'If we do not have causality, we are buggered'

Faster than light particles found, claim scientists

Instruments, colleagues and institutions, all in evidence.

On 'Of Disciplines and Practices'

Larval Subjects: 'Of Disciplines and Practices'

What a story! Inspiring.

It presents such a stark contrast to the majority of students I encounter at the elite British university in which I work.

Their apathy is palpable. It drips from their every expression. And their self-confidence is unbearable. They desire nothing they cannot immediately possess and so neither recognise their desire as desire nor encounter a moment of doubt as to the naturalness of their satisfaction or the plenitude of the vessel from which they drink.

The worlds of thought, education, employment and recreation are theirs by right. They are ready to hand.

The schools they go to and the neighbourhoods they grow up in are largely homogeneous, if not so much with respect to race and sex any more then certainly still with respect to class. Universities are social bubbles and designed as such. And the neoliberal university exists to make the transition from school to employment, in whatever area, as seamless as possible. Of course good middle class kids go on 'gap years' to 'see the world' but what does this usually entail? Global gentrification. Sun, sex, sandals, sangria and the servitude of the locals. 'Roughing it' generally means getting alcohol poisoning, a tan, chlamydia and a souvenir t-shirt. They pass through carefully designed conduits for gap year cash that let strapping young go-getters criss-cross the world without the trouble of actually talking to anyone who doesn't speak English. And they'll be back in time for the First Day of the Rest of Their Lives.

Is it any wonder that so many care so little for so much? They might pass their Others every day but they've never met them. What could the Little People know?

Their path is a superhighway; they glide along it, frictionless, scarcely noticing their own movement. They glance out at everyone else trudging along, hacking their way through the undergrowth. How could those people have anything interesting to say?

Movement is truly relative.

And the 'best and brightest' will run the world.

And so it's little wonder that for so many the world is like a camera lens perpetually focused on the foreground. Everything else is shapes, shadows, brown skin, weird food and mystery. And so it's little wonder that so many feel compelled to subordinate all knowledge to that of their particular clique.

There's much to recommend taking the rickety road.

On Perspective

Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject"; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as "pure reason," absolute spirituality," "knowledge in itself": these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing"; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity," be.
- Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (iii: 12)

What a monstrous notion: a truth is only true from a perspective. Doesn’t it follow that the mob rules? The truth of a hundred wretched thugs automatically overwhelms and outweighs that of a single, solitary beautiful mind. Could there be anything more threatening to civilisation?

Perhaps some would relish the rise of the baying mob. Yet to interpret ‘more eyes, different eyes’ as meaning simply ‘more people’ seems, to me, to be a little simplistic. When we re-read something we wrote a length of time ago do we not say that we are doing so ‘with fresh eyes’? When presented with fresh experience who doesn’t ‘change their minds’? What Latour says of scientists is true of everyone (and perhaps everything): we never stand in our standpoints (Pandora’s Hope, p.66).

Place a scientist, a painter, a builder, a journalist, a historian and a politician in front of a statue. If they are made to stand completely still, unable to move a muscle what will they be able to tell you about that statue? ‘There is a statue.’ Nothing. From a single perspective nothing can be said. But what if each are allowed to move, to follow whatever trajectory they please? Then you will see that each move differently. The scientist may examine the statue closely and perhaps take a sample of the stone and head towards a laboratory. A painter may set up an easel, size the object with thumb and forefinger and mix paints to match the weathered hue of the stone. A builder might wander up, kick and prod at the base and wonder how ‘they’ fixed it there. A journalist might walk around, asking other people what they think. A historian might head away from the statue and dig around in archives to discover what other people have thought. A politician might stand up and address the crowd, hoping to get a statue of her own!

Each subject, armed with its own interests and abilities, proliferates perspectives. This is why we should understand ‘perspective’ absolutely literally. If you stand bit to the left you are in a new perspective. If you close one eye, that is a new perspective too. This may seem ridiculous until you realise that the manner in which one (a) proliferates perspectives and (b) joins those perspectives together differs enormously. No one ‘stands in their standpoint’ but some shift in and out of frames of reference faster than others and there are as many ways of shifting in and out as there are subjects.

Perspectivism is only agnostic – not knowing – if we imagine each subject as a fixed point, forever condemned to see the same world through the same eyes. Perspectivism only leads to not knowing if we imagine each subject as a statue. Perspectives proliferate and they translate in various ways. Once we recognise this we become aware that we can follow the proliferation and translation of perspectives. The process of epistemic realisation becomes ontological, therefore experiential, therefore empirical.

But are statues ‘statues’? Do they remain fixed to their own standpoint? Hardly! They move and creak and groan. Some have captured the gaze of humans for centuries, even millennia. Conquerors and colonialists may have had no respect for those they raped, murdered and enslaved but they respected the statues they brought home with them. Statues might not prance, ponder, paint or pontificate but their reality is their own. They go about subsisting in their own way. And they might not ‘think’ but they do ‘act’ upon us. Their reality is not our own.

It should have been obvious – few philosophers despised the masses more than Nietzsche – but ‘mob rule’ and perspectivism have nothing to do with each other. If some have celebrated the descent of truth from a twinkle in a star-gazers’ eye to a cloud of spittle launched from a wild-eyed horde then they have been clutching very much the wrong end of the stick. If from a crowd of ten people you count ten perspectives then you have somehow remained stuck in three dimensions; you have forgotten time.

Everyone shifts perspectives but the (a) rate and (b) manner of this shifting is widely variable. Our task is to understand these variables.

Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against all those who would forget time and lock each and every person into ‘their’ standpoint.

John Protevi: "Mindless"

"Mindless"

'Mindless' indeed. As ever conservative politics is methodologically individualist. They want to focus only on the individuals, the 'rotten apples' on whom all blame can be placed (you conserve the whole by sacrificing the parts - the parts that don't matter, anyway). This is, of course, tied into all the pseudo-Biblical 'fall of man' nonsense that gets regurgitated as so many 'Broken Britain' cliches - the idea that the 'decline of traditional values' is (a) somehow uncaused, emergent from itself and (b) responsible for all our ills. The more powerful rhetorical strategy, however, is to try to collapse the distinction between explanation and justification. To try to explain the actions of the rioters, looters and muggers (and these, we are told, are all equivalent), it is supposed, is in some way to justify them. After all, doesn't it detract from denunciation? And denunciation is the only response politicians can muster. Anyone who tries to think beyond the mere, brute fact of criminality to any degree seems to make the denunciation less radical and so, it is inferred, that person must be a sympathiser merely mouthing the words of disapproval as opposed to the true believers who damn the perpetrators unconditionally. This is, of course, complete nonsense. One can explain actions in terms broader than essentialised, moralised, individualism without justifying those actions. All this constitutes a total refusal to engage in politics, to recognise the possibility of politics even occurring. Denunciation is the opposite of politics insofar as it cannot tolerate the separation of justification and explanation. One needn't justify action to explain it; one needn't endorse action to engage with it. Are these actions criminal? Yes. Must they be punished? Yes. But none of that need stop us thinking politically - that is, thinking of an explanation we can justify and a course of action to prevent these kinds of events. That, however, is of no use to conservatives who want nothing more than these people to shut up and make do with their lot.

Dave Hill on the London Riots

Dave Hill's five-point analysis in the Guardian is spot on.

Theresa May and the London Riots

When asked whether the economy and jobs had anything to do with the London riots Theresa May replied that it was 'sheer criminality, nothing more.' Saying that these acts are unjustifiable, criminal and that the people involved must be prosecuted is of course completely correct, however it does little more than state the obvious. It is the 'nothing more' that is telling. We are told that there is 'nothing more' to this than 'mindless thuggery' (one wonders how a messy scramble of youths have been able to run rings around the entire police force while being 'mindless').

To say that the riots are 'sheer criminality and nothing more' makes claims on two registers: justification and explanation. With respect to justification I am wholly in agreement: nothing justifies these acts and those responsible must be made responsible. But it also carries a subtextual explanation: these things have happened because these people are criminals; bad people do bad things; the context is irrelevant, the individuals are responsible. This is completely wrong. The 'nothing more' suffix tries to distract us from pondering the obvious questions: why now? why there? If these acts are the result of bad people then we cannot understand why they happened now and where they have as badness is everywhere and always. Moreover we cannot understand how these people became 'bad.' They just are, and that is all there is to say about it. In this respect it isn't much of an explanation at all. It's just a device to try and stop people thinking, to cut thought short.

It is perfectly possible to explain the riots in broader social terms while giving no justification or sympathy whatsoever to those involved. To cut explanation short is just a political device that attempts to distract attention from the obvious: that these riots are the result of serious, long-term and worsening deprivation. The claim that any such social explanation is necessarily a justification of the acts is the same: a political device that tries to cut thought short and focus solely on the individuals involved in the most reductive fashion.

So, I agree with Mrs May - there is no justification for these acts - but I also completely disagree with her - there is a great deal more to be said than a simple condemnation. After all, in analysing a war we don't just say 'well, they should just stop being so violent and nasty and resolve their differences peacefully', no matter how true that may be; instead we see what can be done to bring the conflict to an end, we see what the grievances are and we try understand how they can be resolved. None of that involves justification for killing, much less an endorsement of it. Justification is beside the point, we neither begin nor end there; we, instead, engage in politics. This is precisely what politicians are refusing to do.

To explain in terms broader than the circular and really quite stupid 'bad people do bad things for no particular reason' explanation in no way leads to justification or sympathy with the perpetrators of the acts. Instead it tries to understand how our society could become so fractured. And in contrast to the consonance of 'Broken Britain' it isn't the 'decline of traditional values' or any other pseudo-Biblical 'fall of man' bullshit: it's the economy, stupid.

Comment on: "Structuralism, Cybernetics, and Regimes of Attraction"

In my view, the problem with the concept of structure is that it tells us that there are patterns that reproduce themselves across time and space while telling us little in the way of how these patterns reproduce themselves. As a consequence, structure comes to be treated as an agency in its own right, somehow doing things, without giving us much insight into how precisely structure does these things. And in the absence of an exploded view schematic of how structure reproduces itself, we’re left with little in the way of an account of just how to engage structure.

Structure is a difficult concept mostly, I think, because it has habitually been defined in terms of an opposite: agents. In this respect it is just another bifurcation of nature. If agents are what act and if structures are what constrain them (or, in some more sophisticated accounts, also enable them) then how are they linked? ‘Structuration’ is easily the most popular answer in sociology these days: the two halves mutually constitute themselves by a dialectical movement, thus avoiding the reification of each side but completely failing to address the problem that no one can tell us why these two things are absolutely separated in the first place. That said, I am aware that some dispense with agents altogether and see only structure but this seems to be a case of choosing one side over the other without recognising that it was a silly divide to begin with.

However, I think we can partially rescue the concept if we do away with the idea of structures as entities distinct from some other natural kind and just use it to discuss how things are structured – i.e. reclaim it in its adjectival form. Everything that is related in a coherent way can also be said to be structured. Now, there is more to it than that because structure is not simply an arrangement or configuration – it is an arrangement or configuration that effects the elements that comprise it; it is an aspect of the whole in causal relation to its parts. But nevertheless, it is a supervening mechanism that cannot be abstracted from its parts and thus cannot be wholly estranged from them as in the conventional model. A strength of assemblage theory is that it can talk about the ‘structured’ aspect of wholes without imagining them as two distinct kinds of entities.

Structure in this view is different to a ‘regime of attraction’ but still somewhat related. A regime of attraction would seem to be a largely virtual organising principle, whereas structure in this model is actual.

Comment on: "What Would Flat Ontological Criticism Look Like?"

What Would Flat Ontological Criticism Look Like?

This question has occupied my mind a fair bit. I think the best place to start is most definitely Latour's critique of critique. (This has been present in his work since at least 'We Have Never Been Modern' but has been most fully expounded in his essay 'Why has critique run out of steam?')

For Latour all critique, whether in the lineage of Kant through Marx to the Frankfurt School and today's poststructuralists or in the tradition of denunciation in the name of Science, results from the same ontological assumption: ontological un-flatness (what is the opposite of a flat ontology?). This is because critique is equated directly with denunciation and to denounce one needs an unreal overlaying the really real to peel back or tear away or unveil (postmodernists still follow this path even though they no longer believe in a real underneath the fabric - it's veil all the way down!). A flat ontology, for Latour, must therefore forego critique.

He makes a powerful point with regard to some elements of what has passed for critique to date. There is a widespread sense among (usually self declared) 'critical scholars' in the social sciences that not only is critique good but that it is the only valid occupation for a true scholar. All other forms of scholarship are seen as being somehow repressive. This is taken to an extreme by deconstructionists who insist that anyone enforcing their interpretation on anything is committing 'symbolic violence' or somesuch. To this extent, critique is a self-marginalising discourse. By this I mean that 'critical' thinkers are bound to ONLY criticise and they can only define themselves in opposition to a fabled 'uncritical' or 'essentialising' Other. For this reason they can never possibly succeed, which is a canny move as it means they never have to stop publishing and we never have to stop reading their work!

Latour makes mincemeat of these cliches but he goes too far. In fact I would say that he himself is too critical of critique - he ends up mirroring the very people he seeks to destroy. He has not one good word to say about critique and has no interest in asking what of it should be saved.

It's disappointing because Latour is at his very best when he takes something he disagrees with, takes it apart, translates it into his terms, puts it back together in the context of his overall system and makes you wonder how you ever thought otherwise. That is the way to proceed with the somewhat sullied word 'critique,' I feel.

etymonline.com informs me that 'critique' comes from the Greek kritikos "able to make judgments," from krinein "to separate, decide". The word thus carries connotations of separation and deciding; separation and judgement. Might we say that critique consists in separation and judgment? Judgement by separation? Separation by judgement? Aren't we all critically minded? If we weren't able to separate and to judge we wouldn't be able to get very far in life. If we accept something along these lines then there can be no more pure, exceptional form of critique only known by a chosen few (notice how in this way critique production has mirrored truth production). If this is so then we have to distinguish between different forms of critique and separate the good from the bad (itself a critical act, as I would describe it). This would require no foundation (contra Habermas), it would proceed by a process of critical deambulation, if you like. This would be a better definition (if a broad one) because we wouldn't have 'critical' thinkers opposed to 'uncritical' thinkers and the self-perpetuating dance this necessarily creates.

(Also this is more or less what a music or movie critic does - breaks cultural objects down, analyses the pieces, relates them historically and contextually and judges them (or at least that is the ideal).)

Moreover, this definition wouldn't allow for the assumption that everyone is engaged in a competition to be more critical than everyone else. This is really what critique as a self-marginalising discourse must do - its a perpetual arms race, a race to the bottom that isn't there. No matter how critical you are I must always try to be more critical because that is all there is to do. If we try to do anything else we're committing 'violence' and so must surely commit hara-kari forthwith. As with all practices premised on fundamental bifurcations of reality, it just can't work.

Yet critique is far too valuable an activity to throw to the dogs of excess and stupidity. For all the negligence of those who take critique too far - and far away from where they should - they're not all completely mad - there really are those who would deny critique all licence as a scholarly activity. And these people are the real enemy.

Latour often goes on about how Science Studies was the only field that could foment the breakthrough of transcending bifurcated nature - in other words, refusing sociological idealism without trudging back to the same old realism; of forming a new realism. Science Studies, so he says, was uniquely placed at the midpoint of the 'two cultures' and he and others were thus able to realise how both sides had it all wrong. Well, I think something similar could be said for my field, International Relations, on this subject of critique. If eradication of critique is at all possible or desirable in Science Studies it certainly is not in IR, the field that deals with war, genocide, espionage and all forms of tyranny as a matter of routine. One would have to be an utter sociopath to engage seriously with these issues and not have some sort of 'will to critique' (although, having said that, there are plenty who would attempt to do so in the name of 'political Science', but that's another story).

So, I'm not sure what a flat ontological criticism would look like. First we'd have to figure out just what 'criticism' has meant in other traditions - it doesn't seem to be any one thing. I've been meaning to read Foucault's 'What Is Critique?' for a bit as well as Judith Butler's commentary on it. That might be as good a place as any to start.

DeLanda Reading Group: Cities and Nations (Part Two)

I won’t try to review everything in previous chapters and I will assume that the various technical details and taxonomies are well defined by previous commentaries, however some points deserve revisiting before we crack on with chapter 5.

The first point to raise regards DeLanda’s realism and his definition of this in sociological terms as ‘conception-independence’ (3). In response to Levi’s review of the book’s introduction I wrote:

“‘Mind independence’ is in no way a new idea, it is the mainstream view for social scientists of all stripes. DeLanda’s innovation, it seems to me, is nowhere to be seen in the first few pages (though it abounds immediately after).”

I more or less stand by this argument, although I must now make some adjustments. Upon reviewing my notes, it becomes clear that DeLanda does not say that society is ‘mind independent’ – i.e. it has an existence independent of human minds – but that it is ‘conception independent’ – i.e. it has an existence independent of the analyst’s conceptions of it. This distinction is introduced to account for the fact that if human minds disappeared so would society. This is a fair and appropriate distinction but I still don’t accept that it is particularly innovative. It’s still ‘off the shelf’ realism that, to someone trained in social science rather than philosophy, is frankly de rigeur.

To my first comment Michael at Archive Fire argues that:

“While, for the most part I agree with that line of thinking, it must be acknowledged that DeLanda’s audience are not those people [social scientists]. DeLanda is, first and foremost, a philosopher – and specifically a Deleuzian philosopher drawing extensively on what has come to be known as the “continental” tradition. So DeLanda’s project must primarily been seen as philosophical - as an attempt to reach out to those thinkers who, having learned from the intensities of critical theory of the 80’s and 90’s that focused on language and interpretation, may, again, be seeking out a way to supplement their thought with a new concern for material life and the more tangible dimensions of human experience.”

I see his point but I don’t think that I can accept his reasoning. DeLanda makes extensive use of various sociologists’ works throughout the book and declares that his intention is to “elucidate the proper ontological status of the entities that are invoked by sociologists and other social scientists” (8). Far from aiming his book primarily at ‘continental’ philosophers he clearly wishes it to be valuable to social scientists too – he’s working at the edge of both traditions and as such should be evaluated as much as possible by the standards of both. This is consistent with his statement in an interview that “a philosopher cannot take … artificial [disciplinary] limits into account, and … should push multidisciplinary approaches to the limit” (Deleuzian Interrogations, 14). It is not that I find his definitions of realism wrong as such, it is just that they are a little simplistic – ‘clunky’ would be my preferred adjective.

However, this is not the main problem. The greater problem, besides his realism’s ‘clunkyness,’ is that both ‘mind independence’ and ‘conception independence’ appear to be attacks on a position of subjective idealism, whereas poststructuralist inspired orthodoxies (which I would assume are primarily in his crosshairs) must be characterised as intersubjective idealism. This is not a particularly massive difference in the grand scheme of things but it does make a difference in this case. An intersubjective idealist may well agree that society has a reality independent of their individual conceptions of it because their views, they would add, are themselves drawn from (or even produced by) the wider socio-linguistic or discursive field. Of course, because they define society in linguistic terms they remain anti-realist, yet they would still dodge DeLanda’s realist haymaker.

In other words, mind or conception independence is clearly a necessary condition for realism but it is not a sufficient condition.

So, moving swiftly on, what do we already know about assemblages?

“[A]ssemblages [are] wholes whose properties emerge from the interactions between parts” (5). “[A]t each scale one must show that the properties of the whole emerge from the interactions between parts” (32). In keeping with the realist temper of the ontology, assemblage based analysis is causal and is “concerned with the discovery of the actual mechanisms operating at a given spatial scale” (31). ‘Micro’ and ‘macro’ are relative terms, with any given assemblage having micro or macro aspects and there existing an effectively unlimited multitude of gradations between the two throughout the cumulative emergence of levels (32). Importantly, “although a whole emerges from the interactions among its parts, once it comes into existence it can affect those parts” (34). Assemblages thus possess powers of ‘downward causation’ – indeed this property may be what distinguishes them from mere aggregations of parts.

Assemblages are thus characterised by ‘levels’ which are continuous insofar as there is no definite dividing line between them and each higher level comprises all lower levels as parts; however, levels are discrete insofar as one can identify a number of parts which form a larger whole, the properties of which are irreducible to the simple aggregation of the properties of the parts.

Insofar as each level has its own properties and dynamics different analytical resources will be required. For this reason we could say that discrete assemblages are characterised by distinct modalities (L. modus “measure, rhythm, manner”) of existence. The sense of harmonic, rhythmic or musical distinction is a useful one because these notions are easy to imagine in terms of continua, yet at the same time it is easy to imagine distinct aural objects emerging from that milieu. In other words, the notion of modes as rhythms or harmonies allows for both the mixing and imbrication of elements and their distinction from each other.

Analytically, assemblages are analysed through a fourfold structure – that is, two intersecting axes, each of which are envisioned as continua. The first division is between material and expressive properties and the second division is between processes of territorialization and deterritorialization. (I will assume that readers are familiar with what these terms mean.) Each level thus requires an analysis of the following factors:

1) Material components of the assemblage.
2) Expressive components of the assemblage.
3) Territorializing processes at work in the assemblage.
4) Deterritorializing processes at work in the assemblage.

This divides up the empirical analyses quite neatly and intuitively. The analysis as a whole, however, should also indicate what causal mechanisms create, sustain and/or threaten the assemblage as a whole and must, therefore, give some indication of how all these elements work together. With this in place we can get down to business…

DeLanda Reading Group: Cities and Nations (Part One)

So, the DeLanda reading group draws to a close! All that remains is for me (and, independently, Peter Gratton at Philosophy in a Time of Error) to review the final chapter: Cities and Nations. As some of my review has become rather lengthy, I will divide it up between a few posts. After this first short explanatory post will follow:

2) A brief overview of some pertinent points made in previous chapters that will serve as background to the discussions of Cities and Nations.

3) Something approximating a blow-by-blow account of chapter 5 with minimal critical commentary.

4) A conclusion comprising a few comments on the preceding summary but also trying to extend DeLanda’s analysis beyond cities and nations. By this I mean that DeLanda’s “journey from the micro to the macro” (6) goes from individual persons through various types of local and regional organisation to territorial nation states and stops there. In my field, International Relations, this is insufficient. As DeLanda says himself: “an assemblage analysis of singular, individual entities must be complemented by a study of the populations formed by those entities” (107). States themselves form populations; they are usually called ‘international systems.’ I shall not offer anything like a complete (or even adequate) analysis but, utilising the writings of Kenneth Waltz (undoubtedly the most influential if, also, probably the most maligned IR theorist of the twentieth-century), I shall try to sketch out a beginning for this extra level.

EDIT: I've posted parts 2 and 3. Part 4 will follow some time next week. I'll update this post with links as and when I post the rest.

Reply to: 'Essentialism and a Very Strange Mereology Indeed!'

Response to: http://jmtrom.blogspot.com/2010/09/de-landa-reading-group-essentialism-and.html

[H]ow could we ever test this? We can't test it because there's no way to redo a particular interaction between two organizations using different individual components.

Sure, but there's a whole lot in social science that we can't test. Only logical empiricists would argue that only things that are empirically testable can be legitimately considered as knowledge. And logical empiricism is pretty much dead because it doesn't even satisfy its own conditions. That doesn't mean, of course, that we should go the other way and renounce empirical analysis - we need more of that not less - but rather that we can't expect everything we need to know to present itself conveniently for our 'testing.' (We need to be more radical in our empiricism!)

This is the problem with talking about 'mechanisms,' which I must admit always makes me feel a bit queasy. It's difficult to use this language without implicitly (even unintentionally) endorsing the 'mechanistic universe' image that is so wrong in so many ways and so thoroughly opposed to all we hold dear in these corners of the blogosphere.

But I take your point - we mustn't just take the standard categories of social science at face value. Ideas such as culture and civilization have long and ignoble histories. They are slovenly, rotund, catch-all categories that should be avoided.

But that doesn't mean, however, that we can't talk of social aggregates that possess the capacity for constrainment, enablement and downward causation. It just means that categories that encompass millions upon millions of people who have less in common than they do in difference should be avoided because they tell us nothing about those people other than that some people like to group them all together for no good reason.

Such a thing a 'Muslim culture' or 'Islamic civilization' surely doesn't exist except for its manifestation in various public discourses (and although this mode of existence gives them a certain degree of reality it takes an enormous amount of effort to territorialise these discursive assemblages, which I think is really rather the point - they're like an empty sack, they don't stand up if you're not holding them there!).

In the example you raise I think we would do well to recall DeLanda's useful notion 'redundant causation' - that is, we can talk of wholes insofar as we would gain nothing more in the subject of our analysis if we considered the parts as well. Certainly there are many instances where this is true. If we weren't able to 'frame' our world in this way we wouldn't be able to do or think anything much at all.

So, we shouldn't talk about the enculturating effects of 'Muslim civilisation' but we may be perfectly justified in talking about the enculturating effects of particular sects, particular mosques, particular geographical areas. We don't necessarily have to follow each individual person around indefinitely to grasp the requisite 'mechanisms' at play. Every analysis is an instance of abstraction - the question is whether this abstraction comes from real terms and whether it is abstracting properly.

But it is true, emergence is a very hard thing to pin down. It is not something that can be solved completely. This whole debate over emergence and mereology, we would do well to remember, largely replaces the agent-structure problem as it is in conventional social theory. It improves upon that problem in a variety of ways but it shares certain problems - there is a fundamental indeterminacy in both not just in fact but in principle too. With an indefinite number of causes acting upon an agent over an indefinite amount of time and with no possibility of isolating certain variables in a laboratory environment, we can't imagine causation in these circumstances following anything at all linear or determinate. We certainly can't do much 'testing,' it is true.

It'd be better to think of culture in terms of its other meaning: a culture of germs in a petri dish, say. Concrete objects involved in a complex, co-dependent and co-emergent mixture. It is down to the analyst to establish precisely the character of the mixture and perhaps it needs to be broken down into smaller, purer sections before it can be understood. 'Redundant causality' can help us make this connection but we can't ever hope for 'mechanisms' in any deterministic sense.

And remember: 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' We might not have gotten a handle on social emergence yet but that doesn't mean it isn't a real phenomenon any more than my not understanding how a car engine works means I can't drive it around.

Derrida, "9/11" and discourse analysis

Ian Bogost has written a blog post on Derrida's take on '9/11' and Graham Harman commented on it on his own blog. Both, unsurprisingly perhaps!, are rather nonplussed by it.

Bogost writes:

the "event" (see, I can use scare quotes too) seems to me to invite reflection on so much more than just "this question of language," as Derrida calls it. And more than just "this question of politics," too.

Harman remarks (in reference to the so-called "Derrida wars"):

this isn’t what realism looks like.

Well, quite. Derrida is only willing to talk about the events grouped under the moniker '9/11' in terms of the moniker itself. This much is true. He doesn't recognise the larger geopolitical realities - material and symbolic alike - that extend beyond the formation of the day qua symbol.

This much is to be deplored and, I am sad to report, in my native academic discipline (international relations - the discipline meant to study such events) such linguistic idealism is becoming more and more widespread. However, having said all of that, it is very far from being a majority or even mainstream view - the hardcore of IR as with political science generally is fairly conventional reductive positivism. The mainstream remains utterly incapable of allowing for analysis of the symbolic dimensions of political violence in anything approaching a sophisticated manner. They remain stuck in a reductive analysis of what is called the "distribution of capabilities" - i.e. what war making resources different states have in relation to neighbouring states. The health of the academic discourse is not great.

For this reason I would stress the importance of not dismissing Derrida's point of view tout court (I don't think Bogost or Harman are arguing for this but it deserves iterating nevertheless). His narrowness of vision should not detract from the importance of linguistic/semiotic analysis in situations such as this. Yes, there is more to geopolitical events than their interpellating symbolisation but this aspect is nevertheless crucial and cannot be dismissed.

This, to change the topic slightly, is why I don't agree with, for instance, Manuel DeLanda (but Harman and others have more or less said the same at other times) who says that the 'linguistic turn' was the "worst possible turn" that the humanities or social sciences could have taken. For the most part, the 'linguistic turn' has made a positive and beneficial impact on IR precisely because of its prior impoverishment - an upcoming IR scholar was previously limited to a choice between behaviouralism and positivism; now they have more interesting options. Nevertheless, I've not seen a particularly original 'poststructural' or 'hermeneutic' IR text for some years now - the vein that was once rich is spent. Which is why it is necessary to develop a social ontology that keeps the benefits the linguistic turn allowed (including the kinds of analysis that Derrida was prone to) but at the same time allows analysis of non-linguistic elements of political reality. Such an ontology would, by allowing for all analytical aspects to shine through, improve upon the idealist discourse analyses, not detract from them.

If we needed any more evidence of the importance of this sort of analysis, take the so-called 'Ground Zero Mega Mosque' (which is none of those things). It is a complete fabrication - absolute nonsense from beginning to end. Yet, it has been staggeringly powerful. We need to understand how such linguistic fabrications can be put together. Derrida's form of analysis therefore has an important place. Yet, if we were successful at formulating the new social ontology suggested above, we would not only have to analyse the construction of this fabrication linguistically but also analyse the networks of media outlets reproducing this lie, the financiers buying politicians to reproduce their racist views for short term political gains and the emotional, material and economic status of the desperate, disenfranchised people who, having seen all that they thought solid melt into air over the past few years, cling to whatever nonsensical, simplistic, all-encompassing explanation they can find (i.e. racism - it's the Muslims not the capitalists!).

So, I agree with Bogost that '9/11' is 'more than a question of language.' Certainly, it is also 'more than a question of politics' for those directly affected too. The personal, emotional trauma of those who lost friends, colleagues and loved ones cannot be reduced to 'politics' - much less to the wafer thin politics of linguistic idealism. Yet, the political dimension can hardly be subtracted. Being British and fairly anti-social, I've only ever met one person I know to have been directly affected by the WTC attacks. Yet '9/11' qua symbol, 9/11' qua history changing event affects my life and the lives of millions all over the world who had no direct connection with the events at all. The day was not just a day; to quote one commentator:

As with Sarajevo in1914, Pearl Harbor in1941, and Berlin in1989, 9/11 is presented by pundits of diverse political hues as being a transformational moment where the fabric of history was violently torn.

More than a day, it punctuates 'our' history - indeed it makes 'us' 'us'; it generates the very notion of a shared history. What is more political than that?

For all the flaws of the linguistic turn, it provides a way to understand how this happens. I think that is valuable.

The "Mega" "Ground Zero" "Mosque" (that is none of those things)

I'm finding U.S. politics even scarier than usual right now. There have been a lot of reports in the media over the past few days about how Islamophobic beliefs are gaining ground now far more than just after 9/11. Communities with Muslim minorities that had few or no problems with their neighbours previously are seeing more and more aggravation, agitation and outright hostility.

The downtown New York community centre that has caused such a ruckus is fanning the flames and spineless piece of shit politicians across the board (with only occasional exceptions) are lining up to cast aspersions against a project that there is simply no good reason in the world to object to (and indeed until a few weeks ago nobody objected at all) just to score some quick political points in the upcoming elections.

Now, David J. Rothkopf over at his Foreign Policy blog - a mainstream, middle-of-the-road neoliberal if ever there was one - calls the people wanting to build their community centre "odious" and directly compares them to the extremist preacher threatening to publicly burn Qurans this week (who has now put those plans 'on hold'). Racism is in the mainstream, folks, and otherwise relatively unobjectionable people are going that way too. Islamophobia is becoming a widely acceptable prejudice.

Supposedly 2/3 of Americans now think that the centre should not be built there while 20% believe that Obama is a secret Muslim. Both equally baseless and nonsensical.

What we are seeing at the moment completely demolishes any remaining trace of the naive belief that the Internet would somehow open up public discourse for progressive ends. Utterly baseless, completely ridiculous rumour mongering, it is plain to see, is this brave new world's driving force. The more absurd and the less evidence available for any given viewpoint the stronger it will fare. If there is no evidence to support a view clearly that is evidence of a vast coverup!! If people call your view absurd clearly that is because you are an oppressed minority!!

It is sickening and very easy to denounce. However, it is questionable how far denunciation can go as a strategy. Certainly it will only reinforce the truly racist fringes but I think that it can work very well for the relatively mainstream bandwagon-jumpers like Rothkopf. To hell with him.

Learned a new word: holon

Of particular relevance to thinking about DeLanda's ontology perhaps:

Holon: something that is simultaneously a whole and a part.

Thanks Wikipedia.

More from Žižek

What if, in truth, intellectuals lead basically safe and comfortable lives, and in order to justify their livelihoods, construct scenarios of radical catastrophe? For many, no doubt, if a revolution is taking place, it should occur at a safe distance—Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela—so that, while their hearts are warmed by thinking about faraway events, they can go on promoting their careers. But with the current collapse of properly functioning welfare states in the advanced-industrial economies, radical intellectuals may be now approaching a moment of truth when they must make such clarifications: they wanted real change—now they can have it.

He is referring primarily to Horkheimer and Agamben; the latter I consider to be a particularly important target given his weirdly pronounced fashionability in the last few years.

There certainly are a lot of self-styled 'radicals' in the academy. I myself have no problem with admitting to being a lily-livered leftist who has never been anywhere near genuinely radical, let alone revolutionary, political action. My parochial, rural working class upbringing was about as far from that world as that of private schools and private jets and nothing I have done since has brought me any closer to either of these alien realms. How usual! Indeed, yet what is striking is that so many people who are just as politically irrelevant as me pretend the opposite - these are self-styled radicals.

Times of potential political change, such as the present one, show much self-styled radicalism to be exactly what it is - so much hot air. 'You wanted change and decried its enforced impossibility - now it is there for the taking; take it!' No taking, no changing; there is nothing to say. Nothing in the academic production cycle allows for its relevance: it takes years to publish anything and nobody reads journals anyway. Besides, its not like anyone has anything in particular to say despite spraying words like 'emancipatory' and 'liberating' across their essays like piss up a brick wall.

At least Žižek gets people interested and he usually has something to say.

Žižek on Europe and "Permanent Economic Emergency"

I've not yet heard a better description of the state of the European Union than this piece by Slavoj Žižek:

One often hears that the true message of the Eurozone crisis is that not only the Euro, but the project of the united Europe itself is dead. But before endorsing this general statement, one should add a Leninist twist to it: Europe is dead—ok, but which Europe? The answer is: the post-political Europe of accommodation to the world market, the Europe which was repeatedly rejected at referendums, the Brussels technocratic-expert Europe. The Europe that presents itself as standing for cold European reason against Greek passion and corruption, for mathematics against pathetics. (Slavoj Žižek, A Permanent Economic Emergency, New Left Review 64).

It is difficult to find a place to stand on the EU in the UK. The right are happy to queue up to bash it on almost every conceivable issue, real and imaginary; however, the free market core of the project is generally ignored in terms of scrutiny in favour of ridiculous, spittle-flecked, nostril-flaring stories about straight bananas and the like. The EU's most voracious support comes from the centre with Lib Dems and New Labourites only too happy to endorse technocracy, supporting as they do both the EU's cosmopolitan pretensions and its free market ideals.

The leftist position should be clear: the EU is a neoliberal homogenising operation designed to facilitate the faster, easier appropriation of wealth for a more mobile few and to remove the possibility of political resistance for the (physically and socio-economically) immobile many. Yet it cuts across the political spectrum in an awkward way: it also realises in highly concrete terms a sort of left-leaning liberal cosmopolitanism that, in many ways, is difficult to resist, while, as the other side of precisely the same coin, it eliminates local democratic accountability and communal heterogeneity for the sake of neoliberal free market ideals.

It is easy to love the results of the Shengen agreement, the ability to live and work anywhere in the EU easily and freely, the apparent disappearance of intra-Europe realpolitik, etc. The question is: would the (at least ostensive) disappearance of borders that is so intuitively agreeable (to a social liberal) be possible without the overriding goal of socio-economic homogenisation (which should not imply egality). If one opposes the EU does that automatically make one an unrepentant nationalist?

To oppose the EU in the UK would generally involve aligning oneself with nationalists of all stripes - from moderate Tories to white supremacists via UKIP. It is something of a double bind that catches the most difficult questions for leftists today: how does one oppose neo-liberal economics while embracing broadly liberal values on questions of gender, sexuality, race and religion, etc.? The academic quasi-left of poststructuralists, deconstructionists and hermeneuticists have never come up with an answer for why their 'celebration' of contingency, openness and tolerance accords almost completely with the dominant centrist, liberal status quo. Of course, scratch many a pomo and you'll often find a economic Marxist underneath, which must lead them to declare: To economics, solidarity; to society, freedom and openness. Does this not preclude, as Žižek emphasises "political economy"? Two worlds, two rules - not unlike the nature/society fissure that social theory rests upon. Wherever shall the twain meet? The quasi-left has little or no interest. Where do we go from here?

Žižek continues from the above:

But, utopian as it may appear, the space is still open for another Europe: a re-politicized Europe, founded on a shared emancipatory project; the Europe that gave birth to ancient Greek democracy, to the French and October Revolutions. This is why one should avoid the temptation to react to the ongoing financial crisis with a retreat to fully sovereign nation-states, easy prey for free-floating international capital, which can play one state against the other. More than ever, the reply to every crisis should be more internationalist and universalist than the universality of global capital.

Not this Europe - another Europe. This seems to be the only way ahead. Damn the vicious, knuckle-dragging nationalists but equally damn and blast the suave, smug cosmopolites. Thing is: looks like this must be a Europe built from the ground up.

Levi's review of ch.1 of DeLanda's 'New Philosophy of Society'

Comments on: http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/drg-assemblages-against-totalities/

Two points:

First, DeLanda's key axis 'material/expressive:territorialisation/deterritorialisation' is very interesting and is quite a powerful starting point for a social ontology. However, I wonder how far the material/expressive dimension can be taken ontologically. It is a fairly easy distinction to maintain cognitively or epistemologically - indeed, it'd be difficult think without making this separation in some way - but just how deeply rooted can we say it is in reality? If we take DeLanda at his word then surely we must say that the gravitational attraction of two asteroids is a material relation while the attraction of a wasp to an orchid is an expressive relation. Moreover, this is a truth quite apart from any human interpretation of the situation - it is not a separation made for our convenience alone - it is how the universe is really divided up. I like the distinction but I'm not sold on its being an ontological as opposed to a cognitive or an epistemological distinction (that is if this is what DeLanda is really saying). I'm not fundamentally opposed to the argument but I think I need to know more about it before being at all convinced. (Admittedly this is the first book by DeLanda that I've read besides A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, which is primarily empirical, so I may be just showing my ignorance.)

Second, I agree with Levi that territorialisation as DeLanda articulates is a very promising linking point with Latour's thought - particularly his notion of black boxes and his distinction between social complication and social complexity.

As Latour and Callon put it:

An actor grows with the number of relations he or she can put, as we say, in black boxes. A black box contains that which no longer needs to be reconsidered, those things whose contents have become a matter of indifference. The more elements one can place in black boxes – modes of thought, habits, forces and objects – the broader the construction one can raise. Of course, black boxes never remain fully closed or properly fastened … but macro-actors can do as if they were closed and dark. (Latour & Callon 1981, p.184-85)

The process of black boxing is, in Latour’s terms, a process of social complication to be distinguished from social complexity: “[C]omplexity [is] the simultaneous taking into account of many variables at once … complication [is] the piling of many simple steps one after the other.” (Latour 2000)

Something is ‘complicated’ when it is made of a succession of simple operations. … [T]he skills in an industrial society are those of simplification making social tasks less complex rather than making them more complex by comparison with other human and animal societies. By holding a variety of factors constant and sequentially negotiating one variable at a time, a stable complicated structure is created. Through extra-somatic resources employed in the process of social complication, units like multinational corporations, states and nations can be constituted[.] (Strum and Latour 1987)

In other words, social life starts out as being enormously complex; in this state societies can only be small, relatively ragtag bands of individuals. Social members (Latour uses the example of baboons as an example of social beings in an almost pure state of social complexity) have to work constantly to maintain their social relationships. No relations endure much beyond the immediate moment of interaction - this is an ethnomethodologist's society; a society whose bonds are constantly being remade on an inter-subjective level.

The more society becomes complicated (and this occurs when humans fold more and more non-humans into their increasingly 'entangled' society) the more social relations can be placed in black boxes, the more forces can be translated over greater distances with minimal distortion, the more tightly disciplined and closely knit humans become and the larger their collectives can grow; in this state societies can take almost any form - from larger tribes to city states to empires. Now relations endure far beyond the immediate moment of inter-subjective interaction and we can say, although Latour largely shuns this language, that social structures develop (and so social mereology becomes a relevant consideration).

The important point here is that Latour, like DeLanda (it seems) and unlike Deleuze and Guattari, doesn't hold territorialisation, organisation, disciplinisation or ordering in contempt so as to 'celebrate' the 'freedom' of deterritorialisation tout court. D&G were always begrudged to allow for anything positive in territorialisation, while for DeLanda and Latour these are more or less neutral terms, circumstance excepted. We can easily translate Latour's arguments here into DeLanda's terminology: territorialisation does not simply gather social beings into tighter, more disciplined, more regimented assemblages, it makes larger collectives possible. Therefore, simply 'celebrating' deterritorialisation as being inherently 'liberating' or whatever doesn't make much sense - we have to think much more about where social organisation must be carefully disciplined and where it must not. Sweeping statements either way are not helpful.


Latour, B. & Callon, M. 1981, "Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors Macro-Structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them to Do So," In Advances in social theory and methodology: toward an integration of micro- and macro-sociologies, K. Knorr-Cetina & A. V. Cicourel, eds., Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Latour, B. Progress or Entanglement? Two models for the long term evolution of human civilisation. 2000: Unpublished Work: www.bruno-latour.fr/poparticles/poparticle/P-86-TAIWAN.pdf

Strum, S.S. & Latour, B. 1987. Redefining the Social Link - from Baboons to Humans. Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales, 26, (4)

Reflexivity

Already the DeLanda reading group is getting interesting with a lot of attention focused on the subject of reflexivity of social beings as distinct from natural beings as DeLanda outlines it in his introduction.

In short, DeLanda argues for a 'realist' conception of society where the social analyst's conceptions meet something intransient and real -- i.e. where the sociologist has a concrete referent object to analyse, not where said sociologist just builds up what society is through hypotheses, ideal types or signifiers. Having said this, DeLanda then immediately acknowledges that in some cases it is not this simple; he uses the case of a refugee as an example of an instance in which the social scientist may affect the referent object of study by altering the system of classification by which 'refugee' qua social subject is constituted. This happens and it is important; however, DeLanda argues, it is the exception rather than the rule. Most object of sociological inquiry are not reflexive in this manner (1-3).

On his blog, Alex Reid picks up this idea from Levi Bryant's introduction to DeLanda's introduction and writes:

[T]here is an interesting reflexive quality to a social realist ontology that it different from an ontology of natural objects. That is, calling a tree a tree doesn't impact what the tree is. Calling a plant a weed, doesn't change the plant (though it may change the way people react to the plant). On the other hand, the way we name things in a social milieu can be cybernetic. For example, students who become labelled as smart or troubled or whatever can tend to take on those roles.

In response Levi writes:

This reflexivity is one of the key features of the social. Social entities are capable of relating to the manner in which they are described, such that their description modifies their nature through this relation. If my doctor, for example, diagnoses me as suffering from depression, I might do research on depression and begin emulating some of these descriptions.

All of which reminds me of an essay called 'Social Thought and Social Action' by the philosopher Martin Hollis that appeared in a book called The Social Dimensions of Science in 1992. In particular I am reminded of what Hollis called 'double' and 'triple hermeneutics.'

"Guinea pigs do not read books", begins Hollis, "Biologists do." Humans react to their observation in a way that non-humans do not; in short, they are reflexive beings. This is a "universal social fact" (68). I think we can all agree that guinea pigs, in fact, do not read books. But this highlights something rather important. For Hollis the reflexivity of social beings divides the world in two: on the one hand, there are intelligent, reflexive humans who, when observed, necessitate 'double' or even 'triple hermeneutics' as we are then layering interpretations on interpretations on interpretations (hence leading to 'double' and 'triple hermeneutics'); on the other, there are mute, prostrate non-humans largely oblivious to their manipulation and utterly incapable of affecting the observer in response to the observer's manipulation.

Both Alex and Levi imply (perhaps they would not agree, but this is how it seems from the discussion so far) that reflexivity is a defining characteristic of sociality and that only social beings can be properly reflexive. DeLanda does perhaps imply something like thus but I do not think this is the right way to interpret him at this point.

DeLanda asserts that some social relationships are reflexive and others are not. Social relationships are reflexive when interpreting them affects the original phenomena. Writing policy guidelines for government refugee legislation is, therefore, a decidedly reflexive act as the category of 'refugee' is being reshaped as it is being observed. If I am sat watching a news report about refugees in Australia, for example, this is not reflexive in this way as my experience has no (or at least negligible) impact on the category of 'refugee.' Fair enough, but none of this restricts reflexivity to the social or, indeed, makes societies defined by reflexivity.

Firstly, DeLanda is clear that reflexivity is the exception rather than the rule. Secondly, I see no reason why, for example, an assemblage of gases locked in a relatively stable cycle of disequilibrium (so that the assemblage is constantly changing but cycles back to repeat itself relatively consistently) cannot be said to be 'reflexive'. Certainly it is not of the order of sentient beings attaining self awareness but nor is it totally different. Various beings in an assemblage react to other beings in such a way that all their properties are altered over time.

For Hollis humans are reflexive and non-humans are not, therefore humans and non-humans are completely different (reality is thereby duly bifurcated). For DeLanda some human relationships are reflexive and some are not and we already know that humans and non-humans are not altogether different. On that basis, I would rather put it this way: reflexivity is a possible property of all assemblages, not just social ones. Although social, human assemblages display unusually enhanced properties of reflexivity this does not place them ontologically apart from less reflexive or even un-reflexive assemblages. All can develop reflex mechanisms of one kind or another.

In this reading, human/human, human/non-human and non-human/non-human assemblages may all attain 'reflexivity' or they may not. It is an open question.

re: DeLanda Introduction

http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/reading-group-delanda-a-new-philosophy-of-society-anps-introduction/#comment-34041

I would certainly agree with mark about the introduction. I don’t really like the way DeLanda begins there, to be honest. The first few pages could have been lifted from any positivist sociologist in the twentieth century (and there have been more than a few). ‘Mind independence’ is in no way a new idea, it is the mainstream view for social scientists of all stripes. DeLanda’s innovation, it seems to me, is nowhere to be seen in the first few pages (though it abounds immediately after).

My criticism of his opening would be that the language with which he outlines his philosophy of science is far too similar to that of most mainstream (i.e. positivist) social theorists. Any given individual mind is not a necessary condition for the existence of society, although minds altogether are – that’s Durkheim’s shtick. It’s all valid enough but it’s not new. In short, DeLanda believes in social facts (a social fact: a social phenomenon that has “an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations.”)… Which is fair enough, any realist must believe so (at least in some form), but that is not where his innovation lies.

As soon as he gets into his assemblage theory we realise how different his approach is from any Durkheimians. We begin to see that, yes, minds in the plural are necessary conditions for the existence of society but that doesn’t mean so much. Water is a necessary condition for the existence of oceans, as are worms for the existence of rainforests. Human minds are just parts of vast ecosystems and, as important as they are, the mind independence of society is hardly reducible to social (or human) factors alone! Once we get into the assemblage theory we can think as widely as this, whereas the conventional social theory he flirts with would take collective human minds as (a) on a different (i.e. objective) ontological level to individual (i.e. subjective) minds and (b) as the only significant object of analysis.

But, that aside, this is an excellent introduction to DeLanda’s introduction and I’m looking forward to the rest of the reading!

Completed: 'Where’s the Action’ Latour, Ontology and World Politics

I finally finished writing the paper that I put an abstract up for a while ago. It turned out much longer than I expected. I have had to make up a severely redacted copy to present in Oxford next week. I shall post the full end product here for posterity.

'Where’s the Action’ Latour, Ontology and World Politics