Abstract
In their responses to my framing of the ecological crisis as an ontological crisis, my interlocutors raise questions about the relationship between ontology and ethics; whether and how attention to affect and a reimagined ontology can cope with the demands that we face when thinking of ethics on a planetary scale; the implications of contemporary actions in deep time; and whether thinking through affect leads us to a perspective divorced from History. In response to Gandy and Jasper, I address misplaced charges of anthropocentrism, claims I abandon the subject, and claims I privilege affect in a way that ignores reason. In response to Sharp, Stark, and Clark, I elaborate (a) the ways in which we can proceed from a reimagined ontology to ethics through a more critical engagement with contemporary scholars (e.g. Buchanan and Wehelyie, who leaven the concept of assemblage), (b) the selective engagement of western philosophers as a kind of pars destruens to a western concept of the subject, and (c) the richness of an approach based on semiosis, which uncovers the communicative relations between a vast array of actors and actants and offers both a different vision of plenitude and the potential for wider range of alliances. I propose this as a prolegomenon to a reimagined future and expanded sense of human subjectivity—one which would acknowledge, celebrate, and promote a maximal biodiversity, in recognition of the ultimate dependence of humans on the workings of nonhuman others.
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