Skip to main content

The abundance of representations

One way of critiquing the view of knowledge as building an image of something already there is to criticize representations. In fact, the point of view according to which a subject tries to attain an object that pre-exists it is hostage to the Kantian image of a subject that can be fully cut off from the world. The monadological perspective contrasts with that not because it appeals to no representations, but rather because it postulates many of them. They are everywhere - there is no being without a representation attached to it. I believe this is also the case in Simondon's monadology without monads: a collection of relations account for a subject while another collection of relations account for an object. These relations host (and eventually perform) transductions. Information flow is such that the overall representation is no more than the assemblage of all the small representations, each relata does - like a string reflecting what is around it without taking into consideration the big picture emerging. Transduction is also an issue in calibration: living being, at least, are able to tune to the information flow so that they capture what they can and improve to get better at this. The evolution of the species is, according to Simondon, a giant endeavor in transduction. In fact, transduction is capture and not clausure - and it occupies the place of pre-established harmony in Leibniz's monadology. It is transduction that connects the different bits of the universe together - and they are all representation-rich.

I was thinking of Latour's picture that non-humans are brought in to a community by being (scientifically) researched. It is not about looking for a representation (let alone looking for the representation). It is rather about assembling the many representations that come together with actants that are either among humans or among non-humans. The assemblage of representation is capture - it is post-established harmony, as Latour says in Irréductions. So, science is not looking for an image but rather crafting deals and alliances among a plurality of representation devices. This abundance of representation could look weird if the monadological view is read in Deleuzian eyes, and indeed Deleuze's take was to actually completely dilute the notion of representation by emphasizing repetition and other elements that are also reminiscent of Simondon's transduction. But Latour, I take, gets his monadology from Tarde. Science, therefore, is looking at the best possible agreement between the actants - in terms of truth, correspondence meets consensus if we consider the non-human elements of the community. Within this community, it is a matter of what is politically possible.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dismantling absolute contingency

I´ve been wondering about whether we can formulate something about contingency along the lines of a principle of irreduction: aucune chose n´est par elle-même contingent ou necessaire . The principle asserts that necessity is always contingent on underlying fixed things: something is physically necessary (or contingent) given the fixed laws of nature, something is deontically contingent - allowed - or necessary - mandatory - given the fixed ethical rules (or laws of the land). Finally, something is logically necessary (or necessary simpliciter) given a fixed logic. The irreducible diversity of ethical rules, the absence of eternal laws of nature and the plurality of logical systems, if accepted, makes necessity relative to those parameters. An aggiornamento of Heraclitus would have that nothing is necessary comes what may. Surely, of couse, if there is no absolute necessity, there is no absolute contingency. We can then say that in a broader, more abstract level, things are up for grab...
6 comments
Read more

Necropolitics and Neocameralism

It is perhaps just wishful thinking that the alt-right seemingly innovative and intrepid ideas will disappear from the scene as Trump's reign comes to an end. They have their own dynamics, but certainly the experiences of the last years, including those in the pandemics, do help to wear off their bright and attractiveness. Neocameralism, what Mencius Moldbug and Nick Land with him ushered in as a model of post-democracy that relinquish important ingredients of the human security system, is one of these projects that is proving to be too grounded in the past to have any capacity to foretell anything bright beyond the democratic rusting institutions. It is little more than necropolitics - which is itself a current post-democratic alternative. Achile Mbembe finds necropolitics in the regimes were warlords take over the state-like institutions (or mimick them)  to rule on the grounds of local security having no troubles killing or letting die whoever is in their path. Neocameralism pos...
Post a Comment
Read more

Memory Assemblages out!

  Memory Assemblages is out at Bloomsbury This is the book I wrote during most of 22 and 23. It proposes a spectral realism based on the idea that archives are ubiquitous - I call this pan-mnemism. It offers a conception of how memory related deeply with persistent addition of new events, thoughts and circumstances and this addends concoct varying assemblages of what is retained and what brings this archives to the fore. It also rejects the idea that there is an archeology to the archive - or an ontology to hauntology. Even if it boils down merely to postulate traces or forms. I have neglected this blog for a while and I don't expect myself to be very much back to it soon. But I will talk about the book in my youtube channel, in an English language playlist called "On Memory Assemblages" .  
Post a Comment
Read more