Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World

by Timothy Morton

Overview

Global warming is perhaps the most dramatic example of what Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects”—entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place. Morton explains what hyperobjects are and their impact on how we think, how we coexist, and how we experience our politics, ethics, and art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452940557
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Series:	Posthumanities
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He is the author of many books, including The Ecological Thought and Ecology without Nature. He blogs frequently at Ecology without Nature.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments
A Quake in Being: An Introduction to Hyperobjects

Part I. What Are Hyperobjects?
Viscosity
Nonlocality
Temporal Undulation
Phasing
Interobjectivity

Part II. The Time of Hyperobjects
The End of the World
Hypocrisies
The Age of Asymmetry

Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"In Hyperobjects, Timothy Morton brings to bear his deep knowledge of a wide array of subjects to propose a new way of looking at our situation, which might allow us to take action toward the future health of the biosphere. Crucially, the relations between Buddhism and science, nature and culture, are examined in the fusion of a single vision. The result is a great work of cognitive mapping, both exciting and useful."—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Shaman, 2312, and the Mars trilogy

"Not only does Morton range from William Wordsworth to the Velvet Underground to Nagasaki to Republican denialism, he does it in a way that marshals these disparate allusions in the service of a cogent idea, one that manages to come off as both intuitive and radical."—Newsweek

"[This book] is bold, stimulating, and provocative. With extraordinary verve and audacity, Morton makes his hyperobjects into harbingers for a new epoch, on a planetary scale, a task in which he is assisted by the general consensus about the Anthropocene, the current era of human-induced planetary change."—Los Angeles Review of Books

"Whatever your hopes or fears for the next major era in human history, Morton is telling us that it has already happened and it is us."—3 Quarks Daily

"A relentless torrent of commentary that presents challenges to most contemporary scholarship on both sides of the still upheld nature/culture divide."—Qui Parle

"Morton’s work bridges a gap between academia and the global warming movement with a postmodern angle."—Vogue

"Morton is unafraid to mix theory with personal and often confessional material, anchoring his arguments to his own experience of the world."—A Year’s Work in Critical Culture and Theory

From the Publisher