Introduction – Wonder and the Question of Speculation in Phenomenology
The Allure of Phenomenology
Correlationism and the Critique of Phenomenology
An Epiphany in Virginia
Diffractive Reading
Chapter One – Placing Wonder: Merleau-Ponty, New Materialism, and Object-Oriented Ontology
Thaumazein, Epistemological Wonder, and Ontological Wonder
Merleau-Ponty and an Ontological Wonder
New Materialism
Object Oriented Ontology
Placing Wonder in the Flesh
Chapter Two – Aesthetics, Causality, and Operative Wonder
Aesthetics of Wonder: Rare Experiences
Disenchantment and Re-Enchantment: Why Art Matters
Aesthetic Causality and the Law of Noncontradiction
Language and the Dramatization of Aesthetic Causality
1Q84: A World that Bears a Question
Chapter Three – Ontological Wonder as Operative Wonder
The End of Phenomenology and the Case for Realism
Realism, Ontological Wonder, and Quantum Physics
Onto-Cartography and Operative Wonder
Diffractive Reading and Alien Phenomenology
Chapter Four – Museums, Gardens, and the Possibility for Care in Operative Wonder
The Living Museum
Cabinets of Curiosities
Enchantment in the Museum
Cathedrals of Enchantment and Being Lost in a Horror Store
The Garden of Care
Chapter Five – Speculative Wonder: Toward a Weird Environmental Ethics
The Weird
The Need for a Weird Ethics
An Environmental Virtue of Wonder
Conclusion
Weird Wonder: A Speculative Eco-Phenomenology
Brian Hisao Onishi is an assistant professor of philosophy at Penn State Altoona, USA. His research focuses on the intersection between environmental philosophy and continental thought, with particular emphasis on wonder.
This book connects recent developments in speculative realism, new materialism, and eco-phenomenology to articulate an approach to wonder that escapes the connected traps of anthropocentrism and correlationism. Brian Onishi argues that wonder has explanatory power for the constitution of the world and the organization of meaning. To do this, he appeals to both fiction (speculative and Weird fiction in particular) and quantum physics. More specifically, he argues that the focus of Weird fiction on impossible experiences and a feeling of something just beyond the limits of one’s grasp dramatizes the speculative reach beyond the limits of our understanding. But more than a tool for knowledge acquisition, wonder is an organizing property of objects. Like the collapse of superposition in quantum physics, reality is constituted when objects reveal themselves to other objects and thereby organize themselves into complex objects. Since no relation is exhaustive, the capacity to wonder remains at a material level, and the possibility of reorganization is ever present. Ultimately, Onishi argues for a speculative eco-phenomenology with wonder as an engine for a Weird environmental ethics.
Brian Hisao Onishi is an assistant professor of philosophy at Penn State Altoona, USA. His research focuses on the intersection between environmental philosophy and continental thought, with particular emphasis on wonder.