after the End of the World. Universityof Minnesota Press.

7 References[1] Harman, Graham (2002). Tool-Being: Heidegger and the

Metaphysics of Objects. Peru, Illinois: Open Court. p. 2.ISBN 978-0-8126-9444-4.

[2] Bryant, Levi. “Onticology–A Manifesto for Object-Oriented Ontology, Part 1”. Larval Subjects. Retrieved9 September 2011.

[3] Harman, Graham (2002). Tool-Being: Heidegger and theMetaphysics of Objects. Peru, Illinois: Open Court. p. 16.ISBN 978-0-8126-9444-4.

[4] Harman, Graham (2005). Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phe-nomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Peru, Illinois:Open Court. p. 1. ISBN 0-8126-9456-2.

[5] Bryant, Levi; Harman, Graham; Srnicek, Nick (2011).The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Real-ism. Melbourne, Australia: re.press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-9806683-4-6.

[6] Harman, Graham. “Brief SR/OOO Tutorial”. Object-Oriented Philosophy. Retrieved 23 September 2011.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Harman, Graham (2002). Tool-Being: Heidegger and theMetaphysics of Objects. Peru, Illinois: Open Court. p. 1.ISBN 978-0812694444.

[9] Ibid. p. 2.

[10] Ibid.

7

[11] Gratton, Peter. “TimMorton: The Interview”. Philosophyin a Time of Error. Retrieved 23 September 2011.

[12] Ennis, Paul (2010). Post-Continental Voices. UnitedKingdom: Zero Books. p. 57. ISBN 978-1-84694-385-0.

[13] Meillassoux, Quentin (2008). After Finitude. New York,New York: Continuum. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-4411-7383-6.

[14] Coffield, Kris. “Interview: Graham Harman”. FracturedPolitics. Retrieved 23 September 2011.

[15] Harman, Graham (2011). The Quadruple Object. UnitedKingdom: Zero Books. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-84694-700-1.

[16] Ibid. pp. 8–10.

[17] Ibid. pp. 10–12.

[18] http://dar.aucegypt.edu/handle/10526/3466

[19] Harman, Graham (2011). Quentin Meillassoux: Philos-ophy in the Making. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-7486-4080-5.

[20] Bryant, Levi; Harman, Graham; Srnicek, Nick (2011).The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Real-ism. Melbourne, Australia: re.press. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-9806683-4-6.

[21] Harman, Graham (2002). Tool-Being: Heidegger and theMetaphysics of Objects. Peru, Illinois: Open Court. p. 1.ISBN 0-8126-9456-2.

[22] Ibid. p. 1.

[23] Ibid. pp. 1–2.

[24] Ibid. p. 2.

[25] Ibid. pp. 2–3.

[26] Harman, Graham (2011). The Quadruple Object. UnitedKingdom: Zero Books. p. 49. ISBN 978-1-84694-700-1.

[27] Ibid. p. 49.

[28] Ibid. pp. 49–50.

[29] Ibid. p. 50.

[30] Ibid. p. 50.

[31] Ibid. p. 50.

[32] Harman, Graham (2 August 2007). “On Vicarious Cau-sation”. Collapse 2: 187–221.

[33] Ibid. pp. 200–201.

[34] Ibid. p. 198.

[35] Ibid. pp. 199–200.

[36] ibid.

[37] Bryant, Levi; Harman, Graham; Srnicek, Nick (2011).The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Real-ism. Melbourne, Australia: re.press. p. 263. ISBN 978-0-9806683-4-6.

[38] ibid. p. 264.

[39] ibid. p. 266.

[40] ibid. p. 267.

[41] ibid. p. 268.

[42] ibid. p. 269.

[43] ibid. p. 269.

[44] Delanda, Manuel (2002). Intensive Science & Virtual Phi-losophy. New York: Continuum. p. 41. ISBN 0-8264-7932-4.

[45] Bryant, Levi; Harman, Graham; Srnicek, Nick (2011).The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Real-ism. Melbourne, Australia: re.press. p. 271. ISBN 978-0-9806683-4-6.

[46] Bryant, Levi. “Objects and Powers”. Retrieved 10September 2011.

[47] Bryant, Levi. “The Mug Blues”. Retrieved 10 September2011.

[48] Bryant, Levi. “Potentiality and Onticology”. Retrieved 10September 2011.

[49] Bryant, Levi. “A Lexicon of Onticology”. Retrieved 10September 2011.

[50] Bryant, Levi. “Regimes of Attraction”. Retrieved 10September 2011.

[51] Coffield, Kris. “Interview: Levi Bryant”. Retrieved 10September 2011.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Bryant, Levi. “Dark Objects”. Retrieved 10 September2011.

[54] Bryant, Levi. “Rogue Objects”. Retrieved 10 September2011.

[55] Jeffery, Celina (2011). Preternatural. Brooklyn, NewYork: Punctum Books. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-105-24502-2.

[56] Ibid. p. 20.

[57] Ibid. p. 22.

[58] Ibid. p. 24.

[59] Morton, Timothy (2010). The Ecological Thought. Cam-bridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 130.ISBN 0-674-04920-9.

[60] Morton, Timothy. “Hyperobjects are Viscous”. EcologyWithout Nature. Retrieved 15 September 2011.

[61] Coffield, Kris. “Interview: Timothy Morton”. FracturedPolitics. Retrieved 15 September 2011.

[62] Morton, Timothy. “Hyperobjects are Nonlocal”. EcologyWithout Nature.

[63] Ibid.

8 8 EXTERNAL LINKS

[64] Morton, Timothy (2011). “Sublime Objects”. Specula-tions II: 207–227. Retrieved 2014-05-18.

[65] Morton, Timothy (2010). The Ecological Thought. Cam-bridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp.131–132. ISBN 0-674-04920-9.

[66] Georgia Tech Homepage. “Faculty Page”. Georgia TechDigital Lounge. Retrieved 15 September 2011.

[67] Coffield, Kris. “Interview: Ian Bogost”. Fractured Poli-tics. Retrieved 15 September 2011.

[68] Gratton, Peter. “Ian Bogost: The Interview”. Philosophyin a Time of Error. Retrieved 15 September 2011.

[69] Bogost, Ian. “Latour Litanizer”. Ian Bogost Blog.

[70] Bogost, Ian. “Alien Phenomenology”. Ian Bogost Blog.Retrieved 15 September 2011.

[71] Bogost, Ian (2012). Alien Phenomenology. Ann Arbor,Michigan: Open Humanities Press. p. 90.

[72] Ibid. p. 93.

[73] Bryant, Levi. “Latour Litanizer”. Larval Subjects. Re-trieved 16 September 2011.

[74] Coffield, Kris. “Interview: Ian Bogost”. Fractured Poli-tics. Retrieved 16 September 2011.

[75] Segall, Matthew David. “Cosmos, Anthropos, and Theosin Harman, Teilhard, and Whitehead”. Footnotes to Plato.Retrieved 16 September 2011.

[76] Berry, David Michael. “Critical Theory and the Digital”.Critical Theory and the Digital. Retrieved 1 July 2012.

[77] Galloway, Alexander R. “A response to GrahamHarman’s“Marginalia on Radical Thinking"". An und für sich. Re-trieved 1 July 2012.

[78] Shaviro, Steven. “Processes and Powers”. The PinocchioTheory. Retrieved 16 September 2011.

[79] Ibid.

8 External links

8.1 Blogs

• Object-Oriented Philosophy - Graham Harman

• Larval Subjects - Levi Bryant

• Ecology Without Nature - Timothy Morton

• Ian Bogost - Ian Bogost

• In theMiddle - Jeffrey JeromeCohen, Jonathan Hsy,Eileen Joy, Karl Steel, and Mary Kate Hurley

8.2 Journals

• Collapse - published by Urbanomic

• continent. - edited by Jamie Allen, Paul Boshears,and Nico Jenkins

• O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies -edited by Levi Bryant and Eileen Joy

• Speculations - edited by Paul Ennis, Michael Austin,Fabio Gironi, Thomas Gokey, and Robert Jackson

• Thinking Nature - edited by Timothy Morton andBen Woodward

8.3 Presses

• Open Humanities Press - Ann Arbor, Michigan

• punctum books - Brooklyn, New York

• re.press - Victoria, Australia

• Zero Books - United Kingdom

8.4 Lectures/Tutorials

• Speculative realism/object-oriented ontology tuto-rial - by Graham Harman

• History of object-oriented ontology and speculativerealism - video lecture by Graham Harman

• Onticology Manifesto, Part 1 - by Levi Bryant

• Onticology Manifesto, Part 2 - by Levi Bryant

• A Lexicon of Onticology - by Levi Bryant

• Dawn of the hyperobjects - video lecture by TimothyMorton

• UCLA 'OOO' Symposium - featuring lectures byLevi Bryant, Graham Harman, Nathan Brown, andIan Bogost

• Feeling Stone - audio lecture by Jeffrey Jerome Co-hen

• Incubus-Demons, Magic, and the Spaces Betweenthe Moon and the Earth - audio lecture by JeffreyJerome Cohen with response from Ben Woodard

• Aristotle With a Twist - audio lecture by GrahamHarman with response from Patricia Clough

• Kitchen Shakespeare - audio lecture by Julian Yateswith response from Liza Blake

• Neroplatonism - audio lecture by Scott Wilson

8.5 Selected Interviews 9

• Towards a Speculative Realist/OOO Literary Crit-icism audio lecture on a possible SR/OOO literarycriticism by Eileen Joy

• More Notes Toward an SR/OOO Literary CriticismTwitter University lecture on SR/OOO literary crit-icism by Eileen Joy

8.5 Selected Interviews

• Philosophy in a Time of Error - Interview with LeviBryant

• Philosophy in a Time of Error - Interview with IanBogost

• Philosophy in a Time of Error - Interview with JaneBennett

10 9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

9 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1 Text• Object-oriented ontology Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology?oldid=628032939 Contributors: Ijon, Ni-hiltres, Bhny, Frap, OSborn, Hu12, Gregbard, Andyjsmith, Seaphoto, Mesnenor, Magioladitis, Dwatson888, Snowded, Ydnahij, Beeble-brox, Sustainablefutures2015, Hasteur, Adynatoniac, Protoblast, XLinkBot, Download, Yobot, AnomieBOT, Omnipaedista, RjwilmsiBot,Bollyjeff, Gary Dee, ClueBot NG, Chriscoast, Helpful Pixie Bot, Footnotes2plato, LadyDiotima, Sordini2, Fracpol, BattyBot, OOOisthe-newcorrelationism, Mogism, Cerabot, The Vintage Feminist, MrLukeDevlin, Jakec, Star767, MadScientistX11, Vivaortega and Anony-mous: 26

9.2 Images• File:Ambox_content.png Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Ambox_content.png License: ? Contributors:Derived from Image:Information icon.svg Original artist:El T (original icon); David Levy (modified design); Penubag (modified color)

• File:Edit-clear.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Edit-clear.svg License: ? Contributors: The Tango! DesktopProject. Original artist:The people from the Tango! project. And according to the meta-data in the file, specifically: “Andreas Nilsson, and Jakub Steiner (althoughminimally).”

• File:Question_book-new.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Question_book-new.svg License: ? Contributors:Created from scratch in Adobe Illustrator. Based on Image:Question book.png created by User:Equazcion Original artist:Tkgd2007

9.3 Content license• Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0