Grounding our subjectivity in the semiotic web

Abstract

In their responses to my framing of the ecological crisis as an ontological crisis, my interlocutors raise questions about the relationship between ontology and ethics; whether and how attention to affect and a reimagined ontology can cope with the demands that we face when thinking of ethics on a planetary scale; the implications of contemporary actions in deep time; and whether thinking through affect leads us to a perspective divorced from History. In response to Gandy and Jasper, I address misplaced charges of anthropocentrism, claims I abandon the subject, and claims I privilege affect in a way that ignores reason. In response to Sharp, Stark, and Clark, I elaborate (a) the ways in which we can proceed from a reimagined ontology to ethics through a more critical engagement with contemporary scholars (e.g. Buchanan and Wehelyie, who leaven the concept of assemblage), (b) the selective engagement of western philosophers as a kind of pars destruens to a western concept of the subject, and (c) the richness of an approach based on semiosis, which uncovers the communicative relations between a vast array of actors and actants and offers both a different vision of plenitude and the potential for wider range of alliances. I propose this as a prolegomenon to a reimagined future and expanded sense of human subjectivity—one which would acknowledge, celebrate, and promote a maximal biodiversity, in recognition of the ultimate dependence of humans on the workings of nonhuman others.