If, as I argued in an earlier post today and in a post entitled “Objectile and Agere” written long ago, to be a substance is to be an act, then Nietzsche’s conclusion follows as a matter of course. As Nietzsche writes in the third essay of On The Genealogy of Morals,
[T]here is no “being” behind the doing, effecting, becoming; “the doer” is simply fabricated into the doing—the doing is everything.
Objects don’t act. To say that objects act would be to say that there is something, objects, that either act or do not act. But if there is no doer behind or underneath the deed, then we must say rather that objects are acts. The substantiality of substance is the substance’s activity. Likewise, we cannot suggest that substances or objects are products of becomings as Massumi seems to suggest in Semblance and Event because the substantiality of a substance is not a product or outcome of becomings or activities, but rather the substances are their activity. There isn’t first one thing, becomings or activities, and then another thing, objects that are the result of these activities. There is just the one thing, these activities, that is the substantiality of the substance. The idea that the objecthood of a substance is a product of a becoming that precedes it is premised on an arbitrary and subjective cessation of activity on the part of one who observes a substance that is not itself reflected in nature. Rather, when activity ceases so too does substance cease.
It is because substances are acts, because there is no “doer behind the deed”, but only the deed itself, that substances are dynamic systems. A dynamic system is a unity that exists only in and through its activity. Where that activity ceases so too does the system. Where the system ceases, so too does the substance. I cease to be a substance at that point where operations of my body cease and no longer to continue to produce cells and vital functions necessary for life to sustain itself. I cease to be a substance when my body no longer acts. Likewise, it follows that if there is no doer behind the deed, then the individuality of the substance or system is not a subject that lies beneath accidental changes, that identity is not an abiding sameness that is invariant throughout change, but rather that identity itself is an activity on the part of the system. The identity of a substance is a performance on the part of the substance, an activity, that accomplishes itself from moment to moment until the substance dissolves.
Larval Subjects . 
February 7, 2012 at 3:27 am
Objects don’t act. To say that objects act would be to say that there is something, objects, that either act or do not act. But if there is no doer behind or underneath the deed, then we must say rather that objects are acts. The substantiality of substance is the substance’s activity. Likewise, we cannot suggest that substances or objects are products of becomings… because the substantiality of a substance is not a product or outcome of becomings or activities, but rather the substances are their activity.
This is the crux of the neo-materialist argument, in my opinion. The vibrancy of matter-energy itself speaks to the inherent sensuality of existence: the world-flesh. Things are primordially active and contingent evental endurances – they are acts. Thus ‘objects’ can’t be understood by indexing their ontological tendencies but, rather, only by cultivating our primate sensibilities (sensitivities) to the intrinsic powers and ontic specificity of things as they actually exist in the world. The identity of the object/act is, then, an expression of each assemblage’s dynamic potency.
Great series of comments Levi.
February 7, 2012 at 3:33 am
Sorry for this obtuse comment, Levi, but there seems to be some discrimination against those who do not ‘subscribe’ to social media / automatic feeds. When I browsed LARVAL SUBJECTS 4 hours ago, via my plain-vanilla browser, the latest post was “A Brief Remark on Four-Dimensionalism”! Now there are 4 additional posts with about 6 comments. Gosh, I just can’t keep up with the always-on crowd! I’m fairly sure it means nothing to you, but I spent a few spare hours today (shirking my real work) to read some of Ted Sider’s stuff, and Sider seems to be struggling to bring the notion of “ontological parity” to the Analytic crowd – against the likes of the despicable David Lewis who would have us believe that ‘quarks’ are ‘more natural’ than human beings! I ‘withdraw’ all protests about exaggerated claims of ‘undermining’. Clearly there are more clueless people in ‘proper positions’ tha! I would have expected! WOW! There’s something really wrong about WordPress, or more likely my obsolete version of Firefox, but strange configurations of this comment abound..
February 7, 2012 at 3:58 am
Nicely said, Michael!
February 7, 2012 at 6:19 pm
I find this an apt metaphor
rwm
February 7, 2012 at 10:05 pm
“Agency is ‘doing’ or ‘being’ in its intra-activity. It is the enactment of iterative changes to particular practices-interative reconfigurings of topological manifolds of spacetimematter relations- through the dynamics of intra-activity.” (Karen Barad 2007: 178).
February 7, 2012 at 11:31 pm
Levi, This context is helpful and may supply an additional place to talk about what you — I thought kindly — called our “differend” (and you are correct: I am not a holocaust denier!) in your last response to me. It’s difficult to sum all the points you made and a point-by-point response would be tiresome and inappropriate on your blog. Still, I take one phrase as synoptic of your position: ” intransitive objects are the condition for the intelligibility of experimental practice.” One could – I think – understand intelligibility in such a way as to make this tautological. However, I do not think that your intention is to settle this by a kind of fiat. Rather I understand you to me that you see this as THE transcendental conclusion demanded. I am not sure that I see that objects are necessary to make experimentalism intelligible or to compass the dynamism you offer in this post. Take as an example the experiment offered by Prigogine and Nicolis at the start of Exploring Complexity. They present a liquid between two confining surfaces (by the way — I think that the discreteness that experimentation requires in order to meet “falsifiability” is not innocent or neutral to what results can be seen as intelligible). At first it is a homogeneous state. To a locale — is that a thing? — they apply heat to one area. At first a warmer homogeneity in the heated locality is manifest as the energy is dissipated through radiation and as motion is resisted by viscosity: is this a thing & if so, the same one? Then two counter rotating cells form and the heat now moves through convection — a thing or things? A bit more heat, and the relations become chaotic and turbulence ensues — is this a post thing, a thing? Now this is an absurdly simple system compared with the quotidian world but the “object” of study — we can call it a hot spot if we wish to lend it the greatest duration in naming — is not – I would say – a thing but a productive relation between relations. While none of this is of objects for me, I do think it is still “intelligible.” Also, I think it captures much of what you observe here about the mutuality of action and becoming but without the need for a thing to coordinate that conatus internally.
February 8, 2012 at 6:08 am
Dan, pardon my rudeness but what the f#ck are you talking about? Every sentence you just typed is only intelligible if we concede that objects are intransitive. What person named Prigogine? What book object? What do you suppose by the number two? What is it that dissipates? I would even take it one step beyond what Levi states and suggest that absolutely NO practice whatsoever makes sense, or is possible without granting intransitive affects/agencies and forces. It is only against a background of presupposed intransitive realities and affective singularities that we can even utter a single intelligible sentence. Realism is THE default position.
February 8, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Michael, You remind me again of Johnson’s (Samuel, not Ben) response to, I think, A New Theory of Vision. He kicked a rock and shouted, “Thus, I refute you!” He hurt himself. I would point out that you have given no evidence at all or argument for your excited assertions. I do believe it is impossible for you to conceive of relations rather than objects being a basal concept but you have stated nothing to support that impulse. You express exasperation and seem to think that makes your position strong. To be fair, your conclusion is the default presumption of normative consciousness but philosophy to me is — at least in part — exactly an attempt to understand the virtues or not of every hegemonic tendency. Challenges to the Cogito or the “clear and distinct” have come from many camps and should hardly excite anyone I would have thought. My concern is for an ontology of relations: I do not see that my position disallows what I have indicated as the reductionist impulse to treat names as if they were imperishable — what’s Shakespeare’s line “that outlast gilded monuments” (or something). That reductive rendition of a dynamic ontological locality — the interpellation of “this” as “one of those” — is not a proof that the complexity now so simplistically rendered is as we treat it within our valorized system of coding. For connivance, convenience, social cohesion, convention, habits, etc. we may find the valorization of certain practices and productions that substitute names for relations happy but these are not matters of either truth or necessity. I see ANT and say Wolfram’s cellular complexity as a halfway house between field relations and an object orientation and one that brings more richness but still delimited in the nodal instance by a monadic intersection. To be honest, to me non-relational ontology makes as little sense as non-objectual seems to make for you. Perhaps, that is because I see the literal as an impoverished subset of the literary. Your irritation suggests I have stepped on something you find “self-evident” or apodictic. If so, I am in your eyes mad. To me, you are “sane” but that is not necessarily a beneficial state. Certainty, Wittgenstein says, is a tone of voice (say, your caps). BTW I think Levi’s onticology is much more subtle than what I have flagged here.
February 8, 2012 at 7:46 pm
Hi Levi,
I remember that post many moons ago when it was re-posted on Nietzche Forum. Where does withdrawal fit in here? I would assume that in any one point in time the potential of an object is not completely exhausted, and this is where withdrawal would figure. If so, is withdrawing an (autoaffective) act?
Do you not need to distinguish between between different kinds of acts? For example contrasting allopoetic and autopoetic objects, it seems proper to me to refer to ‘act’ in reference to the latter without necessarily the former being static. My understanding is that you would hold it to be a difference in degree rather than in kind.
Hope you are on the mend.
Will.
February 11, 2012 at 5:32 am
Dan,
Very good response.
I wonder, though, what type of language game would you prefer I play in order to satisfy your personal version of certainty? What argument would you need to hear in order to unlock the gates of your worldview and convince you that objects exist?
If you use nouns, which you seem to do quite often, then you believe in objects. Everything you have typed so far is based on the premise that singularities – as differences that make a difference – do in fact exist. You can’t even state your case without assuming some relative alterity. That should be evidence enough.
And you are right, positing the actual existence of objects is a default position – but not one based in normative positions. The primary reckoning of objects is based on visceral experience. Objects exist pre-theoretically. Which is why the evolution of grammar includes a deep appreciation for objectal agencies. Assumptions about the existence of objects form what John Searle refers to as “the Background”. Nothing intelligibly can be asserted without epistemically coping with the existence of punctuated structures/objects. Therefore, in a quite literal as well as performative sense, there is nothing more I need to say about that.
My ‘reaction’ was for emphasis mostly. I say don’t fake the funk on your ontotheological speculations. The ‘agency’, efficacy and proliferation of objects cannot be denied without allowing your reactionary attempts at the reflexive overcoming of grammar to deteriorate into pure fantasy.
However, if you are trying to argue that reality cannot be understood solely with appeals to ‘objects’ I concur. In fact, I believe objects are fleeting and precarious achievements, and only ever understood in relation to the contexts in which they exist. To be sure, my thinking is not object-oriented. I argue from a position that respects the irreducible onto-specificity of events and systems while also trying to appreciate the processual and collaborative movements of things and flows. You might say, then, that I support the synthesis of objectological and process-relational conceptions. Objects or assemblages are always relational and distinct at the same time. The philosophical decision to prioritize one or the other is based on an impulse for the meta-physik, and not something I support.
I think your concern should be for an ontology of the real (e.g., what actually exists and its ontological structure) and not simply for relations. Prefiguring the nature of what you study is less than helpful.
February 23, 2012 at 12:48 am
[…] has done some incredible work connected to this topic. See his work on the dynamic life of objects, objects as acts, objects as events, […]
February 29, 2012 at 5:48 pm
[…] objects are only agents in relation to other objects. Since objects (as substances) are acts and there is no doer behind the deed (like you stated in a recent blog post), then this entails that there is no agent behind the act […]