What Is A Quasi-Object?

In his work, We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour proposes a theory that society encompasses exactly what the book title suggests—a lack of modernism. He writes of an illusion, a misread, on behalf of the people, and he introduces ideas of connectedness and change. For this blog post, I’d like to focus specifically on section 3.2, What Is a Quasi-Object?, and highlight some of the key ideas I believe Latour puts forth. Within this section, Latour locates his previously discussed hybrids, associates his thoughts with those of French philosopher Michael Serres, and ultimately concludes that society must be built, created.

Latour takes issue with two forms of social science: he writes of the “naturalization” belief system and then too of “ordinary people[s]” beliefs “that they are free and that they can modify their own desires” (52). Latour labels these two forms as a double contradictory and writes:

“When the two critical resources are put together we now understand why it is so difficult for social scientists to reach agreement on objects. They, too, ‘see double.’ In the first denunciation objects count for nothing; they are just there to be used as the white screen on to which society projects its cinema. But in the second, they are so powerful that they shape the human society, while the social construction of the sciences that have produced them remains invisible. Objects, things, consumer goods, works of art are either too weak or too strong” (53).

Latour continues his argument and suggests that it is here where the ultimate contradictory lies. He then writes of the opposing lists—“the ‘soft’ list of the nature pole” and “the ‘hard’ list of all the sciences” (53). Interestingly, Latour comments, is that the soft list features items social scientists despise, whereas the hard list features those which they hold belief.

It is this connection that floods Latour with questions:

“And if religion, arts, or styles are necessary to ‘reflect’, ‘reify’, ‘materialize’, ‘embody’ society — to use some of the social theorists’ favourite verbs — then are objects not, in the end, its co-producers? Is not society built literally — not metaphorically — of gods, machines, sciences, arts, and styles?... Maybe social scientists have simple forgotten that before projecting itself on to things society has to be made, built, constructed? And out of what material could it be built if not out of nonsocial, non-human resources?” (54).

Latour seems to be just as much on the fence as the two contradictory forces. Does he agree with them both? He offers great detail on the quasi-objects and locates them “between and below the two poles, at the very place around which dualism and dialectics had turned endlessly without being able to come to terms with them” (55). Latour believes quasi-objects are the missing links that connects nonhuman item and person.

In Serres’ work, he provides an example of a quasi-object — a soccer ball. He argues that it is a person that brings the ball to life, kicks it, throws it, and shoots it in one direction or another (in combination with laws of physics). Without the human counterpart, Serres believes, the ball just sits on the field as an object of matter. The ball participates in the human actions and is a factor in the relationship between quasi-object (nonhuman item) and person. I’d like to propose another example: Could this same principle be applied to a pen, pencil, or any power tool? Because these items are man-made, does it take a human to define their use? Are these items similar to the quasi-objects Serres and Latour write of? If so, where does agency fit in the relationship?  

Sources:

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993.

How Am I Not Modern?: I Heart Huckabees and Bruno Latour

In We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour explains his theory that our view of ourselves as modern beings is an illusion. He claims that calling ourselves modern tries to create a pure system in which nature is totally separate from society, but this separation does not exist. Apparently, the world contains natures-cultures that cause everything to be interrelated so that if one thing changes, everything changes. We have created hybrids that cannot be sectioned off into tiny compartments and be conveniently tucked away in the closet, only opened when they are needed. These hybrids explain why the stock market crashing has as much to do with the economy as it has to do with dinner table conversation of a family in Norway. They show us that arguing about climate change means that we not only argue about science and weather patterns, but social influxes, economies, transportation, latest trends in fashion, sports games on television, and countless other dimensions of life.

Latour describes all that he considers modern as part of a Constitution to which moderns adhere by as they separate nature from society, cultures from other cultures, and language from its true meaning. In his new, nonmodern Constitution, Latour states that a guarantee is the “continuous following of the production of Nature, which is objective, and the production of Society, which is free. In the last analysis, there is indeed a transcendence of Nature and an immanence of Society, but the two are not separated” (141). If we take to nonmodern thought, then society will not have rules that constrict it from expanding or retracting when it is natural just because moderns feel it is best. Nature, which people will no longer be able to trick themselves into thinking it acts subjectively, can continue to grow without being tied to any such fake rules as well. The main theme that seems to spring from the nonmodern ideal is connection, rather than separation.

This book asserts that there are no such things as cultures. The modern way of thinking has forced us to believe that there are hundreds - possibly thousands - of different cultures that are separate in their ways of thinking, cooking, building relationships, communicating, working, and doing nearly every daily task. However, according to Latour, this idea is made up. While it is true that we all have differences, there are no such distinct separations amongst us all. Latour describes how the Internal Great Divide and External Great Divide prevent us from understanding how similar we are. He claims, “symmetrical anthropology must realize that the two Great Divides do not describe reality - our own as well as that of others - but define the particular way Westerners had of establishing their relations with others as long as they felt modern” (103). People have divided the world into “Us” and “Them,” causing an illusion of hierarchy amongst cultures, privileging some while lessening the importance of others.

These ideas reminded me of one of my favorite movies, I Heart Huckabees. In the trailer below, around 1:30, Dustin Hoffman’s character, an existential private investigator/therapist/philosopher (Latour must love this hybrid), explains to Jason Schwartzman’s character, Albert, that we are all connected. He takes a blanket and pretends it is the universe. He describes that he and Albert are in one corner of the blanket, while the Eiffel Tower is in another, and other examples are within the same fabric. This exercise leads Albert to discover that “everything is the same, even if it’s different.” Hoffman’s character seems to be looking at the world through the eyes of a nonmodern, a person who understands the connections amongst all people, places, things, quasi-objects, and everything in between.

Merging Spheres

In Bruno Latour’s “We Have Never Been Modern,” Latour argues that we live in a hybrid, non-modern world of nature and society versus a “modern” world where nature and society are separate spheres. However, most people are reluctant to admit that. As Latour writes, “Our intellectual life is out of kilter. Epistemology, the social sciences, the sciences of texts—all have their privileged vantage point, provided that they remain separate. If the creatures we are pursuing cross all three spaces, we are no longer understood ” (3).  In other words, Latour believes that our rhetorical discourse is limited when we try to branch the spheres of nature and society since our culture, believing itself to be modern, tries to keep nature and society separated. 

To find Latour’s  theory in popular culture, I once again turn to a clip from The West Wing. (If anyone’s counting, this is my third example from an Aaron Sorkin show.) While the show actually features many scenes where the characters (members of the White House staff) struggle to merge the spheres of nature and society by figuring out ways to communicate to the public vital statistics and scientific data, this scene illustrates Latour’s belief that the act of merging the two spheres leads to discord since the audience is convinced that we live in society where nature and science should be separate.

In this scene, Sam Seaborn, the deputy communications director for the President, is forced to throw out part of the State of the Union speech where he discusses the President’s wish to find a cure for cancer in the next decade. In other scenes, the reasoning behind disregarding this part of speech is that the rest of the staff think it’s inappropriate to include the scientific goals of the administration since the President is already seen as an elitist due to his education and work as an economist. The characters don’t want to merge the spheres of nature and society, or to be more specific, science and politics.

However, as Sam points out in this clip, the ability for the characters to merge science and politics could allow for their society to create something as game-changing as a cure for cancer. Latour addresses  this ability when he states,m“The critical power of the moderns lies in this double language; they can mobilize Nature at the heart of social relationships, even as they leave Nature infinitely remote from human beings; they are free to make and unmake their society, even as they render its law ineluctable, necessary and absolute ” (31). But, tragically, because of their reluctance to merge spheres, society is held back from greatness. 

Agency and the Tube

I first came across the term agency in Dr. Holmevik's class.  He applied the term to web and video game navigation, but he tweaked the term for the digital media and called it egency.  Basically an egent was a person who made decisions that governed the egent's experience.  

For example, on Youtube, you may go on to watch one video before going to some other website, but then you see a few related videos that you also want to watch.  If you choose to experience the related videos, you might run out of time to check out the other website.  Also, if you choose to follow the related video link, you are choosing to watch one video over another. There may have been five different related videos you wanted to see, but if you continued to navigate through the related videos without hitting the back button, you might never get to see all five related videos that you wanted to see. If four different people were given the same options, their journey and destinations could be entirely different based on their choices.

In the real world, the agent still makes decisions that causes world-shaping, unique journeys for each person.  The rhetor chooses his or her words wisely to hopefully shape the minds of the audience.  The audience then can carry out the work necessary to act upon the rhetor's ideas and change the world.  However, the audience also has the agency to ignore or oppose the rhetor.  This is what I understand Giesler to mean when they say that there is an illusion of agency.  The rhetor expects to be the agent while speaking, but the audience too are agents.  And actually, it is most likely the audience's agency that makes speakers susceptible to stage fright.  We like to be liked and only the audience has the power to like us--they are the only ones who can bring in more people and encourage the occurrence of other speaking opportunities.  

Operation Rhetorical Agency

     As the German C130 I was seated in prepared to depart Kabul International Airport, I heard an Air Force Sgt. say with amusement to the just arrived female Airman sitting near him on the red canvas jump-seat,  “Welcome to Afghanistan! Set your watch back…five hundred years.”

I smiled sardonically to myself in appreciation of his accurate appraisal of many areas of the country.

     Though I knew nothing of the study of rhetoric then, I can look back now and consider that classical rhetoric is still alive and well there. The War on Terror in Afghanistan, known as OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM, could, in fact, also be named OPERATION RHETORICAL AGENCY. Those that have had the power of agency (The Taliban) and have kept hold of it with violent and cruel persuasion are struggling to prevent the acquisition of agency by those Afghans who do not support their radical Muslim views.

An Agent, says Cooper in “Rhetorical Agency as Emergent and Enacted”, is one who, with free will, changes the world through knowing intention (421).

     In this photograph that I took of a Shura (meeting) near the town of Jer-i-syah in Badghis Province in Northern Afghanistan, a 209^th Corps Afghan National Army Soldier (with raised hand) discourses with the elder leaders and other men and boys from the village with the desire of persuading them to give up their belligerent ways and fully support the government. If the local people should decide to do this then we, the representatives of the government, will assist financially with much needed basic improvements for the village such as the reconstruction of the dilapidated school. A provision of this construction would be that the village’s girls, as well as boys, would be educated.

     Those girls and all the women of the village are without agency. “Agents do reflect on their actions on their own” (Cooper 421). “Agency instead is based in individuals’ lived knowledge that their actions are their own. (Cooper 421). Those village females have access to little or no knowledge of the outside world. The confines of that village and the mud walled compounds in which they move comprise their entire view of the world. Their actions are not their own.

In stark contrast to those unseen village females was I, a female Soldier working alongside my male counterparts from the US, Afghanistan, Norway, and Croatia. Since I was usually the only female present, it was always my fervent hope that I would somehow be seen by the village 

females from behind the mud walls that obscured them from my sight.  By virtue of my presence and gender I was an agent of change.  I was always aware that I had great responsibility as that lone female representative and had to conduct myself with modesty to maintain a respectful and good working relationship with my fellow soldiers and civilians. Cooper concludes, “…responsible rhetorical agency is a matter of acknowledging and honoring the responsive nature of agency and that this is a kind of agency that supports deliberative democracy.” (422)

     

     

Rick Grimes, the humanist subject and/or posthumanist agent

The readings on rhetorical situation and agency both deal with subject to some degree. Amongst the essays in both topics’ discussions, two types of subject have prevalently appeared: the humanist subject and the postmodern subject. Within rhetorical agency, Lundberg and Gunn describe the autonomous humanist subject and suggest rhetoricians move past this understanding in favor of one based on postmodern thought (much like Biesecker does with situation). My response this week will attempt to make sense of L&G’s essay and their séance allegory.

This Sunday’s (11/18) episode of The Walking Dead demonstrates an instance of rhetorical agency that is easily relatable to L&G’s séance allegory. In it, Rick Grimes, one of the show’s protagonists and the unspoken leader of a group of post-apocalypse survivors, experiences his own sort of séance shortly after he loses his wife Lori during childbirth. 

Rhetorical agency is “seen as the activity of a subject pursuing an intention” (Geisler 10). The humanist subject as agent is autonomous, “transcendental,” and “godly” whose agency is self-possessed and absolute, preexistent, a priori, resemblant of Platonic, Hobbesian, and Kantian thought, seen strictly as affected subject (L&G 84, 86). The posthumanist subject is aligned with the postmoderns like Derrida and Foucault and considered producers, articulators, the “agent who initiates these effects,” both the creation and creator (L&G 88). 

Back to The Walking Dead, Rick receives a mysterious phone call after he discovers Lori has been completely consumed by a Walker. I call it mysterious because telecommunications have been cut off for over nine months. The first call initiates the question of agency: who the hell is calling? and how? and why? While the audience quickly realizes Rick is “communicating” with his “dead wife,” i.e. himself, Rick is “relatively unable to locate the seat of agency” just like the user of a Ouija Board (L&G 85). 

The show does not do as good a job of Rick’s internalization of the Lori calls as the graphic novel does. Below is Rick’s response when he finds out this woman he has been speaking to is his dead wife:

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So, Rick as humanist agent would be exemplified in the show... if I remember correctly (can’t find any videos), Rick goes no further in contemplating the communication with his wife postmortem, taking what “Lori” has to say and suggest he do at face value. For its audience, the show does little besides leave room to speculate whether or not Rick is really talking to those beyond. TV show humanist Rick seems to accept this mysterious voice as an autonomous agent who affects him as a subject to move on and focus on his children. 

However, the graphic novel explicitly tells its reader the conversations are not real. Rick then becomes a posthumanist subject who both possesses and is possessed by agency. It is absolutely clear that Rick creates the Lori he speaks to and is fully aware of her fictitious existence postmortem in his head as a coping mechanism for his failures as a leader after losing so many in his group. This is seen below as he and Michonne discuss the conversations they have with their dead partners:

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So, my basic and dumbed down version of rhetorical agents and agency comes down to this: humanist agency involves an affected subject whereas posthumanist agency involves an equally efficacious agent and effected subject who are one and the same. Hope class isn’t cancelled again because I need it!

Sources:

Geisler, Cheryl. "How Ought We to Understand the Concept of Rhetorical Agency? Report from the ARS." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34.3 (2004): 9-17.

Kirkman, Robert, writer. "Here We Remain." The Walking Dead: Book Five. Illustrated by Charlie Adlard. Colored by Cliff Rathburn. Berkeley, CA: Image Comics, Inc., 2011. N.pag.

Lundberg, Christian and Joshua Gunn. "Ouija Board, Are There Any Communications? Agency, Ontotheology, and the Death of the Humanist Subject, or, Continuing the ARS Conversation." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35.4 (2005): 83-105.

Rhetorical Agency and Spoon River

Instead of trying to analyze all of the articles for this week, I will mainly focus on Cooper’s “Rhetorical Agency as Emergent and Enacted.” The author offers this insight about agency at the end of her discussion:

Responsible agency instead requires one to be aware that everyone acts out of their own space of meaning and that to affirm one’s own meaning as absolute truth is to negate the other person (442).

Cooper emphasized the need to recognize agents as individuals with certain attitudes, goals and desires. She says agents are “self-organizing” in that they are “always changing” (425). I begin with these descriptions, because I think they get to the root of rhetorical agency more so (or at least more to my liking) than the other scholars. In response to Geisler, Lundberg and Gunn strive to answer (or at least ask) this question: ‘Where do we locate responsibility when agency is exercised?’ (94) Who takes up the mantle when it comes to agency? Is it the rhetor or the audience?

It seems what Cooper shows is that agency lies with both. She states the following: “Agency is a matter of action; it involves doing things intentionally and voluntarily, but it is not a matter of causing whatever happened.” Agency invites change, but it does not necessarily cause change (439). Thus, the relationship between rhetor and audience is ongoing and circular. There is always a need for interaction (an idea Miller puts forth as well). Miller discusses how this interaction is lost with computer-based assessments such as the AutoSpeech-Easy system she posed to her colleagues (although we use cameras for other kinds of communication).

This might be a stretch, but the idea of response and action between the speaker and audience brought to mind Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology. This work contains the epitaphs of 212 characters (deceased citizens of Spoon River). Each citizen tells his or her tale from “the hill” (the grave). Although they are dead, they speak to the audience as if they have agency. The tales connect to each other as the characters are connected to each other through past events and trials. The “speaker” of each poem enacts the possibility of change, although we, as readers, know that change is not possible for these characters. However, we give them agency because they have knowledge about what happened in Spoon River that we do not. The following is tale by Minerva Jones, the village poetess:

I AM Minerva, the village poetess,

Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street

For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,

And all the more when "Butch" Weldy

Captured me after a brutal hunt.

He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;

And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,

Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.

Will some one go to the village newspaper,

And gather into a book the verses I wrote?--

I thirsted so for love

I hungered so for life! (Link to poem)

Minerva asks the audience a question, but it is clear that no one can answer her. It is interesting that even though these characters are dead, Masters writes in a way that allows the reader to interact with them (some on a more personal level than others). Each character still has the capacity to persuade the reader to believe what they are saying. There is still a responsibility present, even though it may not be quite the same as listening to a speech or experimenting with an Ouija Board.