When\, in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads \;(1802)\, William Wordsworth insisted that an &ldquo\;overbalance of pleasure&rdquo\; entails the &ldquo\;circumstance of meter\,&rdquo\; he confirmed a philosophical assumption far older than Kant&rsquo\;s theory of the sublime. The pervasive assumption&mdash\;which\, today\, can be tracked in an on-going &ldquo\;affective turn&rdquo\; (necessarily entangled in matters of form and style)&mdash\;is that the artificial makes possible an understanding of the natural. \;
\nBut Wordsworth was writing in the twilight of the Industrial Revolution&mdash\;or what is arguably the dawn of the Anthropocene. For this reason alone\, we might be justified in dismissing his romantic conception of poetry as mere &ldquo\;correlationism&rdquo\;&mdash\;what Ian Bogost caustically defines as the &ldquo\;the tradition of human access that seeps from the rot of Kant.&rdquo\; Faced with the impending consequences of climate change\, withering biodiversity\, proliferating microplastics\, etc.&mdash\;is it not finally time (as various &ldquo\;new materialists&rdquo\; have asserted) to undo Kant&rsquo\;s &ldquo\;Copernican revolution&rdquo\; and\, thus\, the primacy of human perception within \;the nature of things? But what are the alternatives? To approach Quentin Meillassoux&rsquo\;s &ldquo\;great outdoors&rdquo\; we must employ very human tools\, such as carbon dating and mathematics. To know and describe Bogost&rsquo\;s various non-human &ldquo\;things&rdquo\; we must resort&mdash\;à\; la romanticism&mdash\;to &ldquo\;metaphorism.&rdquo\; As in Aristotle\, phú\;sis remains inextricable from té\;khnÄ“: from art\, from technology. Or\, to follow Derrida\, the latter persists as an inescapable supplement. \; \; \;
\nIn our efforts to surmount the problem of &ldquo\;human access\,&rdquo\; do we therefore risk repeating (even more blindly) the violence and immorality of anthropocentrism? If so\, is our only option to re-approach nature paradoxically via its antithesis: solar panels and wind turbines that can save us from green-house gases\; virtual simulations that can measure distance better than any animal eye\; digital photography and narrative structures that might preserve the nature of indigenous life\; genetic engineering that can dissolve the distinction between nature and its others? Should we then re-consider the moral roadblocks embodied in our narrative and philosophical efforts to imagine the posthuman&mdash\;from Mary Shelley&rsquo\;s monster and Philip K. Dick&rsquo\;s androids to Donna Haraway&rsquo\;s cyborgs and Octavia Butler&rsquo\;s aliens?
ORGANIZER;CN=Alain Beauclair;CN=Josh Toth: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR