In a literal sense, the only way to perform alien phenomenology is by analogy: the bat, for example, operates like a submarine. The redness hues like fire.
The subjectivity of these accounts might raise concern: to talk about a bat in terms of a seafaring vessel, a color in terms of a tactile sensation—moves like these feel dangerously selfish. The risk of falling into anthropocentrism is strong. Indeed, I’ll take things farther: anthropocentrism is unavoidable, at least for us humans. The same is true of any unit (for the bats, chiropteracentrism is the problem). The subjective nature of experience makes the unit operation of one of its perceptions amount always to a caricature in which the one is drawn in the distorted impression of the other. This is true not only of the encounter itself but also of any account of the encounter, which only further distances the one from the other by virtue of the introduction of additional layers of mediation.
Bogost, Ian. Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. (via carvalhais)

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