General Ecology: The New Ecological Paradigm

401 Pages·2017·2.134 MB·English

by  Erich Hörl

General Ecology
ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE THEORY SERIES
Conflicting Humanities, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY
Eco-Aesthetics, Malcolm Miles
Environmental Ethics, Marion Hourdequin
The Three Ecologies, Félix Guattari
THEORY
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THhe uNewm Ecoalognicail Ptairaedigsm
EDITED BY ERICH HÖRL
EDITED BY
WITH JAMES BURTON
ROSI BRAIDOTTI AND
PAUL GILROY
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2017
© Erich Hörl and contributors, 2017
Erich Hörl and James Burton have asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-1470-1
PB: 978-1-3500-1469-5
ePDF: 978-1-3500-1468-8
ePub: 978-1-3500-1471-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Series: Theory series
Cover image: Miljohn Ruperto and Ulrik Heltoft, Voynich Botanical Studies, Specimen 50r
Zima, 2014. Collection of the artists and Koenig & Clinton, New York.
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
CONTENTS
List of Contributors vii
Acknowledgments xii
Series Preface xiv
1 Introduction to general ecology: The ecologization of
thinking 1
Erich Hörl
2 Computational logic and ecological rationality 75
Luciana Parisi
3 Elements for an ecology of separation: Beyond ecological
constructivism 101
Frédéric Neyrat
4 General ecology, economy, and organology 129
Bernard Stiegler
5 The modern invention of nature 151
Didier Debaise
6 Deep times and media mines: A descent into ecological
materiality of technology 169
Jussi Parikka
7 Planetary immunity: Biopolitics, Gaia theory, the
holobiont, and the systems counterculture 193
Bruce Clarke
vi CONTENTS
8 Ecologizing biopolitics, or, What is the “bio-” of
bioart? 217
Cary Wolfe
9 Ecologies of communion, contagion, &c, especially
Bataille 235
David Wills
10 Metafiction and general ecology: Making worlds with
worlds 253
James Burton
11 An ecology of differences: Communication, the Web, and
the question of borders 285
Elena Esposito
12 Specters of ecology 303
Timothy Morton
13 Devastation 323
Matthew Fuller and Olga Goriunova
14 Virtual ecology and the question of value 345
Brian Massumi
Index 375
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
James Burton is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Cultural History at
Goldsmiths, University of London. He has previously taught in the areas
of cultural theory, the history and philosophy of art, and media and
communications. From 2014–16 he was a research fellow at the ICI Berlin:
Institute for Cultural Inquiry. From 2011–13, he was an Alexander von
Humboldt research fellow at the Institut für Medienwissenschaft at the
Ruhr University, Bochum. Working across the fields of cultural/media
theory, philosophy, and literature, his current research looks at non- and
posthuman approaches to error and the role of (meta)fiction in the context
of modern technologized culture and ecology. He is the author of The
Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip
K. Dick (Bloomsbury, 2015), and several articles on the philosophy of
memory, theories of fiction, ecology and science fiction.
Bruce Clarke is Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Literature and Science
in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. His research
focuses on systems theory, narrative theory, and ecology. In 2015 he was
Senior Fellow at the Erlangen Center for Literature and Natural Science
(ELINAS), Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. In 2010–11
he was Senior Fellow at the International Research Institute for Cultural
Technologies and Media Philosophy, Bauhaus University Weimar. Clarke
edits the book series Meaning Systems, published by Fordham University
Press. His authored books include Neocybernetics and Narrative (Minnesota
University Press, 2014), Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems
(Fordham University Press, 2008), and Energy Forms: Allegory and Science
in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics (University of Michigan Press,
2001). His edited volumes include Earth, Life, and System: Evolution
and Ecology on a Gaian Planet (Fordham University Press, 2015); with
Manuela Rossini, The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the
Posthuman (Cambridge 2016); and with Mark B. N. Hansen, Emergence
and Embodiment: New Essays in Second-Order Systems Theory (Duke
University Press, 2009).
Didier Debaise is a research professor at the Fonds National de la
Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) and the Free University of Brussels (ULB),
where he teaches contemporary philosophy. His main areas of research are
viii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
contemporary forms of speculative philosophy, theories of events, and links
between American pragmatism and French contemporary philosophy. He is
the director of a collection in Presses du réel and a member of the editorial
boards of the journals Multitudes and Inflexions. He has written two
books on Whitehead’s philosophy—Un empirisme spéculatif (2006) and
Le vocabulaire de Whitehead (2007); edited volumes on pragmatism (Vie
et experimentation [2007]) and the history of contemporary metaphysics
(Philosophie des possessions [2011]); and has published numerous papers
on Bergson, Tarde, Souriau, Simondon, and Deleuze. His most recent book
is L’appât des possibles (2015).
Elena Esposito is Professor of Sociology at the University Bielefeld and
at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia. Working in a systems theory
framework, she studies problems of time in social systems, including memory
and forgetting, fashion and transience, probability calculus, fiction, and the
use of time in finance. Her current research projects focus on the possibility
and forms of forgetting on the Web, on a sociology of algorithms, and
on the proliferation of rankings and ratings for the management of infor-
mation. Esposito’s recent publications include The Future of Futures: The
Time of Money (2011), Die Fiktion der wahrscheinlichen Realität (2007),
Die Verbindlichkeit des Vorübergehenden: Paradoxien der Mode (2004),
Soziales Vergessen: Formen und Medien des Gedächtnisses der Gesellschaft
(2002), “The Structures of Uncertainty. Performativity and Unpredictability
in Economic Operations,” Economy and Society, 42 (2013), and a debate
with David Stark on Observation Theory in Sociologica, 2 (2013).
Matthew Fuller is Professor of Cultural Studies and Head of the Centre
for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. He has published
widely on media theory, software studies, critical theory and cultural
studies, and contemporary fiction, and has worked with the artist groups
I/O/D, Mongrel, and YoHa, as well as independently. He is the author of
Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (Autonomedia, 2003),
Elephant and Castle (Autonomedia, 2011), Media Ecologies: Materialist
Energies in Art and Technoculture (MIT Press, 2005), and (with Andrew
Goffey) Evil Media (MIT Press, 2012), among other titles. His edited
books include Unnatural: Techno-theory for a Contaminated Culture
(Underground, 1994) and Software Studies: A Lexicon (MIT Press, 2008).
Olga Goriunova is a senior lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of
London. She is the author of Art Platforms and Cultural Production on the
Internet (Routledge, 2012), editor of Fun and Software: Exploring Pleasure,
Pain and Paradox in Computing (Bloomsbury, 2014), and co-editor, with
Alexei Shulgin, of Readme: Software Art and Cultures (University of
Aarhus Press, 2004). She is a co-founder and co-editor of Computational
Culture, A Journal of Software Studies (computationalculture.net). She has
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS ix
also worked as a curator, co-organizing, among others, Readme, software
art festivals, 2001–05 and Runme.org software art repository. In 2015, she
was a fellow at the University of Leuphana’s Digital Cultures Research Lab.
In 2014–16 she has been part of the Posthumanities research network and
member of the Visual Social Media Lab, working on the project Picturing
the Social. She is currently working on a monograph on digital subjects and
on a co-authored book on environmental ethico-aesthetics.
Erich Hörl is Professor of Media Culture at the Institute of Culture and
Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM) at Leuphana University of Lüneburg.
His research concerns problems of a general ecology of media and
technology, the critique of cyberneticization of all modes of existence, and
the history of fascination with non-modernity. He publishes widely on the
contemporary technological condition. He is author of Die heiligen Kanäle:
Über die archaische Illusion der Kommunikation (Diaphanes, 2005), editor
of Die technologische Bedingung (Suhrkamp, 2011), and co-editor, with
Michael Hagner, of Die Transformation des Humanen (Suhrkamp, 2008).
His articles include “The Technological Condition” (Parrhesia, 2015),
“A Thousand Ecologies: The Process of Cyberneticization and General
Ecology” (in The Whole Earth: California and the Disappearance of the
Outside, Sternberg, 2013), and “Luhmann, the Non-trivial Machine and
the Neocybernetic Regime of Truth” (Theory, Culture and Society, 2012).
He was invited fellow at the IKKM, Bauhaus University Weimar (2010–11),
Leuphana’s Institute for Advanced Study Media Cultures of Computer
Simulation (mecs) (2013–14) and at the Insitute for Advanced Study of the
University of Konstanz (2016).
Brian Massumi teaches in the Communication Sciences Department at the
Université de Montréal. His research crosses the fields of art, architecture,
political and cultural theory, and philosophy. His works include Parables
for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Duke University Press, 2002),
What Animals Teach Us About Politics (Duke University Press, 2014),
Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception (Duke University
Press, 2015), Politics of Affect (Polity Press, 2015), and The Power at the
End of Economy (Duke University Press, 2015). He is also the translator
into English of a number of works of contemporary French philosophy,
including (with Geoffrey Bennington) Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition
and Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus.
Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University.
He gave the Wellek Lectures in Theory in 2014 and has collaborated with
Björk, Haim Steinbach, and Olafur Eliasson. He is the author of Dark
Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (Columbia, 2016), Nothing:
Three Inquiries in Buddhism (Chicago, 2015), Hyperobjects: Philosophy
and Ecology after the End of the World (Minnesota, 2013), Realist Magic: