In In Defense of Things, Bjørnar Olsen notes that the word “thing” comes from the Old English term þing, meaning assembly or gathering. Things are that which gather or assemble. They are both assembled and assemble. But what is it that things assemble? We are accustomed to thinking of things as assemblages; especially technical things. The tree assembles sunshine, water, and nutrients from the earth in forming itself to sing its hymn to the sky and the land. Yet it also gathers all sorts of insects, birds, squirrels and other creatures aside that make their life in and around the earth. Indeed, in dropping its leaves, the tree contributes to the creation of the soil upon which it depends to persist. But it is not just that the tree gathers and contributes to the creation of the materials it requires to form itself and endure, it is also that the tree is a gathering, an assembly for forms of life beyond itself such as the birds that nest in its branches, the insects that hunt among its leaves, and the squirrels that take refuge high in its canopy to escape our dog. Our dog’s activities of bounding and jumping are also gathered or assembled by the tree and the squirrel. There is a folding of materiality and activity here that draws a variety of beings together.
In Entangled, Ian Hodder gives the example of the car to illustrate the idea of things as assemblies. The parts of a car, he notes, are built in a variety of places from all over the world. The car therefore gathers nations and people together in ways that we can scarcely register when we encounter it as a black boxed or completed thing. Just as Deleuze and Guattari quote Marx, noting that we cannot tell from the taste of wheat how it was grown and who grew it, we scarcely know how we’re entangled or folded into other people and nations when we drive a car. Yet it is not just that the car gathers and assembles all of these other things, nations, and peoples; the car also gathers highways, the oil and battery industries, gas stations, distribution chains for both cars, parts, and fuel, taxes, licenses, roads, and forms of life. The flight to the suburbs wouldn’t have been possible without the car or some other form of transportation that allowed people to travel to urban centers. It is said that the designers of the first Ford Mustang were insistent on two things: that it be cheap and affordable for younger people and that it have a bench back seat. Why the flat back seat? The designers of the classic American muscle car were dimly aware that the car was an integral part of the growing sexual revolution, providing a place of privacy for young people away from the prying eyes of parents. The Mustang was to provide a place where furtive kisses would be possible. Again, another form of gathering, not just of couples locked in embrace with one another, but of forms of amorous activity.
Things gather together other things, norms, meanings, laws, nations, people, and forms of life or activity. They are not just gatherings and assemblies, but gather and assemble human and nonhuman collectives and ways of doing. The tree is not just an assembly of soil, sunshine, and rain, but gathers the morning ritual between our dog and the squirrel, leading me to be awoken every morning between five and six; yet another ritual as she climbs upon my back as I slumber and sticks her nose against my ear to tell me that it’s time to see if this time, at long last, she’ll capture the squirrel (this ritual ends every morning with the squirrel laughing at her and taunting her from high in the branches of the tree). Our tendency is to think of politics as merely an affair of parties, the State apparatus, meanings, identities, and representation. Yet if we take the etymology of the term “politics” from the Greek polis seriously and ask ourselves, “what is a city?”, and note that there is no city that is not an assemblage of humans and nonhumans, we find that even in our humblest dealings with things we are gathered together not only with other humans, but with all sorts of things that embroil us in matters of concern. Perhaps there’s a vantage from which every thing is one of Morton’s hyperobjects, sticking to us in all sorts of uncomfortable ways we’d like to forget, assembling and gathering us together with all sorts of humans and nonhumans to which we only seem unrelated because they have been black boxed in the execution of the thing. We are immediately enmeshed in a politics of the world with the smallest of things in ways we can scarcely trace, and in recognizing this we also recognizing all sorts of other avenues of political engagement that don’t merely take place at the level of recognition and meaning.
July 16, 2018 at 8:54 pm
Reblogged this on Jacob Russell's Magic Names.
July 16, 2018 at 8:55 pm
If I may be self serving, I recommend my forthcoming article in Mobilities entitled “Automobility and Site Ontological Analysis”. Thanks for your post.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2018.1432974
July 16, 2018 at 9:06 pm
I look forward to reading it!
July 17, 2018 at 3:36 am
Thanks again for another fragment, Levi. You might be interested in learning that the Old English “Thing” = assembly lost that meaning after Old English, but it is still very much alive in modern Scandinavian languages. Since you’re going to Norway, their parliament is called Storting = “great” or for all assembly, just as the Danish parliament is named Folketing = people’s assembly or meeting, and in Iceland they have Althinget.
July 17, 2018 at 7:59 am
moving away from something like the mechanics of a tree to the car example how does one decide that the car is doing the assembling and not any of the other objects/actors in the (broadly speaking) supply chain, what is the method and what are the principles it is based on?
July 17, 2018 at 11:17 am
Cars are allopoietic, not autopoietic. They are assembled by others, they don’t assemble themselves.
July 17, 2018 at 12:46 pm
that was my understanding of the world but aren’t you rather saying that the car gathers and assembles other things here?
Yet it is not just that the car gathers and assembles all of these other things, nations, and peoples; the car also gathers highways, the oil and battery industries, gas stations, distribution chains for both cars, parts, and fuel, taxes, licenses, roads, and forms of life.
July 17, 2018 at 1:05 pm
No, dmf. I’m saying the car is a gathering of those things. I confess that between this post and the last I’m losing patience with your questions as you seem to be attributing some rather uncharitable and absurd positions to me. If, as I said in my last post, I’m not making such a claim, I’m not. I’m not posting here to engage in debates and arguments with others. If it seems like one is making a grotesquely stupid and absurd claim, the reader has likely mis-interpreted what’s being said.
July 17, 2018 at 1:52 pm
you throw out fragments and expect them to somehow be self-explicating? I don’t see that I’m attributing to you possible intentions that are out of keeping with your earlier embrace of Luhmann, Jane Bennett (tho she is often careful to speak of a strategic use of animism, object-ive powers) and the like, and seems that Paul above thought you were gesturing in that direction too, but so it goes with blogging I suppose I’ll leave you to it.
July 17, 2018 at 2:04 pm
Not all systems are autopoietic for Luhmann. We can speak of autopoietic systems of technology development and formation, but that’s a far cry from things magically pulling elements together to form themselves. How would a car even do that and why would it occur to anyone to think someone would be claiming such a thing? Moreover, why are you evoking Bennett (and I think you’re misconstruing her position) in this context when she’s nowhere mentioned? In her defense, certainly you would agree something is going on when plutonium undergoes radioactive decay? Matter is not just passive stuff. There’s nothing animistic or vitalist about this. It’s well attested to in physics. That’s all the agency that’s meant. Unfortunately, we just don’t have a language to express these things.
July 17, 2018 at 2:06 pm
Now now, boys. I can envision the car/infrastructure assemblage as some sort of “bright object”. Even better, a car/infrastructure/driving practice site as bright object/assemblage.
July 17, 2018 at 3:26 pm
Paul, can you say more? I do think technologies create technological problems that open a modal space for the genesis of other technologies in technical ensembles. A simple example would be the smart phone. As it saturated our life, becoming daily furniture of our existence, problems emerge. If you use your phone to navigate while driving it, where do you put it so as to see it? That’s a very simple problem. I put mine in the cup holder on my console. But what if you don’t have such a holder? The problem calls forth a mount to affix your phone on the dashboard. And lest I get charged with technological determinism, I’m not claiming problems necessitate a particular solution. It’s a modal space, not a deterministic space. These modal spaces gather other things together in technical ensembles.
July 17, 2018 at 9:35 pm
I am in full agreement with you Levi, regarding your remarks on technological problems and modal space. In my last comment I build on the work of Marston, Jones and Woodward in theorizing the site. The elements of the site – practices, subjectivities, assorted material bodies and their affective relations of force – hang together as various assemblages. In this emergent, self-organizing event space, the human subject is often not at the helm; agency is distributed throughout the site as the inter-affective forces of bodies aggregate and differentiate, while the site’s virtual intensities seeks
possible solutions in extension. The “virtual proper being” of the machinic assemblage is “contoured” by singularities, attractors, basins, etc. Practices as sets of doings and sayings held together by materialities, understandings, norms, goals and emotions (Schatzki) are critical to the site’s problem resolution.
July 17, 2018 at 10:33 pm
These things I think you’re talking about are so difficult to put into words. We still think under an Aristotlean model of a subject informing matter with form according to a mental model. We don’t have good vocabularies for discussing how the matter contributes to the design process independent of our models and intentions and can even transform our uses and intentions.