Experimental Metaphysics? « Larval Subjects .

I’m imagining a Universal Otherhood for Experimental Metaphysics…

Everything becomes a matter of signs, propositions, representations, texts, and contents. However, what role do practices play in philosophy? This role, if it is indeed crucial, would tend to disappear in philosophical texts, leaving only subterranean traces of nonhuman encounters– perhaps what Deleuze would call “becoming-x’s” –that deeply influence the form a philosophy takes…

We can then ask ourselves the question, “what would an experimental metaphysics look like?” It’s likely that pedagogy and conferences would look very different were we to practice experimental metaphysics. For example, conferences would not simply consist in the presentation of papers and the discussion of texts. Rather, conferences would also involve all sorts of experimental activities where the participants could engage in alien matters, strange strangers, to discover the powers that reside within them. Perhaps we would toy around with environmental and social simulators to discover how different patterns emerge based on certain actions. Perhaps we would learn a bit of simple programming. Perhaps we would do a little cooking. Perhaps we would do a little topology with construction paper and scissors, or discover odd properties of knots with bits of string. Maybe we would play about with algorithms to see what complex patterns emerge from simple rules. Similarly, it seems to me that theory conferences should also be melded with the arts, containing exhibits and performance art presentations. I don’t know. The point would be to engage with something other than representations, signs, and texts to encounter a bit of the real that’s irreducible to these things and far from being a passive matter over which the net of thought is thrown.

via Experimental Metaphysics? « Larval Subjects .