Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World

Morton, T. (2013). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Morton argues that the end of the phenomenal world as we know it and the separability of the human with the natural is already here; thus we need new ways of learning to live and think within the world. Instead of centring the human, we should envision modes of coexistence with non-human objects. Morton employs a speculative realist approach and focuses on hyperobjects as large scale figurations that not only exist and are ‘real’ independent of human perception but are also ungraspable and incomprehensible by human minds. Examples include black holes, oil fields, biospheres, solar systems, all the nuclear materials on earth as well as lasting products of human manufacture and capitalism like Styrofoam. Morton links hyperobjects to ‘the end of the world’ that began with industrialism and the patenting of the steam engine in 1784 and now characterises our new Anthropocene era. Part one focuses on defining and explicating hyperobjects and details their five shared properties: viscosity, nonlocality, temporal undulation, phasing, and interobjectivity. Part two then explores the social, political, and ethical consequences of hyperobjects and includes a reflection on and critique of our environmental rhetoric that does not address the problem head on: ‘greening’ our practices rather than fundamentally changing them. It also includes an extended section on postmodernist object-oriented art as a means to move beyond this kind of environmental rhetoric. The purpose of Morton’s focus on non-human objects is to move beyond a human-centred ontology and to envision a new ethical system of action for our current environmental epoch.