Spatial Assemblage : Apparatus/Diffraction

 Assemblage : Apparatus/Diffraction

"There are no simple concepts. Every concept has components and is defined by them.

It therefore has a combination [chiffre]. It is a multiplicity, although not every multiplicity

is conceptual...

Not only do Descartes, Hegel, and Feuerbach not begin

with the same concept,

they do not have the same concept of beginning...

Every concept has an irregular

contour defined by the sum of its components,

which is why,

from Plato to Bergson,

we find

the idea of the concept being a

matter of articulation,

of cutting and

cross-cutting.

The concept is a whole because it totalizes

its components, but it is

a fragmentary whole.

Only on this condition can it escape the

mental chaos

constantly threatening it, stalking it, trying to reabsorb it."

-- Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, pp. 15-16.

Assemblage (Wilcox)

As opposed to concepts like structure, culture, science, objectivity, production, agency, technology, and nature, the idea of assemblage emphasizes the material-discursive heterogeneity of which the cosmos is constituted. As Deleuze explains:

In assemblages you find states of things, bodies, various combinations of bodies, hodgepodges; but you also find utterances, modes of expression, and whole regimes of signs. The relations between the two are pretty complex. For example, a society is defined not by productive forces and ideology, but by ‘hodgepodges’ and ‘verdicts.’ [i]

Fortun and Bernstein (1998) use the term “realitty” to describe the complex, messy world made up of assemblages and trace the genealogy of the concept throughout the twentieth century’s continental philosophical traditions. Beginning with Frankfurt School critical theorists like Walker Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, who coined the term “constellation,” and moving through Foucault and Deleuze, Fortun and Bernstein characterize the concept of the assemblage thus:

In an assemblage, nothing explains it all: not the sciences, not the social sciences, not the human sciences. There isn’t anything that is first or fundamental in an assemblage—nature, language, culture, institutions, whatever—it’s all at once, and we with our questions come after it. Meaning that we are both assembled by it, and in pursuit of it. Even though we’re consigned to come after the assemblage has been assembled, both with and without our intentionality, that doesn’t stop us from going after it, too.[ii]

https://conceptsinsts.wikispaces.com/Assemblage+%28Wilcox%29

Assemblage (Weiss)

(Disambiguation: Assemblage (Wilcox))

The assemblage is introduced as a heuristic tool to map out the realitty of an idea: the conceptual connections surrounding and contributing to the formation of a topic, such as Darwin's theory of evolution. The primary source text for this idea is Muddling Through by Fortun and Bernstein.

There are four general characteristics of assemblages:

1) Assemblages are a kind of infrastructure (1, 2) - "a complex, crazily reticulated transportation system" (105) - that, like roadways, facilitate (conceptual) movement in certain directions while constraining movement in other ways.

2) Despite the constraining nature of assemblages, they still allow for some elements of power and agency to be exercised. If you have the ability, granted by some modes of thinking, to go "off-road" or to start a new chain of self-organizing "roadwork", then you are able to recoup more agency in choosing which direction to think in. (105)

3) An assemblage is always in some type of restricted motion as various nodes are afforded slight shifting within the constraints of their linkages. "The lobster form is not entirely whimsical, but a deliberate reminder that the sciences are in motion and, indeed, composed of linked motions." (106) Stabilization is possible in small regions of an assemblage through stronger interconnections made between nodes of institutions, concepts, and activities, such as those found in the sciences. It is important to recognize that this stabilization effect comes not from reality, but from realitty, the social elements that contribute to a sense of fact or truth. This movement also emphasizes that visual representations are "diagrams of contingency" - the elements are all interdependent upon connections to other elements and that shifts in force or direction will transfer across the diagram, sometimes in indirect ways. (107)

4) The representation of an assemblage is itself a kludged tool to aid our understanding of and inquiry into scientific activities. Rather than providing answers or hard-and-fast explanations, assemblages are meant to provoke questions and to open up possibilities in thinking about events and topics in new ways.

https://conceptsinsts.wikispaces.com/Assemblage+(Weiss)

Agential Realism

A theory coined by Karen Barad, agential realism reconceptualizes the process by which objects are examined and knowledge created in scientific activities. Barad emphasizes that agential realism is not just an epistemological theory, but an ontological one, as it describes how reality is actually shaped. 

" [Agential realism] is an epistemological and ontological framework that extends Bohr's insights and takes as its central concerns the nature of materiality, the relationship between the material and the discursive, the nature of "nature" and of "culture" and the relationship between them, the nature of agency, and the effects of boundary, including the nature of exclusions that accompany boundary projects.

Agential realism entails a reformulation of both of its terms - "agency" and "realism" - and provides an understanding of the role of human and nonhuman factors in the production of knowledge, thereby moving considerations of epistemic practices beyond the traditional realism versus social constructivism debates." (89)

Agency, according to Barad, “is a matter of intra-acting; it is an enactment, not something that someone or something has.” (112) 

Niels Bohr's Quantum Physics

“Bohr’s epistemology calls into question several foundationalist assumptions that Western epistemology generally takes as essential to its project; among these are an inherent subject/object distinction and the representational status of language.” (89) 

Influential in the development of agential realism was Niels Bohr, a quantum physicist who asserted that observing apparatuses are not merely passive instruments, but things that participate in the formulation of scientific observation. He also resolved the "wave-particle" duality paradox (97) by positing that the paradox existed because the methods used by scientists to measure light as a wave versus as a particle were mutually exclusive.

By granting apparatuses a more active role in the production of knowledge, Bohr challenged the separateness of observer and object by referring to “objects of observation” and “agencies of observation”.

“[T]his interaction between object and apparatus thus forms an inseparable part of the phenomenon.” (95)

Apparatus

“[A]pparatuses are specific material reconfigurings of the world that do not merely emerge in time but iteratively reconfigure space-timematter as part of the ongoing dynamism of becoming." 

“...apparatuses are not mere instruments or devices that can be deployed as neutral probes of the natural world, or determining structures of a social nature, but neither are they merely laboratory instruments or social forces that function in a performative mode." 

Barad uses the example of the transducer in a sonogram machine that is used to "view" a fetus: 

"the transducer does not allow us to peer innocently at the fetus, nor does it simply offer constraints on what we can see; rather, it helps produce and is "part of" the body it images.” (101)

A transducer in a sonogram is not merely a passive instrument; it actively participates in the production of an image of a fetus, both in how it transforms auditory input (sound waves) into visual outputs on a screen, but also in how it makes the fetus seem to be more real and existent than it would have been without. 

Diffraction

Another key idea behind agential realism is Barad's emphasis on a transformative and transgressive diffraction, not just reproducing reflection:

"In this regard, it is important not to confuse the fact that I am drawing on an optical phenomenon for my inspiration in developing certain aspects of my methodological approach ... with the nature of the method itself. In particular, calling a method 'diffractive' in analogy with the physical phenomenon of diffraction does not imply that the method itself is analogical. On the contrary, my aim is to disrupt the widespread reliance on an existing optical metaphor - namely, reflection - that is set up to look for homologies and analogies between separate entities. By contrast, diffraction, as I argue, does not concern homologies but attends to specific material entanglements." (87)

Again, Barad's posthumanist expansion of performativity to include nonhumans comes into play:

"I propose a posthumanist performative approach to understanding technoscientific and other naturalcultural practices that specifically acknowledges and takes account of matter’s dynamism. The move toward performative alternatives to representationalism shifts the focus from questions of correspondence between descriptions and reality to matters of practices, doings, and actions." (135) 

Barad clarifies that her posthumanism is not celebrating "after humans", but more challenging the prima facie segregation and privileging of humans over and from other beings:

"Posthumanism, as I intend it here, is not calibrated to the human; on the contrary, it is about taking issue with human exceptionalism while being accountable for the role we play in the differential constitution and differential positioning of the human among other creatures (both living and nonliving)" (136) 

Hearkening back to her physics roots, Barad compares the conceptual diffraction to optical diffraction versus reflection, explaining that diffraction allows for more insight because it transforms (conceptual) images:

"Such an approach also brings to the forefront important questions of ontology, materiality, and agency, which social constructivist and traditional realist approaches get caught up in the geometrical optics of reflection where, much like the infinite play of images between two facing mirrors, the epistemological gets bounced back and forth, but nothing more is seen.

Moving away from the representationalist trap of geometrical optics, I shift the focus to physical optics, to questions of diffraction rather than reflection. Diffractively reading the insights of poststructuralist theory, science studies, and physics through one another entails thinking the cultural and the natural together in illuminating ways." (135) 

This diffraction challenges the singularity and solidity of boundaries, making what was sharply delineated a zone of fuzzy regions that have questionable divisions held in place by iterative performativity:

https://conceptsinsts.wikispaces.com/Agential+Realism+%28Weiss%29