Book review: Timothy Morton’s Hyper-Pandemic
For the philosopher of “hyperobjects”- vast, unknowable things that are bigger than ourselves - the coronavirus is further proof that we live in a dark ecology. In 2013, a philosopher and ecologist named Timothy Morton proposed that humanity had entered a new phase. What had changed was our relationship to the nonhuman. For the first time, Morton wrote, we had become aware that “nonhuman beings” were “responsible for the next moment of human history and thinking.”
Timothy Morton: Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World
Reviewed by Morgan Meis
The nonhuman beings Morton had in mind weren’t computers or space aliens but a particular group of objects that were “massively distributed in time and space.” Morton called them “hyperobjects”: all the nuclear material on earth, for example, or all the plastic in the sea. “Everyone must reckon with the power of rising waves and ultraviolet light,” Morton wrote, in “Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World.” Those rising waves were being created by a hyperobject: all the carbon in the atmosphere.
Hyperobjects are real, they exist in our world, but they are also beyond us. We know a piece of Styrofoam when we see it - it’s white, spongy, light as air - and yet fourteen million tons of Styrofoam are produced every year; chunks of it break down into particles that enter other objects, including animals. Although Styrofoam is everywhere, one can never point to all the Styrofoam in the world and say, “There it is.”
Ultimately, Morton writes,
whatever bit of Styrofoam you may be interacting with at any particular moment
is only a “local manifestation” of a larger whole that exists in other places
and will exist on this planet millennia after you are dead. Relative to human
beings, therefore, Styrofoam is “hyper” in terms of both space and time. It’s
not implausible to say that our planet is a place for Styrofoam more than it is
a place for people....
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/timothy-mortons-hyper-pandemic
After the
Truth Shower - Webinar on the Pandemic. April 26 2020
I Am a Mad
Scientist. By Kate Marvel
10
Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats (1977)
'We did it
to ourselves': scientist says intrusion into nature led to pandemic
The champions of capitalism are
refusing to admit their ideology has failed
America has no real public health
system – coronavirus has a clear run
The US is losing its superpower
status and it might not recover / Trump’s Slow-Motion 9/11
Delilah Friedler: Capitalism Is
America’s Religion. The Virus Makes That Clear
American capitalism has dropped the
mask — and its face is cruel and selfish
Pravaasi -
A Poem by Taapsee Pannu
Bharat
Bhushan - Targeting labour laws: On whose behalf do states operate?
Pratap
Bhanu Mehta: Migrant labour and the unemployed will be demanding their rights,
not our mercy
India
coronavirus: The underpaid and unprotected women leading the Covid-19 war
Sanjay
Srivastava - India’s anti-COVID strategy is premised on a mistaken idea and a
pretence
India's poorest 'fear hunger may kill us before coronavirus'
