Object-oriented Ontology Research Articles

Ink, rust and flowers: Tomás Browne’s poetic garden

ABSTRACT In ‘El jardín de Dankwart Fricke’ (2020), the Chilean visual and performance poet and artist, Tomás Emilio Browne Cruz (1982-), recovers and brings together, through images, sounds and the written and spoken word, seemingly forgotten plants, languages, and garden tools into an example of the ‘interobjective mesh’ (Timothy Morton) in which we all exist. Drawing on new materialism and object-oriented ontology, this paper explores how Browne’s work, by emphasising the ‘withdrawn’ nature of objects, hidden similarities between what are traditionally considered distinct realms – the organic, the inorganic and the human. Browne shows that the materials he presents in the poem are not just human tools, but agents themselves. His poem illustrates how all things, whether organic or inorganic, have the ability to relate to the world around them in similar ways. By writing with organic and inorganic materials that have apparently been forgotten, Browne draws attention to the presence within them of their own languages or their own means of interaction and communication. His multimedia garden, I conclude, encourages awareness of and empathy with everything in our environment; such a recognition could be a step towards the end of the destruction (led by us humans) of our shared world.

Проблема взаимодействия объектов культуры: метафизика коммуникации с точки зрения объектноориентированной онтологии

This paper attempts to design the metaphysics of communication from the perspective of object-oriented ontology. For this purpose, the main provisions of object-oriented philosophy have been analysed with close attention to the description of ways, possibilities and conditions of object interaction. Employing the method of conceptual engineering, an image of what objectoriented communication should be is constructed from the theoretical and analytical review. Its descriptive and predictive capabilities are analysed. Special attention is paid to the conditions of communication breakdown, which reveal a set of relations inherent in its objects and make it possible both to describe the actual state of the communicative system and to predict its further behaviour. The theoretical provisions of the article are illustrated by examples from various spheres of communicative turnover of cultural objects: everyday communication, literature, crisis communications. The results of the study allow us to compile a set of methodological principles for conducting studies of communication in different cultural fields within the given approach.

From Essences to Flat Ontologies: Recontextualizing Modernist Thought for the Present

In terms of connecting seemingly disparate strands of thought relating to modernism and modernity, Philobiblon’s special issue edited by Amalia Cotoi and Alexandru Matei, “Modernism and Bruno Latour. For a Resumption of Modernity” (2023), made a resounding start. Yet Latour’s relationism will always be at odds with the purity, stability and autonomy characterizing certain models of modernism, particularly the formalist modernism envisioned by Clement Greenberg. In this article, I will explore a flat ontology that resolves this problem, namely object-oriented ontology (OOO). It emphasizes the nonrelational autonomy of objects, in the same way as Greenberg’s modernism emphasizes compositional elements such as line and colour over and above context, disregarding any social or political relations or associations the work might have. As I will suggest, OOO connects with modern art and modernism on multiple levels, testifying to modernism’s ongoing relevance.

Looking at Locality from a Performative Perspective

This critical reflection on the category of locality, which is associated with the performative practice of scaling, is based in the embodied experience of activism on the Polish-Belarusian border. Using the latest texts in the field of object-oriented ontology, locality is presented as a significant challenge to the (inter-/trans-/post-)disciplinary approach and confronted with new materialistic approaches to universality.

Revisiting the Notion of Vicarious Cause: Allure, Metaphor, and Realism in Object-Oriented Ontology

Abstract We revisit the notion of vicarious causation in Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) in order to first show that Harman has articulated two iterations of his account that are in tension with one another; one is found in his earlier paper “On Vicarious Causation,” while the other is contained in his later writings following the publication of Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. This involves a critical assessment of his developing theory of metaphor in a way that encourages sympathetic revision in the service of improving his non-correlationist view of intra-objective relations.

A style guide for the structuralist

AbstractOntic structuralists claim that there are no individual objects, and that reality should instead be thought of as a “web of relations”. It is difficult to make this metaphysical picture precise, however, since languages usually characterize the world by describing the objects that exist in it. This paper proposes a solution to the problem; I argue that when discourse is reformulated in the language of the calculus of relations ‐ an algebraic logic developed by Alfred Tarski ‐ it can be interpreted without presupposing the existence of objects. What is distinctive about the language of the calculus is that it contains no operator that resembles a quantifier, and yet it can be used to paraphrase any sentence expressible in first‐order logic. Since the use of a first‐order quantifier (or some similar operator) is usually what establishes commitment to an ontology of objects, and since the calculus of relations eschews the quantifier in favor of a composition operator that can be given a natural interpretation consistent with structuralist metaphysics, the calculus is an ideal language for the structuralist to use to describe the world.

Subjectness of metamodernity: signs of the times (in the wake of a previous discussion)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the manifestation of subjectness of metamodernity. The relevance of the study is due to the need to revise some of the features of metamodernism in connection with the realities of modern culture. Although metamodernism is not a philosophical system, the author substantiates the idea that, oscillating between modernist logocentrism and postmodern nihilism, metamodernism adheres to the principles of Kantian “transcendental idealism” and, striving for transcendence, overcomes immanence. The basis of metamodern aesthetics is also an object-oriented ontology, which, without destroying the hierarchies that will threaten the human place in the world, offers the means with which one can create an updated map of being, taking into account all its complexity and diversity. Going beyond postmodern detachment and alienation, metamodernism appeals to ethics, aesthetics, authenticity, hope, and the awakening of sensuality. Metamodernism is characterized by holism, connectionism and assimilation. These features are shown using examples from the field of fine arts, literature, cinema, as well as modern educational practices.

Emotive Narrative: Thinking and Writing Experimental Animation through Things’ Perspective

The purpose of this study is to explore the magical nature of things, to investigate nonhuman entities, and to study from the philosophy of Object-Oriented Ontology. Rethinking Paul Wells’ scripted artefact based on the ontography concept of Alien Phenomenology, specifically for the transition of objects from real world objects to cinematic objects, Animators go through the found or made object and object as narrative stages. To explore the potential of things, we engage creators in co-speculation through Evocative Object Cards activity that evokes experience. By thinking about the theme of the secret life of things and experimenting with writing from thing’s perspective, we can realize the emotive narrative of things. Using the concept of “human-object” experience entanglement, this study conducted an experimental animation writing workshop to stimulate the tactile memory of the creators, so that they can understand how objects reveal their unique agency in the animation, and then understand the satisfaction of the participants through semi-structured qualitative interviews. The research results show that this activity has a positive impact on the creators’ creative writing of animation scripts, which not only puts forward alternative views beyond the mainstream animation stories, but also enriches the audience’s viewing experience.

Differing Eco-Phenomenological Discourses in Amitav Ghosh's Ecological Realism and Timothy Morton's Dark Ecology

This paper explores the contrasting yet complementary eco-phenomenological discourses in Amitav Ghosh’s ecological realism and Timothy Morton’s dark ecology. Both thinkers offer crucial insights into the Anthropocene, but they do so from different perspectives. Ghosh, through his historical materialist framework, focuses on the socio-political, historical, and colonial forces driving the current ecological crises. His ecological realism reflects the entanglement of human and non-human histories and advocates for a literary realism that incorporates the agency of nature. Morton, on the other hand, embraces post-humanist philosophies, specifically object-oriented ontology, to develop his concept of "dark ecology"—a framework that highlights the inherent strangeness, ambiguity, and uncanniness of the natural world. Morton introduces the notion of hyperobjects, entities like climate change that are too vast and complex to be fully comprehended by humans. This paper argues that despite their differences, both Ghosh and Morton challenge anthropocentric thinking and offer radical reconfigurations of humanity's relationship with the natural world. By placing their theories in dialogue, this paper underscores the importance of embracing both historical materialist and ontological perspectives to address the ecological challenges of the Anthropocene.

Process and individuation (on speculative realism and becoming)

AbstractRecent developments in the continental tradition have taken a realist turn that reveals an oscillation between, on the one hand, an ontology of virtuality that thinks of reality as process and continuum (albeit a continuum of differences or events) and, on the other hand, the resurgence of an ontology of objects and essences guided by the desire to retain the individuality of beings. The dilemma goes something like this: if we embrace a processual ontology, we risk losing the manifestedness of objects, the way they insist in being in their unique presence. Objects become mere epiphenomena of deeper, subterranean forces. If, however, we embrace an ontology of objects, we assume a universe composed of separate substances; objects are all there is (even if they are withdrawn). This article argues that freeing ontology from correlationism does not entail construing ontology in terms of objects. Individuals are products rather than primitive ontological terms.

Making Mars: The Emergence of a Resources-Territory Areopolitics

ABSTRACT Human activities are territorialising and commodifying Mars. Areopolitically reexploring the planet is a pressing necessity as outer space actors have increasingly been operating there for several decades, intensifying thus the interaction. This paper argues that territory and resources are being made on the basis of a novel theoretical framework in the involved sub-fields of geography that it formalises, utilises, and advances: the resources-state-territory nexus and, more specifically, the resources-territory sub-nexus. The unprecedented application of a nexus thinking on areopolitics allows to analyse both sectors simultaneously. This study is informed by the Foucauldian apparatus and is grounded in the conceptual breakthroughs of object-oriented ontology. The discourses and materials, actually conceivable as objects, of the Martian endeavour are that way critically investigated to uncover the dynamics of the nexus. It results that areometrics not only creates territory but influences the creation of resources and, parallelly, that commodity frontiers not only create resources but influence the creation of territory. This interdependence is the core of the sub-nexus. Besides, the exclusive robotic mediation of the relationship with the Red Planet calls for an examination of its implications. Pointing out probe-power further brings to light the bonds between the territorial sub-elements, terrain and land, and resources through the stress it exercises on these interconnections. It also strengthens territory by creating a bridge between its constitutive sub-elements. Hence, the terrain- and land-resources bonds prove to be more substantial than the main sub-nexus, which renders the questions of territory and resources even more inseparable.

Rethinking Organismic Unity: Object-Oriented Ontology and the Human Microbiome

Abstract In recent years, a vast array of thinkers have been invested in challenging the long-standing binary division between the human and nonhuman. The notion of the human microbiome especially attests to the truth of such a complication, since current research in biology strongly suggests that we are at the very least as much microbe as we are human and that the number of microorganisms in the human body outnumber distinctly human cells considerably. In this article, we aim to bring the biological notion of the human microbiome in dialogue with Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) so as to ultimately show that there can be a fruitful exchange of ideas between the two currents of microbiome research and OOO more specifically, and that Graham Harman’s top-down account of objective emergence can be fruitfully a bottom-up approach according to which the parts of an object also impact and constrain the whole.

Ambient Temporalities: Rethinking Object-Oriented Time through Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger

Abstract Immanuel Kant is often conveyed as a Platonic or Newtonian thinker of the temporal, expressing time as an absolute and continuous repository wherein all objects occur. However, employing themes from his aesthetic writings, what happens when Kantian “sublime” time is reoriented towards a more discontinuous temporal register? This essay employs just such a reading, while also utilising Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), as a methodological device for rethinking both Kantian and object time as neither solely continuous nor discontinuous, but somewhere inbetween these two determinations, in what I term their “ontological ambience.” By doing so I offer a critique of both Kantian orthodoxy and Harmanian OOO, via a comparative analysis of (1) how Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger thematise Kantian temporality, and (2) how Harman develops their subsequent ideas about time. This schema provides post-Kantian philosophy with a provisional model for thinking posthuman time in new and productive ways: as ambient temporalities.

Ecogothic Interpretations of the Anthropocene

The so-called nonhuman turn has a great role to play in theoretical elaborations of the Anthropocene. This broad tendency of thought incorporates contemporary non-anthropocentric schools of thought such as Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and posthumanism. These various sociological and philosophical directions have one thing in common: the rejection and transcendence of anthropocentrism, as well as a new sensitivity to the heterogeneous, irreducible and multiple nature of reality. Openness to post-anthropocentrism is a general characteristic of authors who work in Anthropocene theory today. However, posthumanist philosophy, while it decenters and deconstructs the human, is also committed to an aesthetic of uncertainty, fear, and even horror. Simon C. Estok, in his highly important article “Theorising the EcoGothic,” shows that during the ecological crisis philosophical thought must traverse unknown terrain, while also emphasizing the darker aspects of sociocultural constructs. Posthumanism must, by its very nature, prepare for the unthinkable in a quite literal sense according to Stefan Herbrechter. The Anthropocene constitutes an opening to what Nick Land calls “Outsideness”. A future condition “after” the human can be understood as a condition that opens onto a dark, monstrous, threatening or, in a word, hybrid future beyond any anthropic measure.

Within the Hypha: The Deconstruction of the Anthropocentric Perspective in László Sepsi’s Novel Fruiting Bodies

In my study, I interpret one of the most outstanding stories of Hungarian fiction, László Sepsi’s weird, body- and biohorror novel, Fruiting Bodies [Termőtestek]. The narrative depicts the rivalry between gangster families who fight for the hallucinogenic mushrooms, an important commodity in their town Höksring. As the novel progresses, the rivalry of the crime families fades into the background against the disease spread by the mushrooms, and thus the story presents the beginning of an eco-dystopia and apocalypse. As the title suggests, one of the central motifs of the text is the mushroom, which is both a drug (essentially food) and the basis of the city and houses (living space). In this paper, I will show how the metaphors and similes in the narrative, through the compared things, represent the blurred boundaries between the human body, nature, disease, food and the city, which are central to the novel’s narrative. In my view, the narrative and the parts of the story that focus on the relationship between humans and environment/nature are themed around the breakdown of binary oppositions. The boundaries between culturally distinct categories, the Great Divide (to use Bruno Latour’s term), are dissolved, and the ecological viewpoint, the circulation of matter and reciprocity predominate. I will show that Fruiting Bodies dismantles hierarchies at the narrative level of both the action and the storytelling, offering a more universal perspective rather than a purely anthropocentric one, by situating humanity in the relationships of natural cycles. I will build on the main terms of plant studies (such as plant blindness and plant will), and through the concepts of phytosemiology, Object-Oriented Ontology, flat ontology, hyperobject and dark ecology, I will show how the fungus as metaphor and motif organizes the narrative, and thus offers a posthuman perspective instead of an anthropocentric one.

Relational or Object-Oriented? A Dialogue between Two Contemporary Ontologies

Abstract Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) emphasizes the autonomy of objects, positing a withdrawn surplus of being that resists reduction to its parts or the sum of its parts. However, Harman’s framework faces conceptual tensions, including challenges in reconciling epistemological and ontological dimensions, explaining the formation of compound objects, and ascribing determinate features to experientially inaccessible objects. I argue that these issues arise mostly due to Harman’s over-commitment to a withdrawn substantial core of objects. To address these issues, I propose turning to Jean-Luc Nancy’s post-phenomenological materialism and Alain Badiou’s mathematical realism. Both Nancy and Badiou offer alternatives to Harman’s substantialist core, emphasizing a local, contextually bound identity of things, which describes a restricted domain from the endlessly broader horizon of relations and situations in which each thing is or can be involved. They thus account for the surplus of being in each thing and consequently their ontological autonomy without recourse to a substantive grounding. I argue such a relational-friendly account of pluralism avoids the conceptual issues Harman’s OOO runs into. Lastly, I emphasize the value of OOO as an advocate for ontological equality that seeks to avoid the emergence of privileged actors or centralized discourse. This dialogue between Harman, Nancy, and Badiou thus seeks to advance the possibility of pluralistic ontologies within relational frameworks, combining the perspectives of OOO with post-phenomenological theories to explore the complexities of relationality without recourse to non-relational substrata.

Knowing Holbein’s Objects: An Object-Oriented-Ontology Analysis of The Ambassadors

Abstract This article investigates the tenet of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) that art, like philosophy, is a form of cognition different from literal knowledge by applying key OOO concepts to the analysis of the Renaissance painting The Ambassadors (1533), a double portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543). The Ambassadors is found to exemplify the key principles of OOO in its treatment of objects and their relationships. Through an OOO lens, the painting becomes not merely a literal representation of the subjects and their possessions, but a dynamic interplay of real and sensual qualities that exceeds any straightforward paraphrase. The figures and objects in the work are not simply passive symbols, but active agents that withdraw from direct access, preserving their autonomy and inviting the viewer’s participatory engagement. Holbein’s masterpiece comes alive precisely by troubling its own representational coherence, drawing the viewer into an uncanny encounter with the withdrawn depths of objects. By reading The Ambassadors through an object-oriented framework, the painting exemplifies art’s capacity to operate as a non-literal form of cognition, irreducible to mere symbolic codes or propositional knowledge.

Linguistic ontology and epistemology: modern approaches

This article analyzes the linguistic science of the 20th century, its interaction with the ontology and epistemology of linguistic objects. The author explores the ontological status of objects of linguistic research, raising questions about the nature of these objects: whether they are internal, external, or have both properties. The article offers an overview of contemporary approaches to these issues and their epistemological implications, addressing different positions within the academic debate. The main focus is on the analysis and critical assessment of various theoretical answers proposed in modern linguistics.

The complexity of culture in the perspective of object-oriented ontology

The complexity of culture in the perspective of object-oriented ontology

Fine-Grained Task Planning for Service Robots Based on Object Ontology Knowledge via Large Language Models

Fine-Grained Task Planning for Service Robots Based on Object Ontology Knowledge via Large Language Models