I was quite unable to keep up with the exchanges between Jussi Parika, the commenters on his blog, and the OOO folks (Harman, Bogost, Bryant, Paul Caplan, and Robert Jackson).

It’s always hard in such situations to separate the critique from the shit talking as argumentative strategy falls right in the middle. Part of the rhetorical mess is that many Deleuzians still see themselves as occupying a minority position (a position which OOO may see itself in as well and rightly so). The former generally overlooks the longevity of its time in the spotlight while the latter generally overlooks the effect its fast rise has on those outside it. Anyways, these attitudes are problematic and muddy the arguments being made.

Jason Hills has said many things which I agree with here. The problem, as he put it in another post, really has to do with the idea of objects as ready-made, that there does not seem to be a good sense of generation or change. I think Michael Austin addressed this well in his essay in the first issue of Speculations. Though we disagree about the reach of phenomenology, the fact that there is some capacity or conatus or vitality (organic or inorganic) that is not reducibly to thought nor to strictly eliminative means seems important.

Both in drawing battle lines and in separating the epistemological from the non-epistemological, it becomes difficult to separate the partitions from the clouds of swarming objects.