Exceeding the Limits of Human Exceptionalism

The anti-anthropocentric movement of the Anthropocene is constituted by four interrelated characteristics: 1) distributed agency of nonhuman entities functioning within assemblages; 2) entities appear within an entanglement of epistemology, ontology, and ethics; 3) a perspective of posthumanism, which rejects human exceptionalism in its analysis of the subject, and 4) a decentered ecology, not revolving around human conceptualization of nature. These concepts solidify the embedded and interrelated perspective on the Anthropocene deriving from the nonhuman turn, i.e., the shift in focus in scientific inquiry towards nonhuman actors (Grusin 2015). The proposal of an anti-anthropocentric ontology requires evaluation in its connection to the Anthropocene. I will in the following illustrate how an anti-anthropocentric ontology can unify under their acknowledgement of nonhuman entities as real agentic entities. When I refer to the anti-anthropocentric movement I refer to theories in which nonhuman entities are counted as equally substantive as humans in ethical, agential, and metaphysical regards. My focus will be on two of the biggest sub-movements within the anti-anthropocentric movement, 1) new materialism, as per Karen Barad, Jane Bennett and Rosi Braidotti, 2) and Object Oriented Ontology, as per Graham Harman and Timothy Morton.

Against Representational Thinking of Assemblages

The Anthropocene has brought with it some factors that must be put under consideration. More specifically, if the current perspective of human and nonhuman entities is that they are distinct and separated, then we face problems in accounting for the entanglement which the Anthropocene expresses. The consideration of the interconnectedness of entities without resolving to representation is crucial.

When we evaluate a phenomenon such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, i.e., the culmination of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean, we might be tempted to point towards human agency as the causal operator of this phenomenon that is forced upon the essentially plastic free entity of the ocean. However, the ocean is not something that can be reduced to being an entity with a clearly defined center. It is ever evolving. The culmination of the Garbage Patch is exclusively not bound to human agency, but also to the forces of the currents within the ocean. As proposed by Bennett (2010), we can perceive the trajectory of the ocean, even though this trajectory is outside of our comprehension. This does however not imply relinquishment of human ecological responsibility. Conversely, it demands that environmental measurements are informed of the entangled vitality of matter (Bennett 2010, 37). We cannot do away with the plastic and recreate the conceptualization of the ocean, which is imposed upon the assemblage of the ocean as a prefixed entity. The conceptualization of the ocean that is derived from the ecosystemic representation of the ocean is a fundamentally reduced form of the assemblage of the ocean, since an essentialist conceptualization of the assemblage reduces the flux of agency to specific instances of agency. I want to emphasize that plastic damages the lifeway of oceanic creatures. Plastic pollution is a problem constituted by human actions, but the agential forces that instantiate the problem within the assemblage is not restricted to humans but is also inherent to the efficacy of plastic itself and the trajectory of the ocean.

Our understanding of the problem must consider the agential forces of entities which are not directed by intentionality. The ocean does not ‘decide’ where the culmination of debris resides, but it resides due to the agency of oceanic currents as well as the hydrophobic nature of plastics. The danger of plastic debris does not only derive from our action of discarding garbage. It also comes from the thing-power of the plastic itself. Vital materialism, as proposed by Bennett, is helpful in understanding how the relation of forces within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch plays out. These forces cannot be analyzed back onto just human agency but are favorable to analyze from the perspective of the inanimate matter itself. Bennett writes:

“The quarantines of matter and life encourage us to ignore the vitality of matter and the lively powers of material formations, such as the way omega-3 fatty acids can alter human moods or the way our trash is not ”away” in landfills but generating lively streams of chemicals and volatile winds of methane as we speak.” (Bennett 2010, vii)

Therefore, that which is regarded as debris or waste is not an inanimate lump of stuff, which has no other ontology than being ‘worn out’. The matter, which we in this instance term ‘trash’, is in a more concrete sense agential from a place of itself, and not from its conceptualization as trash. Rather, the lump of trash is agential by its constituent entanglement that affects its surroundings. Thereby, in disregarding the conceptualization of matter as surpassing its categorization as ‘worn out’, the instance of a contextualized ‘thing’ provides different material conditions for its assemblage by its vitality. We must regard oceanic debris as vital matter, rather than just garbage that is dangerous for our imposed idea of what the ocean should be. If we accept the extended understanding of agency, I argue that an anti-anthropocentric understanding of the Anthropocene is preferable to the anthropocentric in explaining these forces. When conducting anti-anthropocentric ecological thinking concerning the current state of the environment, we must consider the posthuman limits that assemblages such as the ocean enforce in their interrelatedness. By regarding phenomena such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as constituted by both human and nonhuman forces, we understand this phenomenon on a deeper level. The following sections will elaborate upon some of the tension that is inherent within the anti-anthropocentric movement in order of arriving at a unified ontology.

Towards an Anti-Anthropocentric Ontology

A prominent question within anti-anthropocentric ontology is how to conceive of ‘things’ as opposed to ‘objects’. The following section will investigate the difference, which on the surface is the biggest disagreement between Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) and new materialism, i.e., should we refer to entities as ‘things’, ‘objects’, or neither? The differences between OOO and new materialism do not go unnoticed by the affected parties. That is, OOO expresses strong dissatisfaction with materialism in general. OOO seeks to acknowledge the withdrawn object, without reducing it ‘downwards’ or ‘upwards’. These two instances of reduction within OOO are termed undermining and overmining (Harman 2011, 7-19). The avoidance of these reductions is the reason for OOO’s preference for the term ‘objects’ as opposed to ‘things’ as otherwise presented by Heidegger (Harman 2018, 42-43).

Undermining is reducing an object to something smaller than it is. An example is that the metaphysical position of monism has an explanatory gap in “that if all is truly one, there seems to be little reason why it should ever break into fragments at all” (Harman 2011, 9). This criticism, therefore, is pointed towards the emergence of new objects with new properties. Take the example of atomism, i.e., the position that claims that everything is reducible to small entities called atoms. The properties found within water cannot be found within either its constituent hydrogen atoms or its constituent oxygen atom. However, when configured together, they possess properties that are not found in either of their constituent parts. Therefore, the object of water is not just its constituent parts of H2O. Harman argues that undermining philosophies cannot account for the qualities of objects and can therefore not be the fundamental building blocks of reality (Harman 2011, 10). Overmining, on the other hand, is reducing the object to its qualities, e.g., in the sense of the empiricist’s conception of an apple as only consisting of its properties (Harman 2011, 11).

This way of overmining objects is where correlationism lies and is rejected on the basis hereof. The most important way of overmining is relationism, where, e.g., the ontology of Latourian actor-network theory is placed. The argument against such positions is that if reality is only consistent with the current given relations, there can occur no change (Harman 2011, 12). If it is relations that constitute the existence of entities, then the change in relations is a change in what exists. Therefore, if I had put milk in my coffee instead of drinking it black, the cup would not be the same. OOO argues that such a conception of objects is absurd, since the cup would fundamentally still be the same with either a café au lait or an americano within it. Harman argues that positions such as new materialism either overmine the object, or both undermine and overmine the object. Whether it is just overmining or a mixture of both depends on what one would conceive of as the most central part of the new materialist ontology. The argument for overmining would be the importance of relations. As seen in Barad’s intra-action and Bennett’s assemblage, the relation between entities is everything.

There is, so to speak, no ‘things’ before the relation (Bennett 2010, 5; Barad 2007, 140). The argument for a mixture of overmining and undermining is that OOO conceives of materialism as an empty category that reduces objects, first to their parts (here understood as matter), and from this understanding of the part expand this to be a collection of qualities that is depended on other entities (Harman 2011, 14). Morton elaborates and asks: “I’ve seen wood, I’ve seen photographs of atoms, I’ve seen clouds of chambers, I’ve seen drawings of wave packets. Sure. But have I ever seen matter?” (Morton 2013, 150). These critiques are contingent on the premises and descriptions of relationism, materialism, undermining, and overmining, which are presented by OOO. However, Bennett has proposed in her contribution to the Nonhuman Turn (2015) that the rejection of new materialism being compatible with OOO is misleading. She argues that the withdrawal that OOO calls for is present within the new materialist framework. Bennett calls upon the concept of assemblages that also entails the concept of the plane of consistency, which “is characterized by Deleuze and Guattari as “in no way an undifferentiated aggregate of unformed matter” (Bennett 2015, 229). In this sense, the plane of consistency is the missing concept of substance-like nature that preserves the object’s integrity. Bennett presents that “despite their robust attempts to conceptualize groupings, Deleuze and Guattari also manage to attend carefully to many specific entities-to horses, shoes, orchids, packs of wolves, wasps, priests, metals, and so on.” (Bennett 2015, 229).

From Hyperobjects to Hyperthings

The Big Bang, global warming, the Anthropocene, and the Internet. According to Morton (2013), these entities share features and propose an ontological problem: How do we account for objects that are impossible to observe, but are nonetheless real entities? We live in the extension of the Big Bang by its never-ending expansion, we observe the rising temperatures of global warming, human interference with the Earth Systems is unquestionable, and the Internet is accessible through wireless interaction of computers across the globe. However, as it otherwise usually is for objects, it is impossible to point towards the objects that set these extensions in motion. Take the example of the Internet. How does one point towards the Internet? Is it the small icon on the top of devices that have Internet access? Is it the totality of routers, satellites, and servers? Is it all the websites, chats, and connections found on the World Wide Web? According to Morton, the real object of the Internet is hidden. The objects in question are coined hyperobjects. We encounter the hyperobject of the Internet when we log on to our email or when we are waiting for the router to restart after experiencing technical difficulties. These are local manifestations of the Internet, but never the totality. If we are to find a common ontological ground between OOO and new materialism based on the urgency of the Anthropocene, then we must investigate hyperobjects and their relation to matter as agentic. The reconciliation might seem implausible from the perspective of both positions, since according to Barad and Bennett, objects are illusions that reduce an assemblage to an entity with clear boundaries (Barad 2007, 157; Bennett 2015, 5). Furthermore, Barad and Bennett do at first glance also have one prima facie very substantial disagreement: What constitutes a ‘thing’. Recall that Bennett aimed to understand thing-power, and that Barad concludes that there is no such thing as ‘things’. However, this disagreement is built upon a small conceptual misunderstanding between the two. Barad aims at criticizing things as an extension of representationalism, i.e., an imposednecessary boundary on an ontological level. ‘Things’, as presented by Bennet, are not fixed entities. In this sense, when Bennett refers to the thing in thing-power, it is an intra-acting entity in the framework of Barad. Therefore, when I refer to things, it should be understood in this manner. Accordingly, when I refer to ‘objects’, it is understood in the way of OOO. There lies another crucial point within this immanence of things. A thing is conceived as being a non-fixed entity bound upon its place within the assemblage. However, I will argue that it is nonetheless an entity of potentiality. That is, there is something that exists, but that which exists is not actualized. I thereby argue that the thing which is either 1) actualized or 2) not actualized, is an existing entity also before its actualization. Its existence is without actual agential potentiality, but its potentiality exists before its intra-action. The potentiality for agentiality first occurs within the moment of actualization, and it is here that the entity becomes a thing. Perceiving entities and things as decentered by their potentiality is reminiscent of the Deleuze/Guttarian concept of the body without organs, which can be defined as: “a substrate that is also identified as the plane of consistency (as a non-formed, non-organised, non-stratified or destratified body or term).” (Parr 2010, 37). Thereby, if this reconceptualization of the imminent potentiality for the emergence of things is accepted, the substantivity of hyperobjects can co-exist with the relationality of assemblages of matter. This leads to whether this is undermining the objects by conceiving them as instances of potential matter pre-intra-action. I will argue that what is important is not the matter in itself, i.e., instances of passive ‘stuff’. What is important is the vitality and potential agency of unactualized matter. Matter, as seen in new materialism, is bringing about the force of things, and not the division of specific instances of things. Matter is in this understanding not that which constitutes a concrete book, shoe, or chair. Matter is the body of things, but the body is only immanence without its actualized form. Therefore, the hyperobject is neither undermined by its constituent parts nor overmined by its relations when conceived as within this plane of consistency. The object is still withdrawn within its unactualized state. What Barad and Bennett is aiming towards with intra-action and assemblages is exactly to adhere to the limit of human conceptualization. We cannot epistemically exhaust an entity, whether that entity is a thing or an object. When addressing an example such as plastic pollution, Morton would claim that this would be an instance of a hyperobject. We must ask the question of whether the process of the hyperobject can be separated from the hyperobject itself. That is, can plastic and plastic pollution be separated from each other? Furthermore, if they can be separated, one of the hyperobjects is bound to incorporate the other. Plastic must also incorporate plastic pollution. Plastic pollution is thereby not constituted as a separate entity by its hidden qualities, but from its relation to other objects, e.g., the environment. The process of unactualized matter takes the agentiality and process surrounding the entity of plastic and situates it within its circumstances of plastic pollution. This leads to the question: Is something similar to hyperthings conceivable? Hyperthing is thereby understood as a pre-actualized hyperobject, constituted by processes of flux within materiality yet to be actualized within its realm of immanence. This would indeed require some level of reconceptualization. The characterization of things as found per Bennett dwells away from the conception of the boundaries of material entities in their enactment within their assemblage. The ‘thing’, for it to arrive at a plane of consistency with this conception of a hyperthing, would therefore require a distinction between the thing of materiality within the assemblage, and the possibility of extensions above its current agential relations. Take the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Before the culmination of debris was actualized in its configuration of a patch, the processes that led to the emerged hyperobject was itself an assemblage of agentic forces, independently from the hyperobject which it led to. As the apparatus of inquiry as per Barad can both be measured and measurer, we can conceive of the thing as measured when it occurs within an assemblage of occurring affairs. When the current entity accordingly does not appear within the assemblage in its material form, but still constitutes a degree of agential capacity within the assemblage in the form of valuing the outcome of the material affairs, the entity is situated as the measurer. Hyperthings is therefore a concept of unactualized potential of vital forces, which by its possibility of agential capacity exists within its realm of substrate immanence. Therefore, by reconceptualizing the limits of matter and its relation to ‘things’, and by introducing concepts such as the plane of consistency, OOO and New Materialism can find some common ground. In the following section, I will elaborate upon this common ground, but also dwell upon its limits.

The Anti-Anthropocentric Ontology

As explicated within the last section, there is a philosophical possibility for cooperation between OOO and new materialism. This can further be expanded upon if we investigate the connection between the two positions and the four characteristics of anti-anthropocentric ontology which I have presented. OOO, from the elaboration from Morton, is compatible with these on the same note of new materialism. As previously mentioned, the four characteristics are 1) agency of nonhumans, 2) entanglement, 3) posthumanism, and 4) decentered ecology. When focusing on the surfacelevel conflicting theories of Rosi Braidotti and Timothy Morton, the agreement upon posthumanism and decentered ecology becomes quite explicit. There is a consensus about the dismantlement of human exceptionalism and its connection of interconnectedness between human and nonhuman actors. The concepts of zoe, i.e., the posthumanist analysis of subjects that is not bound to humans alone as presented by Rosi Braidotti (2013) and dark ecology, i.e., the conception of an ecology without the imposed concept of nature (Morton, 2016), are, in this sense, similar in their aim. The disagreement that is most present is concerning whether we should regard the entanglement as a collected analysis of objects (as it would be for OOO) or subjects (as it would be within zoe-based analysis). This disagreement is in its formulation opposite of each other; however, in its concrete analysis of interconnectedness two ways of perceiving the same phenomenon. Whether everything is objects or everything is subjects is not important based on a revised ecology. What is important is that the ecology does not focus on the relation between humans and nonhumans, but rather the interrelated entanglement between the two. When revising the agency of nonhumans, there lies an important point in whether OOO can account for the distributed agency of objects. The concept of agency is not crucial in the works of OOO. However, the elaboration of hyperobjects and their characteristics thereof opens OOO to the possibility of analyzing agency within this framework, in that interobjectivity is compatible with the distributed conception of agency, which is also present within Barad, Bennett, and Braidotti (Bennett 2010, 21; Barad 2007, 141; Braidotti 2013, 160). That is, agency is not restricted to needing intention, but only effects. Hyperobjects do not possess intention, but still alter things. Interobjectivity, as a key characteristic of hyperobjects, is such an alteration of other objects, viz., interobjectivity is how objects alter each other.

However, there is no contradiction in regarding the unactualized hyperobject within its state of phasing as unaltered by interobjectivity. Even though the actualization of the hyperobject that occurs when the hyperobject’s extension alter another object that is specific to that concrete relation, the causality of the alteration is not specific to the extension. Without resolving hyperobjects to relationism, there is no contradiction in claiming that hyperobjects possess the form of distributed agency which new materialism proposes.

Following this understanding of interobjectivity, the entanglement that is present within the ontology of anti-anthropocentrism can be extracted from the concepts of viscosity and nonlocality within OOO. We must perceive the entanglement of 75 viscosity in its relation to bringing about emergent properties of objects upon each other. The viscosity of hyperobjects suggests that the entanglement is so present between objects that the existence of one cannot be formulated or regarded without the existence of another. Non-locality also provides an interplay between new materialism and OOO in the analysis of quantum mechanics, which both positions find interesting. As seen within the last section, there is a common ground for the movements of OOO and new materialism. These agreements upon the four characteristics are, however, situated within wide-spreading frameworks, which draw inspiration from a wide range of authors. Therefore, the ontology of anti-anthropocentrism will also have fundamental disagreements. However, even though OOO and new materialism have fundamental metaphysical disagreements, they can still agree upon the anti-anthropocentric ontology which is presented. OOO can agree upon the agency of nonhuman entities without abandoning their conception of objects as the building block of reality. The metaphysical circumstances that underlie the anti-anthropocentric ontology of the Anthropocene are not restricted to being either constituted by process, as is the case with new materialism, nor to be built upon substance, as is the case with OOO. The metaphysical elements which are presented can differ in interpretation, but the ontological elements of agency of nonhumans, entanglement, decentered ecology, and posthumanism are compatible with both OOO and new materialism. The anti-anthropocentric interpretation of the Anthropocene provides integral insights concerning our relation to our surroundings. The understanding of the Anthropocene as a concept that decenters humanity enables us to regard the forces of intentionality as well as the forces that do not derive from intentionality as ontologically important. It opens the scope for understanding our embeddedness within the environment instead of reinstantiating the separation between nature and culture. Regarding the 76 Anthropocene as anti-anthropocentric puts humans back into nature and emphasizes the importance of our impact upon the Earth. There are a lot of forces within the Earth System, and we are very much one of them.

Conclusion

The anti-anthropocentric understanding of the Anthropocene bears with it two interrelated aspects: The normative aspect of how we interact with nonhuman entities and the descriptive aspect of contemporary metaphysical inquiry. I have shown that these aspects are deeply entangled with each other. The Anthropocene, and the proposition that human exceptionalism is fundamentally flawed, constitute an urgency for a revision of our place upon Earth as well as our place within ontological inquiry. The anti-anthropocentric ontology, deriving from the nonhuman turn, requires us to reconsider the ontological limits of humans as well as nonhumans. I have illustrated in this thesis that even though OOO and new materialism have fundamentally different understandings of how the discontent with human exceptionalism shall be formulated, they do share ontological similarities that potentially can be of great significance to our understanding of ourselves within the Anthropocene. The significance lies within better understanding human as well as nonhuman impact upon the Earth System. When formulating the ontological status of agency within the Anthropocene, the interrelated assemblage which is constituted by the entanglement of entities must be considered. Human impact upon the environment must not be forgotten, but on the same note, nonhuman agency must not be neglected.

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