joseph deane final report

7/28/2019 Joseph Deane Final Report

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The RIBA Aedas Stephen Williams Scholarship 2011-2012

FINAL YEAR REPORT

Joseph Deane


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Graduate Design Project

The Maker and the Made: An Alternative Legacy

by Joseph Deane


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P R O L O G U E

Any product can take on a lie o its own,and may come to dominate the living

labour that makes it. Te nature o things

is indeed to become non-human actors.

-Kirsch and Mitchell, Te Nature o Tings: Dead Labor,Nonhuman Actors, and the Persistence o Marxism

An Atom. A Shoe. A Foot.Indian Ink on Vellum

Archaeologists discern whether ossilised humans wore primitive

shoes by the size o their metatarsal bones, which decreased in size notthrough genetic devolution, but during the lie-time o the wearer.

Humans developed shoes rom the dermis o other animals to increasetheir physiological capacity, but the inanimate have a way o exercisingtheir own agency. Te things we make, eventually return to make us.


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N A T U R E S M A K E C U L T U R E S . C U L T U R E S M A K E N A T U R E S .

We are at the crossroads, where, aced with the autistic, blind, dea andmute violence o our mechanisms o technological, industrial, mercantile andhuman domination, nature reactswith violence and without warning, in aaltering o the original chaosin mutiny against the organization o men

unpredictable in spite o our seismographic sciences.

- Franois Roche, Introduction to a Sest Pass Ici


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Tyres

Between 2000 and 2009 there have been 29uvially dominated closures o the Tames

Barrier. Prior to this there had been only 10 in 18years.

On average Londons sewers overow 50 times per

year... dispensing an estimated 39,000,000 tonneso raw sewage directly into the Tames and its

tributaries. With population increase, this gureis predicted to rise to 70,000,000 tonnes by 2020.

Presently, 16 million tons o sewage seep into theriver Lea every year.

Overows at Abbey Mills Pumping Station arecurrently responsible or 40% o the discharge into

the River Lea.

When completed, the current 190m upgradeworks at Beckton are expected to only be sucient

until 2021.

B Y A C C E P T I N G T H E P O S S I B I L I T Y O F F L O O D I N G , C A N A N A L T E R N A T I V E L E G A C Y

P L A N P R O V I D E A N O P T I M I S T I C F U T U R E F O R A


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I L L U S T R A T I N G

A G E N C Y

Te Spatial Consequences o Atoms

Spatial diagrams. (Six rom extended series)

op Le to Bottom Right:

Construction worksPrevailing winds deposit silt in a concentrated area o the river.Te minerals therein attract bacteria. Tese consume oxygen,changing the entire ecology o part o the river.

Fat AccumulationSaturated ats consumed by Londoners congeal as they traveldown sewers, reducing apertures o sewer lines and causingoverows, changing the ecology o their surroundings.

Isostatic RecoveryLondon is thirty centimeters lower than it was y years ago;sinking as a result o a glacier that passed over Scotland. Asparticles in the earth move against gravity there, those under

London are moving to take their place.

idal BehaviourTe molecular attraction o atoms: wo attractant bodies pullliquids around the earth and through solid matter.

Urban Heat IslandAtoms create weathers: As atoms vibrate, they increase theenergy o their neighbours. E xpanding, decreasing in density,those without bonds move up. Other move in. Weathers ensue.

Wastewater OverowHuman inrastructure is xed. With interminable persistence,matter will always escape such structures at the earliestopportunity.


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3 6 Y E A R S :

Dilapidated sewersOver-stretched treatment plants

Peak phosphateFat blockages

Increased urban run-oErratic climatic conditions

Reduced tidal deence

S H I T H A P P E N S .


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Te Nonhuman Masterplan

Emergence o the Inhabited Wetland


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Braided River Heighteld

Mineral ows


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Te Nonhuman Masterplan

circa. 2060


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CHP

Methane

Building material

Domestic ertiliser

Surplus WastewaterMineral exports

Railway Freight Line

City diet

City Catchment

Sewer fow meters

North Outall Sewer

River LeeAbbey Mills

Rerouted Canal Water

Sewage Overfow

Inorganic minerals

River Catchment Mineral settlement

Water

City Consumption

Reuse Material

A12 road way

Public Axis

Community space

Centralised recycling

Local reuse markets

Data Barometers

Nonhuman habitation

Organic compounds

o-site mining

ad-hoc mineral trawlers

pH/mineral measures

velocity measures

Digital agents / drones

Polluted Water

Schools

Cottage Industries

local smallholdings

recycling / hacking

3D printing

mineral trading

Plastics

Organic matter

Markets

Loam elds

Livestock

Agricultural produce

Mineral arming

Isostatic Recoveryidal fowSoutherly Winds

Flooding Sinking ground levelFlood Winds

Olympic Stadium

Acetogenic Bacteria

Sludge

Sewer Soap

Bio ltration

Anaerobic Digesters

UV Sterilisers

Arcelor Mittal

Sewer mining

Sewage

Water

Fat

Recycling acility

{ low velocity }=

toxic loam elds

Heavy metals

{unsuitable or human

Aquatics Centre

Aquaculture ponds

Water Hyacinth

Algae focation

Mosquito Fish

Freshwater Bass

Slow Sand Filtration

Mosquito Shrimp

Leisure

Aquatics Centre

Aquaculture ponds

Water Hyacinth

Algae focation

Mosquito Fish

Freshwater Bass

Slow Sand Filtration

Mosquito Shrimp

mineral trawling

Pioneer species

Abandoned housing

Ruin Fields

Tird Nature

mineral deposition

plant litter & lea mold

{ high velocity velocity }=

established waterways

nomadic allotmentsresource extraction

toxic hydroponic arming

allotment produce

{ high mineral yield }=

permanent settlement

stercorary houses

exothermic heat

domestic yield

stercorary units


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River Lea catchment area. Te bounds o the masterplan extend to deviceslocated o site

Te working model or networked mineral buoy

Arduino circuit board or network devices

Bespoke weight guide

Fishing Weight

Plastizote waterproong layer with adjustable circuit mounting system 02

Te Masterplan looks to progressions in systems biology ornding emergent models o planning and building. On themicro-scale, small devices will be networked into the systemas part o the internet o things. In this context, machines,many o which will be situated o-site, become active parts o aresponsive network.

03

04

05

06

Te Cybernetic Masterplam

M I N E R A L B U O Y S


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02

Building as ertiliser

aked sewage efuent is compressed in so-called sludge cakes.ere, such material is employed as a building material: An

sulator and a ertiliser.

Te conceptual model explores this process. Te erodingembers represent the invisible particles o the air. As the modelodes, it deposits its mineral content on the canvas below in an

ncontrollable process echoing natural processes.

uch decomposition re-congures our understanding o buildingnd landscape as intimately interrelated elements.

R E A T I V E D E C A Y


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I N H A B I T I N G

I N F R A S T R U C T U R E

From rawler to Allotment to House

1. rawler otation deck2. rawler house

3. Structural service core4. Stercorary units

5. Vertical streets6. Stair circulation

7. Service crane8. Vertical allotment decks

9. Internal allotment supports10. External allotment supports

11. Domestic stercorary bladders12. Communal methane storage

13. Individual inhabited truss preab unit14. Stacked preab units

15. Compressed sludge acade panel16. External support rame17. Ancillary rame support


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Graduate Thesis

Me/We (or) An Investigation into the Agency of Nonhumans

by Joseph Deane


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(or) An Investigation into the Agency of the Nonhuman

Joseph Deane

MA ArchitectureRoyal College of Art

Word count: 9972

WE

WE


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Contents

List of Figures p.7

Prologue p. 9

Preface p. 11

e Cleave p. 17

Sum, Ergo Cogito p. 28

I Am Many p. 37

Cheese and Worms p. 51

Conclusion p. 65

Epilogue p. 68

Bibliography p. 70


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List of Illustrations

Fig. 1 Robert Fludd, Integr Natur Speculum Artisque Imago (1617) http://ouhos.org/2011/09/02/undergraduate-research-in-the-collections/

Fig. 2 Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana (1579) http://www.stanford.edu/class/engl174b/chain.html

Fig. 3 Ramon Llull, Liber de ascensu et descensu intellectus (1304)http://www.biology-direct.com/content/4/1/43

Fig. 4 Matthias Grnewald,e Temptation of St. Anthony (1515) http://www.abcgallery.com/G/grunewald/grunewald23.html

Fig. 5 Michelangelo Caetani, Dante Alighieris Scheme of the Universe (1855) http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/boe/img/g091.jpg

Fig. 6 Rene Descartes, Illustration from Trait de lhomme (1664)

https://reader009.{domain}/reader009/html5/0405/5ac5e642cb728/5ac5e663335a8.jpg

Fig. 7 Parasitic Helminth Wormhttp://www.usuhs.mil/mic/Davies/Research.html

Fig. 8 Church of Light, Osaka, JapanAuthors own

Fig. 9 e Blind Mans Stickhttp://farm1.static.ickr.com/19/110136322_dc9973066d.jpg

Fig. 10 Pre-Cambrian Stromatolites

http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/cfprojects/photodb/Photo_Detail.cfm?PhotoID=204

Fig. 11 Ribonucleic Acid Protocell http://exploringorigins.org/protocells.html

Fig. 12 Micrograph of a Polycrystalline Metalhttp://ookaboo.com/o/pictures/picture.large/21749074/Micrograph_of_a_polycrystalline_metal

Fig. 13 Saidas Mountain http://www.demotix.com/news/57416/garbage-mountain-saida


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8


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Prologue

not in a mans shapehe approves the praise, he that walks lightning-naked on the Pacic, that

laces the suns with planets,e heart of the atom with electrons: what is humanity in this cosmos? For

him, the lastLeast taint of a trace in the dregs of the solution; for itself the mould to

break away from, the coalTo break into re, the atom to be split.

Robinson Jeers


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Robinson Jeffers poem speaks of a violent creative force1. Not an anthropomorphic

entity, nor a divinity with human sensibilities, but a chaotic agency immanent in the material

world. Humans remain in the dregs of this totality because they persist in considering

themselves as separate from its solution. To Jeffers, humans are the product of such vitality,

not the measure of it; as such if we are to truly understand ourselves we should seek to

deconstruct the imperium of humanity altogether, and instead search out the life of the

nonhuman.

The origin of my fascination with this subject is very personal in nature. Prolonged

interests in the phenomenological inter-relationship between the human body and the gestalt

material world, as well as the spatio-temporal context of such materialitys, have led me to

posit certain questions: As artists and designers we are used to working on matter, but do we

ever pause to consider whether matter works on, or through, us? Is it possible that the

nonhuman bodies2

that we are so used to considering inanimate might actually be capable of

subverting our will, or inverting our temperament, for instance? Likewise we are used to

exerting our creative agency or intentionality upon nonhuman bodies, but to what extent do

such bodies exercise their own creative intents independent of human intervention? Seldom

do we ask these fundamental questions, and yet their implications are critical to our practice.

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PREFACE


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12 Preface

For me, architectural manifestos such as Le Corbusiers When the Cathedrals were

White3, and Georg Simmels Die Ruine

4seemed to exemplify the underlying desire of

humans to see themselves and their material creations as isolated from the spatio-temporaleffects of Nature. Moreover, and what is pivotal to our study, they spoke of an on-going

tendency in artistic discourse to undermine the life of materials beyond human intentionality.

Such observations led me to pursue these ideas further, and seemed to reveal a persistent

historic trend in occidental philosophy to place the human, (as considered the superlative

agent), above the mechanistic structures of nature. However, in light of the scientific

advancements made over the past one hundred years, it was my suspicion that such

hierarchical dualisms may no longer be tenable, and as such warranted a thorough reappraisal.

There is evidence that such agent-structure binaries have permeated all fields of cultural

discourse. As such to question the agency of nonhuman bodies is to reconsider the normative

presumptions under which we, as designers, operate.

While a study of the historical emergence of such ontological-hierarchies could quite

easily warrant a thesis in itself, we must nevertheless attempt to briefly disclose their origins

if we are to discern whether such suppositions remain tenable. As such, the first chapter of

this study will include a concise excursus through the geneses of such anthropocentric

notions. With an informed understanding of the conditions of their emergence, we will then

attempt to deconstruct these hierarchies. This will be achieved in three ways:

We shall begin by questioning the normative definition of agency itself; anchored as

it is to the conscious human subject. As such, we shall examine whether the essential

agential faculties of consciousness and reason are as efficient as we would first assume. By

consulting recent findings in neuroscience, we will also attempt to deconstruct the mind-body

dualism by examining the extent to which the Cartesian concept of an immaterial mind is

affected by the gestalt materiality of the body.

If human intentionality is found to be susceptible to material influence, we will then

begin to examine how nonhuman bodies might exercise their own agency upon it. We shall

also attempt to simultaneously deconstruct another dualism; that of the human body as

distinct from its surroundings. Addressing issues prevalent in cellular biology we might be

able to establish the extent to which the subjective human is made up of many nonhuman

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bodies cohabiting and co-effecting its cognition, will and behaviours, thus extending our

understanding of the potentiality of nonhuman agency further still.

Finally, having examined the extent to which a conglomerate agency operatesbetween human and nonhuman bodies, we will examine developments in modern Physics

which may permit a new understanding of vibrant matter that negates distinctions between

animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic life. In this way, we might begin to recognise a

universally applicable concept of agency that operates far below the boundaries of human

control, and of which we thus become a small, but irremovable part.

It should be noted before we embark on this enquiry, however, that this topic remains

in its relative infancy, and the ambitions of the investigation are considerable. As such we are

unlikely to conclude this study with a firm proposal for a new definition of agency. We will

hope, rather, to have begun to establish the lines of philosophical and scientific enquiry that

might enable us to investigate this phenomenon further still5.

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I have no longer any taste for these renements you call life,but shall dive again instead into brute matter.

Ralph Waldo Emerson


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In order to better understand how and why our contemporary disregard for inanimate

matter has emerged, as well as the repercussions this has had on our human-centric notions of

agency, it is essential that we briefly examine the historical circumstances under which these

attitudes were born, as well as the extent to which they have permeated contemporary socio-

cultural practice. While it could be suggested that such distinctions between human and

nonhuman originated in Cartesian dualism, this would actually represent a grossly reductive

understanding. Although it is true that Descartes division between the res cogitans and the

res extensa has been hugely influential in the forming of contemporary mechanistic attitudes

towards nonhuman bodies, it appears that Descartes was in fact struggling to ally his

mechanistic science and philosophy with pre-established theological hierarchies of being6.

Such hierarchies are particularly well exemplified in Judeo-Christian art. The Great

Chain of Being, for example, is one of the most popularly circulated Christian diagrams, and

is concomitantly one of the clearest and most explicit examples of historically established

onto-theological hierarchies. Based on Aristotles Scala Naturae (350BC), this ladder of life

proposed a categorisation of organisms that expressed their ascending levels of potentiality7.

It is the twin notions of agentic capacity and essentialism that makes The Great Chain of

Being essential to our study, as it created a stratification of vitality while simultaneously

making explicit delineations between organisms. This has been scrupled by academics such as

Arthur Lovejoy, who identified it as the greatest synthetic scheme in pre-Darwinian

biology8

insofar as it engendered the conception that humans held more efficacy than any

other organism in nature.

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THE CLEAVE


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20 e Cleave

What the Great Chain of Being added to Aristotles ladder, however, was the

depiction of a divinity at its zenith. What is particularly noteworthy about this is not

necessarily the inclusion of a divine entity per se, but the fact that the paradise in which thisGod resided was shown to be physically separated from a material earth. This was conveyed

in various ways, though always with the same ideological message: Whether shown separated

by numerous celestial spheres [fig.1], protected by a bank of angelic beings [fig.2], or simply

within a walled, hovering kingdom [fig.3], the stark existential division that this implied

between an extracorporeal paradise and the material world is at once made clear. Such notions

were further enforced through the persistent anthropomorphic representation of Angels. By

contrast Demons, as the bearers of pain and temptation, were commonly represented by

animals [fig. 4]. Dantes Scheme of the Universe even goes so far as to depict Hell as the

figurative heart of the earth, with its respective entrance being through a dark wood at the foot

of mountain [fig. 5]. The theological propaganda is at once made explicit: The world of nature

is chaotic and dangerous, and mans salvation lies in his ultimate liberation from the confines

of the material world. This transcendent theology was a sharp distinction to that of the

animistic polytheisms that prevailed in pre-Socratic belief. As Diana Coole asserts, the

productivity that had for the ancients been internal to and of nature was now located in a God

whose agency was external to it, with nature persisting as a mechanical system9. The

relevance of this to our study is critical, for it at once removed the notion of agency or vitality

from nonhuman Nature. This notion was fiercely enforced, with assertion to the contrary

considered a blasphemy10

.

As a being similarly enslaved to the material world, one might assume that the

atheistic materialism that emerged during the Enlightenment such as Baron dHolbachs The

System of Nature (1770)11

would see the Human assigned a mechanistic existence similar to

the rest of Nature. However, it was Descartes dualism that allowed humans to maintain a

degree of theological exceptionalism above all nonhuman matter12

. Whereas animals and

material matter were destined to exist as mere extended objects (res extensa), or at best

automatons, humans as res cogitans would remain superlative agents because of what Gilbert

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Ryle later termed the ghost in the machine13

. As expressed in Descartes mantra, cogito

ergo sum, it was this ghost, the thinking, willing and ensouled cogito that rendered the

human agent unique. As Jane Bennett postulates, humans thus came to be considered the

most vital in the sense of being the most animate or alive and thus powerful, and also in thesense of possessing the greatest degree of freedom or capacity to act in ways that cannot be

reduced to their situational or environmental determinants14

. It is important to understand in

the context of this study that the question of both existence and agency are thus drawn from

theological concepts in which soul, consciousness and existence are considered synonymous.

It is also important to discern the degree to which such dualisms have permeated

contemporary culture, and thus the extent to which such a philosophy has inadvertently

affected normative attitudes towards nonhuman life. In his critique on Descartes, Maurice

Merleau-Ponty identifies that such anthropocentric presumptions have inevitably created a

modern scientific perception of nature that is entirely theological in its infrastructure15

.

Similarly, Arthur Schopenhauer asserted that the vestiges of religious taxonomies have

persisted throughout modern philosophy16

. Today, political philosophers such as John Gray

and scientists like Jacques Monod contend that such tendencies continue in the guise of

Humanism17. As Gray insists, over the past two hundred years, philosophy has shaken off

Christian faith. It has not given up Christianitys cardinal error the belief that humans are

radically different from all other animals Our image of ourselves is formed from our

ingrained belief that consciousness, selfhood and free will are what define us as human

beings, and raise us above all other creatures.18

Furthermore, there are indications of the theological ambition towards extra-corporeal

existence persisting in contemporary culture, with such ideas being explored in the writings of

various cybernetic pioneers. Works such as William Gibsons Neuromancer19

, Hans

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In this way, we may come to substantiate Nietzsches proclamation that the

nonhuman agents within nutrition, place, climate are inconceivably more important than

everything one has taken to be important so far [i.e.,] God, soul, virtue, sin,

beyond, truth, eternal life26

. We should attempt to practice what Diana Coole calls anontological agnosticism as to who or what exercises agency. For by attempting to

deconstruct the efficiency of the willing human agent, we may open chasms of potentiality

into which new agents can fall and exercise their own powers of influence. Only by doing this

might we hope to arrive at a universal understanding of agency that is, as Gilles Deleuze

describes, ontologically one, formally diverse27

.

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Not only do human beings not form a separate imperium unto themselves; they do noteven command the imperium, nature, of which they are a part.

Benedicte de Spinoza


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The traditions of humanism that we have just examined persist in the contemporary

definitions of agency: It is maintained in political theory that only humans have

consciousness, and that only they are therefore capable of willed, reasoned, and intentional

action28

. These are the qualities that are believed to render humans alone as agential

subjectivities.

In his anti-humanist work, Straw Dogs, John Gray criticises Heideggers Dasein and

Nietzsches overman as persistent versions of Christian-humanist ideas that prioritise the

importance of a human reason above all other agential faculties29

. Similarly, Richard Tarnas

comments in The Passion of the Western Mind that this historic privileging has persisted

further still throughout the postmodernist philosophy that nothing exists outside of

consciousness. In this regard, Tarnas asserts that the modern condition begins as

a Promethean movement toward human freedom, toward autonomy from the encompassing

matrix of nature, toward individuation from the collective, yet gradually and ineluctably

the Cartesian-Kantian condition evolves into a Kafka-Beckett-like state of existential isolation

and absurdity- an intolerable double bind leading to a kind of deconstructive frenzy30

. As

Tarnas states, not only has an anthropocentric ontology asserted itself as the basis of Western

thought, it has also led to an alienating ontological condition, (what he refers to as the

distancing between human and nonhumans), that grossly undermines the importance of the

agential relationships that occur outside of consciousness.

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SUM, ERGO COGITO


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Despite its preoccupation with the importance of consciousness, the agency debate has

seldom concerned itself with whether it is either a unique or exemplary faculty, and as such

we shall take up this task now. Scientists such as Darwin and De Waal have demonstratedindependently that animals such as apes

31and worms

32possess degrees of cognition and/or

intentionality, and as such we should not be so quick to presume that humans are unique in

this capacity. However, attempting to further prove that other nonhuman bodies possess the

faculties of cognition would only serve to reify the notion that reflexive thought is a

prerequisite for agency. The more progressive task would be to instead question the variable

nature of both will and consciousness and the inconsistency of their collective efficacy. Only

by questioning the association of agency with conscious action might we successfully derail

what Giorgio Agamben refers to as the anthropological machine of humanism33, and thus

begin to establish a definition that is liberated from such notions.

Maurice Merleau-Pontys accounts of action in The Phenomenology of Perception

were intended to decentralise the importance of will, reason and intentionality by placing

equal importance on both the motor intentionality of the body and the agential influences of

the life-world that engulfed it. Since the time of its writing, this view has been theoretically

substantiated by findings in the fields of neuroscience and cognitive science which show that

even in beings with high levels of awareness, (including humans, amongst others), both

perception and action emerge without consciousness. As the Nobel-prize winning scientist

Benjamin Libet proves in his investigations into the so-called half-second delay, the

electrical impulses and associated neural activity that initiate an action occur one half of a

second before we make the conscious decision to act: The brain evidently decides to

initiate, or, at the least, prepare to initiate the act at a time before there is any reportable

subjective awareness that such a decision has taken place cerebral initiation even of a

spontaneous voluntary act can and usually does begin unconsciously34

. Thus, the majority

of the actions we execute as agents appear to be the result of unconscious thought.

It has also been shown that as organisms active in the world, we process perhaps

fourteen million bits of information per second. The bandwidth of consciousness is around

eighteen bits. This means we have conscious access to about a millionth of the information

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30 Sum, Ergo Cogito

we use daily to survive35

. The influence of the subconscious thus becomes far more

important to the action of the human agent36

. In light of these facts, how can we defend a

perception of agency that is so intimately bound with the idea of conscious action? It is at

once shown to be an untenable association. This revelation is critical to our study, for not onlydo such findings undermine the hegemony of the willing human agent, but moreover they

suggest that other types of bodies might operate below these thresholds of consciousness in

order to subvert or influence human action. Perhaps the most immediate instance in which the

mind might be influenced is through the qualia of the human body itself.

While the lingering vestiges of Cartesian dualism would have us believe that the

immaterial Mind exists independently from the body, certain revelations in modern

neuroscience categorically undermine the Cartesian concept of a singular homunculus, or

controlling entity responsible for an agents action [fig. 6]. Rodney Brooks, the pioneer of

modern artificial intelligence, has asserted through his research that just as there is no central

representation there is no central system. Each activity connects perception to action directly.

It is only the observer of the creature who imputes a central representation or central control.

The creature itself has none: It is a collection of competing behaviours. Out of the local chaos

of their interactions there emerges, in the eye of the observer, a coherent pattern of

behaviour37

. We thus find humans not to be a distinct dualism of mind and body, devoid of

corporeal influence, but instead more akin to what Francisco Varela has defined as a selfless

self a coherent global pattern that emerges from the activity of simple local components,

which seems to be centrally located, but is nowhere to be found38

. Action, then, is by no

means the construction of an isolated, reasoning mind, but the result of agential bodies

distributed throughout the body. This can be seen as a scientific equivalent of what Merleau-

Ponty has previously called the open and indefinite unity of subjectivity39

.

In recent years several renowned neurologists have conducted research that helps us to

understand the role of the material world in the formation of agential action. In Antonio

Damasios The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of

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Fig. 6 Rene Descartes, Illustration from Trait de lhomme (1664). Descartes believed that all stimuli weretransmitted to a single homunculus or control point. e pineal gland was proposed as the point of contactfor the immaterial mind and thus named the seat of the soul.


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32 Sum, Ergo Cogito

Consciousness40

, and Linda Martin Alcoffs Towards a Phenomenology of Radical

Embodiment41

, both scientists conclude through extensive testing that subjectivities emerge,

(and are repeatedly reformed in plasticity), through seemingly insignificant exchanges with

the material world which operate below the level of consciousness. Not only are our actionsnot decided upon by an immaterial mind, it appears that they in fact emerge directly from our

encounters with matter.

Where established definitions of agency such as those proffered by Lewis and Sibeon

would continue to assert the importance of decision-making as the single most important

criterion of agency42

, we now find such conclusions to be intrinsically flawed because, as

Diana Coole states, they ignore the corporeal and transpersonal dimensions that render

decision-making only ambiguously agentic in their own terms43. In light of these revelations,

we begin to understand agentic action as a complex process which includes the interactions of

multiple actants, rather than the premeditated will of an isolated homunculus. In this way, we

should attempt to adopt a line of enquiry similar to that pursued by Merleau-Ponty in his

posthumously published The Visible and The Invisible, wherein he advocated the need to

eschew notions such as acts of consciousness, states of consciousness, form and

even perception in order to avoid a cutting up of what is lived into discontinuous acts44

.

Only in this way might we be able to further examine a pre-discursive concept of agency that

does not concern itself with notions of will or intentionality, but instead examines agency as

the consequence of complex, reciprocal interactions.

Once again, such philosophical concepts are subtended by modern scientific findings:

In contrast to a Cartesian-Newtonian model that defines action in terms of linear causality,

contemporary scientists such as James Gleik maintain that Systems Theory, Complexity

Theory and Chaos Theory offer us far more accurate representations of the fractal, emergent

relationships that exist between universal bodies45

. Coole acknowledges that such scientific

findings play a increasingly significant role in understanding sociomaterial processes

because they help us to appreciate [bodies] inextricability from a wider natural

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environment46

. For Merleau-Ponty, it is this same complexity, inherent to the life-world, that

creates the fissures and gaps into which subjectivities slip and lodge themselves, or rather

which are the subjectivities themselves47

. In this way, both Coole and Merleau-Ponty

similarly suggest that we are not the product of our will, but rather of our entanglements withother, (sometimes nonhuman), affective bodies. This chaotic interaction between actants is

what Bruno Latour refers to in Pandoras Hope as the slight surprise of action. He echoes

the previous assertions when he proclaims that there are events. I never act. I am always

slightly surprised by what I do. That which acts through me is also surprised by what I do, by

the chance to mutate, to change, and to bifurcate48

. Our continual interactions with the life-

world have the potential to invert our actions and thus create effects that are not entirely our

own. In the absence of an I, the local components to which Varela previously referred

appear to play a significant part in the formation of human action, and must therefore hold an

agency of their own. In this way, nonhuman bodies such as animals, food, stones or electricity

could all potentially become imperatives operating within and alongside mans limited faculty

of conscious intentionality. The nature of such generative encounters thus becomes far more

pertinent to our investigation of agency, and should be examined further.

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Should the truth about the world exist, its bound to be nonhuman.

Joseph Brodsky


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If the mind, as conceived as the patriarch of free will, is found not only to have lost

its role as the stronghold of human reason and intentionality, but also to be influenced by its

own corporeality, what then happens to the question of human-nonhuman agency when this

fortress is, in turn, found to be porous?

As Elizabeth Brumfield articulates in her essay On the Archaeology of Choice, the

term agency has been used historically to refer to the intentional choices made by men and

women as they take action to realise their goals, despite the fact that these actors are socially

constituted beings embedded in ecological surroundings that both define their goals and

constrain their actions49

. In this way Brumfield identifies the perpetual tendency in

contemporary discourse to not only separate humans from Nature, but also to undermine the

degree to which this milieu is affective in its own right. George Boas book, Primitivism and

Related Ideas of Antiquity (1935) contained some sixty-six definitions of Nature in its

appendix50

. If we were to consult modern dictionaries, we would find a definition which

explicitly occludes mans presence51

.

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4

I AM MANY


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38 I Am Many

The etymology of the word Nature comes from the Greek physis, meaning either

to blow or swell up. In spite of the Cartesian definition of nonhuman bodies as

mechanistic extensa or automata, scientific findings since Descartes have repeatedly showncells to have a kind of generative capacity akin to that implied by its etymology. Nearly a

century ago, the embryologist Hans Drieschs investigations into the development of the cells

of sea urchins led him to conclude that cells were pluripotent, and thus inexplicable if

conceived of in mechanistic terms52

. The contemporary term stem cell is a neologism used

to express this same pluripotency; referring to a cell that is able to become any of the various

kinds of cells or tissues of the mature, differentiated organism53

. Henri Bergson, (whose

Creative Evolution (1907) emerged concomitantly with Drieschs lectures on The Science and

Philosophy of the Organism), concluded in light of these revelations; what else can this mean

but that matter extends itself in space, without being absolutely extended therein54

. In this

way, Bergson similarly urges us not to misconceive cellular life in terms of the stable,

quantifiable extensa that Descartes had suggested. Rather in light of such findings it is to be

understood as a continuing expression of becoming that is altogether unpredictable.

The biologist Jacob von Uexkll explored such a phenomenon in his own laboratory

work, adding his own concept of the umwelt, or around world. In Uexklls terms,

organisms and cells alike are not causal machines but are instead fields of immanent,

individual mechanics; continuously reforming in response to their respective umwelts, which

are themselves found to be perpetually re-composing55. In this way, cells and organisms alike

exhibit a form of pre-discursive agency. This theory not only had significant bearing on the

scientific community, but also on philosophers such as Heidegger, Agamben and Deleuze and

Guattari. The significance of Uexkll, Driesch and Bergsons findings are crucial to establish

at the outset of this section of our study; for not only do they overturn a perception of

mechanistic nonhuman life, but moreover they place human and nonhuman bodies in a state

of concrescence with one another.

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With the notion of an impenetrable, isolated homunculus already questioned, the task

now is to examine the extent to which the human mind-body unit is in turn penetrated and

affected by these nonhuman bodies; thus establishing both the nonhuman condition of ourown capacities as agents, and the dynamic agency of such bodies in themselves. A finding of

contemporary science that illustrates this particularly well concerns the emergent composition

of the human organism itself. In Reflexing Complexity, Brian Wynne identifies that the

surprisingly small number of genomes found in the human organism were too few to

sufficiently explain the complexity with which the mature organism emerges. As such,

models of genomic determinism have since been abandoned by the scientific community,

with geneticists instead favouring hypotheses of systems-biology which take into account

nonhuman elements such as dietary intake, climate, hormone levels and chemical stimuli56.

This insight is critical to our study, because it redefines the encounters between humans and

nonhuman bodies not only as affective, but as fundamentally generative. In other words, a

reciprocal relationship between human and nonhuman is a prerequisite for the development of

the human organism.

Existing dichotomies between humans and nature thus indicate a reductive

comprehension of this reciprocity, and as such we must endeavour to seek more accurate

alternatives in the study of somatic agency. As Coole states, paying attention to corporeality

as a practical and efficacious series of emergent capacities thus reveals both the materiality of

agency and the agentic properties inherent in nature itself57

. Pierre Bordieus theory of

habitus and field is particularly noteworthy in this regard. Instead of invoking a system of

linear, dualist relations, these terms were intended to express a porous network of emergent,

co-constitutive power relations. By understanding this relationship as fundamentally

reciprocal, Bordieu intended to escape from under the philosophy of the subject without

doing away with the agent, as well as from under the philosophy of the structure but without

forgetting to take into account the effects it wields upon and through the agent58

. In this way,

the internal is externalised, and the external is internalised. Moreover, and what is critical, the

external field is acknowledged as having its own generative agency. This theory is

consistent not only with the proclamations of Wynne and the Complexity and Systems

Theorists, but it is also conducive with the repeated assertions of phenomenologists and

philosophers such as a Deleuze and Guattari, who proclaim that the real truth of the matter-

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40 I Am Many

the glaring, sober truth that resides in delirium- is that there is no such thing as relatively

independent spheres or circuits59

But far from merely implying a web of relations, what we

are examining herein clearly indicates an agential capacity inherent within such encounters.

We can thus begin to formulate a congregational (rather than atomistic)

understanding of agency in which nonhuman bodies become pivotal. But exactly how, and

where, do these encounters occur? As well as enabling us to identify the various ways in

which bodies merge and exchange agentic properties, a detailed examination of this question

may also help us to deconstruct the notion of the human as an isolated singularity, thus

helping us to further remove any perceived taxonomic divisions between human and

nonhuman life. In Art as Experience, John Dewey asserts that the epidermis is only in the

most superficial way an indication of where an organism ends and its environment begins.

There are things inside the body that are foreign to it, and there are things outside of it that

belong to it de jure if not de facto; that must be taken possession of if life is to continue60

.

The boundaries of the body are thus brought into question. It is not contained, but porous;

extending into the milieu while the nonhuman, similarly, extends into it. Latour affirms that

this is not a new understanding, only one that has been removed from normative thought,

proclaiming that humans, for millions of years, have extended their social relations to other

actants with which, with whom, they have swapped many properties, and with which, with

whom, they form collectives61.

The truth of such assertions is once again being substantiated by modern scientific

findings. The research of Julia Segre and her associates at the National Human Genome

Research Institute has recently established that there are one hundred times as many bacteria

genomes within the human micro-biome than there are human genes62

. Not only is Latour

correct in his assertions, but furthermore in Uexklls terms it would also appear that we are

vastly outnumbered by nonhuman mechanics. Segres research shows that the human elbow

alone hosts six tribes of bacteria. These are performing commensalist roles by processing

the fat it produces and moisturising the skin. Similarly the human immune system is now

known to require parasitic helminth worms for its proper functioning [fig.7]. Recent research

has shown that absence of such parasites (resulting sometimes from excessive antibiotic use)

can lead to various maladies including Crohns disease as well as various autoimmune

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42 I Am Many

diseases, and are as result being reintroduced as a form of treatment63

. Not only are these

nonhumans omnipresent throughout the human, but also it seems that their agency is essential

to our own.

In this way, we begin to understand that the human agent is far from an individual.

There is only what Diana Coole calls the contingent appearing of such agents as

singularities. The appearance of individuals as such should instead be understood as

agentic constellations where agentic capacities manifest a provisional concentration and

integrity64

. This declaration alludes to Deleuze and Guattaris notion of agencement,

translated in English as assemblage. This concept is explored in depth in A Thousand

Plateaus in order to elucidate the various ways in which bodies enhance their efficacy in the

forming of heterogeneous groupings. What is interesting also is the distribution of power

within Deleuze and Guattaris assemblage: There is no controlling or hegemonic body, but

likewise its collective affects are not evenly divisible between all its members. It is an uneven

topography of agency that fluctuates constantly as its values vary, inducing affects that are

often far greater than the sum of its parts65

. Such assemblages manifest themselves in a

plethora of ways: Some, like the human, bacteria and parasitic worms, create a super-

organism that becomes irreducible in its functionality. When comprehended in the terms of

Wynne, Coole, or Deleuze and Guattari, the human is then never more than an intensity of a

particular agentic assemblage. We are never a singular human agent; we are composed by

alterity. With this understanding, we should thus aim to follow John Frows assertion in A

Pebble, a Camera, a Man Who Turns into a Telegraph Pole, that any perceived difference

between human and nonhumans needs to be flattened, read horizontally as a juxtaposition

rather than vertically as a hierarchy of being66

.

However, the human-nonhuman assemblages we have hitherto studied are by no

means the subtlest or the most creative examples that we can draw upon. In Jane Bennetts

illuminating study, The Efficacy of Fat, she studies the ways in which omega-3 fatty acids

have been shown repeatedly to effect human behaviour. Controlled tests with omega-3

supplements have induced a variety of behavioural effects; including a thirty-five percent

reduction of violent offences in tested prisoners; improved symptoms in children with

difficulties in learning, reading, and psychosocial adjustment; improvement in both positive

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and negative symptoms of schizophrenic patients; and consistent inverse correlations

between national rates of fish consumption and cases of depression and bi-polar disorder. She

also demonstrates the converse effects of such compounds, citing tests on rats that have

shown hydrogenated fats to adversely effect memory and cognitive capacity67

. Brian Honeand Anil Doshi express a similar relationship between nonhuman matter and human

behaviour in their study, Environmental Pollution, Neurotoxicity and Criminal Violence,

examining the manner in which uptake of certain minerals in the atmosphere induces complex

chemical reactions in the brain which cause unusually high instances of violent crime.68

What is perhaps most significant about these cases is the fact that inorganic bodies

are showing themselves to be affective agents, forming creative assemblages with humans

that in are not entirely predictable. In Deleuze and Guattaris terms, we might say that such

ingested matter has de-territorialised itself within the body only to re-corporealise in the acts

of the consumer-agent. A body such as this is what Latour refers to as a proto-actant, or

similarly what Michel Serres refers to as a thermal exciter. Serres states that such nonhuman

may be deemed affective agents because it makes the assemblage change state differentially,

it inclines it. It makes the equilibrium of the energetic distribution fluctuate. It does it. It

irritates it. It inflames it. Often this inclination has no effect. But it can produce gigantic ones

by chain reactions or reproduction69

. Serres view further alludes to a distributive account of

agency wherein the degrees of intensity and concomitant effects remain unpredictable. Like

the pluripotency of organic cells, such inorganic matter is also to be considered a nonhuman

agent capable of emergent rather than causal effects within an assemblage. This

understanding is pivotal; for when we relate these various findings to our previous

investigations into the subverted role of consciousness, we may begin to build an

understanding of agency as a series of accumulated propositions between bodies, rather than

an intentionality executed by any one single body. Thus agency might be better understood as

a trajectory of action resulting from semi-chaotic encounters.

However, in order to push this notion of a conjoined agency further still, we should

attempt to discern whether objects and bodies within the extended environment can similarly

act as agents without necessarily requiring a biological reaction or discrete ingestion per se.

With this task in mind, we return to Merleau-Pontys enquiries within The Visible and the

Invisible. In this work he developed his notion of the chiasm; or the conceptual

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44 I Am Many

intertwining of bodies such that any distinction between them is rendered obsolete. In the

simple act of touching, for example, Merleau-Pontys identifies three dimensions of

reciprocal encounter between bodies. In the third of these he states the touching subject

passes over to the rank of the touched, descends into the things, such that the touch is formedin the midst of the world and as it were in the things

70. This is particularly noteworthy

because such a concept alludes to a creative, metaphysical exchange between bodies that

occurs not through bio-chemical process, but simply through the encounter itself [fig. 8].

Once again, we may find support for such philosophical proclamations within

scientific research. The pioneer of cybernetics and behavioural sciences, Gregory Bateson,

examined the manner in which objects form affective relationships with human and

nonhuman bodies. Through his work in cybernetics and behavioural sciences, he developed

his theory of the Blind Mans Stick in order to convey how such objects become extensions

of a particular body or organism. But far from being reduced to prosthetic function, Bateson

believed that such transpersonal encounters become part of our cognitive architecture71

. His

theories have since been progressed within the scientific community, with practicing

neuroscientists such as Lambros Malafouris conducting research into what is now termed

cognitive archaeology. Malafouris cites the parody of the Blind Mans Stick as that which

led to the contemporary understanding of the functional anatomy of the human brain [as] a

dynamic bio-cultural construct subject to continuous ontogenetic and phylogenetic

remodelling by behaviourally important and socially embedded experiences. These

experiences are mediated and sometimes constituted by the use of material objects and

artefacts (like the stick) which for that reason should be seen as continuous and active parts of

the human cognitive architecture72

[fig. 9]. Malafouris branch of archaeological study is

concerned specifically with the agency that has historically recurred in material

engagement, examining our understanding of an extended or distributed cognition that is

thus immanent within nonhuman bodies.

Bernard Stiegler further addresses the anthropological significance of this concept in

the first book of Technics and Time, reasoning that human evolution has shown itself to be

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epiphylogenetic73

; meaning that it emerged as a direct result of our relationship with

nonhuman artefacts (such as crafted tools etc.). What is also noteworthy is that Stiegler refers

to this relationship as morphogenetic, and is thus akin to the pluripotent biological cells in

its generative agential capacity. With regards to Wynnes account of humans genomiccomplexity, we thus begin to understand that not only are nonhuman bodies capable of

inducing salient physiological or behavioural effects, but moreover they are critical to both

human evolution and cognition. As impossible as it is to divide mind and body, so it is

equally inconceivable to separate humans from nonhumans, nature from culture, biota from

abiota. The history of agency appears to be one of folds, of assemblages, of encounters and of

propositions between these bodies. As we enter the final section of our study, we will thus

attempt to explore this idea further.


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Look at the mountain, once it was re.

Paul Cezanne


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We have now begun to formulate a concept of agency that is not so much the product of

a willing singularity as it is an accumulated trajectory of action emerging from encounters

between bodies. In this way we have simultaneously questioned the perceived boundaries

between human and nonhuman such that their agency becomes indistinguishable. However, if

we are to explore the subject of nonhuman agency further still, we must now attempt to

decentre the human altogether and explore an agency within even the most inanimate of

matter. Too often we are prone to prioritise the organic over the inorganic, such is the

ingrained association between agency and willed or intended motion74. It is for this same

reason that inorganic matter was represented at the very bottom of the Great Chain of Being;

as the nadir of existence. It seems all the more imperative, then, for us to illuminate the

vitality of such bodies.

In the sixteenth century a miller from Montereale Valcellina named Menocchio was tried

for heresy by the Christian church for proclaiming that;

'God did not create the world out of nothing at all for in the beginning, all waschaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together: and out of that bulk a

mass formed- just as cheese is made out of milk- and worms appeared in it, and these

were the angels among that number of angels, there was also God, he too having

been created out of that mass at the same time.'75

This serves as a fitting start to our present enquiry; for what was considered five hundred

years ago as a fatal blasphemy, now serves as a parable for two important revelations of

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52 Cheese and Worms

twentieth century science. The first of these refers to the theory of abiogenesis, the process by

which all organic life on earth first emerged from inorganic matter76

[fig.10]. Secondly, the

Copenhagen Interpretation developed by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg during the

1920s, which explains that all matter, from the atomic particle itself to its subatomicdivisions, are scientifically regarded as an inseparable whole under laws of quantum

physics77

. The bulk of which Menocchio spoke might be better interpreted as the so-called

primordial soup, from which a series of chemical reactions are believed to have occurred

which in turn led to the formation of the first nucleic acids. One of these acids, ribonucleic

acid (RNA), is believed to be the form of inorganic pre-cellular life that subsequently evolved

into organic cells. These intriguing bodies are in fact pregenomic chemical and solid-state

agents that, while being inorganic, respond like a cell, containing the information necessary

for their subsequent development and reaction78 [fig.11]. But just as inorganic life gave rise to

the organic through abiogenesis, so did mineral matter reassert itself again in the evolution of

vertebrates. As Manuel de Landa illustrates;

In the organic world soft tissues (gels and aerosols, muscle and nerve) reigned

supreme until 500 million years ago. At that point, some of the conglomerations of

fleshy matter-energy that made up life underwent a sudden mineralisation, and a

new material for constructing living creatures emerged: bone. It is almost as if the

mineral world that has served as a substratum for the emergence of biological

creature was reasserting itself, confirming that geology, far from having been left

behind as a primitive stage of earths evolution, fully coexisted with the soft,

gelatinous newcomers79

Such revelations are crucial to our study, as they highlight both the creativity of inorganic

matter and the reciprocity between organic and inorganic life as fundamentals of evolutionary

history. The inherent creative agency within inorganic macromolecules such as RNA is one of

the most important prerequisites for the emergence of all subsequent forms of agency. While

acknowledgement of this is crucial to our study, further preoccupation with such a specific

type of chemical-state body would limit our understanding of the agency of other forms of

inorganic life. The more difficult task, and the one we shall address further here, is to show

how so-called inanimate mineral matter holds similar powers of agency. In this light, we

shall attempt to examine its lively nature below the threshold of human conscious perception,

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56 Cheese and Worms

from this point as matter-energy, or similarly to use Deleuze and Guattaris terms, matter-

flow85

. Thus in investigating this further we might be able to examine a philosophical model

for a universal agency that transcends all matter as well as the perceived taxonomic divisions

thereof.

The historic philosophy of Lucretius is particularly relevant in this regard. As a

follower of Epicurus and the pre-Socratic Atomists, he was also one of the first philosophers

to advocate a universal, atheistic philosophy of agency. In De Rerum Natura he speaks of

bodies, or primordia, falling in a void; not lifeless, but alive, crashing, swirling and

congealing with one another. As well as not being inert, Lucretius also maintained that matter

differed only from organic to inorganic, human to nonhuman, by degree rather than kind- a

theory substantiated by the aforementioned Copenhagen Interpretation. Furthermore, and

what is critical to our study, is that unlike other historical theories of material vitalism, (such

as Kants Bildungstrieb86

, Drieschs entelechy87

, Bergsons lan vital88

), Lucretius

clinamen, or atomic swerve, was not a teleological import heterogeneous to matter, rather

it was an intrinsic part of its gestalt.

In The Birth of Physics, Michel Serres equates the clinamen of such primordia to the

quarks of modern physics encountering other elementary particles within their turbulent,

immanent milieu. Furthermore, for Serres it is the collisions, congealments and subsequent

deterioration resulting from these same encounters that are the basis for all events, affirming

that wherever one looks, one finds the same model of movement, order and relation- that of

turbulent flows and the clinamen89

. He continues in stating that matter always is or becomes

turbulent. The clinamen is the infinitesimal turbulence, first, but it is also the passage from

theory to practice. And once again, without it, we understand nothing of what goes on90

. It is

for this reason that Lucretius concept of subatomic agency becomes critical, for it sensitises

us conceptually to the scientific reality of the invisible encounters that surround and engulf us.

The synonymy between encounter and agency is thus affirmed once again. Like the

assemblages that we have previously studied, modern physics similarly shows the semi-

chaotic congealing and colliding of bodies to be vital to agency. Such an idea is akin to Louis

Althussers aleatory materialism. In describing the prerequisites for the emergence of

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matter, Althusser proclaims that without swerve and encounter, [primordia] would be

nothing but abstract elements So much that we can say that [prior to] the swerve and the

encounter they led only a phantom existence91

. But like Lucretius and Serres, Althusser

expands the significance of such chaotic encounters by suggesting that all events, includingthe political, economic and social, are born directly from such atomic agency.

The swerve of matter-energy thus becomes the model for a universal, transpersonal

agency that affects all bodies equally. Furthermore, such a concept of agency is congruent

with the new understanding of a complex, non-linear world in which mechanism and

determinism have become untenable in their simplicity. Whereas need for intentional motion

has historically been emphasised in established humanist accounts of agency, in

contemporary theory fractals and bifurcations, intermittencies and periodicities [become]

the new elements of motion, just as, in traditional physics, quarks and gluons are the new

elements of matter. Contemporary science again puts forth an agency of process rather than

state; of becoming rather than being92

. Our studies thus far have already emphasised the

importance of trajectories over intentions in agential action. The semi-chaotic encounters that

occur universally at the molecular level are again found to be generative; taking development

paths that cannot be reduced to mechanic causality;

Inorganic matter-energy has a wider range of alternatives for the generation of

structure than just simple phase transitions There are, for instance, those

coherent waves called solitons Then there are the aforementioned stable states

(or attractors), which can sustain coherent cyclic activity of different types

(periodic and chaotic). Finally there is what we might call nonlinear

combinatorics, which explores the different combination into which entities

derived form the previous processes (crystals, coherent pulses, cyclic patterns)

may enter. It is from these unlimited combinations that true novel structures are

generated. When put together, all these forms of spontaneous structuralgeneration suggest that inorganic matter us much more variable and creative than

we ever imagined93

.

In this way inorganic matter-energy can be seen to be constantly demonstrating immanent,

evanescent and self-organising properties induced through its intricate reciprocal inter-

relationships.

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Deleuze and Guattaris, A Thousand Plateaus is full of lively assemblages and

quivering matter-energies, but it is in inorganic life, or more specifically in metal, that the

authors find their example par excellence of what they refer to as the machinic phylum, the

flow of matter94

. Whereas a normative regard for inorganic life typically assumes a fixedform and matter deemed homogenous

95, what we find upon examining its structure is much

less a matter submitted to laws than a materiality possessing a nomos96

. As Cyril Smith

illustrates in A History of Metallography, like all inorganic matter, metal is polycrystalline in

structure. Interestingly though, metallic crystals are found to be curved. This, Smith states, is

a result of the reciprocal interference of each crystal with its respective neighbours growth.

Similarly these crystals are also varied in shape and size due to the specific pressures induced

once again by their surrounding bodies. Thus the reciprocal encounters between the crystals

give rise to a creative, non-determinable arrangement in metals structure. This interplay

between bodies in turn creates a proliferation of inter-crystalline voids [fig 12]. Not only

this, but when we further address the atomic structure of metal we find that in addition to the

array of atoms within each grain, there are also loose atoms at the interfaces between grains,

which belong to no particular body. Like the flashing charge of the atom itself, each grain of

metal is thus found to be quivering with movement and evanescence. It is the unforeseeable

variation in these atoms and voids created through the encounters of bodies that renders each

mass of metal unique; rendering it with its own properties, its own weaknesses, its emergent

agency, or its nomos.

Inorganic life is thus not to be understood as inanimate or lifeless, rather it is matter

in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of singularities and traits of

expression97

. But this behaviour is not to be understood as purely limited to metallic masses,

for as Deleuze and Guattari state, the behaviour of metal is coextensive to the whole of

matter Even the waters, the grasses and varieties of wood, the animals are populated by

salts or mineral elements. Not everything is metal, but metal is everywhere. Metal is the

conductor of all matter.98

Thus it is through the study of the inorganic that we arrive at a

universal account of agency, wherein the encounters between [bodies as] singularities [and

their] spatiotemporal haecceities99 give rise to creative, non-determinable propositions of

action.


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60 Cheese and Worms

It is through such studies that we may make universal comparisons between organic

and inorganic life. As Bennett asserts, all forces and flows (materialities) are or can become

lively, affective and signalling [Thus] an affective, speaking human body is not radically

different from the affective, signalling nonhumans with which it coexists100

. Indeed evenwithin the human lifespan, the inorganic world of mineral and chemical bodies will persist in

acting out-side of the human periphery; in the moving hills; in the quivering metal; in the

objects we discard. As Sullivan portrays in his book Meadowlands, an eloquent account of the

life of a New Jersey refuse site;

The garbage hills are alivethere are billions of microscopic organisms

thriving underground in dark, oxygen-free communities After having ingested

the tiniest portion of leftover New Jersey or New York, these cells then exhale

huge underground plumes of carbon dioxide and of warm moist methane, giant

stillborn tropical winds that seep through the ground a pristine stew of oil and

grease, of cyanide and arsenic, of cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, silver,

mercury and zinc101

.

Thus the reciprocity of matter asserts itself once again; the organic returns to its mineral state;

inorganic and organic congeal and reform; ready to reassemble yet again with worms, humans

and trees without prejudice; creating constellations and propositions of action between

humans and nonhumans alike.

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As for us:We must uncentre our minds from ourselves;

We must unhumanise our views a little, and become condentAs the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Robinson Jeers


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65

As we have come to understand, the subject of agency is a far more complex and

ambiguous concept than established humanist definitions might have us first assume. While it

was unlikely that we would arrive at a concrete redefinition of agency within the relative

confines of this study, we have nonetheless been able to raise lines of enquiry that are

themselves critical in their repercussions; for what we have begun to examine herein is

nothing less than a fundamental revision of some of the most normative presumptions under

which we, as artists and designers, operate.

I set out to examine the reasons for which humans have typically been identified as

the sole or exemplary agent above, and removed from, the nonhuman bodies of nature.

Following this, the intention was to examine the extent to which nonhuman bodies might

exercise their own agency. What I had not anticipated, however, was the emergence of a

recurring concept that was to undermine the very distinctions between human and nonhuman

with which we began this study. This concept was that of the encounter.

Far from discovering any agent acting as a singularity, we have instead begun to

unearth an understanding of agency as a contingent phenomenon whose provisional

emergence depends not on will or consciousness, but rather upon the trajectories of action

CONCLUSION


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Epilogue

Do you know what life is to me?A monster of energy that does not expend itself but only transforms itself

A play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many;a sea of forcesowing and rushing together,

eternally changing.

- Friedrich Nietzsche,e Will to Power, Entry 1067


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70

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/)5*-6179/17%","***!*&)(;)6.79,)41.;)6.79,"61=-9:1;@9-::

%&(+.+,%4+#/%"*+0*/"-/"--&/&*$.

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)44)6;@6-6,9->"("05"*!0//-+--%&/"/.76,767160)94-:%"+-)/&+*+#"$"/("+0(!%-+0$%/%"/&+*+#+-).2&/%."-1/&+*.

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65:15;;4

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72 Bibliography

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#8,99

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(5.1;::;

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joseph deane final report

Documents