New episode of AV out this morning.

‘Nothing But Us’ - The OLR Supplement Timothy Clark and Philippe Lynes discuss Speculative Realism, Object Oriented Ontology (OOO), deconstruction, and concerns of the ecological humanities such as extinction

An interview between Timothy Clark and Phil Lynes on the latter's new book Dearth, on speculative realism and (eco-)deconstruction: olrsupplement.com/2026/04/02/n...

Writing’s Twilight: A Conversation - The OLR Supplement Nicholas Royle and Garrett Stewart discuss close reading, style, French theory, and their careers in literary criticism

Just in time for the close reading craze, a conversation between Nicholas Royle and Garrett Stewart: olrsupplement.com/2026/03/12/w...

If you're in the Toronto area, I'll be speaking about themes related to Virality Vitality at McMaster on March 12th (full info in the flier below). An enormous thank you to Derek Woods for organizing, and to David Clark and Zachary Gan for being in conversation with me. I hope to see you there!

Oh hiiiii @jonothingeb.bsky.social

👋

Imitations–of Life Type: Physical Description Life is nothing given, but what is negotiated in every text and every confrontation or conspiracy among those we call living. The scientific disciplines alleged to have mastered the secrets of life and the ability to produce or create it at will—synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, etc.—are nevertheless stymied by this inevitability. The creation of life, biotechnical artifice, is predicated on a prior act of creation, the construction of a model. Such models necessarily remain contestable; artifactual; historically, culturally, linguistically, and psychosexually overdetermined; and captured in circuits of capital. The necessity of creating a model of creation prior to the creation itself renders every invention an imitation. This negotiation of borders, in which life-or-death decisions are made without knowing what life has been or can be, unites the most humble and overconfident life scientists with their objects of study, those beings we call living, and the parasites, viruses, symbionts, consortia, tools or techno-cultural supplements with which they reach temporary accords.

Friday, February 27, 2026 10:30 AM EST - 12:15 AM EST Room: 515A Papers Biosolar Mimesis: Giordano Bruno, Jacques Derrida, and the True Fable of a Living Cosmos Armando Mastrogiovanni — Baruch College, City University of New York Speaker Bio Armando Mastrogiovanni teaches in the Department of English at Baruch College, CUNY. His work has appeared in Derrida Today, The Oxford Literary Review, Política común, and Poetics Today. He is also an Associate Editor at Derrida Today. Armando's research focuses on the intersection of literature, philosophy, and science around the question of "life." His book-in-progress is called The Astrobiological Turn: Theories of Life Beyond the Terrestrial Imagination. Virality as Fecality: Anal Births, of Evelyn Fox Keller and Samuel Beckett Jonathan Basile — University of Toronto Speaker Bio Jonathan Basile is an Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, teaching with their Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology, and the creator of an online universal library, libraryofbabel.info. He has one published and one forthcoming book on biodeconstruction, virology, and evolutionary theory, Virality Vitality (SUNY Press, 2025) and Natural Lection: Cultures of Evolution (U of Minnesota P, Posthumanities series). Deleuze and the Superfold: Toward an Embodied Genome Yousuf Hashmi — Harvard University Speaker Bio Yousuf Hashmi is a research associate in Cassandra Extavour’s lab at Harvard University’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Saturday, February 28, 2026 10:30 AM EST - 12:15 AM EST Room: 515A Papers Constructing Life: Biopolitics and Biological Narratives in Turn-of-the-Century Polish Writings Katarzyna Muszynska — University of Toronto Speaker Bio Katarzyna Muszynska is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at the University of Toronto. She is a scholar specializing in Polish literature and culture of the second half of the 19th century, and is currently completing a PhD thesis at the University of Warsaw on biopolitical discourse in turn-of-the-century Polish writings. Her research draws on biopolitics, the history of science, cultural studies, anthropology, and visual studies. "Caged Suns," Fallen Earth(s) Ren Ellis Neyra — Wesleyan University Speaker Bio Ren Ellis Neyra, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Wesleyan University, with affiliations in African American Studies and Caribbean Studies. They are the current coordinator of the Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate at Wesleyan and, jointly, serve on the Center for the Humanities Board. Ren is the author of The Cry of the Senses (Duke UP, 2020) and numerous articles on poetry, theory, cinema, and music. Outside Imagination: The Strange Mortalism of Blanchot’s Garden Emile Levesque-Jalbert Speaker Bio Emile Levesque-Jalbert is the Post-doctoral fellow in Plant Humanities at Dumbarton Oaks and Post-doctoral researcher at Concordia University. His research focuses on environmental writing in French and Francophone contemporary novels and literary arts.

Sunday, March 1, 2026 10:30 AM EST - 12:15 AM EST Room: 515A Papers Mimesis Meta Physics Eric Reynolds — Emory University Speaker Bio Eric Flohr Reynolds received his PhD in 2025 from Emory University's department of Comparative Literature. His dissertation was titled Mimetic Masks: Reiterating Identification from Classical Aesthetics to Contemporary Media. Before his time at Emory, he received an MA in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research, and a BA in Philosophy from George Mason University. He is currently teaching philosophy and literature at Kennesaw State University and Oglethorpe University. Chemistry, Biology and Figural Mediation: Early Experiments in Synthetic Biological Staining Nicole Liao — University of Toronto Speaker Bio Nicole Liao is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. Her interests lie at the intersection of the history of photography and film, science and technology studies, and aesthetics. She is currently a Beckman Centre research fellow at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. Toward a Critique of the Uterine Imaginary Elizabeth Berman — Brown University Speaker Bio I am a PhD candidate and Cogut Institute Fellow in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where I am also receiving an M.A. in German Studies and a graduate certificate in STS. I hold B.A.s from Brown in German and Art History and an M.A. in Gender Studies from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where I was a Fulbright research scholar and lecturer. My work engages media through psychoanalysis, queer theory, and philosophies of technology, medicine and the environment.

I'm excited about the seminar we've put together for the ACLA (www.acla.org/conference/s...) - I hope I see some of you there, and let me know when you're presenting if you'll be there

Les hermaphrodites, by Michel Foucault - The OLR Supplement Foucault's posthumously published manuscript sheds new light on his published writings on sexuality and contemporary queer theory's intersex histories

New in OLR: Misha Stekl's review of Foucault's Les hermaphrodites! This posthumous publication transforms our understanding of Foucault's research on sexuallity as well as challenging views in contemporary queer theory and intersex studies olrsupplement.com/2026/02/23/l...

Really appreciate Justin Joque's review of Emily Bender and Alex Hanna's book "The AI Con" @harpercollins.bsky.social And for me it is this paragraph that is the money shot.
olrsupplement.com/2026/02/17/t...

The AI Con, by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna - The OLR Supplement Justin Joque aims for a more radical critique of AI than Bender and Hanna, both by questioning intentionalist language, and with a leftist political orientation

An excellent reflection from @jjoque.bsky.social that draws out some fine, but crucial distinctions that I believe will be essential for political fights for a better world.

It's genuinely disturbing to see people still mobilizing against the very principle of public health protections. The logical outcome of moves like these will be that it is difficult or impossible to protect us at all next time (the response to the last pandemic already being in fact insufficient)

The AI Con, by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna - The OLR Supplement Justin Joque aims for a more radical critique of AI than Bender and Hanna, both by questioning intentionalist language, and with a leftist political orientation

Joque comes at this from a Marxist and deconstructionist/poststructuralist angle but IMO existential phenomenology also gets you there - what if there's no 'ground truth' just the fact that we are stuck here together on this rock

olrsupplement.com/2026/02/17/t...

The AI Con, by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna - The OLR Supplement Justin Joque aims for a more radical critique of AI than Bender and Hanna, both by questioning intentionalist language, and with a leftist political orientation

this review of The AI Con from @jjoque is everything that i would want to say and everything that needs to be said to prevent "left/liberal" and "skeptic/intentionalist" from being conflated
olrsupplement.com/2026/02/17/t...

For a complementary piece on AI, critiquing it without relying on the humanist subject to do so, check out Víctor Betriu Yáñez's "Is a Derridean Critique of Generative AI Possible? Writing Machines and Logocentrism without Subject": olrsupplement.com/2026/01/15/i...

Thank you for sharing this piece with The OLR Supplement, Justin! I'm really happy to have published it

Signed back in for a hot second to share my most recent writing: a short critical review of the recent Bender and Hanna AI book. Please enjoy and share!

I'm glad to hear it! I love @jjoque.bsky.social's Revolutionary Mathematics - I was very excited to be able to publish this piece from him

@jjoque.bsky.social

The AI Con, by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna - The OLR Supplement Justin Joque aims for a more radical critique of AI than Bender and Hanna, both by questioning intentionalist language, and with a leftist political orientation

Justin Joque offers a more radical critique of AI in this review, questioning both the intentional model of language and the liberal politics of Bender and Hanna's the AI Con:

olrsupplement.com/2026/02/17/t...

Threshold Approaches: Michael Naas, Hospitality, and Derrida’s ‘Not Quite Method’ - The OLR Supplement Michael Naas explores the implications of Derrida's most recently published seminars, from Ancient Greek literature and philosophy to contemporary politics

Joe Larios on Michael Naas's Threshold Phenomena, exploring Derrida's recently published seminars on Hospitality, and their implications for everything from Ancient Greek literature and philosophy to contemporary politics: olrsupplement.com/2026/02/09/t...

That’s not really what’s at issue—a lot of people find joy in things written by AI too

It is not a genre that is known for being well written

There’s mountains of it on the internet and it’s already written in chatgpt quality prose—this has got to be the most imitable genre

Sounds like WVU - I loved your episode on Ponzi austerity

Whomst among us

Thank you! But this is Moses striking the rock (Numbers 20:11) - I'm looking for: "while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

Are there any classic illustrations, drawings, paintings, etc. of Exodus 33:22-23 (Moses in the cleft of the rock)?

I'm particularly interested in the analysis of the bullroarer as representing "male anal power" - so I'd be interested in anything on anal birth/rebirth

Can anyone recommend any recent anthropological or other writing on the bullroarer?

The Memory of the World, by Ted Toadvine - The OLR Supplement Toadvine advocates a phenomenology that grapples with the alterity of the natural world and deep time, while perhaps flattening that alterity himself

Timothy Clark reviews Toadvine's Memory of the World -- the book tries to wed phenomenology and naturalism, to recognize the radical alterity of animality and deep time within our experience. Clark argues that he nonetheless domesticates this alterity: olrsupplement.com/2026/01/28/t...