The Democracy of Objects

3.4. The Problem With Rabbits and Hats

In Prince of Networks, Harman, following Latour, levels a trenchant critique against the concepts of potentiality and virtuality that are at the core of my concept of split-objects. By responding to this critique, I hope to render the concept of virtual proper being a bit more concrete and bring out some of its important consequences. In Irreductions, Latour remarks that “[t]he origin of potency lies in this confusion: it is no longer possible to distinguish an actor from the allies which make it strong”. [115] As Latour goes on to remark, “[t]alk of possibilities is the illusion of actors that move while forgetting the cost of transport”. [116] Perhaps one way of articulating this critique would be to say that you can't pull a rabbit out of a hat without first putting it in the hat. The problem with the concept of potentiality under this model is that it treats the rabbit as if it were already in the hat, without accounting for the work it takes to put the rabbit in the hat.

This seems to be precisely the sense in which Harman takes Latour's critique. As Harman argues, “[t]o speak of something existing in potentia implies that it is already there but simply covered or suppressed. This is what Latour denies. For him, a thing is only here once it is here, not sooner”. [117] Illustrating this point, Harman remarks that “[f]or Latour a person does not stand up by drawing on an inner reservoir of potency, but through a series of mediations—nervous excitations acting on muscles, which then shift the body's weight onto a hard, unyielding floor. Numerous allies are brought into play even in the simplest movements of our bodies”. [118] What Latour wishes to capture are all the translations an actant or object must go through in order to engage in even the simplest of motions such as standing up. In this regard, the problem with the concept of potentiality is that it treats these powers as already residing in the being of the substance, thereby leading us to ignore these myriad translations necessary for an action to take place. We say, for example, that the prince has power even when he doesn't exercise it, thereby ignoring all the work that goes into keeping soldiers in line, maintaining a legal system, forming stable alliances with other nobles, dealing with peasant uprisings, and so on. Or, similarly, we say that the acorn contains an oak tree within it, such that it is already there only waiting to come out.

In response to Harman-Latour's critique of potentiality, there are a couple of points worth making. First, while Harman and Latour's points about translation and work are well taken, this critique seems to miss the point that substances must be susceptible to these translations. Returning to Harman's remarks about standing up, I readily grant that nerves must be excited so that muscles must be activated so that feet can press against a hard floor, and so on. However, in order for nerves to be excited, nerves must be capable of being excited. When Harman and Latour argue that only the actual exists, are they arguing that the excited nerves are an entirely new entity, or are they claiming that this entity merely changes its states? If they are making the claim that the excited nerves are an entirely new entity, then they seem committed to the rather odd thesis that entities are popping into existence ex nihilo. As a consequence of his principle of irreduction and commitment to Whitehead's ontology, it seems that this is precisely the thesis that Latour advocates. Within the Whiteheadian framework, every actual occasion (entity) is an instantaneous entity that is fully complete in its being. As Steven Shaviro puts it,

What we get with Whitehead is a sort of radical actualism where every change implies an entirely new entity. Yet if this is the case, it is difficult to see how we can get from one entity to another entity. Rather, it seems that entities must possess the capacity, the potentiality, to undergo change.

In this regard, another way of understanding the concept of virtual singularities or attractors is in terms of Spinoza's concept of affect. As Spinoza writes in the Ethics, “By [affect] I understand the affections of the body by which the body's power of activity is increased or diminished, assisted or checked”. [120] What makes Spinoza's concept of affect so interesting is that it doesn't restrict affect to what is felt, but links the concept of affect to the capacities of an object. And here, if I refer to the capacities of an object, then this is because for Spinoza all entities, whether human, animal, or inanimate possess what Spinoza calls affects. And these affects consist of both an entity's “receptivity” to other entities and the various capacities an entity has to act. Unless we are to fall into an atomism where there is an insurmountable gulf between entities, it seems that we must attribute to objects affects in Spinoza's sense. Those nerves must have the capacity of being excited or stimulated.

In discussion with me surrounding these issues, Harman remarks that, “[c]ontra what Bryant implies [...] however, I don’t think that the acorn already has oak-qualities. I think it has acorn-qualities”. [121] However, this is precisely what I don't claim. To suggest that the acorn has oak-qualities would be to conflate qualities with substance. But as I argued in section 3.3, the virtual proper being of an object cannot be equated with anything qualitative. Virtual proper being is radically other than qualities. Moreover, it cannot be said that the acorn already contains the oak tree. What the acorn contains are acorn powers or attractors, and while these powers or attractors are entirely determinate, their actualization is a purely creative process producing new qualities and eventually a new object. In this respect, Harman and I are very close, for like Harman I advocate the thesis that the acorn does not contain oak-tree qualities, but is fully determinate at its virtual level as an acorn. The virtual dimension of objects is concrete without being actual. In this regard, Harman and Latour seem to conflate the virtual with the possible.

It is precisely this conflation of the potential with the possible that Deleuze seeks to avoid with his account of the virtual. As Deleuze cautions,

Deleuze criticizes the concept of the possible for reasons similar to those Latour levels against the potential. In short, he criticizes the concept of the possible for treating the rabbit as if it were already in the hat. As Deleuze argues,

Between the possible oak tree and the actual oak tree there is absolutely no difference beyond the brute fact of existence. If, then, we conflate the potentiality of the acorn with the possibility of the oak-tree, we are making the claim that the acorn already contains the oak tree, but in a potential state.

Alternatively, “[t]he actualization of the virtual, on the contrary, always takes place by difference, divergence or differenciation [...]. Actual terms never resemble the singularities they incarnate”. [124] In contrast to a process of realization or a movement from the possible to the real, the process of actualization is a creative process within substances that requires work. Moreover, the local manifestation produced in the process of actualization is something new and shares no resemblance to the singularities which it actualizes. To illustrate this point, let's return to the vexed example of the acorn. The virtuality of the acorn is not the oak tree, but rather is the notes of its being. The singularities that characterize its concrete existence are folded deep within that existence and withdrawn from the world. When the acorn enters into exo-relations with other entities, these singularities will be activated in a variety of ways depending on the exo-relations it entertains with other entities. If the soil is too damp and the temperature doesn't get warm enough, the acorn rots. If the temperature is right and there is a requisite amount of water in the soil, the acorn begins to germinate. But now, as the acorn germinates, it encounters other entities in the field of its exo-relations. There are, for example, all sorts of other plants growing in the region of the acorn with which the acorn's own roots must compete. As a consequence of this, the seedling becomes weak and anemic or strong and thriving. The region in which the acorn grows is perhaps particularly windy, with sheets of wind buffeting the plain where the seedling grows from a predominantly westerly direction. When we come across the oak tree decades later, we notice that it is bent and knotted in an easterly direction like a carefully pruned bonsai tree. It is as if the oak tree has become petrified wind.

The point here is that the singularities or attractors belonging to the acorn do not contain the oak tree in advance. Rather, the acorn negotiates a milieu of exo-relations to other entities in producing its local manifestations or qualities. The attractors that preside over this process are radically non-qualitative. Here I find myself inclined to embrace Latour's thesis that “[w]hatever resists trials is real”. [125] The problem with Latour's formulation is that it is purely negative and relational. In situating the endo-structure of an entity in terms of resistance, Latour emphasizes what occurs when an entity enters into exo-relations with other entities. This confuses epistemic criteria through which we or other entities recognize another entity as real, with what constitutes the reality of the entity regardless of whether anyone or anything knows it. In this regard, he thinks the being of an entity from the perspective of other entities encountering that entity. The wind, itself composed of many entities, encounters the seedling and must move around it. The seedling resists the wind. It is by virtue of its singularities, its endo-structure, that the seedling is able to resist the wind, but these singularities aren't the resistance. Rather, the singularities would be there in the seedling regardless of whether or not anything interacted with them.

From these observations, a number of distinctions follow. On the one hand, we must distinguish between symmetrical and asymmetrical qualities or local manifestations. Symmetrical qualities are qualities that can repeatedly snap in and out of existence. For example, the various shades of color the coffee mug manifests are symmetrical qualities in that, barring a transformation of the endo-structure of the coffee mug, these qualities can come in and out of existence. Turn off the lights and the mug becomes black. Turn on the light and the mug returns to that particular shade of blue. Asymmetrical qualities, by contrast, are irreversible qualitative transformations that take place within an object. These are qualitative transformations that can be produced by either the object itself, or through exo-relations to other objects. Thus, for example, the bent figure of the tree is an asymmetrical quality produced by the tree's exo-relations to the wind and perhaps other plants in its vicinity it competes with for sunlight. The key point not to be missed with asymmetrical qualities is that they are irreversible. Asymmetrical transformations cut off other possibilities within the vector field of a substance's attractors.

On the other hand, we must distinguish between exo-qualities and endo-qualities. Exo-qualities are qualities that can only exist in and through a set of exo-relations to other objects. Color, for example, seems to be a quality of this sort. Color is an event that only takes place through a network of exo-relations between the molecular endo-composition of the object, particular wavelengths of light, and a particular neurological structure in an organism. Take any of these elements away and color puffs out of existence. As such, color, as an exo-quality, is a genuine creation of these three agencies being woven together. It is not the cup that is colored, but rather the entanglement of these agencies that produces color as an event. The cup merely has the power to contribute to the production of this exo-quality. Endo-qualities, by contrast, are qualities that really are in the object. However, endo-qualities, as local manifestations of a substance, come about in two ways. First, endo-qualities are local manifestations that can come about through the internal dynamisms of an object independent of any other objects. Here the object need not be perturbed by another object for the endo-quality to be produced. Second, endo-qualities can come about through exo-relations to other objects, where these exo-relations irreversibly transform the local manifestation of the object. All asymmetrical qualities are of this sort. These events also harbor the power of transforming the endo-structure of objects, leading to the genesis of new singularities, powers, attractors, or vector fields in the virtual proper being of an object.

The great error to be avoided lies in conceiving the virtual or potential in teleological terms, or in believing that the entity could be captured or fully grasped by summing up all possible points of view on the object. The relation between virtual proper being and local manifestation is not a teleological relation or a relation between an agency and a goal. Throughout the last three chapters, I have attempted to argue that objects can be fully concrete without locally manifesting themselves or actualizing themselves in qualities. Another way of putting this is to say that local manifestation is not the fulfillment of objects. Local manifestation is something that objects can do, but an object that does not locally manifest itself is not lacking in some way, nor is it somehow incomplete. Nor is it the case that we would encounter the complete being of a substance if only we could see it from everywhere at once. Where the local manifestations of a substance are concerned, these manifestations are, in principle, infinite. There is no limit to the number of local manifestations that an object can actualize, precisely because there is no limit to the exo-relations an object can enter into and the exo-relations it can consequently produce. Yet even if God exists and is capable of perceiving an infinity of local manifestations, the being of objects is nonetheless radically withdrawn even from God for the subterranean dimension of substance, its virtual proper being, is in excess of any of its local manifestations. The virtual proper being of objects consists not of qualities, but of powers and these powers are never exhausted by local manifestations. In this regard, there is never a complete mapping of any phase space, but rather only ever a limited mapping of a phase space dependent on the exo-relations into which the object has been placed.

Here I see no reason to follow Bhaskar in privileging closed systems over open systems. Bhaskar's thesis seems to be that the events we witness when a substance is placed in the closed system of an experimental setting constitute the true being of an object. Here, I believe, Bhaskar betrays his fundamental insight: that substances can be out of phase with the qualities or events of which they are capable, and that there is therefore a fundamental difference between substance and qualities. All that takes place in the closed system of an experimental environment is the situating of an object within a particular set of exo-relations such that particular events take place. Nothing about this suggests that the substance thus situated is exhausted by this setting or that we have been brought before the true being of the object. That being is always withdrawn and in excess of any of its manifestations. As every cook knows, when placed in other exo-relations other local manifestations take place.

As I reflect on Harman's vigorous critique of potentiality, it seems to me that the real motivating desire behind this critique is the desire to preserve the concreteness of objects. As Harman writes,

However, if what Harman says here is true, I fail to see how it is possible for an object to change while remaining the same substance. Rather, this thesis seems to lead us to the punctualistic atomism of Whitehead's actual occasions, where each change constitutes an absolutely new entity. Here, perhaps, we should distinguish between the concrete, the actual, and the virtual. Harman appears to treat the concrete and the actual as synonyms of one another. Yet if we treat the concrete and the actual as synonyms of one another, then we're forced to go the route of Whitehead and treat every change in an actual entity as an absolutely new entity. With each stroke of the keyboard, with each movement of my finger, with each beat of my heart, I am, under this model, not the same entity now writing this essay, but rather am an absolutely new and distinct entity. This seems like a high ontological price to pay for preserving the concrete and seems to lead to the thesis that entities are created ex nihilo precisely because no entity contains potentials by which a new entity could be produced.

It is far better, in light of these concerns, to distinguish between the concrete, the actual, and the virtual. Within this framework, all entities are absolutely concrete, but have virtual and actual dimensions. The virtual is not the possible, nor is it an entity or substance that doesn't yet exist. Rather the virtual is a fully concrete, real, and existing dimension of objects. Nor does it indenture objects to hidden overlords, rendering actuality irrelevant. This would only hold if the true being of objects were their virtual dimension, but as we have seen, the virtual is but a dimension of objects and actuality plays a key role in objects; not the least of which lies in unleashing potentials within objects when they enter into exo-relations. Here, in many respects, I sense that my position and Harman's are much closer than might initially be suggested. In Guerilla Metaphysics, Harman remarks that “[a]n object may drift into events and unleash its forces there, but no such event is capable of putting the object fully into play”. [127] Without the dimension of potentiality or virtuality, it's difficult to see how it would be possible for objects to unleash their forces in this way. In his most recent work, Harman distinguishes between real objects and real qualities, and sensuous objects and sensuous qualities. Real objects and qualities refer to objects and qualities withdrawn from all relation to other objects, while sensuous objects and qualities refer to how one object encounters another object. Between Harman’s real objects and sensuous objects, I sense more than a passing resemblance between my virtual proper being and local manifestations.