Over at An und fur sich Voyou has a nice post up on OOO and commodity fetishism. As Voyou writes,
One of the criticisms of object-oriented ontology which has some currency is the suggestion that it is a form of, or a philosophized alibi for, commodity fetishism. I don’t want to violate the rigid Leninist discipline of AUFS by coming to OOO’s defense here, but I think this criticism is likely to mislead us about commodity fetishism. In fact, object-oriented philosophy might provide a way of analyzing commodity fetishism which we could use to provide a Marxist corrective to the banality of much leftist critique of reification (such as that of Axel Honneth).
Voyou continues, showing what relevance OOO has to the critique of capitalism. While I disagree a bit with his understanding of OOO– OOO doesn’t claim that objects don’t relate, but that objects are external to their relations such that they can move out of a particular set of relations and into another set of relations, i.e., objects aren’t constituted by their relations, though they are certainly affected by their relations –I think he’s right on mark here. In Capital Marx remarks that commodity fetishism consists in confusing relationships with people as relationships among things. For example, when I go to the grocery store and purchase some kale and parsnips, I think, under capitalism, that I’m just relating to these things, when, in fact, this kale and these parsnips are what Marx calls “congealed labor”. It seems as if I’m not involved in any social relations– or that my social relations consist only of my relationship between me, the buyer, and the owner –when in fact the commodity that I purchase is an expression of the labor that went into producing it, embodying countless persons ranging from the farmers that grew it, those that picked it, those that produced the fertilizer and tools went into producing it, those that transported it, those that produced the gas and vehicles that transported it, those that processed it, etc., etc., etc. All of this becomes invisible in the commodity such that we experience ourselves as relating only to the commodity and the person selling the commodity.
read on!
The first point to note is that things are no less alienated in commodities than labor. Contrary to what Voyou says in his otherwise excellent post, a commodity and a thing are never identical to one another. Indeed, commodification is a way of alienating a thing by reducing it to an equivalent unit in a system of exchange under what Marx calls the “money-form”. A commodity is the way in which another (hyper)object (cf. my article in Speculations II) translates another object and erases its withdrawal or singularity. A commodity is an object for another object.
As a consequence, a commodity is what Graham Harman calls a “sensual object” or an object that erases the withdrawal of an object. That object doing the erasing, of course, is the hyperobject of capitalism. As Harman argues in The Quadruple Object a sensual object is an object that only exists on the interior of another real object. Harman gives the example of the imaginary Monster X that he imagines. This object only exists on the interior of his imagination. Unlike real objects, sensual objects have no independent existence of their own, no depth, nor any withdrawal. As I argue in chapter four of The Democracy of Objects, such objects are the manner in which one real object domesticates or consumes another object, erasing its withdrawal or differential being.
In this regard, things are no less alienated under capitalism than persons. Not only is labor as the source of value erased under capitalism, but under the money-form that renders all things equivalent under the unit of money, all things become exchangeable insofar as all things are subordinated to the abstract measure of the monetary unity. What disappears, in other words, is what Deleuze called “repetition”. As Deleuze writes on the very first page of Difference and Repetition, “…repetition is a necessary and justified ocnduct only in relation to that which cannot be replaced. Repetition as a conduct and as a point of view concerns non-exchangeable and non-substitutable singularities” (DR, 1). It is precisely this non-exchangeability that disappears under the money-form and in the commodity. A piece of land containing precious metals, for example, becomes a mere price, exchangeable for other commodities (money), thereby losing all of its singularity and particularity. It’s withdrawal or excess in the face of all local manifestations is erased under the numerical form that simply makes it a “mark” (a notation on a piece of paper) to be exchanged for something else.
In the framework of Adorno’s negative dialectics, this is an example of “identity thinking”. Identity thinking is the essence of all correlationism. In correlationism things are reduced to the thought of things and concepts are treated as identical to the things they “represent”. We encounter a prime example of such thinking in Brandom, where the lingua-form of his thought suggests that he believes that thing, object, can be replaced by language. Just as the rightwing “patriot” believes that the country is somehow literally being destroyed when a flag is burnt because he believes that the symbol is the country itself, Brandom seems to believe that reasoning can be reduced to the lingua-form without having reference to the “pre-discursive”. In this context, at least, given that he sees only language users as having an honorable place within the world of those that deserve normative dignity, we wonder why he doesn’t come out and suggest that people in comas or Helen Keller prior to entering the world of language shouldn’t be used for scientific experiments or food. Such is the place this linguicentric representationalism that refuses to mark the difference between concept or representation and thing leads us. Indeed, for such representationalists the commodity necessarily is the thing given that they’ve reduced the thing to communicability (the logic of equivalence and therefore the exchangeable) and thereby the logic of identity. If it can’t be articulated in language, such thinkers say (and in saying so they’re saying if it can’t be reduced to what representation already posited in the thing, i.e., thereby erasing its withdrawal) then it isn’t real or rational. This goes no less for persons than things. Given that Brandom argues that norms regulate reason, that these norms arise from community (though he refuses to give us an account of how, they just do), and that the reigning community standard in our particular historical moment is capitalism, Brandom is necessarily committed to the thesis that it’s entirely just to reduce persons to the abstract quantificational logic of capital or the money-form, refusing to grant them any dignity or being beyond their representation within that system. Yes, that’s “rigor”, phallocracy, ontotheology, or the logic of presence for you folks. If it can’t be articulated in a set of linguistic norms it’s inadmissable. Enjoy your roast Keller for dinner! After all, Keller, being outside the order of language, is no different than a cow!
Adorno argues that to think is to identify, to reduce the alterity or difference of the object to the concept. In Difference and Givenness, I argue against this model of thought, instead arguing that thought is only ever produced by a difference or encounter, an alterity. Yet nonetheless Adorno manages to capture the bureaucratic model of thought, where the aim is always the erasure of the gap between concept and thing. Like the outraged critic of flag burning that believes the nation itself is being burnt when the flag is being burnt, the administrative thinker believes that things are exhausted in concepts. Such is the teaching of the correspondence theory of truth or representation. Yet concepts are not without the differences they produce, and for this reason are things as well. As Adorno writes,
The barter principle, the reduction of human labor to the abstract universal concept of average working hours, is fundamentally akin to the principle of identification. Barter is the social model of the principle, and without the principle there would be no barter; it is through barter that non-identical individuals and performances become commensurable and identical. The spread of the principle imposes on the whole world an obligation to become identical, to become total. (146)
The concept here, of course, is Value under the money-form. Under this form all heterogeneity of labor and persons is erased, as are all qualitative differences among things. Rather, they can now all be substituted for one another as commodities. Such is the reality of concepts or fictions, wherein the withdrawal of entities can be reduced and they can be transformed into what Harman calls “sensual objects”. Here we have one object hegemonizing others. Representationalism would lead us to that conclusion that the representation (the commodity) can be substituted for the thing because they’re identical.
Larval Subjects . 
June 15, 2011 at 10:24 am
This post is a keeper, for real! It is only my withdrawal from the dream of thought, the wheel of time, and the dark energy of recycling that connects me with the real object(s) that we are, none of which can be reduced to the other – unless we are unconsciously engaged in an exchange system of (im)mutable selves? A better axiology is on order! Thanks, Mark
June 15, 2011 at 1:15 pm
very good, for Harman does withdrawal = differential being?
http://www.newappsblog.com/2011/06/mercier-and-sperber-on-the-origins-of-reasoning.html
June 15, 2011 at 1:45 pm
[…] greater intimacy – not less. It reminds us that behind every ‘thing’ – from commodities (Levi’s recently posted on this) to gender – is a hidden cacophony that we can come to […]
June 15, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Levi, I really hope that you are being polemical and therefore perhaps a bit combative vis-a-vis Brandom as I find your implications somewhat puzzling. Surely, we can argue and disagree without such ugly accusations as Brandom perhaps being willing to allow for cannibalism or experimentation on humans? If you can perhaps provide textual evidence that Brandom indeed suggests that being outside of the order of language makes one equal to cow, then I will change my point of view – I however am pretty certain that he never says anything even close to that and if you somehow deduce it from his discussion of discursivity, then I think you are being disingenuous in such a crude misreading. I’ve been a long time reader of your blog and I have to say I am taken aback by this latest attack on Brandom and analytical philosophy as a tradition. I have always sympathised with your position against your critics (i.e. your insistence that they read your work carefully and charitably), but I have to say that I’m confused as to how you can ask for charity while not giving any to your opponents. I really do hope that I misread your posts and that there’s an innocent explanation to all of this.
June 15, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Andrew,
As someone who has been accused of some extremely ugly things by Brandomians, ranging from the charge of being a supporter of neoliberal capitalism to someone that hates humans to a supporter of Nazi ideology (the list goes on and on), I can’t say that I’m particularly sympathetic to your concerns. Somehpw others get bent out of shape when I make remarks like this, yet when I and those with whom work are portrayed in these ways we hear nary a peap. But yes, I am being polemical. Brandom restricts the domain of normativity to language users and holds that the normativity embodied in language use is only binding for language users. This leads directly to the conclusion that if, say, someone is in a coma there’s no reason to see our action to them as bound by norms. The point behind this example, however, is serious. If we concede that we have certain duties and ibligations to a person in a coma or any other person that is unable to himself engage in the “game of giving and receiving reasons”, we’ve conceded that normativity is not restricted to linguistic performance and that one being a rational agent is not a necessary condition for being the beneficiary of certain forms of treatment from others.
June 15, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Levi,
I’m relieved to learn that you were simply making a point (however strange it is to attack Brandom personally in order to avenge oneself against his disciples). I am not sure who the ‘Brandomians’ are but surely accusations of Nazism are entirely inappropriate in any civil discussion.
I am still struggling to understand your point though. If ‘normativity is embodied in language’ (a citation?), then surely those of us who have language are bound by norms towards someone in coma. I mean it is a difficult ethical problem – what do we do when someone is in coma? – but surely no one has ever suggested that once someone is in coma, they exit the realm of norms and we can treat him/her as a cow. We can reasonably talk of ‘ethical treatment of animals’ even if animals themselves are not likely to join our conversation about them.
Let me put it this way: Do cows have norms? Do they have an idea that they ought to do something beyond simply instinctual behavior which is not, I hope you would agree, normative in any meaningful sense? If they have norms, what sort of normativity is it? If they don’t, then is it because they are not rational in Brandom’s sense of rationality? Is the order of cow-rationality the same as the order of human-rationality? Or to put it even more abstractly, does one not adhere to some idea of normativity whenever one states that we ‘must’ or ‘mustn’t’ do this or that?
June 15, 2011 at 10:21 pm
Andrew,
I’m not sure how I am attacking Brandom personally. I am inferring a consequence of his own positions. Brandom is quite clear, everywhere, that reason and normativity is restricted to language. In this regard, we have no normative obligations to animals because animals do not use language and are therefore bound by norms. If a being cannot normatively commit to something then we do not have obligations to thos being. The question then is what distinguishes our lack of normative obligations to animals (according to Bramdom) to the sorts of obligations we may or may not have to those in a coma, those suffering from severe mental illness, the “deaf and dumb”, etc, etc, etc.? You can find some textual evidence for what I’m claiming in my earlier post on Adorno.
June 15, 2011 at 10:26 pm
And just to add obviously no one has ever suggested that we should use a person in a coma as food. That’s the point. Yet Brandom argues that we onlyhave normative commitments to other beings that can make normative commitments, and that the only beings that fit such criteria are language users (again, see my Adorno post). This leads to one of two conclusions: Brandom holds to his guns and says we’re silly to believe we shouldn’t eat people in comas (ie, our ethical intuitions are mistaken and should be abandoned), or there’s something deeplymistaken in his linguacentric conception of normativity and reason and it should be abandoned or modified.
June 15, 2011 at 10:48 pm
Levi,
Thanks for your explanations. I am going to need to process this for a bit as I don’t think you are interpreting Brandom the way I always interpreted him. Are you saying that, contra Brandom, reason and normativity are not restricted to language? Can you give an example?
For the sake of the argument, how would you argue that it is unethical to eat people in general? I know it sounds silly but still. If your reading of Brandom is correct, then he is suggesting that those that do not have language can be eaten or disposed of in any other manner since they cannot protest. Is your argument a simple “But this sound odd and strange, therefore it cannot be the case that it is correct” – certainly not a rational argument against Brandom but a simple “gasp-argument” – or do you have a counter-argument that suggests that Brandom’s position is somehow inconsistent with decency or civility [as established by whom]? I mean surely you do not intend simply to suggest that since Brandom’s view might be “weird” and “barbaric”, it is automatically incorrect. To push it a bit, and please let me know if I’m going too far with my questions, what is your argument against treating animals as food (I’m assuming that is your position)? Why shouldn’t we simply kill and eat them? In other words, what sort of normativity binds us, non-Brandomians, to treating animals ethically?
June 15, 2011 at 11:03 pm
Andrew,
I’m a little confused by your remarks. My point is that in Brandom we only have obligations to those that are themselves rational agents, i.e., capable of giving and asking for reasons and capable of being committed or responsible for their own claims. Since the mad and people in comas fall outside of this, we would have, under Brandom’s theory, no obligations to them just as he suggests that we have no obligations to animals. I believe this is mistaken, which entails that normativity cannot be restricted to the domain of language or discursive practices. As for myown normative theory, that’s something I’m working out. I thus don’t have responses to your last couple of questions.
June 15, 2011 at 11:17 pm
Levi,
I guess the short version is as follows: when you say that you believe that Brandom’s view is mistaken (in excluding non-linguistic agent from normativity), why do you think that it is mistaken? Is it mistaken because normativity is not restricted to the domain of language? Can you give an example of a non-discursive type of normativity?
The other question were not essential, I was simply trying to understand your position as you seemed to be suggesting that we must treat animals ethically. If your own theory of normativity is still in the works, does that mean that at the moment you are not bound by any norms when it comes to animals and people in coma?
Thanks for this conversation, it is very helpful and it is making me think about all sorts of issues.
June 15, 2011 at 11:53 pm
Andrew,
Yes, my point is that normativity extends beyond the realm of language and discursivity. On the one hand, I believe we have obligations to the mad, newborns, people in comas, and animals even though they are unable to rationally commit or participate in the game of giving and asking for reasons. On the other hand, I don’t think that everything that is relevant to reasoning can be explicitly articulated in language or that the pre-discursive plays an important role in reasoning. Here I have in mind things like affectivity, but also pre-discursive cognitive processes and pattern recognition processes.
I find your question about whether or not I am bound by norms rather strange as it seems to be premised on the idea that one must have an articulated theory of normativity to be bound by norms. Of course I have all sorts of normative intuitions about what is right and wrong. I just don’t have a fully articulated theory of the grounds of these intuitions.
June 16, 2011 at 12:23 am
Levi,
You’re right though, my question did sound as though I was suggesting that to have norms one must have a theory of norms. Let me rephrase (and confirm that I understand you correctly): when you conceive of your action as bound by a norm (“I ought not to eat an animal”), this norm comes from your normative intuition – but where does that normative intuition come from? Is it rational or instinctual? If I have the opposite normative intuition, is it possible for us to have a rational discussion of norms or is it simply that you follow your intuition and treat non-discursive agents with respect and I follow my intuition and treat them the way I intuit I ought to treat them?
June 16, 2011 at 12:49 am
Andrew,
This is exactly right. The reason I’m so cagey in discussions of normativity is that, for me, there are a number of hesitations in the background. Obviously there’s a principle that pervades all of my thought and that comes out of my experience as a Lacanian: “always respect the singularity of persons, things, and animals and resist attempts to subsume them under categories that would erase that singularity.” this is what we do in the Lacanian clinic. We don’t subsume under a set of diagnostic categories and then prescribe treatment based on that, but attend to the singular history and being of the analysand that appears in the clinic and allow that to guide treatment. We don’t even begin with a predefined goal for treatment, instead allowing the analysand’s desire to dictate that goal. For me that’s always the issue. But it puts me in a very difficult position: First, what is the ground of this sort of ethical principle? Is it absolute, or can some further reason nbe provided for it? Second, and in a vein more germane to this discussion, it places me in a position of paradox with respect to your questions. The singular is the singular. It can only be alluded to never said. As Hegel observed, language is composed of universals or “the word kills the things”. Discussions of normativity seem to desire a general principle, a universal, that would allow cases to be evaluated according to the same or identity. Yet that would be a violation of the very ethics I’m talking about and am committed to.
Object-oriented ontology raises other questions for me. If we’ve decentered the human, does this have implications for theories of normativity? Can normativity no longer he understood as the domain of the human and how humans relate to other things? How do we think about that? Moreover, just how far do values and obligations extend? Do I have duties and obligations to animals, plants, and rocks? Why or why not? If I do have duties to rocks as people such as deep ecologist Arne Naess argues or perhaps Lingis argues, why do I have these duties? What grounds them? From whence do they arise?
Finally, for me, there’s also the question of just what theories of normativity should be about. Are they about evaluating right and wrong, good and bad? Are they about legality? Or are they about the good life, flourishing life, or what a fulfilling life should be. I tend to see questions of legality as derivative from more fundamental questions about flourishing and the good life, and am thus a bit dismayed when we choose to focus on the legal question, the evaluative question, to the detriment of questions of fundamental values. But as I said, I’m full of hesitations on these issues.
June 16, 2011 at 1:39 am
[…] response to my post on Commodities, Objects, and Persons, Andrew and I have been having an interesting discussion about Brandom and normativity. As many who […]
June 16, 2011 at 2:03 am
Levi,
Thanks again for the extended explanation. I see that you have published a post but I haven’t yet been able to read it, so allow me the last question related to this post: is it fair to say then that you are committed to a kind of paradoxical ethic of commitment to no commitment?
I think I understand your position but I hesitate to make any certain conclusions as it sounds like a sort of ‘private ethics’ that is impossible to either contest (how can anyone argue against personal intuitions?) or share (how does one communicate one’s intuitions to another?). My issue would be something like the following: if we are to commit ourselves to an ethic of no commitment, then we are requiring a norm (commitment to a belief/principle) without providing an appropriate grounding/explanation. Thus in the case of normative conflict, my position is as valid as yours. In fact, my position, being singular, is as one-sided, limited, determined by my context and ultimately ‘private’, as anyone’s and therefore we arrive at the impossibility of ‘public reason’ and ethics as such. Perhaps such end to normativity is your ultimate end – I better go read your new post. Apologies if you have already covered these issues there.
June 16, 2011 at 2:21 am
Andrew,
The claim that one hasn’t worked out a theory is different than the claim that there isn’t the possibility of a defensible theory or that ethics is purely private. What you argue here is, in my view, one of the central shortcomings of Brandomians. In your defense of knowledge (what we can provide reasons for here and now) you degrade inquiry and learning. You want to reduce everything to a position that one can provide positions for here and now, rather than attending to the processes by which positions are produced. This is the idealism inherent in all such positions. No, I’m not defending the sort of position you’re suggesting. I’m merely saying these are open questions that still need to be worked through. My advice is to think less about justification and knowledge and more about learning and inquiry.
June 16, 2011 at 2:42 am
Levi,
Forgive my directness, but why the disconnect between ‘knowledge’ and ‘inquiry/learning’ – what are we inquiring about? what are we learning when we learn something? My use of terms such as ‘public’ and ‘private’ is not just about knowledge claims, it is a basic requirement that one be able to explain how one arrives (inquires) at one’s positions (knowledge) – I thought you were requiring the same of Brandom? I mean you just wrote a long post about your ethics and Lacan and so on – is it knowledge that you are sharing with the public? isn’t it fair to ask questions about it thus contesting certain aspect of it? Emphasis on ‘inquiry and learning’ seems like an excuse here, a preemptive strike against any possible criticism.
Surely paying attention to the ‘journey’ rather than a ‘destination’ is a noble aspiration, but one cannot exist without the other: journey (inquiry and learning) without a goal in mind is wandering around in the darkness. To put it differently, learning without knowledge is impossible because you never know when you actually learned something. I don’t think this has much to do with Brandom, it just seems like a common philosophical assumption, is it not?
June 16, 2011 at 3:09 am
Andrew,
Next you’ll be asking for educational rubrics and standardized testing like the “educational reformers” in the united States. This is the bureaucratic mentality of Bramdomians and what they’re essentially asking for in their discussions of normativity. “Show me the rubrics!”. This is exactly what Mandel is getting at in his discussion of Aristotle. Such a frightening set of assumptions and a sad set of desires.
June 16, 2011 at 3:16 am
Levi,
I am sorry but I don’t understand what you mean by your last comment. Perhaps I overstayed my welcome. I will not bother you any further.
June 16, 2011 at 3:59 am
[…] HERE. Posted by doctorzamalek Filed in Uncategorized Leave a Comment » LikeBe the first to […]
June 16, 2011 at 10:13 am
@5 “As someone who has been accused of some extremely ugly things by Brandomians…”
Can you cite an example? A link? A quote?
June 16, 2011 at 10:43 am
I could Brandomizer, but I won’t. Why would I link to such things and stir up old antagonisms?
June 16, 2011 at 10:46 am
The article states:
“Not only is labor as the source of value erased under capitalism, but under the money-form that renders all things equivalent under the unit of money, all things become exchangeable insofar as all things are subordinated to the abstract measure of the monetary unity.”
In anthropology, one of the first things you learn is that people’s engagement with these technologies of equivalence are highly multiple. There is an edited volume by Parry and Bloch for instance, which shows how people from various places around the world use money in all sorts of different ways and think about it in all sorts of different ways. This should be significant for OOO lines of inquiry as it suggests that thinking about commodity objects solely as things of exchange is highly simplistic (I think here of Mauss, Derrida and Gregory on the gift/exchange debate).
If we take a Deleuzian perspective and say that the world begins with difference, then perhaps it is precisely the global repetition of material objects, their distribution in space-time (everything from the circulation of coke cans, to the almighty dollar, to the iconic sky-scraper), which forge a simultaneity against this difference. Yes, every coke can is different and every coke can is affectively engaged with in a singular way, but the repeating affects are astounding and must in some way contribute toward producing the effects of simultaneity, homogeneity and all the other things we attribute to global capitalism.
June 16, 2011 at 3:22 pm
I’m dubious that such accusations actually occurred. Maybe some folks did so accuse you, and that is unfortunate, but I doubt that any of the “Brandomians” were a party to it.
June 16, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Well, you’d be mistaken Brandomizer.
June 16, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Then you should have no difficulty proving it.
June 16, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Anyone who’s followed this blog regularly over the last couple of years knows exactly what I’m referring to. I’m not dredging those things up again, nor will I link to them. Do you have anything to contribute to the actual discussion?
June 23, 2011 at 3:32 am
[…] lack thereof) between Object-Oriented Ontology and Marxism and, as luck would have it, Voyou and Larval Subjects just wrote about this very […]