3 Possible Kinds of OOR

Over at Tim Richardson’s blog objet(a)uthenticity, the question is raised as to whether an object can be designed to be authentic. For Tim, authenticity requires a certain amount of distance between the “mythical” real object and the object that is claiming to be authentic in regards to this real object. For example, Tim relays his experience with the word authentic when:

During one of the [last democratic presidential primary] debates, when the field was still large, one pundit commented that the choice of a nominee would come down to which candidate seemed most authentic to the voter. At that exact moment, I reached for a bag of tortilla chips that was emblazoned with the slogan “Authentic Mexican Taste” and, with that coincidence, realized the problem. “Authentic Mexican Taste” only makes sense outside of (a mythic) Mexico. (Of course, you can see that referenced in the proposal, but this distance may be very much like the distance insisted on by medieval courtly love narratives, too).

Authenticity, according to Tim, requires that there be an ideal object or place that exists apart from the “authentic” object. Authentic Mexican chips can only be authentic to a Mexico that exists outside of the chips themselves. In the end, though, Tim questions the relationship between the “mythical” object of origin and that object claiming to be authentic as being similar to the an object’s substance and its properties. He asks, “But I’m wondering if this idea of difference between the design of a device (even the body) and its potential properties isn’t something like the distance or gap I described far above as a hallmark of the authentic?” (emphasis added)

Now hopefully Tim will build on this question (and I look forward to reading his next post), but it got me thinking about my own project and a note I drew up some time ago about Aristotle’s three kinds of rhetoric.

For Aristotle, there existed three kinds or species of rhetoric: deliberative (argues that we should take a certain action or that a certain action should not be taken), forensic ( or judicial rhetoric, accuses or defends someone according to some event), and epideictic (offers praise of blame determining if someone is honorable or shameful). But, as Eugene Garver points out in his essay “Aristotle on the Kinds of Rhetoric,” these three kinds at times seem trivial since “[e]ven in Aristotle’s time, most rhetorical speeches did not fall under one of the three kinds of rhetoric. Today, the proportion of rhetoric that is deliberative, judicial, or epideictic is even smaller” (17). Now ultimately for Garver, Aristotle’s three kinds of rhetoric act as guides that “tell us what rhetoric should and can be” by “show[ing] us rhetoric’s possibilities” (18). And while I don’t disagree with Garver’s point one hundred percent, I would argue that in order to develop a true faculty to discover all available means of persuasion, we also need to take into account the temporal dimension of deliberative, forensic, and epideictic rhetoric.

For Aristotle these three kinds of rhetoric were also tied to respective times. As he states in Book I chapter 3 of his Rhetoric:

Further, to each of these a special time is appropriate: to the deliberative the future, for the speaker, whether he exhorts or dissuades, always advises about things to come; to the forensic the past, for it is always in reference to things done that one party accuses and the other defends; to the epideictic most appropriately the present, for it is the existing condition of things that all those who praise or blame have in view. It is not uncommon, however, for epideictic speakers to avail themselves of other times, of the past by way of recalling it, or of the future by way of anticipating it. (135b12-20)

So we can see that apart from purpose, there is also a temporal distance between each of these types of rhetoric. Therefore, any interaction, if it is dependent upon a certain amount of opportunity or kairos is subject to a temporal characteristic as much as a motivating one. In other words, it makes sense (especially if we agree with Garver that Aristotle’s three kinds of rhetoric are often irrelevant to the extent that rarely do rhetorical acts fall under one of these categories) that we can reduce rhetoric to a temporal structure. So that if we were to develop any new categories, they would not have to accommodate or acquiesce to the purpose of Aristotle’s kinds, but simply the temporal format of future, past, and present.

And it is with this temporal understanding of rhetoric that I wish to put forth my own three kinds of object-oriented rhetoric: architectural, practical, and aesthetic. With architectural rhetoric, the focus is on the object’s future design, for the object stands as something to be improved upon, developed, and planned for, whether that object exists or not. Architectural rhetoric relies on the future much like deliberative rhetoric does, by attempting to determine future models and manifestations. Practical rhetoric focuses solely on use, for objects in use are either in reference to objects that have worked before or to the withdrawn substance of the broken tool. Therefore, practical rhetoric relies on the past in order for objects to be put to use, constantly oscillating between tool and broken tool, real and sensual. Finally, aesthetic rhetoric focuses on objects as they appear or present themselves to us and to other objects, for it is in the object’s existence as something pleasing or perturbing that creates networks of relations. However, like epideictic rhetoric, it is not uncommon for aesthetic rhetoric “to avail themselves of other times,” of the past by way of recalling an object’s use, or of the future by way of anticipating the potential of new local manifestations.

Hacking and Allusion

Over at Tim Richardson’s new blog Objet(a)uthenticity, he questions the idea of authenticity as it relates to both the prosthetic and the hack. He posits that like rhetoric, as dunamis, hacking seems to be a way of getting the object to reveal itself while a prosthetic is merely a replacement part:

What seems to differentiate the hack from the prosthetic (that talk I linked to last note) is that the latter is a replacement in kind, a surrogate that may or may not live up to the standards or utility of the original (and may or may not appear authentic). The hack, though, is all about new functionality. So it might be that all hacks are prosthetic (though maybe they address a lack, not a loss?) but not all prosthetics are hacks?

I’m going to get back to this in just a bit, but I want to bring up something that’s always bothered me about Harman’s OOO—allusion. In Prince of Networks, Harman states:

When the hammer surprises us with its breakdown, the exact character of this surprise can admittedly be described by various predicates. But note that ‘surprise’ is only the phenomenal result of the previously concealed hammer. The veiled, underground hammer cannot be identified with the surprises it generates, since these merely allude to its existence. (Allusion and allure are legitimate forms of knowledge, but irreducible to specific predicates.) (225)

Therefore, even when the object seems to offer us a glimpse into its withdrawn nature, these are just allusions to the real object that lies beneath. Now I used to think that this “allusion” (whether on our part or the object’s) was just a weasel word—a way to get around not having to talk about a seemingly important point. But what Tim’s post seems to get at is that perhaps a better way of understanding the relationship between the real object and the sensual one, or when the hammer breaks, is by way of hacking. Hacking allows users to get at parts of their objects that were meant to remain hidden, tucked away in code or purposefully disabled. What the hacker does, then, is never a physical modification but an action that allows the excess or withdrawn “reality” of the object to come forth. A recent example is when iOS hackers found that there was a panorama setting in iOS 5.0 that wasn’t turned on by Apple. Hacking, therefore, is a sort of non-linguistic way of alluding to a real object. And humans aren't the only objects that hack. For example, HIV works by hacking a host cell to replicate its RNA strand. HIV, in its hacking, makes the allusion to the host cell's hidden functionality extremely clear. Hacking in this sense is a faculty for observing all of the available means of perturbation. And as Tim reminds us, rhetoric (and maybe more specifically for us, OOR), too, is a faculty for discovering an object’s hidden functionality or local manifestations.

Everything I Needed to Know about OOR I Learned from Watching 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'

No matter how much we insist on the strangeness of our everyday objects, it is rather difficult for anybody (yours truly included) to see their world as uncanny. If it were easy, this would go against the OOO claim that objects are inherently weird or strange. So, perhaps the easiest way to discuss examples is to actually have an ordinary object (for us) be introduced into a culture in which it is truly a strange-stranger.

In the 1980 film, The Gods Must Be Crazy, a normal, familiar Coke bottle is introduced into a secluded tribe in the Kalahari Desert. Now the traditional way of reading this film would be through metaphor – that is, the Coke bottle represents Western Culture, and everything that happens to the once peaceful and graceful tribe (i.e., the ensuing moments of jealousy, violence, and social upheaval) are simply shining examples of the West’s influence on other cultures. In other words, the traditional way of reading such a narrative would be through reducing it to a moment of language, a single metaphor of East meets West. Most of us would understand that even though there might be other ways to read this film (from a sociological perspective, or even a psychological perspective) this reading is the most explicit, especially given the other two vignettes in the film (centered on revolution and Western emigration).






Yet, no matter how clear such a reading might seem to us, we must not forget that this tribe has no idea what this object really is. They’ve never seen a bottle, and have no notion of what Coca-Cola is or its ties to Western capitalism. Therefore, such a reading dismisses not only the bottle itself, but also the tribe’s unique position and characteristics. We are left wondering then, what else is there? If the bottle is more than simply a metaphor for some thing, and the tribe more than a generic representation of something else, how might we read the events that take place in the film?

Taking a cue from object-oriented philosophy, we must first recognize that no object can be reduced to one aspect, actual (material) or virtual (symbolic), of said object. Therefore, a blue mug cannot be reduced to its blueness or to its mug-ness. Instead, like every object, the mug is a myriad of qualities, none of which are “owned” or inherent in the object itself, but which are manifested in certain situations. So the mug is blue with the lights on, black with the lights off, and in the right light can also appear purple. In this way, object-oriented rhetoric is never satisfied with readings that reduce things to metaphors, metonymies, or other linguistic tropes. For the object-oriented rhetorician the Coke bottle as a real, independent object has an influence all of its own, divorced from any third-party reading. It has its own agency.

To clarify this last point, we should turn back to the example in the film. If we take away the reading that the Coke bottle is representative of some other ideology, point of view, or social organization, we are left with examining the bottle itself, its local manifestations or effects. I will call these effects−following Timothy Morton and Levi Bryant−the object’s resonances. Resonance maintains the requirement that we must not confuse the object for its qualities, nor reduce the object to these effects. Instead, an object resonates with multiple effects or local manifestations on other objects, and the bottle is no exception. The bottle resonates with its environment from the time it first appears on screen. It is a beverage bottle, it is trash, it is a gift from the gods, it is used to crush grain, it is perfect for rolling snake skins, it makes music, etc. In each instance, the bottle resonates in quite different ways without ontologically becoming a different object. However, as we see in the film, the bottle resonates in other, less obvious ways than these initial findings.

The bottle also directly effects or resonates with the tribe itself. The peaceful and content tribe becomes violent and envious of each other as a result of the singularity of the bottle. The tribe itself, then, must be read as an object – an object that like others is open to resonances from other objects, whether internal or external. The bottle becomes the focal point of such an object-oriented examination, not because it represents this ideology or that theoretical trope, but that it (in itself, as an ontologically independent object) influences or resonates with the objects around it, even to the point of social unrest.

The example of the Coke bottle in The Gods Must Be Crazy is, I argue, a perfect example of an object-oriented rhetorical reading. Does it encompass the entirety of the composition of dirt, tribe, bottle, sky, air, etc., etc.,? No, but I would argue that it doesn’t have to. OOR, in my opinion, is never going to be one hundred percent exhaustive. Nor should it try and be. The goal of OOR, instead, should be to point us away from reductions, but especially linguistic reductions, and in turn open up the canvas to be painted with all types of readings, from anthropologists, designers, musicians, biologists, etc. Object-oriented rhetoric offers a unique angle from which to approach rhetorical situations in that it brings objects to the forefront, in themselves and their immediate resonances, rather than shrouding them in metaphors or other linguistic terminology. By performing such a task, object-oriented rhetoric can observe the object as an independent means of persuasion outside of human discourse.

Rhetorical Correlationism

In Meaning, Language, and Time, Kevin J. Porter succinctly restates the three dominant factions of rhetoric as espoused by James Berlin. They are as follows:

cognitive rhetoric (e.g., Emig, 1971), the “heir apparent of current-traditional rhetoric” grounded in the methods of individualistic cognitive psychology and built upon the premise that “the structures of the mind correspond in perfect harmony with the structures of the material world, the minds of the audience, and the units of language” (p. 480); expressionistic rhetoric (e.g., Elbow, 1981), with its focus on the authentic “experience of the self, and experience which transcends ordinary non-metaphoric language but can be suggested through original figures and tropes” (p. 485); and, again the hero of the narrative [for Berlin], social-epistemic rhetoric (e.g., Bartholomae 1985/1996), which holds that knowledge comes into existence through discursive interactions comprised of “social constructions […] inscribed in the very language we are given to inhabit in responding to our experience” (p. 488). (Porter 31)

First, cognitive rhetoric, with its belief that the structures of the mind correlate exactly with the world, other’s minds, and language, could very well be seen as an example of a strong rhetorical correlationism. Here the emphasis is place on the mirroring that the mind is capable of, rather than the world itself, so much so that, as Berlin remarks, cognitive rhetoricians like Janet Emig are “convinced that [they] could arrive at an understanding of the entire rhetorical context – the role of reality, audience, purpose, and even language in the composing act” (Berlin 480). The rhetorical act becomes nothing more than a construction of one’s mind, then. Or, to put this still another way, for the cognitive rhetorician, there is no reason to look outside of one’s mind. As Berlin puts it, “For cognitive rhetoric, the real is the rational” (482). All rhetorical acts, therefore, are products, or compositions, of the rhetor. Cognitive rhetoric shifts the discourse of rhetoric away from the rhetorical act, so that instead of asking “what is it” they wish to ask “how is it or how can it be composed.”

Second, we have expressionistic rhetoric which values the individual. For this rhetoric, as Berlin argues, “the existent is located within the individual subject. While the reality of the material, the social, and the linguistic are never denied, they are considered significant only insofar as they serve the needs of the individual” (484). Unlike cognitive rhetoric which in its own way denied a world outside of the mind, expressionistic rhetoric exploits the real world in order to serve its purposes. So that what remains significant is not the true ontological reality of the world and its real influences and presence, but instead, the terministic screens or perceptions through which this reality passes. The expressionistic rhetorician seeks to create metaphors by which the world comes to be – and specifically for that rhetorician. Born out of a response to political and authoritarian discourse, expressionist rhetoric wished to place the power into the hands of the rhetor. In this way, Berlin remarks that “From this perspective, power within society ought always to be vested in the individual” (485). The individual knows best how to divide up the real world for expressionistic rhetoricians. Thus, this type of rhetoric places a heavy emphasis on experience – experience as much in order to know more. For philosophy, we see this type of stance prevalent in all weak forms of correlationism – that is, much like the weak correlationist for whom the thing-in-itself could never be known, but for whom the phenomenal realm was ever knowable; the expressionistic rhetorician only ever knows his or her experiences of the real world.

Finally, for Berlin, we have a social-epistemic rhetoric. To recap, “For social-epistemic rhetoric, the real is located in a relationship that involves the dialectical interaction of the observer, the discourse community (social group) in which the observer is functioning, and the material conditions of existence. Knowledge is never found in any one of these but can only be posited as a product of the dialectic in which all three come together” (488). At first this form of rhetoric might sound pleasing to a rhetorician working to get outside of the correlationist circle. For here we have a rhetoric that recognizes a dialectical interaction between individuals and groups of individuals, but most importantly of a real world. Unlike the other two factions of rhetoric, social-epistemic rhetoric encorporates an ontologically independent world with which the rhetor/rhetorician must deal with. However, it is Berlin’s next statement that I find troubling.

Following up on his definition of a social-epistemic rhetoric, Berlin states, “Most important, this dialectic is grounded in language: the observer, the discourse community, and the material conditions of existence are all verbal constructs” (488). Reality, though it may exist for the social-epistemic rhetorician in an assemblage of personal, social, and material realms, language is seen as the overarching guide to interpretation. That is, everything can be reduced to language. Like the cognitive rhetorician who reduced the objects of the world to a product of the mind, and like the expressionistic rhetorician who reduced the objects of the world to the individual’s experiences, social-epistemic rhetoric reduces the objects of the world to language. The correlationist circle in rhetoric has simply been redrawn: there is nothing outside of language. But Berlin is not the only rhetorician who favors this view. His list of social-epistemic rhetoricians include: “Kenneth Burke, Richard Ohmann, the team of Richard Young, Alton Becker and Kenneth Pike, Kenneth Bruffee, W. Ross Winterowd, Ann Berthoff, Janice Lauer, and, more recently, Karen Burke Lefever, Lester Faigley, David Bartholomae, Greg Myers, Patricia Bizzell, and others” (488).

Each of the above three factions of rhetoric seems, to me, to redraw the correlationist circle in their own way. For cognitive rhetoricians the importance of rhetoric is on the processes of the mind and not the real world and its influences. For the expressionistic rhetoricians, the importance of rhetoric lies with the individual’s experiences of the real world. And for the social-epistemic rhetorician, the importance of rhetoric is to show how all rhetorical acts are a product of the function of language. Each faction uses the same structure – by shifting the goal of rhetoric from asking the question, “What is the rhetorical act?” to “In what way can the rhetorical act best be represented?”.

If the goal of an object-oriented rhetoric is to break outside of these types of correlationism, we must find a way of defining rhetoric that does not reduce it to any of the above (or others) positions. Rhetoric, then, as I propose it must be seen as separate not only from cognitive structures and personal experiences, but most importantly separate from the hierarchical function of language. In other words, rhetoric outside of correlation would no longer be seen as a product (e.g., political rhetoric, academic rhetoric, religious rhetoric, etc.), but a productive process that is irreducible to mind, experience, or language. Let us move rhetoric away from the forms of observation, and back toward the faculty (potentiality/potency/dunamis) of observing all of the available means of persuasion - including objects.

On "Smuk is King"

I’ve just finished reading Adam Reed’s “Smuk is King”, which describes the role of tobacco and cigarettes in a prison in Papua New Guinea. What is fascinating about the article is the agency Reed, an anthropologist, finds tobacco to have in the prison. Reed argues that “In inmates’ eyes, the organization of prison life is premised on the action of smoking; when cigarettes are taken away those social forms break down and men withdraw from contact with each other” (42). But such significance is not imbued upon cigarettes by Reed or another outside agent. Instead, through a close examination of the way in which the Bomana prison operates at the inmate level, he finds that cigarettes govern every action. “Smuk is king” as Reed points out, “because it makes men act with these things [cigarettes] in mind” (42).

Cigarettes rule these prisons in two unique ways – as both a form of currency, but also (and I think, more interestingly) as cigarettes (that is, material objects destined to be smoked). Unlike the formal form of currency, this informal prison currency is both valuable (traded for food, toothpaste, soap, etc.) and useful. When smoked, the men claim the smoke of the cigarettes makes them forget – that is, forget the outside world, forget their anxieties of being in prison. Reed takes this claim that “smuk is king” seriously (for why shouldn’t he), stating that “As smokers, inmates learn to love cigarettes because they kill their memory and therefore change their state of mind” (35). Cigarettes (or smuk), then, must be smoked, not saved. Again, Reed finds that “At Bomana inmates identify what might be taken as the spirit in cigarettes – its role as medium of exchange and token (the same spirit they identify in kina and toea [traditional forms of currency outside of the prison]), but they also highlight what might be taken as the spirit of cigarettes – their role as consumable matter” (41).

Reed proposes that one way to look at smuk or cigarettes in this prison is to see it as a fetish object. Following Peter J. Pels, Reed states that “The fetish object is not animated by something foreign to it – human intention or social meaning – but by a spirit that seems its own. That spirit is not held to reside in matter, but rather it appears as the spirit of matter” (41). And it is this spirit of matter that the inmates at the Bomana prison find in cigarettes. “Smuk moulds men,” as Reed concludes, “by having them transform its material state (it is the smoke of the cigarette, not its solid matter, that acts upon the mind of inmates). From this simple action, life in Bomana unfurls; as far as prisoners are concerned, it is the point from which everything starts and to which everything returns” (42). What we have, then, is a process or procedure of smuk – of finding, collecting, or exchanging cigarettes and then the ritual smoking of those cigarettes. Each cigarette, each object or unit, in this financial system is valued the same. Every cigarette, whether rolled tight and thin, or loose and fat, is just as valuable as another – for what is important is the eventual smoking of that cigarette. Each cigarette is a martyr, and this martyrdom gives it authority and agency.

What excited me about this article is its potential for drawing out some of the same concepts I’ve been struggling with in my conception of an object-oriented rhetoric. Like Reed, we too must approach situations, not from the outside, but from the muddled middles, from the quasi-objects (via Latour) and work our way to the outside extremes of social or natural concepts. We must think through objects by following their effects; but we must never see them as the only cause of those effects. In other words, we must understand these quasi-objects as both being effected and effecting others, so that no one, or only, cause can be claimed. Cigarettes did not cause the Bomana prisoners to act the way they do; however, they directly effect the prisoners’ actions. For to be effective is also, in some ways, to be persuasive.

Rhetorical Scene and Onticology

Over at Larvalsubjects Levi has posted a couple of responses to my initial thoughts on what an OOR pentad might look like with regards to his Onticology. The large point of contention, however, seems to be based around a remark I made about an object’s environment. I stated that an object exists “in” an environment. Yet, as Levi points out, this is not the case for Onticology, and is a mistake I fully take credit for making. Instead, following the thoughts of Niklas Luhmann, every object creates its environment. In other words, as Levi states in his blog, “the environment is not something that is already there” – that is, before the object.

And to this I readily agree. However, the point I was trying to make is that in the distinction, drawn by each object, between system and environment, a series of constraints also follows, much like those of a rhetorical scene. Every scene contains elements proper to the act of translation – that is, the environment created by the object does not “control” the object’s translation but it definitely has an influence on it. And this “influence” is exactly what is meant by the constraints of the object’s environment. As Levi states in Democracy:

When Luhmann observes that objects cannot be controlled or dominated his point is not that objects are completely free sovereigns capable of creating whatever reality they might like, but rather that any event that perturbs them will be “interpreted” in terms of the systems own organization. As a consequence, objects cannot be steered from the outside. However, the events that do or do not take place in the environment of an object and to which the object is open nonetheless play a tremendously significant role in the local manifestations of which the object is capable. […] Those other objects in the environment of the object define a regime of attraction with respect to the object, creating regularities in the local manifestation of the object and producing constraints on what local manifestations are possible. (224)

For Levi, then, we can think of these interactive networks of other objects as regimes of attraction or as Tim Morton has called them, meshes. Therefore, depending upon the objects (since each object creates its environment) being examined, the regimes of attraction (and thus constraints) can include “physical, biological, semiotic, social, and technological components” (225).

So it is in this way that I understand the scene of every act of translation – built around the self-constructed regimes of attraction of other objects. So, although an object does not exist “in” an environment, nor is the object ever controlled by these regimes of attractions, these environments created by the object limit the possibilities of local manifestations.

And it is in this way that I see the limiting aspect of an object’s created environment as akin to Burke’s notion of scene. For as he states early on in Grammar, “From the motivational point of view, there is implicit in the qualities of the scene the quality of the action that is to take place within it. This would be another way of saying that the act will be consistent with the scene” (6-7). In other words, there never exists an act that is inconsistent with its environment or regimes of attractions. Nor would we ever be able to deduce the act of translation from either the object/system or the environment alone. Instead, if we think of every object as an agent, then surely Burke is correct in stating that the distinction between scene and act gets muddled if we take both (actors and scene) as having agency. To this he remarks, “For the characters, by being in interaction, could be treated as scenic conditions or ‘environment,’ of one another; and any act could be treated as part of the context that modifies (hence, to a degree motivates) the subsequent acts” (7). Like Onticology, then, the rhetorical scene should be read as not having control, but having influence over the agents involved and vice versa.

Yet, by creating its environment, or making the distinction between system and environment, the object always limits itself in regards to is possible acts of translation. But this limitation can be lifted by the object, as well. For again, not only is the object never static but neither is the scene. Or, as Levi puts it:

While the regimes of attraction we [sic] find ourselves enmeshed in might constrain us in a number of ways, through our movement and action we have the ability to act on these regimes of attraction, construct our environments, and therefore modify the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We are not simply acted upon by regimes of attraction, but act on them as well. Given the unpredictable nature of other actors, however, the question revolves around which form of action might be most conducive to enhancing our existence. (227)

Therefore, it is only if we allow the merger between agents and scenes that we might begin to work through an object-oriented rhetoric. Only if we understand scenes as full of agents, may we begin to move from an anthropocentric rhetoric to a rhetoric of the real, where every tree, every blade of grass, or every computer screen has as much agency as the rhetor.

Rhetorical Purpose and Onticology (cont.)

I realized that my last post might be read as if I see the receiving object as having the choice to translate however it wants. This is not so. Instead every object exists in an environment for Onticology. And this environment constitutes the scene of the object’s act of translation. As Bryant remarks, “The organism-environment system indeed constrains the development of the phenotype in a variety of ways, defining a topological space of possible variations” (DoO 223). And he continues, “What’s important here is that the information presiding over the genesis of the phenotype is something constructed in the process of the development from a variety of factions, and, moreover, the qualities that the organism comes to embody are not located already in the organism in a virtual or implicit form, but are rather new creations in the process of development” (223). In other words, objects must constantly deal with, work with, or fight against their environments by constantly translating perturbations from other objects in its environment. However, the object itself is constrained in the ways in which it can do so. Therefore, no object can anticipate the perturbations from other objects, nor can any other object anticipate the translations by other objects.

Bryant offers us the following:

Just as other substances in a substance’s environment can only perturb the substance without determining what information events [or translation] will be produced on the basis of these perturbations, the most the substance can do is attempt to perturb other substances without being able to control what sort of information-events are produced in the other substances. And these attempted perturbations can always of course fail. My three year old daughter, for example, might yell at her toy box when she bumps into it, yet the toy box continues on its merry way quite literally unperturbed. Everything spins on recognizing that while objects construct their openness to their environment they do not construct the events that take place in their environment. (224)

Thus, a receiving object, in this case Bryant’s daughter, becomes perturbed by the toy box when she bumps into it. This perturbation is translated by her in a way that produces a yell. A translation that, in this case, has no further effects on the toy box – but this does not mean that it doesn’t have any further effects for her environment, for Bryant might have heard her yell and run to the rescue, or at least turned to see what was causing the commotion. Regardless, Bryant’s daughter was forced to deal with the perturbation (or objet a from my last post) but is constricted in the ways in which she can do this.

What’s important for our understanding of the object-oriented pentad, then, is that it seems as if the scene only becomes apparent after the information-event or act of translation occurs, because only here do we see the constraints from which the receiving object must work, and the further perturbations this object has on other objects. Or, as Burke states, “From the motivational point of view, there is implicit in the quality of a scene the quality of an action that is to take place within it. This would be another way of saying that the act will be consistent with the scene” (Grammar 7). Any environment limits the types of perturbations that can be produced by objects, as does any object’s system.

Rhetorical Purpose and Onticology

First off, I want to apologize for the length of the following. What started as a short post of ideas quickly developed into a mini essay. But, as always, I welcome any comments and critiques. Also, I want to thank Levi Bryant for letting me read a draft of his Democracy of Objects - I hope it will be as fruitful for others as it was for me.

Over the past few weeks (months really)

I’ve been trying to read Kenneth Burke’s

Grammar of Motives in OOO terms. The problem with Burke (and the initial problem with all rhetoric) is that it seems to be extremely enveloped in the human-centered world view. For example, in Grammar, Burke states: “Instruments are ‘essentially’ human, since they are products of human design” (283). In this way Burke argues that even though some objects might not have a purpose in and of themselves while still maintaining an agency as instrument, they are always imbued with a “human” purpose since they are tools, designed with a purpose in mind – i.e., a symbolic purpose. The problem, then, for an OOR is how do we separate human purpose from the ontologically independent nature of such objects. In other words, if objects act then for what purpose do they do so?In what follows I propose that it is only by means of the uncanny that we might begin to recognize an object’s purpose. But to begin with we have to look at how objects inter-act or have exo-relations. Using Levi Bryant’s Onticology, we find that all objects are mediators in relation to one another – that is, they all transmit and translate or transform what they receive from each other. Since all objects are either autopoietic (self-creating) or allopoietic (other-creating), and draw upon their own system/environment distinctions in order to transform “perturbations” into information, they all mediate or add something new to what they receive (DoO 194). It’s hardly a stretch, then, to recognize through such a formulation that each object is an agent acting with a certain amount of agency. Yet, again, where can we find purpose or motive in such acts of translation?

To begin with, objects for Onticology exist in a type of realism that accepts all beings. In other words, there is no hierarchy of “more real” to “less real” and finally to “not real”. Every object is as real as every (other) object. One part of this type of realism is the belief that all objects withdraw from each other. That is, no object is ever fully present, either to itself or to other objects. However, this does not mean that an object is ever fully withdrawn, either. No, instead for Onticology “withdrawal is never so thorough, never so complete, that local manifestation in one form or another is impossible” (295). Therefore, because of the inherent split between an object’s local manifestations or qualities, and its virtual proper being (that part of the object that is always in withdrawal) no object can be without the potential to locally manifest itself yet no object is ever completely locally manifested.

Such a realism, however, leads to a non-binary split of the object between something familiar or manifested, and something unfamiliar or withdrawn. Now, to be clear, this familiarity and manifestation are not simply for us, but are for all objects, including the objects themselves.

We might better understand this concept through what I’ve formulated here as the un-canny. Freud remarks early on in his essay that:

For us the most interesting fact to emerge from this long excerpt is that among the various shades of meaning that are recorded for the word heimlich there is one in which it merges with its formal antonym, unheimlich, so that what is called heimlich becomes unheimlich. […] This reminds us that this word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which are not mutually contradictory, but very different from each other – the one relating to what is familiar and comfortable, the other to what is concealed or kept hidden. (132)

The un-canny is a both/and term – for it represents both what is familiar (heimlich) and unfamiliar (unheimlich) at the same time. What presents itself in the object, since it is locally manifested or seems familiar. Yet, because objects never fully deploy themselves in their dealings with each other, they remain strange or unfamiliar (i.e., withdrawn). Bryant likens this un-canniness of the object to a concept formulated by Timothy Morton, namely the “strange stranger.” For Morton the strange-stranger is an object or person who no matter how long we know, we never become familiar with them. They remain constantly un-canny. Bryant, though, cautions us not to think of the strange-stranger as different from us, a difference in identity and the repetition of the same. Instead, again, every object is un-canny.

In terms of the un-canny, every object is surprising to every (other) object. That is, because every object maintains the un-canny split between local manifestations and the withdrawn virtual proper being, they are never fully consumed, taken in, or understood by an (other) object. And it is here in this un-canniness - that I find purpose in an object’s actions.

The split between the local manifestations and the virtual proper being of an object creates a difficulty in dealing with other objects. For on the one hand, a receiving object always receives something. But, on the other hand, this something is never everything. Therefore, the withdrawal of objects, in terms of its exo-relations, can be read as an excess. As Bryant remarks, “For while, in their virtual proper being, objects withdraw from any of their actualizations in local manifestations, while every object always contains a reserve excess over and above its local manifestations, nonetheless local manifestations are often highly constrained by the exo-relations an object enters into with other objects in a regime of attraction” (214). And it is precisely this excess which becomes important for our understanding of the purpose of object inter-action.

Perhaps the best way to understand this purpose behind exo-relations is through the structure of Lacan’s formulation of fantasy. What’s important to note, here, is that I am in no way performing a one-to-one reading of Lacan over Onticology, but am in fact using Lacan’s formulation since it best suits the types of relations in which objects seemed to be involved. Therefore, if we substitute the barred or split subject for the split object we could redraw the matheme ( $ ◊ a ) as ( Ø ◊ a ). This should be read as either the split object’s relation to objet a or the split object punch a. Now, normally Lacan figures this as an internal or intersubjective relation between the object and the bit of the real through alienation and separation – or the introduction of the symbolic. What’s needed for our purposes, however, is simply (Ha!) a reformulation of objet a in terms of exo-relations.

Sticking to fantasy, for Lacan, as Bruce Fink notes, “Object a, as it enters into [one’s] fantasies, is an instrument or plaything with which subjects do as they like, manipulating it as it pleases them, orchestrating things in the fantasy scenario in such a way as to derive a maximum of excitement therefrom” (60). Objet a, for our purposes, maintains its excess of immediacy – ready to excite, horrify, or perturb – yet, we recognize also that it does not come from the receiving object, but is a (by)product of an other object. In this way it is doubly excessive – in excess of containment since it escapes the first object and in excess of reception since it always perturbs the “natural” state of the receiving object. Regardless, what is important to note in the quote from Fink is that objet a is always translated in whatever way the receiving object wishes. Why is this important?

Well, since every object interprets or translates in their own way, we have to assume that there is a purpose behind this choice. For Lacan this purpose shows up in the dual movement of alienation and separation – or the punch in the matheme. Quickly, we can think of alienation as asking the subject to choose (either/or = S/S’). Immediately, the subject finds problems with her choice because of the Other – something is missing – and continues on a path of neither/nors in an endless chain of signifiers in order to fulfill her (his) desire (S’, S’’,…Sn). The purpose, then, behind this double movement or punch, is the subject’s development of a fantasy in order to deal with who she is for the Other – she is neither this nor that nor that, etc.

For our purposes, the punch represents the same two operations, yet with slightly different consequences. In the moment of alienation, the split object can either be perturbed or not. If not, the object still chooses, and thus is confronted by the neither/nor of separation. In our understanding of separation the object doesn’t choose between signifiers, but instead is forced to translate the objet a in to something else – for it is neither this nor that. Every object, therefore, is forced to deal with the excesses of other objects. And it is in this excess contained in every object that we begin to understand the rhetorical purpose behind translation. Objects translate not because they want or need the other object, but because parts of other objects are forced upon them constantly. In order to maintain a certain level of contentment, as a unified object, they must constantly deal with the perturbations of other objects.

Ontological Question?

What is a question? Not why do we question, but ultimately what is it that a question is? Is it an object? Does it have properties? Linguistically we can say they do, right? Or do questions exist as a form of translation? When we question someone or something what are we doing? Are we looking for information? Are we critiquing their points or egging them on? Are we attempting to invoke ideas, thoughts, differences, or affects? Or, are all questions doing just the same thing – waiting for a response? If so, who responds? Why do they respond? Is there a felt sense of duty to respond – a respons-ibility? Or are we asking questions in order to answer previous questions? If so, whose? Yours? Mine? Or, perhaps, Heidegger’s? Wasn’t Heidegger fascinated by questions? But, what were Heidegger’s questions? Wasn’t one of them the question of the meaning of Being? Wasn’t another the fundamental question of metaphysics, or why is there something instead of nothing? Didn’t he also ask, “What is a thing?” Are we now asking these same questions? Do we still not know what a thing is? Or was that the point of Heidegger’s question – to get at knowledge? Is that our point of asking the same question? Or do we have another question? What are the questions we are searching for in this new object-oriented way of thinking? Are we actually worried about things? If so, what are we worried about? Are we worried that objects can’t or won’t present themselves? Or are we determined to dethrone the human subject from its place in philosophy by focusing on things? Yet what happens if we are simply worried about things? Is there an ethics in dealing with things – even if this “dealing with” is a letting-be? In other words, what do we do with things? Can we, humans, even discuss things? What if Heidegger was correct when he said inherent in human Dasein is an incessant violence – that we find humans the uncanniest of the uncanny because of this reciprocal tension between dike and techne (Intro to Metaphysics)? Did he mean that humanity is the violent one, the one who oversteps his bounds in everything it does? Or did he mean that humanity, in its need to separate itself from the all encompassing, gathering-together of being, this real that is real for everything, is always battling for a place of its own, a unique clearing? And is not one way of clearing, of disclosing that is characteristic of the human, to ask questions? So, again, I have to ask: What question(s) are we asking in object-oriented philosophy?

Allusion and Influence: How to Say and Do Something Without Having to Say or Do It

In Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Kant argues that:

On the contrary, I say that as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently, I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies. This word merely means the appearance of the thing, which is the unknown to us but is not therefore less real. Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary. (298 - pg.33).

In Prince of Networks Harman states:

When the hammer surprises us with its breakdown, the exact character of this surprise can admittedly be described by various predicates. But note that ‘surprise’ is only the phenomenal result of the previously concealed hammer. The veiled, underground hammer cannot be identified with the surprises it generates, since these merely allude to its existence. (Allusion and allure are legitimate forms of knowledge, but irreducible to specific predicates.) (225)

And in a recent blog post he gives us another statement on allusion:

The point is that you don’t just have the options of saying something or not saying it. There is also a way of saying something without saying it: we allude to it. The same is true of thinking: it is quite easy to think of something without thinking it in the full-blown sense: “The tree that exists outside thought” is such a case. Here, I allude to the tree. As Levi wonderfully put it earlier this fall, my inability to “know” the tree in the full sense is turned from an obstacle to realism and metaphysics into the very condition of it.

For Kenneth Burke in Grammar of Motives, on the crossing over the gap between the phenomenal and noumenal realms:

The thinkable but unknowable noumenal realm, then, was taken [by Kant] as the ground of the phenomenal realm. But we slid over a Grammatical embarrassment. If the phenomenal is the realm of relationships, and the noumenal is the realm of the things-in-themselves (i.e., without relationships), just how could there be a bond between the two realms? … Kant compromised a weasel word, saying that the noumenal “influences” the phenomenal. (198).

My question is, then, what's the point for rhetoric? Isn't allusion just another "weasel word"? If we can't ever know objects by way of language and objects never fully let themselves appear in the first place, what's left? To speculate? On what? To allude to or speak of influences? What for?

Or does this involve the rhetorician becoming a constant mediator? A babbling machine that is always alluding, explicating surprises, and arousing influences? The rhetorician, instead, becomes a stepping stone in the walkway between the thing-in-itself and the language we use to describe it. It seems to me that to practice rhetoric in an object-oriented philosophy is less about persuasion of action, than it is about persuasion of language. To say something without saying it means that we must spend even more time focused in on the words we use, the examples we give, and perhaps objects we choose to discuss - in effect, to bring poetry back into the equation.

Time and Object-Centered Rhetoric

In perhaps a more rhetorical question, Larval Subjects in his most recent post asks his readers, “What is time?” He points to the seeming paradox of light speed travel uncovered by Einstein's general and special relativity, and in an interesting move discusses time in terms of Leibniz's Monadology and principles of non-contradiction and self-identity. And although I'm sure Larval is not expecting an answer to his post, especially one that goes beyond (perhaps in left-field as I seem to do) it, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to begin discussing what I propose to be an object-centered rhetoric that will lead us ultimately to a construction of an object-centered temporality.

Ultimately what Einstein discovered is that time is relative to the subject and the location of the subject, so that if a person were to travel at the speed of light away from the earth while another stayed on earth, the person traveling away from the earth at the speed of light would actually experience less time passing by than the stationary one. Time, then is relative to the observer and location. However, what if we talk instead about objects instead of observers? What then?

Most rhetoric that deals with objects deals with them from the standpoint of an observer. So that for instance when talking about a book and a table, they consistently say something like, “the book is located on the table” or “the book is located on top of the table.” Both of these are still observations – that is, observations from a third perspective or an observer. An object-centered rhetoric, instead, attempts to discuss the encounter of the book and the table from both the perspective of the book and the table. So that statements like the one's above become something like: “From the point of view of the table, the book is located above it” and “From the point of view of the book, the table is located below it”. See here how simply changing our use of words and language creates a more inclusive and less observer-centered way of talking about objects. Also, what this does is that it allows the book and the table to exist in their own right, not tied to the observer, whom might have a motive or create a generic hierarchy from which to classify the book as being superior to the table (or vice versa). Object-centered rhetoric also allows objects to be approached from all angles. So that the two object-centered sentences just uttered actually are that – two individual, different sentences. If we stick with our observer-centered rhetoric, the book and the table become synonymous with each other in their encounter, so that what is ultimately being stated is that the encounter is what is important. Instead, object-centered rhetoric places the object(s) at the center of the speech act, requiring the encounter to be explained from different perspectives, without favoring one over the other.

There might be a couple objections that might occur with such rhetoric, namely: A) saying the book is located on top of the table is the same thing as saying that from the table's perspective the book is located above it and B) that using such rhetoric makes sure that you could never fully understand any interaction or encounter between two objects whatsoever.

When I ask for directions or give them, I always have to listen for or make statements such as “it will be on your right” or “you'll see it on the left, if you are going south”. As far as directions are concerned, these are the types of sentences you (as a lost soul) want to hear, for they orient you to what you are looking for, where you are going, and where you might find it. If I were to just tell you, “it's on this road,” a million different questions would spring to mind: “Which direction, north or south?” “Where on the road, or how far down or up the road?” “Will it be on my left or right?” Answering any or all of these questions will put the traveler closer to the destination and with more accuracy. Therefore, the speaker or direction-giver would have to orient him/herself to how and where they are traveling, as well. So that in saying that “heading south, it will be on your left”, one is also saying that a) you will be facing this direction, b) do not look right, as there is nothing of interest on that side, c) if you head north you will not see it, and d) if you miss it, and turn around, you will be heading north and therefore it will be on your right and not your left.

However, by making a statement such as “the book is on top of the table” is tantamount to saying, the place you are looking for is on this road. It fails to orient the location and observer. From which direction is the book located “on top” of the table? What if I look at it from underneath the table, is the book still there? Or if I'm looking at it from above, couldn't I assume that the table is actually below the book? Object-centered rhetoric then places the objects as points of observation, as focal points from which all spatial location is then made available. For example, when I claimed earlier that from the table's perspective, the book was located above it, I was not only making a statement as to the relation of the book and the table, but I am also stating that this relation is relative to the table – that only from the table's perspective can the book be located above it. And, the same goes for the book's perspective. In this sense, the book and the table are given back their unique perspectives, perspectives that are equally important in understanding the relation between the two objects.

And this brings us to our second problem, that using such rhetoric makes sure that you could never fully understand any interaction or encounter between two objects whatsoever. In response to this I would like to ask another question, what purpose is there to understanding an encounter in its entirety? Is this even possible from an observer-centered rhetoric? I propose that any object-centered rhetoric is never exhaustive in describing an encounter. We can see proof for this when in an earlier post we discussed the encounter as the propagation of the event (E), which creates meaning stretched out over time. The meaning of an encounter is the immediate result of such an object-centered utterance. So, from the books perspective, meaning is created when the table is seen as being below it. How much meaning, what type of meaning, and what importance does the meaning have, are all questions we will leave unanswered for now. But, what I've hopefully done is shown the importance of object-centered rhetoric, so that we can now discuss the object's temporality.

Before we begin, I would like to add another diagram to our growing catalog:

As you can see, we have kept all of our previous parts of the object, and only added a few lines. Each line represents a movement of time and thus a temporalizing of sorts. For the most part, the lines originate in the thing-itself (A) and move outward. The only exception is the line that connects the encounter (B) with event (E). But, before we get into this exception, lets look more closely at the other lines. If you will note, the lines originating from (A) move outward, almost as if the object were expanding. Keep in mind, though, that such expansion is in no way an expansion of space (which I will discuss in a later post) but is a temporal expansion. By this I mean simply that each object moves through time in its own way – that is, time is relative to each object. It moves away from its pure Being towards its non-Being, but each object does so at its own rate. Therefore, a flower will have a different temporal existence than say a Styrofoam cup; however, each object continues to temporally expand until this non-Being is reached. Why so many lines? Well, simply put, because each object temporally expands in all directions. So that from the object's perspective time is felt in all parts, in all realms, and in all encounters, events and movements. Think of your body, so that you feel time not only mentally but you feel it when your nails grow, every time you realize you need a hair cut, etc. So that every object (here, your body) temporally expands in many directions.

Finally, we might note that the line connecting the encounter (B) with event (E) takes a different direction with regard to those originating from (A). This is because time here is also an encounter, but an encounter that does not originate from the object, yet encounters the object, and continues outside of the object itself. For example, I eat a really tasty orange. In this encounter, meaning is formed (regardless of whether it is “oranges are good” or “this particular variety of oranges are tasty”). But this meaning is formed out of the utterance and continues past the orange's (the object's) non-being – for I've effectively eaten the orange. Instead, this encounter has a temporality unto itself. So that if we have to think time relative to the object (or orange), we must also think of time as relative to the encounter and thus connecting encounter (B) with event (E). Does this time line end? Well, like we said when we discussed Porter's book on (M)eaning, meaning only becomes non-consequential (and thus meaningless) when all of the possible meanings have been exhausted or are no longer consequential. Time for the encounter (B) then should be seen in terms of consequentiality, for every encounter (B) immediately produces an event (E), which is and moves outside of the object proper.

Every object, then, is part of at least two (but really quite a bit more) temporalities – the temporality in itself and that of its encounters. Our only problem then is to shift our language from the temporal nature of discussing our encounters with the object to a language that discusses the object-itself in all of its expanding temporal qualities.