One of the interesting criticisms arising in my work context – international development – and particularly in certain more critically oriented circles, is a rejection of ‘things’ in favour of processes based on a concern that: “things have been given priority for too long.”
The point being made of course, is that in the wonderful world of international development, the achievement of development outcomes or results has typically been planned and measured in terms of numbers and quantities of things – from the distribution of mosquito nets and vaccines to increased GDP. “People” – that class of things that all this ‘development’ is supposed to be about – often appear as passive by-standers in a technocratic, managerialist vision of change that is primarily concerned with ‘things’.
Highly asymmetrical power relations within the international development industry (between donors, recipient ‘intermediaries’ and so-called ‘beneficiaries’, for example) can quite easily result in the exclusion of the voices and realities of those it is typically claims to be serving. People, in this set-up, are treated as objects or things, passive units to be manipulated, modified, changed, educated, treated, stimulated and even ‘empowered’. An alternative approach would be people-centred, thus ushering in a new development paradigm that is concerned with people, relationships and power. Through radical, emancipatory and participatory practices of knowledge-creation, new subjectivities would be formed in a dialectic manner through the process of change itself.
There is a lot to this critique of dominant strains in development and the alternative approach it advocates. Proponents of this position may well find themselves put off by object-oriented philosophies, favouring instead process philosophies. Where the former appears to signal a continued concern with static things over people (most people can’t stand the idea that a human should be considered an object or thing… and I find myself wondering whether all objects aren’t equally well described as subjects), the latter appears to embraces the relational and temporal dimension of being more adequately. My sense is that this judgment constitutes something of a knee-jerk reaction to the word ‘object’. As such, it privileges epistemology and meaning over ontology and being, which is what one might expect from critical theory. Digging into process and object oriented philosophy, therefore, seems a necessary correction before going further.
The central tension – or rift – between process and object philosophy lies, in my view, in the super-being implied in process philosophies (Whitehead, Simondon, etc.). This super-being is Deleuze’s virtual, a field of pure potential, “more than unity, more than identity”, it is individuation or becoming itself. From this field of pure becoming, ontogenesis becomes possible. This virtual ‘ocean’ of becoming, is able to manifest itself in the actual in the form of objects. Objects then are derivatives of a more primordial reality. They are concrescenes of potentiality into seemingly ‘stable’ things that must either reproduce themselves from moment to moment in order to exist (in the case of living things) or else must be constantly reproduced by the primordial virtual immanent ocean of becoming itself.
Object oriented philosophies refuse to recognise any unified virtual domain underlying, connecting, holding, enabling, sustaining, producing or supporting the cosmos of objects as a whole. This would, effectively constitute a form of undermining or overmining. Rather, objects are withdrawn into their own private realities even though they are composed (in part) of other objects (which they treat as elements) and even as they encounter the other objects around them sensually and are experienced by those other objects in a similar manner.
In my version (ahem… my trying-to-figure-out-what-I-think) of OOO, all real objects are processual in nature: they unfold in time and time infolds in them. Some may be buzzing hives of dynamic activity (like a living being) while others barely change throughout their lives (like a brick). Either way, there is room in this OOO for becoming, being, doing, decomposing and all the rich and wonderful world of practice, process and event. All real objects are also composed of other objects: no object is an island, withdrawn and autonomous as it may be. The reality of being an object is being on the interior of other objects. This ‘being-in’ is always that of partial part: both a constituent of a whole but also withdrawn from – and therefore not reducible to – it.
What is perhaps most key here is that rather than deferring to some primary plane of becoming from whence springs all else, becoming is always what goes on inside an object. Indeed, it is what goes on inside objects. It is the particular fusing together or splitting apart of certain objects (partially) on the interior of yet other objects, in turn (partially) on the interior of yet other objects (ad nauseum) that is capable of generating new objects (partially) on the interior of those objects. The life of these new objects is a function of their power to circulate; a maintenance of the tension that is generated between their own powers and the exigencies and affordances thrown at them by the other objects into whose midst they find themselves born.
In this framework there is no need for a super-object. There is no ‘whole’ that is greater than the sum of its parts, parent of all other parts, or determinate of all other parts, but rather a bubbling cosmos of circulating and mutually co-constituting yet autonomous and agential beings, with their own very particular disruptive, reproductive and constructive powers. Rather than positing this as an abstracted field of pure or excess potentiality, it seems to me that it is best understood as multiplicity rather than unity. This multiplicity, however, is not more-than-unity (as Simondon might have it) but, rather, less than unity. How so? To speak of it as an ‘it’ is to misleadingly attribute ‘it’ a coherence and continuity that there is no reason to assume that ‘it’ possesses. It presumes a kind of view from within as though there were something from within which to view or experience it from (I’m fine if the ‘it’ is an experience subject but not something like ‘process itself’). ‘It’, rather, is a bubbling multiplicity of simultaneously unfolding becomings (note the plural) that cannot be reduced to any kind of whole or unified, singular, virtual plane however much it might be bubbling over with sheer potential. This ‘it’ is the cosmos of real, agential objects doing what they do (to and with each other).
Back in the world of international development, the question, I suppose is ‘so what?’ Firstly, I hope that the above implies that process and object need not be seen as conflicting. I hope I have shown how even ontogenesis – as what goes on ‘inside’ objects rather than ‘outside’ them – can have a comfortable, becoming-friendly place in object oriented philosophy. I hope that it would also help to recognize that the traditional emphasis on things that has come under critique, has little to do with what those engaging with OOO are concerned with. Instead, we are invited to see the objects that surround us as already-at-work, constituting regimes of attraction, doing things themselves of which we are barely conscious. Failure to adequately map out the real agencies of these processual objects, is to ignore the intricate design of the web in which we are caught.
In international development objects are generally considered only from the narrow perspective of the purpose for which they have been designed: reducing malaria, increasing seed production, providing health care, etc. But objects – in this world at least – are always caught up in wider material-semiotic ecologies of objects and both their production (i.e. on the interior of other objects) and circulation will transform the regimes of attraction of which they become parts. This has real implications for people who must encounter, confront, deal with, destroy, transform or use these new objects for their own purposes. They do not encounter the object-as-designed (because even a designed object always withdraws from the knowledge and intentions of the designer), but encounter it based on its particular local manifestion of the powers bound up in it.
Furthermore, and this is where Stengers’ ecology of practices comes in, the objects responsible for the creation of this new object are themselves creating another very distinct set of effects through the process of doing what they are doing. In effect objects are perpetually and simultaneously spawning other objects (from dinners to electrons) and participating in the reproduction of existing objects (from capitalism to climate change). As far as human activity is concerned, it would seem, intention really is the tip of the ice-berg of consequences – at least so far (I appreciate that more often than not the intention itself is problematic, but even so…)
The question for me then, is: given this framework for understanding the relationship between processes and objects, what can we humans (in all their cyborgian multiplicity), do – with our cohort of co-participating objects – that can address the structural injustices that confront us? More specifically, how can we really compose, create, conjure, bring forth or birth new objects/processes (and of what kinds) that are efficacious in dissolving the real infrastructures of injustices (in all their multi-dimensional horror) and that are capable of weilding agency beyond anything that we ‘alone’ could ever be capable of? And how can we do this in ways that does not simply feed – through some wild tangle of causal connections – the very structural injustices that we set out to dissolve?
Is an “object” merely a formal demarcation? For it has seemed such to me for some time. If so, then talking about the “inside” and “outside” of objects becomes intellectually perilous. If an “object” is not a merely formal demarcation, then exactly what real distinction is being made? I ask because it seems that some OOO scholars want it both ways–they want substance and process in their objects–even though the two are mutually exclusive. Some process philosophy answers many of the needs expressed here, though I would disagree with some of the characterizations, without the substance vs. process dualism that seems to fascinate my OOO interlocutors.
An example about the unity vs. multiplicity (process vs. objects) point. Its the “unity” of relations that is “unified” per being connected or “continuous.” The “unity” is thus a “continuity” and not some bearded guy in charge. Traditional substance metaphysics, and I have yet to see OOO escape this without falling into self-contradiction, does not and cannot think continuity. In sum, the unity of process should not be thought as the concepts “unit,” “whole,” or “totality,” and this unity does not threaten multiplicity. It does require one to rethink what multiplicity means.
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To be clear, I was speaking in generalities. You did not offer a specific position, and we’d have to go to specifics to cover this; e.g., there’s a huge difference between Harman and Levi–see the latter’s recent posts. Rather, I’m offering some general critiques and pointing out that I haven’t heard conclusive responses. Second, I did what to clarify on the unity issue; there’s something to what you say, but usually one aspect dominates the criticisms of process, e.g., transcendentals.
Jason,
Yes, I agree that there are clearly major differences between Harman and Levi. I think I am closer to Levi’s work in some respects and closer to Harman’s in others. Morton has also been a significant influence. For me ‘withdrawn from all relations’ is a way of saying that while an object may enter into relations with other objects, those relations never exhaust its reality: it always has something in reserve – even from itself. At the same time, I find Harman’s conception of allure to be particularly interesting, as well as the distinction between real and sensual objects. Regarding the continuity of relations, that you refer to in your first set of comments, is this a temporal continuity?I I’m not sure I can understand why you say there is no continuity in OOO. I know it’s not a bearded-guy-in-charge (:p)! But then I wonder how different is this from Morton’s ‘mesh’ or the more recently described Kris Coffield’s (‘really’).
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“Withdrawn from all relations” can mean “is a source of creativity” or “generativity.” I’m fine with that, though it is an unusual position. However, withdrawnness also posits a discontinuity between something and other things and even with itself. This leads to a number of metaphysical problems of how something wholly unrelated may become related. This is why I invoked the Harman vs. Levi, because Harman has an answer to this–he goes substance all the way–and Levi goes more with processes.
Temporal continuity is implied, but continuity more generally implies relationality (predication, etc.). Its a Peircean concept invoked in much of process philosophy; there’s a lot to it.
As far as difference from other thinkers, I’m generally defending process views, especially since OOO often borrows from process and does not realize it. It. I suspect it is in part a disciplinary thing, as most original process thought was not continental, but has been creatively borrowed from American, which is something that many scholars have forgotten. I’m hoping that the conversation can be widened.