Papers by Jake Greear
Several cultural, political, economic, and technological trajectories are currently driving a tre... more Several cultural, political, economic, and technological trajectories are currently driving a trends toward de-industrialized and de-centralized modes of production and consumption, such as the local food movement, the makers movement, and the open source movement. In this paper I examine these trends with a view to their implications for ecological sustainability. Specifically, I suggest that in order to understand the potential positive ecological implications of such trends, it is helpful to depart from the well studied problem of “incomplete information” in markets, which is often understood as a key way in which markets fail to solve or forestall environmental problems. One promising aspect of decentralized production is its ability to facilitate greater flows of “information” in the market, as consumers bring themselves into closer proximity to production processes, often participating significantly in the production of many of the goods they consume. However, posing the problem and the promise of different regimes of production in terms of information assumes fixed preferences and desires on the part of individual consumers and producers, and it ascribes to the non-human components of the production process only the potential to meet pre-existing human desires. I argue for expanding the logic of “information problems” to consider how affects as well as information flow alongside materialities in cycles of production and consumption. Rather than seeing the affects that fuel market dynamics as preferences and desires inherent in individuals, I claim we should understand affects--including different modes of acquisitiveness as well as ecological and social sensibilities--as the emergent properties of specific assemblages of humans and non-humans that comprise and perform processes of production, distribution, and consumption. To help explicate this claim I explore a specific attempt to capitalize on emerging technologies to decentralize production: Marcin Jacobowski’s Open Source Ecology project, which is an attempt to design and build a suite of modular, open-source, self-replicating machines to empower a global network of self-sustaining local economies.
In this paper I argue that Heidegger was not only a philosopher with an idiosyncratic penchant fo... more In this paper I argue that Heidegger was not only a philosopher with an idiosyncratic penchant for agrarian imagery, but rather his philosophy is fundamentally an agrarian philosophy, and that the affinity between and Heidegger and environmentalism is best understood in this way. I link Heidegger's later writings on dwelling to his earlier masterwork, BEING AND TIME, suggesting both are articulations of a hermeneutic of the metabolic body. From this Heideggerian perspective, the privileged perception of the authentically environmental subject is closely connected to agrarian practices as a particular mode of work that is closest to the essence of human existence. Work in this sense functions for Heidegger as an environmental technique of the self. I point to a very similar emphasis on the existential importance of agrarian work in the work of the influential American eco-critic Wendell Berry. This paper is intended to stimulate discussion about the role of specific practices in fostering environmental consciousness and in constituting the concept of nature.
working draft The increased attention given to the analysis of ideational factors in political sc... more working draft The increased attention given to the analysis of ideational factors in political scientific scholarship continues to be understood by many proponents as progressive step forward in a field of essentially scientific study. However, this perspective tends to ignore important and fundamental questions raised by the incorporation of ideas-as-causes into scientific analysis. Many political scientists now acknowledge a causal importance for cognitive factors in politics, but often their work stops short of articulating the full implications of such "findings" for many commonly accepted notions of what political science is and does. If we bear out the logical implications of the ideational scholars' central insights, I argue, we see that the distinction between normative and empirical analysis cannot be strictly upheld, the line between political scholarship and political action is significantly blurred, and the applicability of the presently hegemonic inferential scientific method of social inquiry is even more limited than often thought.
This paper traces the evolution within the phenomenological philosophical tradition of specific t... more This paper traces the evolution within the phenomenological philosophical tradition of specific techniques aimed at modulating perception, which, following Foucault, I conceptualize as ‘alethurgic techniques of the self.’ After the Kantian separation of the noumenal and the phenomenal, the phenomenological tradition turns its attention to perception itself--prior to any transposition, for example, into a proposition--as the site of philosophical or critical action. Within this tradition I suggest that we may trace the development of specific techniques aimed at perfecting or authenticating perceptual experience. Starting with Husserl’s methods of ‘turning the gaze’ to ‘bracket’ the reality of the object, I argue there is an increasing emphasis on praxis, embodiment, and materiality in such techniques, which concomitantly come to be articulated not in terms of bracketing reality, but rather in terms of recovering or accessing a now-problematized ‘phenomenal real,’ or the ‘real’ understood as consonant with subjective experience itself. Drawing on Foucault’s late lectures and Fred Turner’s recent work on the ‘democratic surround,’ I suggest this facet of the phenomenological tradition inaugurates a mode of critical political thought, exemplified well in the work of Guy Debord, which links perception, political subjectivity, and revolutionary praxis through a peculiarly modern conception of the real, and thus a peculiarly modern politics of truth and illusion.
Talks by Jake Greear
This talk makes the case that in the history of Western environmental consciousness the practice ... more This talk makes the case that in the history of Western environmental consciousness the practice of walking became an ecological art of the self integral to the modern concept of wilderness. Drawing on Foucault, I claim we can understand wilderness walking as an "alethurgic" mode of practice which “performs” the wilderness as a space of truth and produces a particular mode of environmental subjectivity. Particularly I examine Henry Thoreau's reflections on walking, which he often portrayed as a praxial prerequisite for sensually clarified and ethically purified perception of the environment. I suggest that in Thoreau's sustained attention to the "how" and the "why" of wilderness walking we find a key element of contemporary environmental consciousness, which I call "peripatetic asceticism." As a set of ideas and ideals that come tightly packaged with certain embodied practices, I claim peripatetic asceticism is not peculiar to wilderness enthusiasts, but is also discernible in ancient Cynicism and the contemporary urban art of parkour. Finally I suggest that while the nexus of theory and practice that connects wilderness and walking has helped produce a culture of attentiveness and attachment to “nature,” it also ritually reproduces a potentially problematic notion that through a hermeneutics of the motile body one can attain a singularly authentic perception of the environment, to the dogmatic exclusion of other modes of making environmental meaning, which could include agrarian, scientific, spiritual, economic, or cultural-historical modes.
This talk draws upon Nietzsche's GENEALOGY OF MORALS and the work of Paul Rahe, using the histori... more This talk draws upon Nietzsche's GENEALOGY OF MORALS and the work of Paul Rahe, using the historical example of Greek war-fighting innovations as an entry point into a discussion of the 'materialist turn' in political theory. I use examples from military history to illuminate theoretical, philosophical, and pop-cultural debates over the agency of materiality, the ideological neutrality of artifacts, Latour's actor network theory, and the Deleuzian concept of assemblages.
Blog Posts by Jake Greear
Before the current political cycle no one could have predicted the rise of Donald Trump the candi... more Before the current political cycle no one could have predicted the rise of Donald Trump the candidate. Not with any certainty. But now, with the primary endgame looming, no one can deny its importance. What accounts for his surprising success? We hear that he is tapping into the frustrations and fears of the working class in economic decline. But it isn't as if Trump is
Teaching Documents by Jake Greear
What is Technology? How does technological change impact politics, society, and human life in gen... more What is Technology? How does technological change impact politics, society, and human life in general? Do the changes in technology since the Enlightenment constitute progress? Does technological progress foster moral progress? Is technology a good in itself? Is it ethically neutral? Or is increasing technological complexity bad for society? These questions have taken on increasing salience over the last three centuries. In this course we will engage classical and contemporary writers who address them from scholarly, critical, and artistic perspectives. We will read texts
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Papers by Jake Greear
Talks by Jake Greear
Blog Posts by Jake Greear
Teaching Documents by Jake Greear