Discussion of Coward 'Against Anthropocentrism'

Martin Coward says

I read Eva’s comments with considerable interest - they raise some issues that I will have to reflect on further.

In methodological terms, it would be worth me adding two brief clarifications:

1. I think we should not confuse anthropocentrism and humanism. While the argument is contra anthropocentrism insofar as it argues that things are as constitutive of existence as persons, it is not anti-humanist. It does not argue that what happens to persons is not important. Indeed, what happens to things is important because it impacts on people. This is methodologically important because we must be clear that an interest in materiality is not the same as a disinterest in humans (the easiest way to dismiss materialist accounts is to say that human suffering is more important).
2. You are right it is a different conception of community than that which is usually referred to by sociologists (though I will steer clear of thick and thin as they seem to entail certain normative judgements). Community here is deployed in the sense Nancy gives it in The Inoperative Community. He deliberately talks not of ‘a community’, but of ‘community’ as an existential category or experience. Community then names not the substance that we have in common, but rather the experience of being-in-common. And we have nothing in-common, other than our exposure to one another. It is thus not community as understood by sociologists. I mention this because it seems to me that this sense of community is something like the sense of apparatus referred to by Deleuze – it is always there in any experience, but never has any substance such that it could have transcendental value. It is a dynamic, not a substance.

16 September 2010, 19:03

Nadine Voelkner says

Thanks Owen for pulling the threads together again after our summer break. Very useful in focusing our upcoming discussions. Thanks also to Martin for joining us. I think it adds/creates some really interesting synergies to our group. Martin's article already speaks but also adds new avenues to our ongoing conversation. Let me add a few points to Owen's summary of our pre-summer tallks while simultaneously working Martin’s text into these and also suggesting one or two additional points to consider as we move forward.

1. I’d like to highlight the point about the relationality between things (living/non-living) again. This theme runs through Foucault, Bennett, Barad, Deleuze, Agamben as well as Martin’s work. Martin emphasizes this in his discussion of Nancy’s Being-with.

NB: Perhaps we can begin to discuss different forms of relationality. Is it enough to speak about “concrete strategic functions” (Agamben or Foucault)?

2. Of course, a relational ontology bears on how we conceive of agency (and ultimately subjectivity) too. If we follow Bennett, Barad, Latour (who we are yet to read) etc, then we come to realise/understand that human/our agency is only possible through the way we/things are interconnected. It is in this sense that we mentioned though did not discuss in any depth the specific notion of distributive agency. In fact, the very possibility of our being, as Martin reminds us through Nancy, is dependent on the relations we forge with the world: “there is no ‘self’ except by virtue of a ‘with’”. Put differently, we are constituted through the relationalities within which we are embedded.

NB1: Are these relationalities always strategic as Agamben notes? Is it affective as Martin notes; i.e. the common-sense nodes, like the bridge, from which an ensemble unfolds? Martin mentioned in his post 'the self-organizing sustaining nature of an ensemble' that is "a network that sustains a particular pattern of dynamics”. How do we describe this dynamism within an ensemble? Is it always strategic in the sense of Foucault who spoke about power traversing apparatuses (or Agamben who speaks about apparatuses always having a “concrete strategic function”)? What is the role of affect? I think Deleuze offers some way into the multiplicity of dynamism with ensembles (call it apparatus, dispositif, assemblage). More in my comment on Agamben.

NB2: I am very glad we’re discussing Martin’s work as it gives us an excellent methodological example for how we can grasp materiality (living and non-living) and the ensemble they compose. Another work that not only influenced the work of Benett/Barad but has also provided a range of empirical sites demonstrating how we might grasp the ‘meaningful’ networks composed of different forms of materialities is Latour. Here, we may want to explore Timothy Mitchell’s work on Egypt as well as John Law’s work on globalities (also, since he’ll be one of our keynotes at the training workshop at the OU).

3. I want to suggest we consider in our ongoing discussions about materiality and security the emergent qualities of ensembles. By this I mean, the way in which ensembles and their (strategic?) qualities emerge from a diverse range of elements that are irreducible to the qualities of individual elements. In other words, the ‘whole’ such as the electricity grid (Bennett) or the foetus (Barad), the Icelandic volcano, the phenomenon of urbicide (Martin) or subjectivities of security (the terrorist), is different to the parts, e.g. electrons, body tissue, ash, rubble(bridge), that make up the whole.

NB: Why is this important? First, I think it reminds us that political rationalities, subjectivities etc are emerging phenomena that are made possible through specific arrangements (relationality) of different things (humans/non-humans). For example, why/how did the virus become an object of government and subsequently an object of security? Why/how did the ozone or crowded spaces become an object of security? Why/how did we, for example as frequent flyers, become objects of security? We presented in such an arrangement that we came to be recognized as specific subjects/objects. In a different but similar way, Martin argues that the destruction of shared spatiality is violent because it destroys the condition of possibility for heterogeneous communities/ensembles. It destroys the relationalities within which we (co-) exist.

NB2: It reminds us too that whatever quality an ensemble has, it is instable, always open to transformation or disappearance. I think the same for subjectivity. We cannot assume, for example, that we will always be subjects of terror or other.

4. The nature of how ensembles emerge bears on the kind of politics can emerge (or as Bennett and Martin call it: ecologies).
NB Does it involve foreclosing politics to the exclusion of alternatives? Martin for example talks about how cutting us off from the materials that make co-existence possible, e.g. urban spaces, points to a violent politics of exclusion that negates the very terms of our relational being.

So, relationality, distributive agency, emergent qualities and politics.

A final point, I like that we clarify (or Eva/Martin in their posts) what we mean by anthropocentrism. I think it’s important in how we define what we mean by charging others for being to Mensch-centred. Martin’s point about humanism is an important point but I think Bennett’s point about anthropocentrism points to something else. Namely, that we human assemblages are not the only ones who bear on the world within which we are embedded. We don’t have to go as far as Bennett to suggest that materialities have agency. It suffices to say that impacting on the world is the result of how different things are arranged/assembled.

17 September 2010, 09:53