I didn't wanna wake the team now sleeping under the stars. So I am whispering. I haven't read that Hell book but have caught quite a few of Morton's podcasts recently. Have you run across his claims on the Parsifal myth? I disagree with it in that good way that makes me wanna hear his side in full.
Gotta pass through your wild business here again. Back soon.
Thanks, Andrew. I don't recall about Parsifal, but I'm very much enjoying disagreeing with Tim Morton "in that good way" right now. Hell is a baffling book of wisdom and obfuscation. (Much like Dark Ecology was). I've been reading Tim for over a decade and am with them for the long haul. A key thinker for our time I believe.
Hi Dan, I read occasionally your substacks, I am frustrated that it makes little sense to me. I wonder how I should understand my lack here. Does one need to be immersed in this type of thinking/literature to understand it. What is the genre?
Thank you sincerely for occasionally reading this weirdness, Donald! Your frustration and questions are understandable and warranted. Thanks for asking for clarification rather than giving up on this Substack altogether. (Sorry it took so long to reply.) Your questions are very good ones and not easy to answer. I'm sharing this as a note as I'm certain you're far from alone in your bafflement.
SHORT ANSWER: it helps but I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to be already immersed in the type of thinking and literature I’m referencing or performing here. At best, the language and imagery will excite and nourish even the reader who has no such frame of reference. (This is completely dependent on one’s tastes, I suppose.) The genre is perhaps its own genre that folds in many others, from fantastical allegory, fiction, and autofiction to philosophical aphorisms, (often dirty) jokes, and something approaching ecstatic visions. I find that roiling combination exciting. Many will find it only baffling (or worse, boring).
LONG ANSWER:
You ask, 1) ‘Does one need to be immersed in this type of thinking/literature to understand it’? Unfortunately I have to give an equivocating answer: maybe, maybe not. I frequently write from the heart and from the hip. I am trying to express and clarify certain things for my own understanding and my hope is that the prose style, the images, and the sketched concepts will in and of themselves bring some delight to certain kinds of readers who enjoy experimental, creative writing. The music of the language (such as it is) is often its own reward for me. It sustains the thoughts it arranges. That is, the poetic qualities of the writing may thrill or entertain or pique curiosity regardless of whether one is familiar with a given discourse I might be tapping into (mostly continental philosophy and ecocriticism/ecophilosophy). Or they don't. My style and approach are admittedly niche (more about that in answer to your second question on genre below).
So, you definitely get more out of a piece like this one in particular if you're passingly familiar with some central concepts from the likes of, say, Heidegger (that's the ‘dasein’ and ‘zuhanden’/’vorhanden’ remark) or ‘monism’ or ‘Object-Oriented Ontology--or Kierkegaard in the Afterword. That said, I think context suggests at least some of the meaning of the discourses alluded to here. The piece is wrestling with whether everything is one or whether plurality actually exists in the world and how this question connects to life and its lived material conditions. If someone finds that to be an interesting question (or just entertainingly presented here), they might go Google some of those terms and thinkers and see what they can find. They might explore my previous or future posts to see if I expand on any of it (albeit in my consistently idiosyncratic way). They might click on the links to articles or podcasts and see if they perceive the alleged affinities or antipathies I'm suggesting.
That will sound like a lot of extra work or a lot of fun depending on whether the reader's brain energy was a little enkindled by my writing or not. I do honestly completely understand that, for now, so far, it's likely to be the former way more often than the latter. It's a risk I'm taking: writing this way. I'm perfectly capable of clear, signposted, properly referenced writing (I publish academic articles after all). But here I'm doing something different, though not at all unrelated. These rather bizarre creative explorations are supplementary to my 'professional' writing and research (I don’t think that distinction’s necessarily helpful, but it’s familiar).
All that said, in certain cases I do try to provide brief explanations of terms or discourses, such as my attempts to sketch the concept of the Anthropocene and its critics in a substantial footnote here, with reference to academic sources on those topics.
Your second question supplements the first: 2) ‘What is the genre’? Alas, that's even harder to answer. I'm not entirely sure it's a genre that exists outside my Substack. To some, that will sound like a boast. To me, it's more like throwing my hands up in exasperation. There are genres I've heard of, such as ‘theory fiction’ and ‘philo-fiction’, that at least some of my Substack writing may fit into. But I still don't know enough about these genres to say whether that’s so. Exploring them has been sitting on my to-do list, uncrossed off, for some time. In any case, the ‘genre’ of many of these Substack pieces (if it *is* a genre) seems to fold in many of the following:
imagistic *prose-poetry*
*allegory* and *extended metaphor*
*semi-visionary*, almost *ecstatic* writing (if one grants that vision or ecstasy can be partial or approximate)
*humour writing* and *jokes* (which is in part why I indulge in some swearing, sex, excrement, and the like)
*fiction* of some theoretical sort (that seems to exceed mere allegory to me--it tells tiny little stories or describes fantastical scenes that are at least to some degree there for their own sake before they are there to make a certain rhetorical point)
somewhat cryptic *autobiography* (creative narrations of my long-ago and current conditions, in both factual and fantastical registers, which try to make some sense of my present and very real spiritual and material precarity: I tend to think of this with the coined term ‘autofabulation’ as opposed to the more well-known ‘autofiction’; but I would add that there is also at times an element of desperation or existential urgency that seems to me to exceed the category of mere autobiography)
and, of course, *philosophical skirmishes* (i.e. arguments about metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, etc. expressed in super compact provocations rather than syllogistic, deductive, or inductive series of paragraphs; there is, of course, some precedent for this in the aphorisms of various philosophers, including Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, some of whom also deployed fairly strange or grotesque imagery and verbal constructions not altogether unlike those found here)
But something that tends to fold in all (or at least a *lot*) of these in any given piece… what the hell genre is that? I honestly don’t know. I suppose certain novels or epic poems or plays contain all of these elements. But I’m writing none of those forms here. Perhaps the emphasis tends to triangulate on philosophy, autofabulation, and visionary ecstasy--without an overall novelistic or monographic structure--grounded in some emotional or existential throughline that (often barely) holds it together. In my mind and heart anyway. But it’s also one huge work-in-progress, still finding its overall shape and probably its genre too, whether that already exists or awaits invention.
That’s the best I can do to answer your questions for now, Donald. Thank you again for asking (and reading!).
Thanks Dan for the helpful reply, hearing what your doing encourages me to continue to read, I find your autofabulation struggles very helpful, I am less at home with the philosophical skirmishes, but want to learn much more of philosophy...
I didn't wanna wake the team now sleeping under the stars. So I am whispering. I haven't read that Hell book but have caught quite a few of Morton's podcasts recently. Have you run across his claims on the Parsifal myth? I disagree with it in that good way that makes me wanna hear his side in full.
Gotta pass through your wild business here again. Back soon.
Thanks, Andrew. I don't recall about Parsifal, but I'm very much enjoying disagreeing with Tim Morton "in that good way" right now. Hell is a baffling book of wisdom and obfuscation. (Much like Dark Ecology was). I've been reading Tim for over a decade and am with them for the long haul. A key thinker for our time I believe.
Hi Dan, I read occasionally your substacks, I am frustrated that it makes little sense to me. I wonder how I should understand my lack here. Does one need to be immersed in this type of thinking/literature to understand it. What is the genre?
Thank you sincerely for occasionally reading this weirdness, Donald! Your frustration and questions are understandable and warranted. Thanks for asking for clarification rather than giving up on this Substack altogether. (Sorry it took so long to reply.) Your questions are very good ones and not easy to answer. I'm sharing this as a note as I'm certain you're far from alone in your bafflement.
SHORT ANSWER: it helps but I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to be already immersed in the type of thinking and literature I’m referencing or performing here. At best, the language and imagery will excite and nourish even the reader who has no such frame of reference. (This is completely dependent on one’s tastes, I suppose.) The genre is perhaps its own genre that folds in many others, from fantastical allegory, fiction, and autofiction to philosophical aphorisms, (often dirty) jokes, and something approaching ecstatic visions. I find that roiling combination exciting. Many will find it only baffling (or worse, boring).
LONG ANSWER:
You ask, 1) ‘Does one need to be immersed in this type of thinking/literature to understand it’? Unfortunately I have to give an equivocating answer: maybe, maybe not. I frequently write from the heart and from the hip. I am trying to express and clarify certain things for my own understanding and my hope is that the prose style, the images, and the sketched concepts will in and of themselves bring some delight to certain kinds of readers who enjoy experimental, creative writing. The music of the language (such as it is) is often its own reward for me. It sustains the thoughts it arranges. That is, the poetic qualities of the writing may thrill or entertain or pique curiosity regardless of whether one is familiar with a given discourse I might be tapping into (mostly continental philosophy and ecocriticism/ecophilosophy). Or they don't. My style and approach are admittedly niche (more about that in answer to your second question on genre below).
So, you definitely get more out of a piece like this one in particular if you're passingly familiar with some central concepts from the likes of, say, Heidegger (that's the ‘dasein’ and ‘zuhanden’/’vorhanden’ remark) or ‘monism’ or ‘Object-Oriented Ontology--or Kierkegaard in the Afterword. That said, I think context suggests at least some of the meaning of the discourses alluded to here. The piece is wrestling with whether everything is one or whether plurality actually exists in the world and how this question connects to life and its lived material conditions. If someone finds that to be an interesting question (or just entertainingly presented here), they might go Google some of those terms and thinkers and see what they can find. They might explore my previous or future posts to see if I expand on any of it (albeit in my consistently idiosyncratic way). They might click on the links to articles or podcasts and see if they perceive the alleged affinities or antipathies I'm suggesting.
That will sound like a lot of extra work or a lot of fun depending on whether the reader's brain energy was a little enkindled by my writing or not. I do honestly completely understand that, for now, so far, it's likely to be the former way more often than the latter. It's a risk I'm taking: writing this way. I'm perfectly capable of clear, signposted, properly referenced writing (I publish academic articles after all). But here I'm doing something different, though not at all unrelated. These rather bizarre creative explorations are supplementary to my 'professional' writing and research (I don’t think that distinction’s necessarily helpful, but it’s familiar).
All that said, in certain cases I do try to provide brief explanations of terms or discourses, such as my attempts to sketch the concept of the Anthropocene and its critics in a substantial footnote here, with reference to academic sources on those topics.
Your second question supplements the first: 2) ‘What is the genre’? Alas, that's even harder to answer. I'm not entirely sure it's a genre that exists outside my Substack. To some, that will sound like a boast. To me, it's more like throwing my hands up in exasperation. There are genres I've heard of, such as ‘theory fiction’ and ‘philo-fiction’, that at least some of my Substack writing may fit into. But I still don't know enough about these genres to say whether that’s so. Exploring them has been sitting on my to-do list, uncrossed off, for some time. In any case, the ‘genre’ of many of these Substack pieces (if it *is* a genre) seems to fold in many of the following:
imagistic *prose-poetry*
*allegory* and *extended metaphor*
*semi-visionary*, almost *ecstatic* writing (if one grants that vision or ecstasy can be partial or approximate)
*humour writing* and *jokes* (which is in part why I indulge in some swearing, sex, excrement, and the like)
*fiction* of some theoretical sort (that seems to exceed mere allegory to me--it tells tiny little stories or describes fantastical scenes that are at least to some degree there for their own sake before they are there to make a certain rhetorical point)
somewhat cryptic *autobiography* (creative narrations of my long-ago and current conditions, in both factual and fantastical registers, which try to make some sense of my present and very real spiritual and material precarity: I tend to think of this with the coined term ‘autofabulation’ as opposed to the more well-known ‘autofiction’; but I would add that there is also at times an element of desperation or existential urgency that seems to me to exceed the category of mere autobiography)
and, of course, *philosophical skirmishes* (i.e. arguments about metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, etc. expressed in super compact provocations rather than syllogistic, deductive, or inductive series of paragraphs; there is, of course, some precedent for this in the aphorisms of various philosophers, including Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, some of whom also deployed fairly strange or grotesque imagery and verbal constructions not altogether unlike those found here)
But something that tends to fold in all (or at least a *lot*) of these in any given piece… what the hell genre is that? I honestly don’t know. I suppose certain novels or epic poems or plays contain all of these elements. But I’m writing none of those forms here. Perhaps the emphasis tends to triangulate on philosophy, autofabulation, and visionary ecstasy--without an overall novelistic or monographic structure--grounded in some emotional or existential throughline that (often barely) holds it together. In my mind and heart anyway. But it’s also one huge work-in-progress, still finding its overall shape and probably its genre too, whether that already exists or awaits invention.
That’s the best I can do to answer your questions for now, Donald. Thank you again for asking (and reading!).
Thanks Dan for the helpful reply, hearing what your doing encourages me to continue to read, I find your autofabulation struggles very helpful, I am less at home with the philosophical skirmishes, but want to learn much more of philosophy...