Lexicon

Abject
Accretion
Actant
Aeration
Aerobic
Algae-boosted
Animal
Anthropomorphism
Anti-Continuous Construction
Apocalypse
Aquaculture
Aquanaut
Ark
Artificial Intelligence
Autopoiesis
Assemblages
Asymmetry
Atrophy
Attraction
Autarchy
Automata
Automation
Autosymbiosis
Bambassador
Bathyscaphe
Bioconurbation
Biomedia
Bionics
Biosphere
Biotechnique
By-product
Capacity
Actant
Coisolation
Composting
Conservative Surgery
Consumer Envelope
Consumption
Continuous Construction
Conurbation
Correalism
Cultural_Memory
Cybernetics
Cybertecture
Cyborg
Dispositif
Diving Saucer
Dross
Earthship
Ecocatastrophe
Effluvium
Egosphere
End-use
Entanglement
Eutopia
Feedback
Foam
Folk
Gadget
Garbage House
Green Cyborg
Heuristic
Hoard
Holism
Homogenization of Desire
Hostile
Human Affect
Hybridized Folk
Hydroponic
Hyper-Materialism
Information Economy
Inner Space
Interama
Intra-Uterine
Maque
Megalopolis
Min-use
Mobility
Monorail
Multi-Hinge
Non-Design
Oceanaut
Oppositional Consciousness
Organic
Ouroboros
Panarchy
Parasite
Perceived Continuation
Permanence
Place
Prototype
Post-Animal
Reclamation
RI: Data Farms
RI: Garbage and Animals
RI:Shipbreaking
RI: Toxic Sublime
Sampling
Scale
Sensing Structure
Simulacrum
Simulation
Soft Energy
Spaceship Earth
Submersible
Superwindow
Symbiosis
Synthetic Environment
Technocratic
Technological Heredity
Technological Sublime
Telechirics
The Sublime
Thermal Panel
Actant
Thing-Power
Thinking Machines
Tool
Toxic Withdrawal
Turbulence
UV-Transparent Film
Vibrant Matter
Waste
Work

TOXIC WITHDRAWAL

Graham Harman theorizes withdrawal in his object-oriented ontology (OOO) - that objects or their qualities never fully touch, always at least partially receded from one another. Levi Bryant, another founding member of OOO, has noted the ethical and political tensions that exist (though never explicitly by Harman) in Harman's withdrawal, claiming it is "a protest against all ambitions of domination, mastery, and exploitation." Bryant expands on his claim linking withdrawal to the themes of both hope and caution: the hope "of being otherwise... that there's always an excess that allows the possibility of the 'more,' the encore, and the otherwise" for the former and the caution against "narcissistic pretensions of mastery... that entities always harbor hidden surprises and are liable to behave in ways that we don't expect" for the latter1

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This caution has been ignored throughout history, especially with regards to industrial processes, such as mining and smelting natural ores and other substances to produce technological products. Humankind's attempts at "mastery" over nature often result in toxic qualities of these processes infiltrating the natural landscape. However, these effects are often invisible, withdrawing from being immediately at hand - often only appearing through statistical data, health symptoms, and sensationalist media. While Jennifer Peeples notes that the toxic sublime is an emerging art aesthetic that can be appropriated to aid in the environmental communication of toxic landscapes, these images only explore the qualities of the toxins that have permeated through the environment2. The toxic substances themselves are impossible to fully view aesthetically; they have withdrawn.

Citations
Bryant, Levi. "Harman Withdrawal, and Vacuum Packed Objects: My Gratitude." 2012, Larval Subjects
Peeples, Jennifer. "Toxic Sublime: Imagining Contaminated Landscapes." 2011, Environmental Communications 5. pp.373-392