Timothy Morton: Subscendence

SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL - THE GEOLOGIC IMAGINATION
Timothy Morton: Subscendence
26 February 2015 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
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We have all heard of transcendence. But what about the inverse, where something shrinks into its component pieces in such a way that the whole is always less than the sum of its parts? In this talk Morton explains why this new concept is very useful for thinking ecological beings. In an ecological world, beings are necessarily fragile and incomplete, even the massive ones. And all kinds of contemporary phenomena (megacities, global warming), the hyperobjects, are subscendent in precisely this way.

[@chrismyrs3455]

Fabulous! i'm thinking this stuff should start to catch on *any time now*! thanks...

[@d.r.m.m.]

Thank you, @timothymorton !!

[@JoaoCosta-pn9im]

Brilliant! A system is certainly smaller than its parts. A legal system, for instance, operates with the simple distinction of legality and illegality that frames all the humongous collections of laws, by laws, adjudications and all sorts of regulations and rulings in the legal sphere. A system is a hyperobject.

[@nickgeffen8316]

[@edwardferry8247]

Morton has a habit of decontextualising in order to build an initial platform for his beautiful juggling. He is skilled at verbally transversing meshes of references and making nodal skips across webs (apparently disconnected possible intersections) but his speeches arrive at the ear as contrived conceptual art. It’s seductive but he is stretching simple premises way beyond their required temporal space.

[@zeritic]

So?

[@Johnnyredtail]

So Vishnu being the size of a thumb resting within the heart is not such a outlandish idea after all?