Energyscapes, Architecture, and the Expanded Field of Postindustrial Philosophy -- Jeff Diamanti Full Citation and Summary Diamanti, Jeff M. `Energyscapes, Architecture, and the Expanded Field of Postindustrial Philosophy'. Postmodern Culture 26.2 (2016): n. pag. Web. This article posits that the postindustrial economy of economic elasticity and the theoretical outgrowths of its material forms are underpinned by an intensification and expansion of energy production. This expansion establishes itself in specific spatial forms which transform all landscapes into energyscapes where all activity is necessarily energy-intensive. As a corrective to toothless theoretical regimes tied to fluidity and plasticity, Diamanti proposes a return to dialectical thinking. The author, Jeff Diamanti is a Cultural Studies researcher and Professor of Environmental Humanities as the University of Amsterdam. His background is in English Lit. and Film Studies and his doctoral research was undertaken in the heart of oil country in Edmonton, AB. Notes - Introduction (pp. 1-2) - Sets the stage w/ the following premise: the "immaterial economy" is premised-on and actively motivates the rapid expansion of energy infrastructure responsible for climate change (pp. 1) - Cooling, electricity as the two big supports, necessity to be always online (pp. 1) - Main claim: infrastructural truth of post-industrial economy involves the inseparable processes of "energy wealth" ↑ & unemployment ↑ (pp. 1), that the post-industrial economy reshapes all landscapes as "energyscapes" and that an object-oriented-ontology (rather than a labour oriented one) is implied in its operation (pp. 2) - Energyscapes and the Infrastructures of Accumulation (pp. 2-7) - "Energyscape" = the expanded field in which capital accumulation is provided its energy infrastructure, optimized aesthetically and socially for growth of capital (pp. 2) - "expanded field" = the historical and physical settings of a process (see Rosalind Krauss' "Sculpture in the Expanded Field) (pp. 2) - Takes cues from Toscano and Kingle's "logistical landscapes", but goes beyond them (pp. 2) - The form and historical specificity of the "setting" we find ourselves in (pp. 4) - "setting" = "texture, rhythm, and environment" (pp. 5) not context - Specific focus is on how all postindustrial landscapes are energy saturated (ie. all activities are energy-intensive activities) (pp. 2-3) - This through automation, logistics, infrastructure; all activities (pp. 3) - Expanded field of energy is the "seamless" circuit between extraction circulation consumption (pp. 2) - Aesthetics of fluidity, immateriality, etc. which hide the process of disemployment (pp. 2) - Expressed in philosophy/cultural theories of elasticity, plasticity, and liquidity which reject the capital-labour-energy relation (pp. 2) - Theories of "immaterial culture" are one component, along with economic growth and state security of an aesthetic practice that hides the real relation (capital expansion through resource extraction), these together form a continuous aesthetic project (pp. 3) - The limits of the "exposure", the problem of scale, the problem of relating global to human (pp. 2) - Political knowledge through making visible (awareness) =/= action; this through the ideological level belief in individual plasticity, the ability to endlessly reinvent yourself without recourse to your own history (Boetzkes & Pendakis) (pp. 3-4) - This even at the molecular level in Carbon itself (pp. 4) - The hiddenness of infrastructure through scale, active obfuscation (ie. state actors) (pp. 2-3) - Tie between increasing energy production and production of digital information; acceleration since the first industrial revolution (pp. 3) - Moves to a philosophical discussion of "plasticity" to defend a dialectical form of thinking (pp. 4-5) - D proposes dialectic in two directions: 1) capital-plasticity (abstract capacity to give form) & 2) capital-plastic (the energy system that supports it) (pp. 4) - Critiquing postindustrial philosophies' (Speculative Philosophies, OOO, ANT) political ambitions (pp. 4) - Through Levi Bryant's naturalization of energy processes through thermodynamics which naturalizes capitalism (pp. 4) - Assertion that these de-historicize or reject historicization (pp. 4) - Takes a position against this through reading the "expanded field" as essentially the following: there is not autonomy of any activity, all of the "economies" are intimately linked (pp. 5) - There are no external forces acting since there is no edge for them to act upon since everything is a linked component - "Energy deepening" as root cause of postindustrial since it made possible a series of transformations: financialization currency delinking, resource industry expansion, cheep domestic energy, digital tech. so-called immaterial, affective, creative economic turns (pp. 5) - Architectural turn back to landscape at the same time as energy deepening which was marked by ambition to design environments/the environment (pp.5-6) - Marked by design of "processes, strategies, agencies, and scaffoldings." Not design of buildings; from objects to settings (pp. 6) - Response to environmental awareness on one hand, but more so from new client requirements which were explicitly keyed to postindustrialization (pp. 6) - Uses Tschumi's La Villette as an example of this: how programmed dpaces are disengaged from the productive process and redesigned as "indeterminate settings" where program is variable (pp. 6-7) - Redefinition of landscape as a "place where matter, energy, and ideas flow" which sits on de-industrialization (pp. 7) - Landscape Infrastructures (pp. 7-10) - David Gissen's assertion that turns toward research, organization, landscape, and infrastructure are part of the same historical process which involves theoretical changes and a representational move to maps of territory over plans (pp. 7) - Related to the emergence of landscape architecture as a profession (pp. 7) - Representation change to accommodate the global scale of postindustrial governance, production and management (pp. 7) - Demonstration of the above assertion through Rossi, Reiser + Umemoto, DS+R's Blur Building, Mostafavi's eco-nostalgia (pp. 7-9) - General theme of naturalizing energy as an ecological function, shedding the economic function of energy as underpinning the productive process (pp. 9) - Urban life without production (pp. 9) - Against this, spatial modulation of energy deepening as main driver of postindustrial economy; architecture as energy infrastructure, the spatial sites of energy production processes (pp. 9-10) - Philosophy and the Problem of Energy (pp. 10-12) - Charts the following philosophical move of intensive properties over extensive action: speculation object orientation accelerationism (pp. 10) - Energy as a cosmic force in these speculative philosophies; the visibility of energy-capital dialectic is in climate change (its material effect) (pp. 10) - Conceptual slippage between energy and intensity; need material history of energy's concept across disciplines in which it takes shape (pp. 10) - fundamental mediator of creation is labour in its mediation of energy in creating value (pp. 10-11) - Proposes Isabelle Stenger's critical realism as a fruitful point of departure which can get at the material level while also operating on the history of concepts by committing to mediation (pp. 11) - Stengers continues tradition of engaging with gap between mechanics and thermodynamics (see Serres and Bachelard), while thinking the two energy frameworks as "ways of seeing" as much as formations (pp. 11) - Stengers gets at the way energy is a strange object for science to study since it is not directly measurable; Diamanti brings in Marx's labour theory of value by showing that it is a measuring system for energy: labour theory of value insists on making energy empirically measurable (pp. 11-12) - Value and energy are tightly intertwined and that's the key which connects capital and energy (pp. 12)