Contributors on the Unfogged blog have been having some good fun with this characterisation of Graham Harman’s recent talk as “brilliantly dense” (besides also being generally amused by the reference to “object-oriented philosophy” and the possibility of a “realism without materialism”). In hindsight it was probably not the most fortunate choice of a phrase, given some of the connotations of dense such as “thick,” “difficult to understand,” or “thickheaded.” How can something be dense brilliantly, i.e. “permitting little light to pass through because of compactness of matter”? (Definitions from The American Heritage Dictionary 2002.) Yes, that would be a contradiction, unless one was trying to say something poetic about the “brilliantly dense character of black holes in the universe” or something like that (which I wasn’t).
Untitled (detail)
Pencil on paper
65cm x 50cm
© 2009 Tammy Lu
