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Meditations in Midair

Meditations in Midair REVIEW ESSAYS emina musanovi A review of Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Cited in the text as ho. There is a moment in nearly all Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons wherein the coyote, having been tricked into succumbing to his own more or less elaborate trap, runs off the edge of a cliff. Though he eventually plummets down with gusto, he first runs out horizontally beyond the precipice and is briefly suspended there, unaware of the sudden loss of ground. Only when he looks down, realizing that he has bid farewell to the support of terra firma, is he seized by the vertiginous verticality. But until he catches up to the abrupt change in his gravitational predicament, he is virtually suspended, held up by an imagined, transcendent ground mapped onto the gaping abyss. In a short-lived moment of the mind's triumph over the weight of matter, Coyote continues to run midair, mechanically enacting what Graham Harman calls "a procedure no longer flexibly adjusted to its surroundings."1 Harman, whose object-oriented ontology (ooo) informs Timothy Morton's work, argues that the kind of comedy that is http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences University of Nebraska Press

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University of Nebraska Press
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Copyright © University of Nebraska Press
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1938-8020
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Abstract

REVIEW ESSAYS emina musanovi A review of Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Cited in the text as ho. There is a moment in nearly all Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons wherein the coyote, having been tricked into succumbing to his own more or less elaborate trap, runs off the edge of a cliff. Though he eventually plummets down with gusto, he first runs out horizontally beyond the precipice and is briefly suspended there, unaware of the sudden loss of ground. Only when he looks down, realizing that he has bid farewell to the support of terra firma, is he seized by the vertiginous verticality. But until he catches up to the abrupt change in his gravitational predicament, he is virtually suspended, held up by an imagined, transcendent ground mapped onto the gaping abyss. In a short-lived moment of the mind's triumph over the weight of matter, Coyote continues to run midair, mechanically enacting what Graham Harman calls "a procedure no longer flexibly adjusted to its surroundings."1 Harman, whose object-oriented ontology (ooo) informs Timothy Morton's work, argues that the kind of comedy that is

Journal

Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social SciencesUniversity of Nebraska Press

Published: Oct 9, 2014

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