I started to write this post in response to Paul Ennis’ recent remarks about correlationism and the ethico-politico place of animals, but it quickly turned into a diary of its own so I’ll post it here. Ennis writes:
One argument was that anti-correlationism has a deflationary effect on the special status usually assigned to humans by continental thinkers such as Hegel and Heidegger. The anti-correltionist stance shows that such a status is a fabrication or at least not as evident as usually portrayed. This is one way to open up the critical animal debate.
Rather than restricting the question of the ethico-politico implications of non-correlationist thought to questions of the ethical and political status of animals, I’d like to situate the question (I don’t have any answers here, so all this is exploratory) within the framework of the ethico-politico status of nonhumans in general. Here the issue isn’t one of excluding the human, but of asking how the domain of value might be extended beyond the human, without humans being at the center, or all questions of value pertaining to nonhumans being questions about the relationship of humans to nonhumans. In other words, the litmus test of whether or not something fits the bill of a non-correlationationist ethico-politico theory revolves around whether that domain of value would continue to be a domain of value even if humans cease to exist. That seems to be a pretty tall order or very difficult to think, though Lingis has certain proposed on such ethical system that meets this litmus test in his book The Imperative.
read on!
These sorts of issues– not just about animals, but about nonhumans in general –have been giving me real headaches. To what degree is a non-correlationist ethics possible? I think it’s safe to say at this point that non-correlationist metaphysics or ontologies are possible or that compelling arguments have been produced against the anti-realist’s “full nelson” argument. I go back and forth, however, on whether this is true in the domain of values as well. It could be that non-correlationist metaphysics are possible but that the domain of value, whether in ethics, aesthetics, or political philosophy, is necessarily correlationist such that humans must necessarily be placed at the center of the picture. As someone writing about my recent post “Inhuman Ethics” on another blog put it, “it’s still humans making the judgments.” This a rejoinder that any non-correlationist value theorist would have to address, just as the object-oriented ontologists and other variants of Speculative Realism have had to address anti-realist arguments pertaining to the manner in which objects are only ever objects for a subject.
If it is true that correlationism is the only game in town where value theory is concerned, then it looks like the only sorts of arguments we get for a sort of defense of the nonhuman from human exploitation are either utilitarian (this exploitation will come to bite humans in the ass) or some deontological: we have some sort of deontological a priori duty to the nonhuman as shepherds or something. No case could here be made that there’s something of intrinsic value in nonhumans such as animals or the planets. Rather, we would be committed to the thesis that there are only relative values of some sort or another. And here the relativity in question would be that of relationality. The planet, for example, would only take on value-predicates in relation to humans. Were humans to not exist, the planet would neither be valueless or valuable. It would just be. It seems to me that environmental theorists and critical animal theorists interested in object-oriented ontology and, more broadly, speculative realism are looking for something a bit more robust than these sorts of correlationisms. I sense in their remarks and interest, that they are looking for something like a trans-human axiology.
If one takes the non-correlationist route where ethico-politico questions are concerned, we need a deep meta-ethical inquiry into those concepts that are assumed by any and all ethical philosophies so far put forward. In other words, it is necessary to wipe the slate clean, suspend our belief that we know what the domain of the ethical or value is, and carry out a critique of the central concepts of traditional ethical thought. A Heideggerian might say that we require a “deconstruction” of the history of ethical thought. This requires an inquiry into the ethical subject, concepts of duty, obligation, intentionality, debt, etc. that function as the shared conceptual space of ethical thinkers of very different persuasions. Is it really true that ethics revolves around these concepts, or are they myths or fictions of some sort?
In my “Inhuman Ethics” post I called into question the very concept of the human. A correlationist thesis about the primacy of the human in ethical thought is premised on the thesis that the ethical subject is identical to the human. In other words, I argued that ethical thought is premised on an ontological assumption: that it is the human that makes ethical judgments. This is true even in ethical thinkers like Badiou where the Subject (which would be better referred to as a “Group” or a “Subject-Group”) necessarily supervenes on a human body. In my post I raised the question of whether or not it is in fact true that the ethico-politico subject is human.
This question was there based on ontological considerations pertaining to relations between objects or bodies. The thesis would be that when we relate to something we literally become a different entity. Levi-1 without a hammer in his hand or who is not sitting at a computer is literally a different entity than Levi-2 that has a hammer in his hand or that is working at the computer. Here the idea is, somewhat following Deleuze and Spinoza, that entities are individuated by their powers or capacities. The proper being of an object is what an object can do or its generative powers. An entity that enters into a relational network with a hammer or a computer has different powers and capacities than an entity that does not exist in these relations and is, therefore, by this logic, a different entity. In ethical terms they are literally different agents.
A few interesting consequences would follow from such a thesis. First, notice that the ethico-politico domain is no longer a domain pertaining to the human, nor was it ever a domain pertaining to the human. The condition for the possibility of the human would be the suspension of a “human” body in a pure void, de-sutured from all relations. But such a being does not exist. Rather, we are always in relations of some form or another in the world about us, and by virtue of this we are different entities, even over the course of our own lived timelines. The second consequence is that the ethico-politico domain has never been a homogeneous domain, but has always been a domain pertaining to diverse or heterogeneous entities pertaining to issues of how these entities are to relate to one another. In other words, the thesis that the ethical subject is always the same, a human subject, would, under this thesis, be shown to be a fiction. Paraphrasing Marx from a different context, the serf and the factory worker are two entirely different entities. And as Deleuze and Guattari put it, the work-horse has more in common with the ox than with the race horse. There would thus not be an ethical agent (i.e., a universal shared by all particulars), but rather ethical agents. A third consequence would thus be that because entities always open on to a network or assemblage greater than themselves, their being is bound up with entities that might initially seem to be outside of the domain of the ethical. For example, many of us are bound up with industrial, agricultural, animal, geographical, etc., networks that sustain us in being the sort of being that we are. We would not be the entities we are without these networks and therefore these networks enter into the axiological domain. In other words, where the traditional facts/value distinction mirrors the nature/culture distinction, our ontological premise generates a collapse or breakdown of the nature/culture distinction preventing the exclusion of the domain of the natural from the domain of the ethical. We would be unable to draw a clean distinction between these two realm.
Tentatively, this simple ontological thesis would also call for a substantial rethinking of ethico-politico categories like responsibility, duty, debt, etc. It will be noted that these are categories of judgment. Since the late 18th and the 19th century, ethical thought has revolved around questions of judgment or the formulation of rule-based systems that would allow us to evaluate the moral worth of certain claims. However, such an aim was based on the thesis of a formally identical ethical subject or agent that would remain structurally identical despite persons and circumstances being very different. While empirically Melanie and I are very different persons, from the standpoint of this sort of ethico-politico thought we are formally or structurally identical as agents. It is this thesis of formal identity or structural identity within and across diversity that serves as the condition for the possibility of identical duties, obligations, and powers of judgment despite our empirical differences from one another. And it is this structural or formal identity that guarantees debt in the face of ethical infractions or violations of universal laws.
If ontologically we cannot presuppose the formal identity of agents across diversity– indeed, if we cannot even presuppose our own identity by virtue of the fact that we become new agencies when we enter into new relations —rule-based ethical systems are out the window. Or perhaps, less dramatically, rules, criteria of judgment, are effects or results, not grounds. Yet if the domain of the ethical is not the domain of rules that would allow us to evaluate particular circumstances according to universal rules, then what is it? Perhaps, rather than judgment, the domain of the ethico-politico field is the domain not of judgment, but of problematizations. In other words, it would be the domain wherein problems of the coordination of networks or assemblages are formed. What we previously referred to as norms or rules would instead become attractors, tendencies, paths towards actualization of collective-bodies (groups, assemblages, or ecologies, all of which are objects at higher orders of scale and complexity).
But again, all of this is very vague and experimental, murky, marking my attempt to think through just what an object-oriented ethics would require and trying to get straight on just what the issues and questions are. So take it with a grain of salt.
Larval Subjects . 
January 28, 2010 at 5:32 am
Yeah, I still mean to do a longer, more formal response over at my place, to both you and Paul. But excellent starts.
(1) Your post explains to me the parts of Derrida I find important and necessary. Though he’s not essential, he has been useful for me (there are passages in here that are almost word for word things Derrida writes in The Animal That Therefore I Am).
(2) Does a flat ontology demand a flat ethics? Obviously the specter of a non-anthropocentric ethics and politics is what terrorizes certain people in the face of SR/OOO. We in the CAS work get it all the time. We must really, really hate humans, or something absurd. It always sounds to me like people who say that fighting for same-sex marriage is trying to give gay people more or special rights. Equality (and that is what flatness means on some level) means somehow the opposite of equality to other people.
(3) I think you are right that the time period of the abstract judgment is over. As also the individualist nature of certain ethical systems (including certain readings of Levinas). Politico-ethical projects are projects of relations. How do we relate? How do we respond to changing relations? How do we become beings capable of the relations we want? This is why I always have trouble thinking ontology as separate from the political and the ethical (and I’d say the same is true of Deleuze!).
I’ll try to say more later, but please keep this up.
January 28, 2010 at 5:42 am
It is exactly concerns like this that lead me to dismiss hypotheticals as tools for ethical speculation. Hypothetical situations always require interchangeable subjects, and if it is difference/turtles all the way down, then no such subject exists. Kantian and Utilitarian deliberation falter badly.
January 28, 2010 at 5:56 am
Scu,
I’d be really interested in seeing you work through some thoughts about the possibility of something like a “flat ethics”. I think something along these lines is what I’m groping towards, though I can’t quite get the words out of the jumble of my mouth. But yes, in the reformulation of these ethico-politico questions the ethical domain needs to be flattened to consider all actants, human and nonhuman involved. It’s here that I go back and forth with your articulation in point 3 as the language in both my post and in your third point is still human centered when humans need to be thought as among other actants, not organizing and defining the other actants. Nice analogy with gay rights debates.
January 28, 2010 at 6:18 am
I really loved the speculative animal event, but to the degree it was a failure (what part of it failed) I think is because for several of us (me, you) we know where we want to head, but only in a vague way. And we know even less how to speak about it. When you say you can’t get the words out of the jumble of your mouth I am reminded of all the charming, beautiful things that Deleuze had to say of stammering and stuttering. We’re at the stammering and stuttering stage.
But yes, we need a flat ethics. To me, it seems that whatever ethical system/relation (those aren’t the same thing, but slashes are one of my preferred ways to stammer) we are working towards, it has to both be egalitarian (flat) and also account for differences (becoming, relations, non-homogeneity, non-hegemony, et cetera).
Your objection to point three is certainly noted, and I think you are right. But I didn’t mean to imply a system that only sees humans as agents. But the problem isn’t that I think that non-human entities (at least certain other animals) cannot engage in ethical behavior, the problem becomes almost something of a communication difficulty. How does one address oneself except to those who can read you? (Which isn’t all humans, not even most humans).
And yeah, this is part of the problem. We don’t want to turn into arguing for some sort of ethical/political vanguard.
Oh well, I’ll try later, hopefully. You’d laugh if you could see the number of unpublished posts on critical animal and how many saved documents with flat ethics in the title that haven’t been posted yet.
January 28, 2010 at 7:18 am
[…] Larval Subjects is up with a post tonight on non-human values. Putting to the side the question of meaning, which is heavily discussed in the […]
January 28, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Levi, Scu,
reading this exchange I realized that, in my own post for the speculative animal event, I made claims regarding OOP which were too narrowly focused on Harman’s rehabilitation of substance. If there is a way out from this issue of ‘flat ethics’ it is probably going more towards the radical relationism of Latour and your own ontological dynamism. I am trying to come up with a cool variation of the term ‘objectile’ (which I rather like) capable of convening some ethical meaning but no luck yet:)
As I see it, it is all a matter of ontological committments: it is hard for the christianized tradition of the metaphysics of presence to give up the idea of a free-willed ethical (and imputable) subject.
I must confess my –at times a bit superficial since it is not exactly my specialization– sympathy for buddhist ethics, built on the starting point of the realization of the non-‘substance/essence’-iality of all beings, and yet prescribing ‘compassion’ precisely because of this ontological outlook on reality and its actors. Again, this is somewhat a simplification, since different buddhist trends have different nuances on the issue. Moreover, the academic discipline of Buddhist Ethics is extremely new (almost entirely linked to Damien Keown–I believe that this also gave rise to its application to critical animal studies, am I right?), and somewhat problematic, since it seems to be the fied of buddhist studies in which 1) preconceptions about buddhism being an ‘ethical and wise’ religion and 2) western concerns are projected on a non-western system, are most evident.
January 28, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Levi (and Scu) – I’ve been groping towards these things for several years now, but in (or out of) a different context. As I try to get my bearings within the philosophical context you occupy, allow me a few questions (and my apologies if you feel you’ve answered these already elsewhere).
For me, the place you start from in this piece is foreign, or at least no longer (for some time now) the defining context, while the place you get to is, in effect, ‘home.’ The first is represented in paragraphs like the following:
“If it is true that correlationism is the only game in town where value theory is concerned, then it looks like the only sorts of arguments we get for a sort of defense of the nonhuman from human exploitation are either utilitarian (this exploitation will come to bite humans in the ass) or some deontological: we have some sort of deontological a priori duty to the nonhuman as shepherds or something. No case could here be made that there’s something of intrinsic value in nonhumans such as animals or the planets. [etc.]”
While I realize this is the first step of an argument, I’m puzzled that it still needs to trouble us as much as it seems to.
The second consists of pieces like these:
“Here the idea is, somewhat following Deleuze and Spinoza, that entities are individuated by their powers or capacities. The proper being of an object is what an object can do or its generative powers.”
and
“The condition for the possibility of the human would be the suspension of a “human” body in a pure void, de-sutured from all relations. But such a being does not exist. Rather, we are always in relations of some form or another in the world about us, and by virtue of this we are different entities, even over the course of our own lived timelines. The second consequence is that the ethico-politico domain has never been a homogeneous domain, but has always been a domain pertaining to diverse or heterogeneous entities pertaining to issues of how these entities are to relate to one another. In other words, the thesis that the ethical subject is always the same, a human subject, would, under this thesis, be shown to be a fiction. [Etc.]”
Exactly, exactly. If voting could make an argument more convincing, this all gets my enthusiastic vote. This is precisely the kind of relational ontology I’ve been assuming in my own work. What Meillassioux (I take it, since I’ve only browsed his writing, not actually read it) calls “correlationism”, if conceived as something centered on the relationship between a human subject and a nonhuman object/world, seems thoroughly passé to me. The literature I’ve been drawing on, from Whiteheadian and Deleuzian studies to the growing post-ANT “social nature” and “non-representationalist” literature in geography, the Spinozist/Deleuzian veins in social and political theory (Connolly, Hardt/Negri, et al), Piercian and Batesonian approaches in semiotics and systems theory, embodied cognitivism (in cognitive studies) and the ecological psychology of Gibson, and even the scientific literature on networks and systems though it’s quite weak on understanding the human part, is all well and thoroughly beyond that. It seems that only the philosophers still need to catch up, and I’m gratified to see you and others doing that.
Having stated that so baldly, I’ll now admit that the philosophical underpinnings of all these related intellectual trends do, of course, need a lot more thinking through -– which is what excites me about your work and that of all the speculative realists (object-oriented or otherwise). But to me the “object-oriented” label seems an inadequate vehicle for that because, as you’ve clearly outlined in this very post, what’s needed is something that draws attention not to specific objects and the distinctions between them, but to the relations between them, the kinds of relations, the different ways of relating and coming together (in emergent networks, etc.). Ethics, in a relational guise, is about how we do what we do, how we take up our relations, how we affect others, get involved with others, etc. The “we” are not “the human,” as some universalized abstraction. In fact, the “we” is not particularly relevant; it’s the how, the what, the movement of the doing, the becoming rather than the being, that counts.
Even “correlationism” seems sounder to me than a pure focus on “objects” (as if the latter are unrelated and unchanging) — as long as the “correlationism” focuses on subject-object relationalities in general, as opposed to “human” ones specifically. What’s wrong, for instance, with expanding phenomenology to include the phenomenological worlds of nonhumans (as those who draw on von Uexkull, from Deleuze and Deleuzians to biosemioticists and others, do)? If all physical entities are, as Whitehead and others assert, engaged continually in relating to their environments, structurally coupling (Maturana/Varela) with them in manifold ways, then the question of ethics is HOW best to do this (in a specific context). We need an ethics of action, of becoming, of (what I’ve called) “circulating agency” amidst the world of actantial relata.
Environmental ethicists have tried in various ways to deal with the realm of “value” in the nonhuman (including intrinsic values, though these are often weakly defined), but the most promising approach, to me, seems to be a relational way (which resonates with, and in some cases clearly underpins, certain strains of environmental philosophy already).
Am I, in your view, barking up the wrong tree? From a philosopher’s perspective, are my thoughts off the mark? Or is there an unnecessary tension here between the relational strands in your own work and this “object-orientation” that, while useful to make the point that humans aren’t the only actors/agents around, muddies the waters otherwise? In other words, once we’ve accepted that humans aren’t the center of the universe (and many of us have already), why focus on “objects” rather than relations, capacities, affects, systemic interactions, and all the other things that make the world of relations so rich?
Adrian
January 28, 2010 at 3:37 pm
I love this passage:
So the question is: what sort of ethics permits us to go beyond the wall of death against death, of crime against crime; beyond the wall between the desperate poor and the nihilistic rich? The question finally is a political one. And finally we have to say there is no formal, divine, or natural ethics that exists in something like concrete political questions and commitments to their solutions. The good is always a singularity. Alain Badiou, Ethics
I think Badiou is on to something there. And I think that a flat ontology will do a lot of ethical work without a fleshed out ethical theory, precisely because it removes the grounds for those theories. Precisely because it problematizes the “human.” We need to accept the possibility that there is no such thing as an ethical theory that is not centered on a (abstract, formalized) speaking subject in the traditional sense. We need to accept the possibility that we will never, ever find one.
I think we’re afraid of that possibility, but why? Because it would endanger the legitimacy of our politics? That argument loses touch with reality fast, as a cursory examination of actually-existing politics reveals. There is no ethico-discursive system, no idealistic system of post-hoc meaning that cannot be twisted inside out to justify all sorts of madness, that is not, at its root, some kind of tautology. These discursive systems are cobbled together out of the fragments of religion, spirituality, philosophy, and some kind of common sense. No one, not even the most pious priest or the most analytic philosopher, is guided in their everyday actions by a coherent ethico-discursive system of value. They may think they are, but when they think they are, they’re just thinking.
PS: I’m a vegetarian, and have sought for years a coherent and convincing ethical framework to ground this choice. I can’t find one.
“But how will you know you’re right?” the ethicist would say. We don’t. The realist should always proceed with the possibility that she is wrong, but she must still proceed.
January 28, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Just a quick follow-up to my earlier comment (which may or may not get posted here?): “Flatness”, as I see it, is a useful move to make when one wants to smoothen over a gap or break down a wall/hierarchy/striation — such as the human-nonhuman gap/wall. The virtue of a “flat ontology”, like the virtue of any argument, is to alter the playing field. Once that playing field has been altered — and it’s possible that we still have some way to go with this one — the “flatness” can become a trap just as was the “correlationism” it was aiming to dissolve in the first place. Ideas are bricks, as Deleuze & Guattari put it, and I think of “flatness” more as a brick with which to poke holes into a wall, rather than the kind with which to build new walls. Foucault, and poststructuralism more generally, tried to flatten things – such as the assumptions about subjects and objects (among other things) that were smuggled into depth hermeneutics of various kinds.
Pursuing flatness for the sake of it, however, might not do as much useful work as describing the kinds of relations that do and might occur in the world already. Do we want to flatten, for instance (i.e. eliminate), the difference between real things and imagined or purported things? I’m not sure. If we do, we’re left wandering in a world of so many things we’d have troubled making sense of them all; and if we don’t, then we need to come up with criteria by which we judge some of them to be non-existent and others to be real. But whose criteria? Will that not place us (humans) at the center once again? Or scientific methods? Or something like that?
On the other hand, by focusing on relations rather than things, we can focus on what things do – how they act, interact, affect, transform, come together to bring about new relations, etc. Then everything (including ideas) becomes real to the extent that it does act and affect. (OK, enough from me here…)
January 28, 2010 at 6:09 pm
So many comments…
Adrian, I can’t speak for Levi. I’m not as plugged in specifically with ecological theory/philosophy as you are, but I’m fairly highly plugged into all the stuff you mention.
I think relations are certainly the productive angle, but I am not sure I would agree with you when you say, “In fact, the “we” is not particularly relevant; it’s the how, the what, the movement of the doing, the becoming rather than the being, that counts.” I am fairly sure I know you are talking about here, and on one hand I agree with you. On the other hand, yeah, I think the ‘we’ matters. I think it matters because otherwise we have a tendency to treat actors in a homogeneous or interchangeable way. But I know you know that, I just get worried about rhetoric like that sometimes.
I agree there is a lot of exciting stuff out on the questions of relations. What I’ve felt is lacking is (1) a radical commitment to egalitarianism, and (2) an understanding of how to translate the theory of relations into more concrete situations. If you feel that stuff is out there, drop me some cites!
I certainly think it can be done, but I’m not sure it has, yet.
January 28, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Hi Adrian,
I’m in a bit of a hurry at the moment so just a quick reply. I think there tends to be a lot of loose talk about relations in some of these discussions. My version of object-oriented ontology, at any rate, does not reject relations. Rather, it holds that relations are external to their terms. What is being rejected is the thesis that all relations are internal relations or constitutive of the being of a being. My motivations are both ontology and political here. Ontologically, if objects are there relation it would be impossible for change to take place. They universe would become a crystalline and static lattice because it wouldn’t contain any alterity within it in excess of relations. Additionally, nothing at all would exist because where everything is a mirror or relation to everything else there is nothing at all. Politically, unless we begin from the premise that terms are ontologically distinct from their relations, I don’t see how anything like emancipation or change is possible. Badiou has understood this well. It is only where you have a radical ontological nominalism or independence of terms from their relations that it’s possible to reconfigure relations. Where, by contrast, relations are ontologically internal to their terms this sort of change is not possible.
With all of this said, holding that terms and relations are distinct is not the same as rejecting relations. Relations are a central focus of any onticological inquiry in my view, and this in two ways. First, within the framework of my variant of object-oriented ontology the internal structure of an object is a relational network. This is what I call it’s endo-consistency. These are internal relations or relations such that if they are destroyed the object is destroyed. Second, objects do enter into relations with one another in networks or assemblages. All I’m rejecting is the use of language like “system” or “structure”, where it’s presupposed that all relations are internal and that therefore any term within a structure is an effect of internal relations and therefore has no autonomy of its own.
January 28, 2010 at 8:15 pm
In my opinion, a theory of objects is applicable to a theory of concrete political situations. Here’s some objects that might appear in a political situation, a US Army brigade, an Apache helicopter, Barack Obama, Mr. John Doe voter. Politics demands a situation of discrete entities. While a flat ontology might recognize a lot of objects as real, that doesn’t mean that our politics has to concern itself with every object in the universe, all the time.
I am, personally, committed to egalitarianism in the traditional economic and political sense. An object-oriented ontology provides and extremely interesting metaphysics that political situations are embedded within. However, no one has yet demonstrated how a specific politics is determined by a metaphysics. Without a God handing down His values to all of the universe, how is this even possible? And why do we need to make that move?
January 29, 2010 at 1:40 am
It’s worth looking back at a dominant approach to moral questions after we’ve tied ourselves in knots.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reflective-equilibrium/
January 29, 2010 at 4:10 am
LS writes: “Ontologically, if objects are there relation it would be impossible for change to take place. They universe would become a crystalline and static lattice because it wouldn’t contain any alterity within it in excess of relations. Additionally, nothing at all would exist because where everything is a mirror or relation to everything else there is nothing at all. Politically, unless we begin from the premise that terms are ontologically distinct from their relations, I don’t see how anything like emancipation or change is possible.”
This reminds me of something Harman had said, about how if all things are relations, or relational in nature, with nothing outside of those relations, then the universe would somehow have to melt into an undifferentiated mass (in your terms, it would be “crystalline and static” and that therefore “nothing… would exist”). But the missing premise(s) here seem to be that (a) all relations are identical, and (b) that relations are static, changeless, featureless and indistinct in terms of differential capacities, lacking in folds or spatial-temporal arrangements within which they exist and unfold, etc. But these premises are incorrect. Just as in an object-focused perspective all objects are not identical (they have different properties, etc.), so in a relational perspective all relations have their properties, their extents, forms, shapes, and histories of unfoldment and transformation. There are, e.g., relations in which one term overpowers another and forces it to do its will, and relations of mutuality or symbiosis. And networks built of relations can similarly come in many shapes and sizes, e.g. Delanda’s meshworks and hierarchies, etc.
Relations give rise to consistencies, differential textures or thicknesses, knots and nodes, contrapuntal rhythms and harmonies (choose your metaphor) in the fabric of the world. They unfold over and against other relations, in networks that vary and interact in numerous ways. The universe is a lumpy, complexly differentiated and highly structured field. Its points of greater consistency and regularity can be called “objects”, but that still leaves us with the task of describing how those objects relate to each other. Or they can be described as processes – which are objects conceived as verbs rather than nouns (but verbs that still mean different things – they don’t all melt together into a meaningless stew).
In a relational view, everything is assumed to change over time, but at different rates and speeds, with different kinds of openness or closedness in structure, some features persisting while others change, and so on. Formal/structural coherence gives the impression of there being a continuous entity, and for conscious, reflective beings like us, that coherence is sharpened by strands of narrated meaning that repeat the same phrases (“this is me,” “here’s what I think,” “I hate liberals,” “I don’t eat meat,” etc.), giving rise to the perception (illusion) that there really is a consistent and unchanging “self.” But outside of relationality, that “self” couldn’t exist, since it is a product of relational processes (changing relations between perceptions of selfhood/identity and otherness/difference, subjectivity arising in relation to perceived objectivity, etc.). That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have more consistent and relatively “permanent” features as opposed to more elusive ones.
I like your second paragraph much more, with its “endo-consistency” of internal relations, its external relations forming networks/assemblages, etc. While I (following Delanda, Protevi, and others) find terms like “systems” and “structures” to be useful within limits, I don’t presuppose “that all relations are internal” or that terms within structures lack any autonomy. So I don’t think I disagree with you here; I just prefer a different terminology. In a sense, I prefer verbs over nouns, because verbs include the recognition of temporality whereas nouns do not. “Objects” sound to me like nouns. But if they can be defined in a way that makes clear that they are “verbal” in nature, i.e. temporal, changing, relational, etc., then I’m fine with them. But I still want to know how they relate with each other, change, arise and pass away.
Re: Scu’s and anxiousmodernman’s comments about politics and egalitarianism: For me, a relational approach gets at this better than a non-relational one, since it allows us to focus on the quality of relations, their fairness and evenhandedness, and on the processual nature of everything, i.e. its life process (if it is living) from its emergence to its decline (which sounds a bit teleological in an Aristotelian way, but so be it). I have more to say about that, but I think I may take it over to my own blog, since I don’t want to hog too much space here.
January 30, 2010 at 4:21 am
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January 30, 2010 at 6:05 pm
[…] on objects and relations which really goes to the heart of what I’m trying to think about (here, here, and here). Indeed, in an earlier draft of The Democracy of Objects I had pitched the project […]
January 31, 2010 at 11:27 pm
[…] post, following up on a discussion we were having about anti-correlationist thinking and the animal.Levi followed up by combining some of his earlier analysis on inhuman ethics with Paul’s post. That then […]
June 23, 2010 at 3:14 pm
[…] debate has revved up again over at Larval Subjects, in the commentary responding to Levi Bryant’s Questions about the possibility of non-correlationist ethics. The debate, as I would describe it, circles around the following question: If we agree that […]