In the responses to my last post Michael, from Archive Fever, makes an interesting (as always) remark. Michael writes,
an object/assemblage is not real if it does not make a difference/affect the world. All actually existing entities have force and consequence
For me the case is very different. If I draw a distinction between things and actants, then this is because I hold that things are irreducible to their effects on other objects. On the one hand, things are always in excess of the manner in which they happen to affect other things at any given point in time. No object is every exhausted by the manner in which it affects other objects. Even in that case where, improbably, a thing enters into all possible relations it could enter into with other things, there would still be a residue of excess in the thing that never manifests. This is a central feature of what Harman, I believe, has in mind by “withdrawal” and is part of the reason that Morton refers to things as “strange strangers”. Like Hegel’s famous “bone in the throat” (at least as read by Zizek), there is always something inassimable about all objects. I won’t get into my reasons for this claim (you can read them in the first chapter of The Democracy of Objects), but will only underline that I am committed to this thesis of the excess of objects over their actualizations.
On the other hand, because I hold things cannot be defined by how they affect other things, it follows that it’s possible that there are things that affect no other things at all. I say it’s possible, not that they do exist. How would I know? In order for me to know that they exist they would have to produce some sort of difference with respect to me or the social and natural world with which I dwell. Yet such a thing is precisely a thing that produces no difference beyond the mere difference of existing. It seems appropriate to refer to these types of things as “dark objects”. Dark objects are objects that are so thoroughly withdrawn that they do not affect anything else at all. Again, all I emphasize is that dark objects are a metaphysical possibility, not that they exist. Of course, if dark objects do exist, they would be thoroughly actual or real. They would just have the peculiar property of affecting no other things. And here, as an aside, I confess that I find the strange idea of living in a world with all sorts of dark objects of which I’m scarcely aware to be a thought that both disturbs and incites wonder.
There are, of course, many objects that approach the status of dark objects. Dark matter seems to approach dark objects in and through its elusiveness. Likewise, neutrinos often seem to have many properties of dark objects. In the realm of social and political theory, what Spivak calls the “subaltern” would share much in common with dark objects. Such too would be the case with what Badiou calls the event, and what Ranciere calls the part-of-no-part. In this regard, part of political practice would consist in diminishing the darkness of quasi-dark objects, of devising strategies to “brighten” or intensify their appearance in situations.
Larval Subjects . 
May 25, 2011 at 1:34 am
Levi, I like this idea of dark objects, and I like to think that they exist. Of course, politically speaking, I don’t like the thought of their existence (as in the case of the subaltern). This post gets me thinking about the nature of causality or, less physically put, efficacy. If we’re thinking about agency or efficacy as distributed throughout a swarm or confederation or assemblage of objects, forces, and relations, then perhaps we need to not only think about the affects produced by objects (and, following Spinoza, we could even identify individuals in terms of their effects), but also think about the way that some objects operate/act in an assemblage without properly affecting something. What I’m getting at is the difference between a baseball bat hitting a baseball and, say, the way that the Icelandic ash cloud is conspiring with the other ecological conditions that are ultimately linked to the weather in Pittsburgh. The ash cloud is obviously not a ‘dark’ object in your sense (!), but from the perspective of Pittsburgh’s climate it is at least dim without being completely ineffectual.
May 25, 2011 at 1:47 am
[…] got a string of recent posts clarifying the difference between objects, actants, and processes. The latest post proposes the concept of ‘dark objects’, or objects that exist without having any effect […]
May 25, 2011 at 2:22 am
A baseball bat hitting a baseball in Pittsburgh is precisely an example of “objects that are so thoroughly withdrawn that they do not affect anything else at all,” sighs a certain Pirates fan
May 25, 2011 at 2:33 am
Hah, Greg! My sympathies! Incidentally, I’m very much enjoying both your articles and collection. I hope we fpget to shoot the shit one of these days.
May 25, 2011 at 2:33 am
Gregory,
Indeed, a winning season for the Pirates may very well be a dark object!
May 25, 2011 at 3:53 am
Of course, even if they might perhaps be real, in the strictest sense of the term these “dark objects” would not be actual (they have no activity, influence, or effect on anything else). Regardless, in assessing reality there would really be no point in trying to account for the existence of these dark objects, because they would have no effect whatsoever on the course of events in the real world.
May 25, 2011 at 3:56 am
I also very much enjoy this idea of dark objects. An interesting thought experiment would be to ask whether or not you could say the universe existed if it was composed wholly of “dark objects”. This is sort of an expansion on when Meillassoux remarks that, given absolute contingency, the universe could at any time become wholly sterile, motionless, frozen and even thereafter eternally unchanging–this is something we have to imagine as possible. But it seems very different from saying that the universe could become simply void. So, if everything was frozen in such a manner, nothing able to touch anything and therefore no causality, no affect or effect–can we say that there are still objects? Of course, I think you could still say that even these objects produce a sort of “background noise” simply due to their own perpetual reproduction in becoming, though it is a becoming which affects nothing else (this means you still have some “process” with your objects, I guess).
A second interesting question is the relation between dark objects and the void. Can we say they are the same? This certainly seems possible with Badiou’s void–the infinitely productive Null which potentializes itself into a tiered infinity of number. But, if we can say that there are dark objects can we also say that there is a void in which there are NO objects? This is a difference between any “void” at the core of an object (a void which is really just pure potential or pure virtuality, the point of excess, in Badiou’s terms) and a sterile void, a nullity in the null–unproductive and entirely objectless (what we imagine might “be” outside the bounds of the universe or after its extinction).
May 25, 2011 at 5:21 am
It’s interesting. If a dark object is a part of no part, it would seem also to be a relation of non-relation. This reverberates through your recent post about love as a relation of no relation. But I wonder if the aim would rather to maintain the darkness of an object rather than to brighten it. For example, a wedding ring. A wedding ring expresses a relation of non-relation, the ongoing commitment to an untotalizable absurdity, which, as Kierkegaard observed, can only be realized by living it. Of course if a wedding ring is lost, the loss has an effect. The non-relation is jeopardized — the marriage threatens to become a relation of relation, which is to say, a relation collapsed into finitude. It is then a matter of saying, Well, the wedding ring has no effect in itself, it’s the love that counts. In other words, the wedding ring was just a dark object. Which seems also to indicate that a dark object that can be owned cannot really be lost, either, so long as it is “kept dark.”
Interesting, for sure.
Incidentally, my son lost my wife’s wedding ring when he was an infant — while we were driving in my mother’s car. Very symbolic! The whole car was turned upside down, but the ring seemed simply to have vanished. A year later, we had our car seat sitting in our dining room and my son found the ring buried deep in its lining. Also very symbolic!
May 25, 2011 at 5:26 am
Hello!
The idea of dark objects – as a metaphysical possibility – tickles me. But I do have some basic reflections and questions…
(1) dark objects – that have no effect on any other object – are a very different category as compared to ‘dim’ objects – since we acknowledge that the latter do have some effect. Dimness, I imagine is a measure of intensity of effect but I think that it is also probably a question of dimness-for whom. Less affected, more ‘distant’ objects may find dim an object that up-close objects find incredibly bright.
(2) What are dark objects made of? If objects are made up of other objects (matters, substances to which they give form), then are dark objects just made up of other dark objects? Because if they were, wouldn’t this mean that they have their own pattern of effect/affect, thereby contradicting the idea that they have no effect?
(3) As far as the political project of making dim objects brighter is concerned, I think I am totally on board…
Thanks :)
May 25, 2011 at 5:35 am
Another thought is that dark objects fill up the total possibility space of not-yet-manifested objects. All objects arise from some kind of rupture within one or more dark objects – which makes them not dark objects any more. How such a causality of rupture might work is beyond me. However, the idea of a dark object just being indefinitely, unaffected by anything (and not affecting anything), really is perplexing. What are we supposed to do about it ? :-P hehe
Yet another thought is that every object is in some way a dark object – at least the part of it that is withdrawn… Withdrawn-ness is a bit like dimness I suppose… but what is the part of an object that is withdrawn from ALL other objects? Is that the dark part of the object or is does every object have a dark core?
Sorry for the random musings but these dark objects are getting to me!
May 25, 2011 at 5:46 am
I’m with Ross on this one, in that on object is an object by virtue of it’s capacities, therefore if it is without affect it has not an actual entity. And if it has no ‘force’ or efficacy then it is inconsequential and irrelevant.
Such an entity would therefore be the creepiest thing ever… (lol).
May 25, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Moreover, your account of dark “objects” seems to run counter to some of your previous statements about objects. In your entry “Affect and the Structure of Objects,” you write:
You continue later to assert that
Yet here you indicate:
But if the universal proposition is made that “All objects are characterized by affects,” it would follow that it would be impossible “that there are things that affect no other things” (since could not be said to possess affect, either passive or active). This would seem to be a most fundamental contradiction in claims.
I’m personally surprised that no one else has brought this up.
May 25, 2011 at 4:20 pm
I mean no disrespect by this, but it is this kind of careless logical discrepancy in your claims from post to post that leads me to believe that your speculative musings are largely improvised, rather than rigorously thought out. Perhaps this is the proper place to conduct one’s own philosophical education, in public (or at least the blogosphere), as Hegel said of Schelling. After all, your blog posts are perhaps just a way of trying to clarify your own thoughts and positions to yourself, and should not be expected to be fully consistent in what they assert.
For me, it’s more important that things be thought out systematically in advance, modified of course to the object(s) of investigation. Certainly, conceptual schema are all too often applied in a crude and Procrustean manner. But I prefer to be more certain of my claims about a subject before I make any sort of pronouncement about it. As the title of your blog suggests, however, this might just be another one of your larval transformations, and perhaps it was never the case that you had a fixed, determinate position regarding the necessarily affective nature of all objects. It’s hard to tell.
May 25, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Ross,
Perhaps no one brought it up because people recognize the difference between a capacity and the exercise of a capacity? I have the capacity to walk across the room right now. That doesn’t entail that I am exercising that capacity right now. There’s no logical contradiction between those two claim and had you bothered to read the comments you would have seen that this point was already discussed.
May 25, 2011 at 6:49 pm
@Ross
to be fair, even in the quotes you provide, Levi is only saying that objects are “characterized” or “defined” by their affects, meaning that dark objects would simply be uncharacterized objects without definition. Sure, in the recent quote the “defined” should probably be read as “entirely” or “exhaustively” defined, but I do not see the contradiction, otherwise.
Also, it seems that they are actual entities in that, even though they are not in a network of affect/effect or whatever it should be logically possible to “bump into” them inadvertently–to have a dark object suddenly intrude into a network of “light” objects and to therefore become itself a more regular object which affects others. Of course, this intrusion can’t necessarily be read as a force coming from the dark object (or else it would simply be an affect), but the “light” objects can intrude into the zone of the dark object, which would then act like a caesura or gap, an undigestible piece of the situation, like a black hole or dark matter, before finally being “registered” with that situation.
May 25, 2011 at 6:49 pm
Just as troublingly, looking back at some of your posts about objects/things, there seems to be another major contradiction at work if you continue to uphold this theory of “dark objects.”
Now this could, of course, just be related to a misunderstanding that I have regarding the nature of process. Process would seem to me to involve a series of actions, an ongoing dialectic of transformation and reconstitution. Now unless you claim that
processes can be wholly internal and self-referential, i.e. without reference to any object outside of itself, this would again seem to preclude the possibility of “dark objects.”
In your recent post, “The Movement of Things,” you wrote:
Earlier, in “Double Articulation: Notes Towards a Theory of the Genesis of Objects”:
And then, finally, you write in “Don’t Just Sit There! Some Remarks on Objects” that
Now since you assert in this post that
First of all, it is unclear how such objects would either come into existence, since being “produced out of another object” would seem to imply at least some sort of passive affectivity on the part of the dark object whereby it receives productive energies.
Etc.
May 25, 2011 at 7:04 pm
If i may:
Ross, it is important to note that Levi’s ontology ‘splits’ objects into their withdrawn ‘virtual’ capacity to affect and the actual manifest exercising of those capacities. So his argument for non-affecting objects is, in theory, logically consistent with his framework. In his ontology (and correct me if I am wrong Levi) an object need only have the unexpressed virtual capacity to affect to be “real”. So the consistency is there.
The problem, for me, is that “dark objects” are ontologically impossible because an object/assemblage’s capacity is an already existing and embodied yet non-local affair. This is to say, as an actualist and materialist, I believe both that capacities to affect and their particular expressions are catalytic and sometimes emergent events occasioned by the inter-action and intra-action of existing compositions and properties (mass, energy, etc). An assemblage’s capacity to affect, then, is ontically specific to the processual combination of intrinsic and extrinsic properties. Capacities are therefore never simply located within objects, but co-located, co-implicated and emergent from the entangled situations of objects and their affording ecologies.
In addition, in my view, and as I indicated in a post below, without actually expressed capacities to affect “dark objects” would be have no constituent organization and no difference-making capabilities, and therefore would be undifferentiated and boundless potentialities stretching across the continuum of cosmic reality. Perhaps, in this vein, the only real “dark object” is the plane of immanence, otherwise known as God.
May 25, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Ross,
Clearly there are processes internal to objects and processes by which an object comes to be out of other objects. Where’s the contradiction? A dark object would merely be an object that has come into existence from other objects and does not subsequently affect any other objects. Finally, there’s a tremendous difference between claiming that an object is defined by its affects or powers and reducing an object to the way in which it affects other objects. When a person is sick a glass of wine might taste disgusting to them. They are affected by the wine in a particular way. Yet that doesn’t entail that the disgusting flavor of the wine is in the wine or that it is what makes the wine the wine. The disgusting flavor is in the person that is tasting the wine.
May 25, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Stanley,
That’s not what I’m saying. Dark objects lime any other objects have their affects. Affects are powers or capacities. It just so happens that those powers or capacities are not being exercised on anything else in the case of a dark object.
May 25, 2011 at 7:18 pm
stanley,
You unwittingly identify the very crux of the problem as I see it: without affective force “dark objects” would be undefined, or worse, undefine-able. Without the always already partially expressed (actual) capacity to affect or make a difference such objects would be character-less. Thus their embodied capacity would have to be making a difference, or affecting the world from the beginning – regardless of any particular permeations of expression.
May 25, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Michael,
I always find this view of yours odd. Why do you conclude that an unexercised capacity or power amounts to something having no character or structure? Does wine have a structure and nature when it’s not being drunk? Does it have powers or capacities? You seem to be committed to the position that entities have no unexpressed or unactualized powers. I believe that if that were the case all change and novelty would be impossible.
May 25, 2011 at 7:43 pm
Hye Levi,
I think the disconnect is in our differing view on what capacities are. You split the reality of cpaciaties ‘within’ objects – with a separation of duties between withdrawn virtualities (potentialities)and local manifestations (actualities). Whereas I split the reality of capacities between objects – with a separation of duties between multiple composite actualities and their catalytic relations.
I don’t see us ever getting past that difference – which is ok. Though oddly enough we still seem to come to the similar conclusions with regards to ‘higher’ level assemblages and politics.
May 25, 2011 at 7:52 pm
I don’t see how anything could catalyze a reaction in another object if that other object didn’t already have affects (virtual powers) allowing it to be acted upon and subsequently act. For me “actuality” means “frozen”. Take the case of a pure actualist like the atomist Lucretius. Lucretius’s atoms themselves can never change in any way. They’re eternal, fixed, and will always have the shape they have. All they can do is be moved from place to place. If things are purely actual they would be frozen or fixed like Lucretius’s atoms. At most they could move from place to place, but I don’t see how they could be capable of any process of becoming. Actualism in you, Harman, Whitehead, and Latour thus always leaves me scratching my head. Harman is vehemently opposed to atomism, so that won’t work for him. Latour and Whitehead both want process and hecoming, so they can take the Lucretiun solution.
May 25, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Specifically, for example, wine does not have the capacity or quality of flavor. The flavor that emerges is a capacity expressed in the relationship between the properties of wine and the properties of tongues, nervous systems, oak barrels, etc. And all of those properties are fully actual.
Moreover, if you want to change the capacities of a particular assemblage or regime of attraction you need only change the existing relationships, exchanged and flows between or among its constituent properties. As I have argued many times, all objects are open systems on an immanent plane of emanating properties and therefore always already vulnerable to destruction augmentation, hybridization, parasites as well as emergence and innovative structural accumulations. Such is the ongoing wow of now.
May 25, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Michael,
In my view you’re conflating two things here. First, I agree that wine does not have flavor. Flavor is what I would call an “exo-quality” or anquality that only arises, as you put it, between or in relation between two entities. Nonetheless, I would argue that wine does have the power or capacity to produce flavor. It harbors within it certain capacities that are there even when the even is not taking place. This is where things get ridiculously difficult. I am committed to the two following claims:
1. Wine, in and of itself is flavorless.
2. Wine has the power to produce flavor.
Here’s the difficulty: the power to produce flavor is nothing like the quality of flavor. Yet we can only ever infer and talk about this power through the actualized quality despite the fact that powers are nothing like the powers that render them possible. This is something that can’t be gotten around.
What then are you conflating in my view? You’re conflating being-structured with actualized quality. An object can fail to actualize its powers and nonetheless these powers are structured. It’s not nothing. A dark object would just be an object that hasn’t entered into those relations that allow it to exercise its powers in qualities.
As a final aside, it’s clear that those local manifestations that are exo-qualities (qualities produced in and through relations between objects) will always be creative and novel. This is because exo-qualities involve a synthesis of the powers of both entities involved such that the emergent quality is novel or has the characteristic of uniqueness. The way the wine exercises its power on you and me will be different because of our respective differences from one another.
May 25, 2011 at 8:43 pm
I guess I should also add that power or potentiality is the core concept at the heart of all my metaphysics. It’s the key concept that distinguishes my onticology from Harman’s object-oriented philosophy and is at the base of everything else.
May 25, 2011 at 8:50 pm
I think there’s an important point here about distinguishing between objects and assemblages… Is there a difference or are they one and the same. All objects are fuzzy, that’s something I’ve argued in the past – and they obviously vary in their spatial and temporal scales… But to argue that the capacity of an assemblage can be changed merely by changing the relationships, exchanges and flows between or among its constituent properties is something that I have some trouble getting my head around. It assumes some magic outside actor that can rearrange relationships within an already configured object or else some kind of autopoietic process of self-reconfiguration… But don’t we know (from thermodynamic type stuff) that that even autopoiesis is based on an internal external relationship and a process of creating order from an ‘outside’? When an assemblage changes its capacity by rearranging the relations amongst its components it is, in effect becoming other than what it was as an assemblage. Of course, it’s a fuzzy boundary. When does it stop being what it was? Of course, wine is not going to change the internal order of relations amongst its elements (even if its taste changes as a result of ageing or areation or whatever, this is always a function of its relation with external actants/objects/assemblages what-have-you)… Wine clearly has certain properties that determine the kinds of possible effects it can have – the kinds of flavours it can manifest. Yes flavour manifests only in an emergent way in relation with tongue, etc., etc. But that says more about flavour (which emerges-for the taster) than it does about the potentiality of the wine itself which is always far more diverse than is ever likely to get instantiated in its life as an object. Does this make sense?
May 25, 2011 at 8:56 pm
And for me the “power” or capacity to produce flavor is both embodied and and non-local. Flavor is catalyzed by the combination or association of affects/powers embodied in the material-energetic properties and organization of both wine and tongues, etc – and without those ‘others’ – whose intimacy is assured by virtue of our shared cosmological origins – wine does not have the power to produce flavor. Wine affords or contributes to the emergence of flavor in certain catalytic situations (events).
This participatory, non-local (or co-local) dynamicism is at the core of my own actualist, speculative ecological realism.
May 25, 2011 at 8:59 pm
For me “actuality” means “frozen”.
Really? That makes me scratch my head. Why would something actual necessarily be “frozen”? Unless you assume a priori that ‘individuation’ or territorialization is a process that can ever be or must be completed? In my most materialistic thinking I can’t even conceive of a situation where any object is ‘complete’ or “frozen” in its actuality. All things, I maintain, are temporary “achievements” (to borrow Adrian’s term) of coalescent flows and forces, and thus vulnerable, open systems.
For me “actual” simply means substantive, affectual or efficacious – and only cosmologically evolved (ancestral) properties can induce actuality…
May 25, 2011 at 9:04 pm
Michael,
It honestly doesn’t seem like we’re that far apart. The difference is that I hold that wine has powers of its own and that it’s the quality that’s non-local, while you wish to argue that the power is non-local. Both of us, however, recognize the importance of relationality in bringing these properties into being. I merely argue that objects apart from relations are not nothing.
May 25, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Michael,
For me actuality means frozen because it implies completeness and the fruition or termination of a process. In Aristotle’s vocabulary, actuality is the termination of a becoming or process. Actuality means “present”, “fully there”, “complete”. Consequently, when you say everything is actual I am unable to see how anything would contain the requisite flexibility to become otherwise. The actual is that which holds nothing in reserve. Do you actually, right now, for example, have certain memories that you’re not thinking about (say your knowledge of a particular anthropologist)? If you’re not thinking about it, how is it actual? If you nonetheless have it, how do you have it if, by the lights of your position, everything is actual? You write:
This is what I mean by real. What I call “virtual proper being”, potentiality, or power is substantial. It is not something other than substantiality, it is a real property of a substance, and is nothing like a possibility. I can imagine the possibility of unicorns, but unicorns as possibilities are neither substances, virtual proper beings, nor do they have any powers or potentialities. They are just ideas. By contrast, the power of the wine is a real and substantial property of its being regardless of whether it’s being exercised.
May 25, 2011 at 9:20 pm
andreling,
Interesting stuff here. My position is that objects themselves are also composed of other objects. As a consequence, we can indifferently refer to objects as objects or as assemblages. When we refer to objects as objects we’re referring to their unity or individuality. When we refer to them as assemblages we’re drawing attention to the other objects that compose them. This gets close, I think, to providing the means for answering your question. An assemblage can be changed precisely because objects within the assemblage can act against the assemblage. No assemblage dominates the objects of which it is composed so completely that they don’t retain their own capacity to introduce differences into the assemblage. Along these lines I’ve written a great deal here on entropy. Every object, I believe, contains a degree of entropy by virtue of its inability to completely master the objects that compose it.
It might seem that there’s a contradiction here between the concept of a dark object and the thesis that all objects are composed of other objects. After all, don’t we here have an object (the dark object) that’s being affected by other objects that compose it? However, the point would be that this action need not be reciprocal. We can have, perhaps, higher order objects that in no way affect the smaller order objects of which they’re composed.
May 25, 2011 at 9:24 pm
I guess I should also add that power or potentiality is the core concept at the heart of all my metaphysics.
That much is clear Levi. And it all fits together well – it’s just that, based on my own investigations, I cannot accept the notion of withdrawn potentiality when every-thing is explainable in light of a thoroughgoing naturalistic actualism. Ockham and all that..
May 25, 2011 at 9:28 pm
Michael,
Well as you know I consider myself a thoroughgoing naturalist. I don’t think naturalistic interactions are possiboe without potentiality as a feature of being.
May 25, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Two things still don’t seem to be resolved for me, even if you posit an eternally unexercised ability or capacity for these “dark objects” to act on other objects.
First of all, you write that
You see, saying that the “dark object” has the property of not affecting other things seems to suggest that it can’t affect other things. It would have been much clearer if you said that these dark objects are able to affect other objects just as well as any other, but simply don’t.
Moreover, so long as such a “dark object” would not have any relationship to anything other than itself, it would be questionable whether it would have any relationship to reality at all. “Reality” would seem to be a domain outside of the bounds of the object’s internal self-relation. If “dark objects” don’t have a relation to anything other than themselves, I don’t see how it could have a relationship to reality, unless you just claim that anything that has a self-relating processual affectivity qualifies as “real” whether it relates to other objects or not. And that would seem a fairly cheap ploy.
Also, with your idea of the composite “dark object” that is made up of objects but the whole object has no reciprocal effect on the parts that comprise it, this still seems problematic. Because even if the whole is affectively passive in the act of “being composed,” the whole nevertheless enters into relation with its subcomponents simply by being affected by them. And thus the “dark object” would still have a relationship with another object (albeit an object that is part of it).
May 25, 2011 at 9:46 pm
I agree we are not all that far apart. In fact, I even agree that objects hold some powers in reserve. They just don’t do so totally or in all aspects.
Objects do have an onto-specific, embodied and irreducible capacity all their own. This is what I call their potency, and its reality – and therefore ability to affect – is a property of its material-energetic constitution.
I just think that an object’s endo-potency (to bastardize some terms) is also always exposed (ontologically vulnerable) and constantly involved and evolved in relations. You will never find an object that is not implicated in some relational matrix. All reality is thus the co-local manifestation of irreducible relational material-energetic assemblages and flows, with no ontological remainder.
May 25, 2011 at 9:50 pm
“I don’t think naturalistic interactions are possible without potentiality as a feature of being.”
They certainly aren’t logically exclusive.
May 25, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Ross,
The claim that a dark object is not affecting anything is not the claim that it can’t affect anything. It just isn’t currently affecting anything.
As for your remarks about what constitutes reality, I contend that the real is what exists, not a fabric of interrelationships. Not all things are related to one another. This is why scientists have to engage in such arduous work to forge relations. One example of this I’ve analyzed in detail is the example of the neutrino. I link to the analysis of the neutrino and neutrino research in this very post. Check it out if you’re so inclined.
Your third point about dark objects being composed of other objects is fair enough. That doesn’t change the fact that were dark objects to exist they wouldn’t affect any other objects. Note, I’ve only claimed that dark objects are a metaphysical possibility, not that they do exist. The concept of dark objects helps to underline some salient features of the ontology I’m developing and also provides a nice limitmcase in the domain of political theory for thinking human bodies that only dimly appear in social assemblages.
May 25, 2011 at 10:14 pm
Michael,
My concept of virtual proper being is no different than what you’re here calling “potency”. Do you attribute to me some mysterious non-material thesis about powers or potencies?
Additionally, I’ve often emphasized that all of the objects we know of exist in a relational matrix. How could we know of them if we didn’t relate to them or if they didn’t produce effects in other objects (e.g., black holes) allowing us to infer their existence? Nonetheless, objects break with their existing relations all the time and enter into new relations. This indicates that objects must have a substantiality independent of their relations. If that were the case they wouldn’t be able to break with relations and enter into new ones. Once this point is conceded the possibility of an object that affects no other objects becomes thinkable.
May 25, 2011 at 10:24 pm
“For me actuality means frozen because it implies completeness and the fruition or termination of a process. In Aristotle’s vocabulary, actuality is the termination of a becoming or process. Actuality means “present”, “fully there”, “complete”. Consequently, when you say everything is actual I am unable to see how anything would contain the requisite flexibility to become otherwise.”
Therein lies a major issue. My definition of “actuality” is not dependant on Aristotle. My notion of actual simply means tangible, or present, or ‘with-structure’. Again, I’m a materialist, albeit of the non-reductive variety. The ancient schemas are mutated in my way of thinking – which, obviously, creates difficulties when trying to express myself to the more classically educated.
“Do you actually, right now, for example, have certain memories that you’re not thinking about (say your knowledge of a particular anthropologist)? If you’re not thinking about it, how is it actual?”
What is ‘actual’, for me, is the organic, chemical and organizational composition of my brain and nervous-system. My cognitive capacity is the result of the material properties of my brain and body historically developed in relation. So when I “remember” something what I am actually doing is re-collect, trigger and instantiating a particular brain and body state/expression which allows me to recall and recursively reflect (via mirror neurons and such) on certain ‘trace’ significations coded into my self-system. And such re-collections only ever occur in relation to (among) certain environmental resources (symbols, conventional speech-acts, etc) and cues afforded to me by particular ecological states of affair.
In other words, “memories” are not real, tangible entities, but rather intangible situational mirages (fantasies) afforded by symbol using primates (in this case) with code-able nervous systems. Incidentally, in this view all ‘thought’ is virtual fantasy (just ask Derrida) and apparitional.
”What I call “virtual proper being”, potentiality, or power is substantial. It is not something other than substantiality, it is a real property of a substance, and is nothing like a possibility.
Fair enough. You’ve said this many times. My issue is that you don’t seem to cash that idea out in terms of an adequate substance-materialism. If “potentiality” is a “property” of substance then it must be embodied and specific to particular substances involved. And that’s all I argue; that the particular powers of things are embodied properties specific to actually existing (manifest) ‘material’ substances and thus always expressed in relation.
May 25, 2011 at 10:35 pm
Do you attribute to me some mysterious non-material thesis about powers or potencies?
I used to, but not for several months.
I think the issue for me is conceptual, in that I want to think of potent assemblages (or your powerful objects) as ontologically identical to their ontic substantive being – as opposed to logically, formally, or theoretically “split”.
As you and I both admit, our positions are quite similar, with perhaps some quirky (on both our part) variations in signifiers and terminology.
I honestly think we “see” the same worldly dynamics Levi, we just schematize them somewhat differently.
May 26, 2011 at 1:59 am
[…] light of an excellent discussion with Michael of Archive Fire today, I’ve come to realize that the concept of potentiality, of […]
May 26, 2011 at 6:58 am
Hey Andre,
Great questions, and I’ll take them in order:
”I think there’s an important point here about distinguishing between objects and assemblages… Is there a difference or are they one and the same.”
For me, they are one and the same. All ‘objects’ are compositions – temporal-material achievements with affective potency (capacity). I prefer the term ‘assemblage’ because, as Levi indicated, it draws attention to the composite, associational character of entities. I think it is important to retain the resonance of plurality and relation in order to appreciate the “openness” or vulnerability of things.
”All objects are fuzzy, that’s something I’ve argued in the past – and they obviously vary in their spatial and temporal scales… But to argue that the capacity of an assemblage can be changed merely by changing the relationships, exchanges and flows between or among its constituent properties is something that I have some trouble getting my head around. It assumes some magic outside actor that can rearrange relationships within an already configured object or else some kind of autopoietic process of self-reconfiguration…”
It’s strange to me that you think these are the only two options. I don’t think change comes only from ‘inside’ an assemblage/object, because, for me, there is no absolute ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ – only relative structurality (or ‘folds’), cosmological properties (mass, energy, intensities, extensities) and temporal coalescences or differential singularities existing on an immanent plane. And because all objects and assemblages exist in relation (in situ as ‘actants’ in a ‘network’) they are vulnerable to the forces, affects, agencies or potencies of both their own composite sub-assemblages as well as the forces, affects and potencies of other objects and assemblages within range. Therefore “change” can happen as a result of augmentations brought on by the excess agencies or force of endogamous composite objects, or by the powers and capacities of exogamous objects in the ‘network’ – and only made possible by the series of catalytic changes brought forth through the feedback processes of both.
For me, all assemblages are open, ontologically vulnerable systems. You change the particular flows, exchanges, elements and relationships between and/or ‘within’ assemblages and you’ll witness changes in the wider systems of relationships, flows and actualities making up a particular regime of attraction. Thus no “magic actor” is required – only immanent relations and emergent processes between, within and among objects/assemblages.
An example: If you were to observe an endogenous troop (assemblage) of baboons living their lives before and after the introduction of an exogamous male into their midst you would witness a concrete example of how adding an element to an existing assemblage can radically alter the affective repertoire or capacity of, in this case, the troop as a whole. And over time you might see how a previously operationally ‘external’ element (an exogamous individual) can become an ‘internal’ component, say, through possible acceptance, mating and procreation.
Likewise, say the alpha male of our hypothetical troop has a heart defect intrinsic to its composition and dies. The change of an ‘internal’ component of the troop/assemblage would no doubt disrupt the temporary and precarious equilibrium (if you can call it that) of the group and unleash a cascade of affects and interactions eventually leading to a new troop configuration.
Or, a hunter (extrinsic element) shoots and kills the baboon king (intrinsic component) thereby directly but partially disrupting the dynamics of the troop resulting in a change in that assemblage’s constitution.
”But don’t we know (from thermodynamic type stuff) that that even autopoiesis is based on an internal external relationship and a process of creating order from an ‘outside’? When an assemblage changes its capacity by rearranging the relations amongst its components it is, in effect becoming other than what it was as an assemblage. Of course, it’s a fuzzy boundary.”
Exactly. I totally agree. And it is a fuzzy boundary. So-called externalities turn out to have internal affects and so-called internalities have external dependencies and relations. Like I wrote above, all entities are open systems – but systems or operational units nonetheless.
”When does it stop being what it was?
When it crosses a certain threshold of affective and characteristic organizational coherence, and transitions to a new configuration of intrinsic components (and intra-relation) and extrinsic relations.
”Of course, wine is not going to change the internal order of relations amongst its elements (even if its taste changes as a result of ageing or areation or whatever, this is always a function of its relation with external actants/objects/assemblages what-have-you)… Wine clearly has certain properties that determine the kinds of possible effects it can have – the kinds of flavours it can manifest. Yes flavour manifests only in an emergent way in relation with tongue, etc., etc. But that says more about flavour (which emerges-for the taster) than it does about the potentiality of the wine itself which is always far more diverse than is ever likely to get instantiated in its life as an object. Does this make sense?”
Here I have to disagree. Both the properties of wine and the properties of tongues, etc., must be present for the catalytic event of flavor to occur in the world. I argue that if we were able to know all the constituent properties of all those things involved in expressions of flavor, we would know exactly what the possibilities are for generating particular flavor-events. And, so, the diversity of possible expressions (as I reject the notion of potentiality) is a feature of both the wine and the other entities involved. Flavor, much like cognition, is a distributed affair.
May 26, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Levi,
Well at least this much is clear. You depart from the definition provided in your “Lexicon of Object-Oriented Ontology” insofar as it says that
According to your distinction between “things” and “actants,” a dark object would constitute a thing, not an actant. However, insofar as the definition of an actant claims to be synonymous with any object, it would seem to cover the entire spectrum of objects — “dark” objects. I am assuming that by distinguishing things from actants and classifying dark objects as things rather than actants, you are rejecting the definition of an actant as synonymous with any object.
May 26, 2011 at 2:40 pm
Yes Ross.
May 27, 2011 at 6:21 pm
[…] isolationism that simply does not exist in the grand scheme of things (but see Levi’s recent post on ‘dark objects’), and at the practical level leads us to ignore all of the […]
May 27, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Levi,
Before I plunge into a disagreement with your argument here, I want to let you know how much I admire/respect your work. I’ve been reading this blog for a while now, but hadn’t decided to post until now.
This post is kind of long and goes all over the place, because I’ve been formulating it and adding on to it as I read over the entire series of comments. Your main rebuttal to Ross was that “people recognize the difference between a capacity and the exercise of a capacity.” (post 14) My contention is that there is no difference, or at least a meaningful one in the context of whether or not something is a (dark) object. Further, when you state “I merely argue that objects apart from relations are not nothing” (post 25), I contend that objects cannot exist apart from relations.
A few posts later, you say that “A dark object would merely be an object that has come into existence from other objects and does not subsequently affect any other objects.” (post 18)
This seems to be an impossibility to me, on two levels. First, scientifically, how can an object come into existence without continuing to effect the objects that gave rise to it? By the law of conservation of energy, there would have to be some “trace” on the objects which gave rise to it as evidence that the act of creation happened. That’s still a relationship between the “dark object” and the ones that created it – precisely, one of creation. Second, philosophically, it seems that this rests on a very static notion of time which requires the erasure of any historical relationship between the two. But even this seems like a logical impossibility to me – the object and the objects that created to it are bound by that relationship of creation – for that relationship to be erased seems incredibly difficult – the only conceivable way would be if some other object came by and “erased” it somehow, but that is merely a transmutation of the relationship, for now it is embedded in the eraser-object, which had to be changed by its encounter with the relationship.
Additionally, both of these points apply on a double level. In defending them as being objects, you say that it rests on the difference between a capacity and the exercise of a capacity. It seems to me that this is a distinction without a difference, at least insofar as it determines whether two objects are in relationship to one another. For instance, your example is that “I have the capacity to walk across the room right now. That doesn’t entail that I am exercising that capacity right now.” I think this distinction is ultimately false, in that having the capacity and exercising the capacity still require a relationship between you and the object in question – either you ARE walking on the floor in the present, or you have the POTENTIAL to walk across the floor, in the present. Whether you are exercising that potential does not change that it is still a relationship between you and the objet, it just changes the character of that relationship. It seems to me that to say otherwise unjustifiedly truncates what counts as a relationship.
To me, this suggests that dark objects cannot exist, because by your definition of object, they have to have the capacity to effect other objects. But two levels: the character of relationships and temporality both seem to imply that the capacity to effect other objects requires effecting those other objects. For instance, Stanley, in post 15, says that they are entities that are logically possible to “bump into” accidentally, but currently are effecting nothing. You say that you don’t agree with him, but I don’t think this particular statement can be separated from your definition of objects. This again seems to imply that the potential for having a relationship is equivalent to already having one. For instance, an example: say that I have lived in my house for my entire life. Little do I know, there is an invisible dark object that entirely surrounds my house, and is immovable. Were I to try to leave my house, I would be unable to do so because of the presence of that object. But, I have never tried to do so and thus am unaware that this object exists. For the strongest version of this case, let’s say that that is the ONLY capacity to effect other objects this dark object has (it can’t impede or effect anything else), and it has NEVER actualized that capacity. Despite that, it seems that it is STILL effecting me by limiting where I am able to travel. To say that it is not seems to move AWAY from an object oriented ontology, as it places my knowledge of its effects as constitutive of the relationship, rather than the factual potentiality inscribed in the characteristics of the object in relation to me.
Another example, this time in the context of temporality. Say that I possess an organ in my body that I have no knowledge of. Yet, this organ, if I exceed any speed of 30 mph, will instantly kill me. I have never gone beyond that speed. It is not producing any effects now, and hasn’t in the past. Yet, the very fact that it has the capacity to produce an effect in the future, seems to be a reason it is still affecting me.
To further generalize, it seems that any dark object that could be “bumped into” is already affecting the thing that could bump into it – were that to journey there, or do X or Y to activate the dark object’s effects, it would indeed be affected. It’s potential options for the future are effected by the object, because enacting some of them would be different were the object not there. To say otherwise both artificially limits effects to things only happening now as well as what counts as an effect.
One last point, you add later (post 32) that “It might seem that there’s a contradiction here between the concept of a dark object and the thesis that all objects are composed of other objects. After all, don’t we here have an object (the dark object) that’s being affected by other objects that compose it? However, the point would be that this action need not be reciprocal. We can have, perhaps, higher order objects that in no way affect the smaller order objects of which they’re composed.” I do think this is a contradiction, and again stems from artificially limiting what counts as a relation. If the smaller objects composing a larger (dark) object are affecting the dark object, isn’t the dark object (inadvertently) affecting the smaller objects, by affording them the possibility of exercising capacities they would not be able to were they not parts of that dark object?
As I keep reading, I realized that Ross introduces this point also, to which you reply that even if this is true, that just means dark objects don’t exist, not that it’s impossible for them to. But how is that the case at all, when (post 32), you say that “No assemblage dominates the objects of which it is composed so completely that they don’t retain their own capacity to introduce differences into the assemblage.” and “Every object, I believe, contains a degree of entropy by virtue of its inability to completely master the objects that compose it.” If ALL objects and assemblies must contain entropy, than how are dark objects even a metaphysical possibility, as the very existence of entropy implies that any object is in turn affecting its parts?
May 27, 2011 at 9:06 pm
Thomas,
I’m in the middle of writing an article right now so I can’t respond to your comment in the detail it deserves. Your first argument about objects arising out of other objects is good and I’ll have to mull over it a bit more. The issue here is that within the framework of OOO objects are withdrawn from one another such that they never directly encounter one another. If that’s the case, then it follows that objects are withdrawn from the objects that compose them. This would entail that they can be composed of other objects without affect those objects. I, for example, could right now be a part of a larger object without being affected by that object in any way.
I categorically disagree with your thesis that the difference between having an affect amd exercising an affect is a difference that makes no difference. Right now, for example, I have all sorts of memories. I have the power or capacity (affect) to remember these memories, but I am not currently remembering those memories. There’s a tremendous difference between having a memory and remembering it or bringing it before consciousness. This is the whole point of the concept of powers or potentials (affect). They refer to capacities that dwell in a thing but which aren’t currently being exercised.
Your argument in the final paragraph about no entity being completely devoid of the power to affect other things moves a bit too quickly. In many instances an entity must array or mobilize all sorts of other entities to affect another entity. This is the case in the example of the neutrino I keep citing. To forge a connection between humans and neutrinos, scientists have to go to the south pole, many holes that go miles beneath the surface of the ice, fill them with ultra sensitive light sensors to capture that infrequent event where a neutrino does happen to interact with another particle, and so on. The relation between the scientist and the neutrino is highly indirect and requires all sorts of mediators. These sorts of circumstances are not unusual. At any rate, the neutrino is the closest example I have of a truly dark object. In most instances it passes right through all other matter without producing any effects whatsoever. Currently there are all sorts of neutrinos passing through your body and the earth (and this gets at your house example) without producing any sorts of effects. When I say they don’t produce any other effects, I mean that literally. Because of their neutral charge they don’t impact other forms of matter at all except on very rare occasions.
June 5, 2011 at 3:31 am
Great post Levi. A great great idea. I respond a little here.
June 6, 2011 at 8:14 am
Levi, would you mind explain the difference between a dark object and a dormant object is?
June 7, 2011 at 5:30 pm
[…] (I’m slow, I know) going on over at larval subjects mainly involving Levi, Ross and Michael (here). The differences erupted after Levi proposed a new kind of object: the dark object. The dark […]