Notes on Dark Vitalism and Epistemology

15Dec09

Again to think the cosmological cascade of Dark Vitallism in these terms we start with the following: Real – Immanence – Sense – Transcendence and translate it for the realm of thinking (and to borrow from Zizek: )

unknown unknowns –  known unknowns – known knowns – unKnown knowns

Previously I designated the following operators:

Real—(Matter)—Immanence—(Life)—Sense—(Pathology)—Transcendence

This schema is from an embodied or phenomenological point of view. This might also be taken to be a flattened ontology taken from an materialist (and not realist) point of view. To take a step back, to take a particularly realist point of view a different set of operators is required. From an epistemological point we could set up the following operators:

Real—(Concept)—Immanence—(Process)—Sense—(Object)—Transcendence

The unknown unknowns are what lie before the bare minimum of conceptualization following from the void of the Real, what could be designated as (borrowing from Badiou) being qua being. The inconsistency of any sense of being lies not in any particular formulation (of any specific grasp on the Real) but the inconsistency in formulation itself. To place conceptualization prior to process is not a chronological emergence but of the way in which a philosophical program must function retroactively.  In other words, conceptualization does not proceed immanence or process chronologically but only philosophically.

For immanence we must immediately distance ourselves from the livel pure immanence of Deleuuze and work towards something more in the vein of Mark Fisher’s Gothic materialism. The inseparability of the organic and inorganic in the field of immanence remains a particularly thorny issue in the work of Meillassoux. This problem of immanence I hope to adress in my next entry.

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Filed under: Badiou, Brassier, Deleuze, ontology, Speculative Realism, Zizek   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: dark vitalism, epistemology, gothic materialism, immanence, the Real