Delanda, assemblages and objects

In my last post (objects, matter and relational forms) I made a case for the reality of objects as relational forms composed of other objects. The extension of object-hood to objects composed of humans, such as families, raised a number of concerns with Michael from Archive Fire proposing that the term ‘assemblage’ might be more appropriate. My immediate reaction was to note that, at a very basic level, all objects are assemblages: the cell as much as the human, the molecule as much as the market. But the discussion pushed me to think through this question a bit more deeply and so I’m using this space for that purpose.

My first encounter with assemblages was in the work of Latour (Reassembling the Social), back in 2008, which is really what got me hooked on including non-humans as part of ‘the social’ in my ethnographic research. At the time, OOO was not on my radar. As soon as I became aware of it (via a circuitous route traversing Karen Barad, and Jane Bennett, until I reached the blogs, which led me to other books… etc.), I got hooked on objects and I generously assigned object-hood to everything from events to capitalism. Then the doubts set in regarding tensions between objects and processes, events, etc. and I tried to resolve them  (probably unsuccessfully) through a series of process-object mash-ups (here and here). After all of this, objects (aka entities, things, assemblages, systems, etc.) are still the main players in my hood, though they are definitely weirder than they were before for me.

Anyway, I decided that I should finally dig into Delanda’s A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity and see what this master of assemblage theory has to say. This is in no way a full review, just a digestion of some highlights and reflections from my initial forays (see here for the kick-off to some reviews of the book by some of my favourite bloggers).

Firstly, in this book, Delanda is putting forward a realist ontology of social entities as assemblages. Now, I may be mistaken, but for me, ‘entity’ and ‘object’ both denote the same kind of ‘thing’. Distinguishing his position from Deleuze’s (who treats species as assemblages but not the organisms that compose them), Delanda states:

“… I will not take heterogeneity as a constant property of assemblages but as a variable that may take different values. This will allow me to consider not only species but also biological organisms as assemblages, instead of having to introduce another category for them as does Deleuze. Conceiving an organism as an assemblage implies that despite the tight integration between its component organs, the relations between them are not logically necessary but only contingently obligatory: a historical result of their close coevolution. In this way assemblage theory deprives organismic theories of their most cherished exemplar. ” [pp.11-12]

So, according to Delanda, since the relations between an object’s parts and itself are only ‘contingently obligatory’ and not ‘logically necessary’, an object is an assemblage is an object is an assemblage, which suits me just fine. Assemblage theory provides a way of conceiving objects not as unified wholes, but rather as precarious, composite entities that just about hold together because all their parts happen to be in the right places, doing the right things to achieve this.

Delanda then refers to territorialisation as a ‘synthetic’ process that produces ‘more or less permanent articulations’ between parts, as a result of which a ‘whole emerges from its parts and maintains its identity once it has emerged’ [p.14]. This seems to point to the centrality of the coherence of particular patterns of interaction (i.e. ‘articulations’) in the production of a given whole (i.e. object or entity). Hence my own account of an object as a ‘relational form’, which must be continuously reproduced by its parts (and is therefore at least partly at their mercy) in order to persist.

Alongside territorialisation (and consequently deterritorialisation) – i.e. homogenising and heterogenising tendencies – Delanda includes processes of coding and decoding, which he links most closely to the function of ‘expressive entities such as genes and words’, which play a critical role ‘in the production and maintenance of identity.’ [p.14]

Delanda then goes on to discuss coding and decoding:

 “In assemblage theory, these two specialized expressive media [genes and words] are viewed as the basis for a second synthetic process. While territorialization provides a first articulation of the components, the coding performed by genes or words supplies a second articulation, consolidating the effects of the first and further stabilizing the identity of assemblages. Biological organisms are examples of assemblages synthesized through both territorialization and coding, but so are many social entities, such as hierarchical organizations.” [p.15]

 “…in both the biological and the social realms there are processes of decoding, yielding assemblages which do not conform to the organismic metaphor. In biology such decoding is illustrated by animal behaviour which has ceased to be rigidly programmed by genes to be learned from experience in a more flexible way.” [p.15]

 He then goes on:

 “In an assemblage approach, genes and words are simply one more component entering into relations of exteriority with a variety of other material and expressive components, and the processes of coding and decoding based on these specialized lines of expression operate side by side with nongenetic and nonlinguistic processes of territorialization and deterrilorialization.”

So far so good, though at some level I remain perplexed by the distinction between territorialisation and coding… surely something to ponder further.

From my own (weird/OOO?) materialist perspective, the notion of a matter-expressive dichotomy is perplexing since I hold that all expression relies upon a material basis for its transmission (e.g. sound waves, vocal chords, activity in the brain)… This still works with my earlier idea of matter as being simply the sequential translation/experience/encounter of one real object by another. Abstractions (‘expressive components’) are, in this sense, always coded into material (i.e. interobjective) encounters (e.g. light bouncing off facial expressions, entering eyes of the viewer, focused by the lens, translated into electro-chemical impulses by the retina, relayed through the optical nerve and translated into new electro-chemical signals and experienced by the mind as carrying a particular meaning, etc.). If abstraction is understood as coding, then it need not be restricted to humans or even animals.

This possibility of coding-into then reveals the (potentially) ‘meaning-laden’ nature of inter-objective reality. Encounters between objects are only possible when one object is legible to the other – and all legibility is essentially a kind of coding-for/by and/or de-coding of/by. The evolution of techniques (human and non-human) for de/coding lays the foundation for the modification and genesis of new objects through the introduction of novel distinctions (always experienced through material encounters) that trace the contours of other real objects whose own emergence is predicated on the coherence of the patterning of these distinctions (de/codings) that organise (partially, of course) the experiences of the objects that compose them.

In any case, what is key for Delanda’s theory of assemblages is that it is precisely the combination of territorialisation and coding that constitute ‘assembly processes’ through which the assemblage as coherent entity emerges, whether it is a group of humans or a cluster of cells. This happens against the deterritorialising and decoding processes to which the entity is subjected by its own parts and their co-implication in a diversity of other assemblages. Elaborate coding mechanisms can, therefore, counteract deterritorialising processes just as territorialising processes can counteract mechanisms of decoding. Ultimately, however, it is the repetition of specific patterns of behaviour amongst parts that give an assemblage its stability, i.e. that permits an entity to emerge from those interactions.

In the next post(s) I will (hopefully) explore Delanda’s thinking on the relationship between wholes and their parts and also probe a bit more into the status of social assemblages as objects.