This week’s reading did not resonate with me. Not because I disagreed with it or sensed malice, but purely because I could not understand what the author was saying. Of the 22 points in Shaviro’s 22 Theses on Nature, I can confidently say I fully understood 2. These points were about Nature being everything around us (point 1) and that the laws of thermodynamics have an impact (point 13). I do not know what the other 20 points were trying to say. I have some vague guesses, but I truly couldn’t understand most of it. It was only around point 10 that I realized just how little of the information on the paper was actually being processed. At first, I thought I was just tired or misreading something, but after many attempts to parse what was being said, I was still coming up short. There were even sentences like, “All-encompassing Nature is traversed by potentials and powers, or by energy gradients and inherent tendencies” made me think that I was genuinely having a brain issue. I read this sentence probably a dozen or so times before I concluded that I have no idea what the author was trying to say here. I think I’m going to lie down now.  

Shaviro, 22 Theses On Nature