As I mentioned, one section of the handouts we used in class was "In conversation with," where the theorists/scholars referenced/discussed were mentioned. As the semester progressed, I felt more and more familiar with authors that popped up regularly (namely Deleuze and Guattari), though often I had never read any of their works. It's interesting how familiarity can develop, and the roundabout ways in which meaning can emerge from a list (or a list of lists). As with the key terms section, I'm curious what this recording might evoke for a listener.Â
Throughout the semester, the beginning of each class was kicked off by a student presentation on the reading(s) we had done for that day, including a handout giving a bio of the author, a list of theorists with whom the author is in conversation, a list of key terms, a synopsis of the arguments made, and discussion questions. I've always found the format of these handouts very clarifying, and have wondered how much of the text one could understand just by knowing the key terms it engages with. Here is a recording of me reading aloud the key terms sections from the handouts on five different readings. I'm curious as to what impression of the individual texts, and of our semester as a whole, this reading might create.
This is a recording of the Abstract of Jasbir Puar's "Prognosis Time: Towards a geopolitics of affect, debility, and capacity." This was surprisingly fun to read aloud. I chose this passage because of the enumerations at the beginning and end of this passage, but and while reading, I noticed just how many "and"s were included throughout the text: aloud, the list-ness of the text that I had missed emerged.
One phrase that stood out to me that I had not previously noticed was "I argue for a deconstruction of what ability and capacity mean, affective and otherwise, and to push for a broader politics of debility that puts duress of the seamless production of abled-bodies in relation to disability." The single word "otherwise" opens up the singular concept of affect into an open, speculative list. Puar leaves it to the reader, and to those with whom she is in conversation to take up this "otherwise" and to run with it.
This second recording is an excerpt from Paggy McIntosh's "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." I've included the first 20 items out of McIntosh's 50 item list with which she hopes to demonstrate the impact of white privilege on daily life. Reading aloud, I found myself losing my breath, as I forgot to pause to breathe at any point other than between the numbered items, a problem I did not have when reading Whitman's poetic, un-numbered list. The numbers of this list created a rigid structure that I unquestionningly followed until I realized how unnatural and strained it had made my reading. (This numbering carried, for me, an authoritarian quality, quite the opposite of the freedom and openness of lists that I believe gives them great potential as a genre.) When considering the vibration of a text, the breath is vital as our breathing is linked to our heartbeat, arguably the defining vibrational rhythm of living bodies.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm interested in the ways that lists sound/vibrate/resonate. To explore this question and to document the sonic qualities of lists, I've recorded myself reading a series of lists, some from poetry, some from theory, some from notes I took in this class. This first recording is an excerpt of "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman.
Rejoice in the Lamb is one of the most famous choral works by renown British composer Benjamin Britten. The text of this cantata is "Jubilate Agno", a lengthy poem written in the 1700s by Christopher Smart while he was in an insane asylum. That the author of this poem was (or was perceived o be) "insane" comes across in its structure and content. It is at points nonsensical, random, unintuitive, even incoherent, but from it emerges a clear message: a passionate faith in God. The enchantment of the text is enhanced by the way it has been set to music by Britten. This poem is also referenced in Oxley's dissertation on lists in literature. Above, you will find a recording of the work of Britten, a starting point for an examination of the ways that lists can resonate, the ways that lists, as sound waves, can fill or traverse space and time. Below, I've included an excerpt of this list-poem (available in its entirety here), as an example of how meaning emerges from poetic lists, challenging traditional calls for coherence, organization, and logic, in favor of a different (though obviously not "New," as this poem is hundreds of years old) manner of thinking:
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his dayâs work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lordâs watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him heâs a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lordâs poor, and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his masterâs bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Icneumon rat, very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived Godâs light about him both wax and fire.
For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
Jasbir Puar: The Role of the List in Critiquing Intersectionality
Daily Effects of White Privilege
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
âŠ
45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.
46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.
47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.
48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.
49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.
50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.
â excerpt from Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"
 Because enumerations are additive, lists necessarily call into question the reasoning and politics behind what is included and what is excluded, what is said and what remains unsaid. As Krause, another scholar of the list's role in poetry, states: "by their very nature as finished, closed verbal objects, [lists] raise inevitable questions as to what has been excluded, what doesnât fit" (Krause 2). Additionally, he states that lists raise "questions of language, culture, power, gender, ideology, and class" (Krause 2). As such, the list is implicated in questions of inclusion, exclusion, and identity politics.
What Oxley describes as the "lack of a center" of lists seems fitting as for a philosophical project that seeks to decenter the subject from our understanding of the world and to imagine an alternative ethics that goes beyond the human (Oxley 2). Decentering the human subject is one of the project of the new materialisms. In her article "I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess," Jasbir Puar critiques intersectionality as a failed attempt to decenter whiteness in feminist thought, that is in fact "a universalizing project that is always beholden to the self-referentiality of the 'center'" (55) that resulted in "re-securing the centrality of the subject positioning of white women" (52).
Interestingly, the intersectionality that Puar critiques could be described as a list: "Indeed, many of the cherished categories of the intersectional mantra â originally starting with race, class, gender, now including sexuality, nation, religion, age, and disability â are the products of modernist colonial agendas and regimes of epistemic violence, operative through Western/European epistemological formation through which the notion of discrete identity has emerged" (54). By going through each of these required categories, white feminists can preface their work with a disclaimer about their identity as though it absolves them of any implicit biases in their text or critiques about the failure of their work to address difference. Thus, intersectionality becomes just one more box to check off on the to-do list of "good feminism," and is also a list of identity characteristics. Though lists can be used as a tool for decentering, this form of listing has not sufficed to change feminist thought. I would argue that this is not because of an inherent flaw of the list, but due to the use of a closed list. As Puar points out, though the "intersectional mantra" did open from "race, class, gender" to include "sexuality, nation, religion, age, and disability," but the openings ended there. Intersectional analysis is definitive instead of speculative. Once these feminists list their identity categories and move on to the rest of their work, the author assumes that the question of identity, privilege, and difference have been adequately dealt with, and the discussion of identity is thus closed. If these authors were to realize that their act of listing is necessarily incomplete, open, and needing to be further developed, played with, examined, deconstructed, and build off of, then whiteness would not be allowed to remain central to the text and unexamined.
The closed nature of the intersectional list is demonstrated by the "the self-referentiality of the 'center'" (55) of whiteness as well as the fact that the "categories privileged by intersectional analysis do not necessarily traverse national and regional boundaries nor genealogical exigencies, presuming and producing static epistemological renderings of categories themselves across historical and geopolitical locations" (54). The intersectional list is not creative, but a reiteration of pre-existing categories and concepts. It is a closed logical loop that allows for no departure from its own circular logic, no openings.
Puar critiques not only the centering of white womanhood, but the centering of the human subject more broadly. Puar states that "intersectional identities are the byproducts of attempts to still and quell the perpetual motion of assemblages, to capture and reduce them" (50) and describes intersectionality as a theory that "depoy[s] the subject as the primary analytic frame" 49). On the other hand, she characterizes assemblage as a theory that "highlight[s] the forces that make subject formation tenuous, if not impossible" (49). The "impossibility" highlighted by the assemblage is comparable to the chaos and incoherence of the list, and its ability to juxtapose contradictory items, catching the reader in a paradox. In response to what she views as the failure of intersectionality, Puar advocates for a turn towards assemblage. The flat, lifeless, confessional list that Puar critiques does not have the vibrant vitality, agency, or virtuality of gatherings that constitute the assemblage and the open list.
Puar's critique of intersectionality, and her endorsement of assemblage demonstrate the different types of work that lists can do. While I believe that the list is an important tool for examining complex concepts, Puar reminds us that not every list accomplishes the open, speculative, receptive, engaged relation to knowledge production that we have found in the work of Bennett, Saldanha, Stewart, and others. Puar encourages a wariness of the boundaries of the list, asking us to see where and why lists close down, and encourages to push beyond the comfort of order and coherence, into an intellectual territory that is complex, in motion, and uncertain.
Like Stewart, Bennett features lists quite prominently in her book, Vibrant Matter. Bennett presents the reader with a list of five vibrant materials as a way of explicating the notion of the assemblage. In Bennett's work, like in Stewart's, list and assemblage are deeply interrelated, as both constitute a collection or a coming-together of various vibrant elements that interact with each other in complex and often hidden ways. Bennett sometimes accomplished the opening of the list sometimes through the juxtaposition of items that should be contradictory she maintains the open, speculative nature of her lists: "a turbulent, immanent field in which various and variable materialities collide, congeal, morph, evolve, and disintegrate" (xi). Other times she explicitely states that her list is incomplete and open to new additions: "These genealogical⊠studies exposed the various micropolitical and macropolitical techniques through which the human body was disciplined, normalized, sped up and slowed down, gendered, sexed, nationalized, globalized, rendered disposable, or otherwise composed" (1). Bennett concedes she is unable to capture the full network of concepts, things, and connections in her lists. Her lists are not a catalogue, but a beginning.
Like Stewart, Bennett uses lists to create dimension and tension in her text, and leaves her lists open ended. In the section "Thing-Power I: Debris," Bennett builds off of the concept of the assemblage and working in her own theorization of vibrant matter. She launches into her analysis with a list: "one large men's black plastic work glove / one dense mat of oak pollen / one unblemished dead rat / one white plastic bottle cap / one smooth stick of wood" (4). Though the first five enumerated items constitute the central point of Bennett's analysis, the list remains open, as the assemblage they form remains open to interacting and merging with other vibrant matter. Bennett states: "When the materiality of the glove, the rat, the pollen, the bottle cap, and the stick started to shimmer and spark, it was in part because of the contingent tableau that they formed with each other, with the street, with the weather that morning, with me" (Bennett 5). This openness calls for more work to be done, more connections to be made, more speculations to occur, new assemblages to emerge. By bringing our focus to these vibrant materials, Bennett hopes to encourage the reader to "glimpse[] a culture of things irreducible to the culture of objects" (Bennett 5). This list of vibrant materials, Bennett hopes, is irreducibleâalways becoming more that what meets the eye. Bennett uses the additive nature of lists to question the traditional boundaries between what is included and what is excluded in theory and in academic thought. Her irreducibly open list calls for infinite addition.
"The ordinary is a shifting assemblage of practices and practical knowledges, a scene of both liveliness and exhaustion, a dream of escape or the simple life. Ordinary affects are the varied, surging capacities to affect and to be affected that give everyday life the quality of a continual motion of relations, scenes, contingencies, and emergences. They're things that happen. They happen in impulses, sensations, expectations, daydreams, encounters, and habits of relating, in strategies and failures, in forms of persuasion, contagion, and compulsion, in modes of attention, attachment, and agency, and in publics and social worlds of all kinds that catch people up in something that feels like something" (1-2)
Stewart's book, Ordinary Affects is a descriptive list of vignettes that demonstrate the notion of ordinary affects. In these vignettes, as opposed to rigorously theorizing and defining the ordinary affects, Stewart instead builds an assemblage from which ordinary affect emerges, leaving the reader not with full comprehension, but with a strong impression. Other than her brief introduction, Stewart's book does not read like theory, but more like art, as it is a work in which the meaning emerges not from a logical explication or a deep theoretical engagement, but from the affect of the text. While interrelated, these vignettes are by no means causally linked, and have no continuous narrative thread connecting them. As there are no logical ties explicitly made between these scenes, the reader is left with the work of finding the threads that connect them, and Stewart states, "I write not as a trusted guide carefully laying out the links between theoretical categories and the real world, but as a point of impact, curiosity, and encounter" (5). As such, a vital part of Stewart's project is to very deliberately not lay out logical connections in this work, making the list the perfect form for her work to take. Through this list-like form, Stewart attempts to create a work that serves as "a point of impact, curiosity, and encounter," demonstrating Oxley's claim that "The list is a beginning" (Oxley 4). In the introduction, Stewart states that this text "gazes, imagines, senses, takes on performs, and asserts not a flat and finished truth but some possibilities (and threats) that have come into view" (Stewart 5). This is not a closed text, and it does not strive to demonstrate theoretical mastery. Instead, through both its form and its content, this work seeks to open up new meanings and engage in new possibilities.
One concept theorized by writers in the new materialisms is emergence. Emergence is an expression of how the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts, and though the many parts of an assemblage may not have the potential to create certain new meanings, acts, or conditions separately, when the vibrancy of all these materials is combined, new and unexpected effects can emerge from the system. One could interpret lists as functioning in a similar way, and Oxley states, "The virtue of an enumeration⊠is that it will not remain just an enumeration. It becomes something greater, depending upon its degree of openness" (Oxley 21). Thus, listsâparticularly open and speculative listsâallow the components of the list to be something greater than the sum of their parts, creating the potential for new meanings to emerge: Belknap notes this particular potential of enumeration, stating that literary lists "might spiral into their own constellations of form for which there is no identifying label" (Belknap 7). This also demonstrates the similarity in form and function of list and assemblage. Stewart further establishes this similarity as she describes her list-like work as an assemblage: "Ordinary Affects is written as an assemblage of disparate scenes that pull the course of the book into a tangle of trajectories, connections, and disjunctures" (5). Thus for Stewart, the list is the form of writing that allows ideas to be expressed through the new conceptual framework of the assemblage, a key concept in the new materialisms. As it is a list/assemblage, Stewart's book, has emergent properties. Her work "becomes something greater" and has meaning that "spiral[s] into [its] own constellations" (Oxley 21, Belknap 7).
The non-linear, non-causal structure of the list is a key part of how meaning emerges from Stewart's text. Stewart states that "Ordinary affects, then are an animate circuit that conducts force and maps connections, routes, and disjunctures" (Stewart 3). Her book is an exploration of the "connections, routes, and disjunctures" of these ordinary affects, and the form of the list facilitates her project as it allows for multiple connections and interrelations to be created between the items enumerated as these items " refer back and forth to each other" (Oxley iii). This allows us to depart from traditional and simplistic notions of cause and effect, and to imagine instead a network of connections between many different things which all act on one another. The list, perhaps, can function as a more rhizomatic form of writing than other forms of prose. While good writing traditionally means creating clear, logical connections between ideas presented, the list defies this convention, leaving the possibilities for many different relationships and interactions between the different items on the list open to interpretation by the reader: "The question [ordinary affects] beg is⊠where they might go and what potential modes of knowing, relating, and attending to things are already somehow present in them in a state of potentiality and resonance" (Stewart 3). Stewart responds to this question in part through the form of her work. Its list-like structure reveals a new mode of knowing that is more open, and a new way of relating ideas to one another that depends not on structure, linearity, logic, and rigor, but instead on free floating thoughts, affects, interconnectivity, simultaneity, unity/fragmentation, and openness.
Even in the introduction of Stewart's book, which has the most conventional form for a theoretical text, instead of elaborating logical connections and causal links, Stewart instead often chooses to simply enumerate. At the end of the introduction, for example, Stewart enumerates a list of scholars that engage in this genre of thinking, with a brief description and no transition, explicit linking, or ordering of the works of thinkers. "Walter Benjamin's 1999 Arcades ProjectâŠRoland Barthes' S/Z and A Lover's DiscourseâŠLeslie Stern's The Smoking Book⊠Michael Taussig's My Cocaine Museum and The Magic of the State⊠D. J. Waldie's Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir⊠David Searcy's Ordinary HorrorâŠFinally, Lauren Berlant's mode of thingking and wriging on the affects of the present moment" (6-7). Thus, she creates a theoretical framework for herself that very clearly draws on an existing body of scholarship, and engages in a brief description of each of the works, yet allows these items to "The items refer back and forth to each other" leaving open the potentiality of numerous interconnections, dialogues, and contradictions between these works (Oxley iii). By refusing to lay out logical/causal connections/transitions, Stewart leaved the work of the meaning-making process largely in the hands of the reader. This ensues an active, engaged, and speculative reading and denies the possibility of mastery of the text.
Before moving on to another text and another theorist, I would like to briefly look at one example of a list in Stewart's vignettes. One section in the main body of the text, "The Pull of the Ordinary," includes the passage "The ordinary throws itself together out of forms, flows, powers, pleasures, encounters, distractions, drudgery, denials, practical solutions, shape-shifting forms of violence, daydreams, and opportunities lost or found" (Stewart 29). This list is extensive, and while its almost exhaustive nature could close down the list, the contradictions included among the items enumerated ("pleasures" and "drudgery," "practical solutions" and "daydreams") opens back up the potential for new meaning in this list. This implies that this list is not a definitive description of "the ordinary," but a suggestion of a starting point, again demonstrating Oxley's claim that lists are beginnings. This passage highlights the use of the list to create "uncertainty," "chaos," and "juxtaposition," and even "questions the possibility of coherence" (Kadir 2).
Lists as Assemblage: The coexistence of Order and Chaos
The coexistence of chaos and order is yet another characteristic that lists and the new materialisms share. Oxley argues that lists allow chaos and order to coexist with one another: "The enumeration can offer the semblance of order and chaos at once" (Oxley 2). In my midterm paper, I addressed how examining the concepts of assemblage, emergence, virtuality, and lines of flight, as theorized by Jane Bennett and Arun Saldanha, allows us to reconceptualize order and chaos as co-constitutive instead of oppositional. This implies that one shared characteristic between assemblage, a key concept in the new materialisms, and lists is this apparent coexistence (or even co-constitution) of chaos and order. As I will discuss further in my post on Kathleen Stewart's Ordinary Affects, lists and assemblages can be strikingly similar and can accomplish similar conceptual work. As such, putting assemblage theory and the poetic theory about lists in dialogue with one another could result in new insights about how we can conceptualize the organization of matter and ideas.
In reading over my midterm paper, the concepts of vibration and resonance stood out to me the most. How do lists vibrate? How do lists resonate with readers--both figuratively and literally? Later in this blog, I'll post some audio recordings of lists read (or sung) aloud to attempt to explore this question (I'll link to it as soon as it's posted!).
For your reading pleasure, my midterm paper:
Creative Matter, Destructive Tendencies: Assemblage as Theorized by Bennett, Saldanha, and Puar
Philosophers and scientists alike have long sought to clearly define the human body. The need for defined boundaries between human and in human, matter and discourseâas demonstrated in the clear mind-body split Cartesian dualism and in the linguistic and philosophical distinction between subject-object, for exampleâhas long been the dominant mode of thinking. However, New Materialisms challenges old notions of thinking about matter and breaks down many of these apparently defined dichotomies and boundaries. One of the key concepts that challenges these clearly defined lines between bodies, between active and passive, and between the material and the immaterial is assemblage theory. In this essay, I will examine the notion of assemblage as theorized in Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter, Arun Saldanha's Psychedelic White, and Jasbir Puar's "I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess." Each of these three theorists build off of the work of Deleuze and Guattari, moving away from traditional notions of bodies as contained and independent, moving instead towards a theory of interconnectivity where many things come together to form a more complex system, an assemblage.
In Vibrant Matter, Bennett defines assemblages as "mosaic[s]," "ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts," and "throbbing confederations that are able to function despite the persistent presence of energies that confound them from within" (Bennett 22, 23). Bennett's assemblage breaks down the binary between active subject and passive object, building off of Spinoza's idea that things are "neither subject nor object but a 'mode'" (Bennett 21). Thus, Bennett conceptualizes matter not as a passive surface waiting to be acted upon, but an active, lively presence with the capacity to significantly influence the world. Not only is the assemblage as a whole a lively actant, but Bennett also imagines each of the simple bodies that constitute assemblages as being "living, throbbing," full of potential and energy.
By characterizing matter as a powerful actant that constitutes and surrounds human bodies, Bennett decenters the human subject and blurs the line between where the material ends and the human begins. Humans are part of assemblages, and are also composed of assemblages, as human bodies are conceptualized as "a heterogeneous compound of wonderfully vibrant, dangerously vibrant, matter" which are "composed of various material parts (the minerality of our bones, or the metal of our blood, or the electricity of our neurons)" (Bennett 12-3, 10). As opposed to humans being independent agents capable of mastery over objects, assemblage theory instead conceptualizes humans as embedded within a complex system where "inanimate" things also actively participate. According to Bennett, assemblages are made up of "humans and their (social, legal, linguistic) constructions" as well as "very active and powerful nonhumans: electrons, trees, wind, fire, electromagnetic fields" (Bennett 24). Saldanha conceptualizes assemblages in a similar manner, with vibrant material and human actions and ideology taking part, stating that "assemblages are composed of elements of various kinds and levelsâchemical, behavioral, artificial, meteorological," (Saldanha 25). Puar expresses this as well, and states "bodies are unstable entities that cannot be seamlessly disaggregated into identity formations," implying that human subjectivity and identity is far from clearly defined, and is instead a complex and unpredictable coming-together of diverse materials and ideologies (Puar 56). Human bodies and identities are not clearly distinct from the rest of the world. Instead, humans are deeply enmeshed in assemblages that include many forms of vibrant matter. Assemblage theory thus challenges our conception of human subjectivity, forcing us to acknowledge the influence of many non-human actors.
This ability of diverse materials to come together, remaining in constant motion is the focus of Puar's examination of assemblage. Approaching assemblage from a different perspective than Bennett and Saldanha, Puar uses assemblage primarily as a critique of intersectionality. Puar argues "intersectional identities are the byproducts of attempts to still and quell the perpetual motion of assemblages, to capture and reduce them, to harness their threatening mobility" (Puar 50). Thus Puar emphasizes "the perpetual motion of assemblages" and "their threatening mobility," and condemns any attempt to suppress their vitality as futile (Puar 50). This idea that assemblages are perpetually in motion is implied by Bennett and Saldanha as well. The title of Bennett's book itself, "Vibrant Matter," implies the vibration and movement of the assemblage. Bennett also states that "matter itself is lively" and that "Assemblages are living, throbbing confederations," refuting the stillness or passiveness of the material (Bennett 13). Additionally, Saldanha theorizes that "matter containsâor rather isâa creativity beyond the creativity that is habitually attributed to culture, language, or the mind" (Saldanha 21). Though the description "creative" less explicitly relates to motion, it nonetheless characterizes matter as vibrant and as having the capacity to be an actant. Saldanha's dual statement that matter both "contains" and "is" creativity again emphasizes the dynamic complexity of matter as both imbued with and the embodiment of creative forces. Saldanha also discusses "matter's intrinsic changeability," again foregrounding the mutability and mobility of the material (Saldanha 27). Thus, from the perspective of all three theorists, the powerful capacity of motion is a key component of assemblages and the material.
Though the vibrant material that constitutes assemblages is key in understanding assemblage theory, all three theorists also discuss emergence, how assemblages become more than the sum of their parts. Saldanha also focuses on the interrelation between the parts in an assemblage, discussing the "force fields, differentials, charges" of the system (Saldanha 25). Thus, for Puar and Saldanha, the interrelation of the pieces of an assemblage allows them to become more powerful and meaningful than each constituent part alone. Saldanha posits that assemblages have emergent properties, as at "every level of organization, from the cell to the world-economy, [assemblages] exhibit[] 'emergent properties' that do not derive from, and cannot be predicted by, the properties of its constituent parts" (Saldanha 22). Bennett also discusses emergence and how vibrant materials become more than the sum of their parts when they come together, and describes how "The effects generated by an assemblage are, rather, emergent propertiesâŠdistinct from the sum of the vital force of each materiality considered alone" (Bennett 24). While small pieces of matter are vibrant, something else emerges when these come together to form an assemblage, as "each member and proto-member of the assemblage has a certain vital force, but there is also an effectivity proper to the grouping as such: an agency of the assemblage" (Bennett 24). Here, agency, the power to act, emerges from assemblages, again decentering the human subject, normally the sole bearer of agency. Though Puar discusses emergence less explicitly, for Puar, there is creative power of the assemblage is more than each material part as "design, layout, organization, arrangement, and relationsâthe focus not being on content but on relations, relations of patterns" (Puar 57). All three theorists engage with the notion of emergence, theorizing that new and unforeseen potentials and effects can arise from an assemblage.
Saldanha takes this discussion of emergence and the potential of the assemblage even farther, theorizing the notion of virtuality. Saldanha states that "Emergence entails that there is always a virtual realm that exceeds the system," and defines the virtual as "the set of potential trajectories for change the system itself generates out of its internal composition and exchange with its changing surroundings" (Saldanha 26, 24). While not currently present, the virtual is "the capacity to become actual," the potential for new realities, actions, or states to arise from the assemblage (Saldanha 24). The virtual, according to Saldanha, is "infinite" (Saldanha 24). Even the most unexpected and improbable effects could arise from the boundless potential of vibrant assemblages.
Through the concept of the virtual, Saldanha gives us language to name a concept that is touched upon by both Puar and Bennett. Puar implies virtuality in her discussion of Massumi's description of the potential for domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday. In this description, the television, the living room, the kitchen, the male body, the female body, and the pattern of relations, are some of the many constituent factors of the assemblage. Massumi states that in this event-space, "Anything could happen" (Puar 60). This echoes the insistence of Saldanha that even the most unexpected circumstance could result from the event-space and that the virtualities of an assemblage are indeed infinite. Bennett addresses the infinite, unknowable potential of an assemblage through the example of the power grid, in the context of a blackout that affected millions in 2003. Bennett describes the grid as "a volatile mix of coal, sweat, electromagnetic fields, computer programs, electron streams, profit motives, heath, lifestyles, nuclear fuel, plastic, fantasies of mastery, static, legislation, water, economic theory, wire, and woodâto name just some of the actants" (Bennett 25). Humans, ideologies, and vibrant materials come together to form this "volatile" assemblage. The infinite virtualities of the grid are unforeseeable as "Complicated beyond full understanding, even by experts," (Bennett 25). Saldanha's notion of the virtual gives language to express the infinite potential of the assemblage, a characteristic of assemblages that is touched upon by all three theorists.
In summary, assemblages are groupings of vibrant matter, in constant motion, with emergent properties that include infinite virtualities. This is a starkly different conception of the material world from the traditional notion of objects as passive, and of humans as being agents in control of our selves and our environments. Because of the loss of human control, and the unpredictability and power of the assemblage, the implications of assemblage theory are in many ways unsettling. Due to this constant motion and infinite potential, assemblages are characterized as "volatile," "chao[tic]," and "threatening "(Bennett 25, Saldanha 23, Puar 50). This implies complete organizational anarchy, with all societal norms and laws of physics thrown to the wind. However, there are limits to this seemingly infinite and destructive behavior.
To understand these limits we must return again to Saldanha to engage with the concept of intensive difference. Despite Saldanha's notion that the virtual of an assemblage is infinite and immanent, there are clear restrictions that mitigate the potential of an assemblage. Saldanha discusses this through the notion of intensive differences, the deep structural tendencies of an assemblage. Saldanha states "intensive difference embodies tendencies" (Saldanha 25). The intensive difference of the assemblage "delimits what can probably happen to it" and quoting Guattari, Saldanha notes the "certain resistance or inertia" to going against the tendencies dictated by intensive difference. Intensive difference brings order and predictability back to the assemblage, yet it is founded on disorder within the assemblage. Assemblages are "filled to the rim with the intensive difference" due to the "differentials," "unevenness," and "asymmetry" in the system (Saldanha 25). This notion of unevenness and asymmetry within the assemblage is also expressed by Bennett, who states that to emergent properties of an assemblage are due to the fact that "each member actant maintains an energetic pulse slightly 'off' from that of the assemblage" (Bennett 24). The vibration and vibrancy of the materials that make up an assemblage are out of sync with one another, thus unification and discordance coexist in the assemblage, creating the assemblage's potential. Bennett and Saldanha both imagine this internal differential between the vibrant components of an assemblage as determining the emergent possibilities of that assemblage. The concept of intensive difference in the assemblage begins to reveal that order and chaos are not oppositional, but co-constitutive.
Intensive difference allows us to examine the temporality of assemblages by foregrounding pulsing and vibration, as well as synchrony and asynchrony. Because of their pulsing, vibratory motion, assemblages take on a rhythmic quality, as each vibrant material takes on a unique tempo of vibration differentiating it from the material around it. From the layers of pulses from its constituent parts, the assemblage as a whole also takes on a tempo and rhythm of its own. The temporal (mis)alignment of these vibrations within the system serve to determine intensive difference, the tendencies of the system.
To more closely examine the pulsing, rhythmic tempo(rality) of the assemblage, I would like to return to Bennettâs use of the power grid to illustrate the concept of assemblage. In order to describe the blackout, the failure of this complex assemblage, a newspaper article stated "the grid's heart fluttered" (Bennett 25). The newspaper's use of the pulse of blood through the human body as an explanation of the grid's behavior aligns with Bennett's metaphor of the vibrational vitality of matter as determinant of the emergent possibilities of an assemblage. The failure of the grid is imagined as being caused by a broken rhythm, a pulsing out of time. While we could view the metaphor of the "heart" as merely an oversimplifying anthropomorphization and a recentering of the human subject, I would like to suggest that the human heart is just one manifestation of a molecular and universal pulsing that drives the virtuality and intensive difference of assemblages. This "heartbeat" of the grid is more than a compelling metaphor; it is an expression of the intensive difference of the system, the effect of the vibratory relations between its constituent parts.
Modern science seems to suggest that Bennett's theory of vibrant matter, and Puar's theory of the perpetual motion of assemblages is not merely an appealing metaphor, but in fact an accurate description of the material world. The de Broglie-Bohm theory, for example, holds that the molecular building blocks of our world are simultaneously material particles and oscillating waves (Goldstein). Thus, both assemblage theory and current scientific discourse attest to the fact that everything in the world is fundamentally vibrational. The scientific concept of resonance also reveals a connection between physical laws and assemblage theory. All objects have a specific set of frequencies of vibration at which they will oscillate at a higher amplitude, storing vibrational energy within the object (Resonance). What are traditionally imagined as passive, stationary, inanimate objects do in fact hold energy through their vibrational potential. This constitutes a scientific parallel with Saldanha's notion of intensive difference, as these vibrations have natural tendencies towards certain frequencies.Â
Given that vibration as a fundamental state of being on the molecular, human, and planetary scale, I would like to re-introduce Bennett's usage of Spinoza's concept of the mode to further emphasize the vibratory nature of assemblages. Spinoza holds that things are neither passive object nor active subject but "modes," and that "every mode is itself a mosaic or assemblage of many simple bodies" (Bennett 22). Thus, mode is another term to express the concept of vibrant matter that constitutes assemblages. From a scientific perspective, "mode" is also denotes a pattern of vibratory motion. The "normal mode" of an object is the same as its resonance frequency, the frequency at which a material has a tendency to vibrate. Thus, while Spinoza and Saldanha use "mode" to denote a gathering or collection of material things in a spatial sense, "mode" also implies temporal relations between object, vibration, and energy[1]. This scientific definition of mode complements the usage of "mode" in assemblage theory, further emphasizes the vibratory nature of matter and assemblages, and reaffirms the concept of intensive difference. The concepts of "normal mode," "resonance frequency," and "intensive difference" all connote the tendencies and vibrations of vibrant matter and assemblages.
Using the concept of resonance/intensive difference, I would now like to discuss lines of flight. Saldanha defines the concept of "lines of flight" (which is a term created by Guattari') as "the wildest, most creative (or destructive) tendencies of an assemblageâŠ. Lines of flight are those tendencies that would continue dismantling the assemblage if they would remain 'turned on'" (Saldanha 26). The concept of intensive difference seemed to have brought order and predictability to these unruly and volatile assemblages, but even though matter has a tendency to act in a particular way there is still a destructive potential in this vibration, the potential for order to unexpectedly dissolve into chaos.
Consider the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a suspension bridge constructed in 1940 in Washington State. The third longest suspension bridge in the world, this bridge was a feat of architecture and a demonstration of man's mastery over nature ("Tacoma Narrows Bridge"). However, the engineers of the bridge did not account for resonance, and mere months after its construction, the bridge collapsed as the resonance frequency of the bridge coincided with that of the wind whistling across the strait that it spanned. This alignment of resonance frequencies caused the bridge to oscillate at a greater and greater amplitude. Taking on a life of its own, the bridge earned the nickname "Galloping Gertie." Rolling waves traveled through this seemingly solid and stationary construction of metal and concrete until ultimately, the bridge failed. Steel cables snapped and reinforced concrete collapsed, as the line of flight of this assemblage, the most destructive tendency of the system, was realized. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge defied expectations of passivity and refuted man's supposed control of and agency over the material.
What is counterintuitive about this disaster is that destruction arose not out of chaos, but out of order and accord. The line of flight was realized when the frequency of vibration of the vibrant materials of the assemblage aligned. If the resonance frequencies of the system had been in discord, the bridge would have remained standing. Normally alignment and order would be expected to go hand in hand, but here we see that alignment leads to chaos, while dissonance allows assemblages to follow their non-destructive tendencies, to do and to become what is expected of them. This demonstrates Saldanha theory that intensive difference, and thus its tendency towards predictability, is due to the "asymmetry" and the "unevenness" in an assemblage. Additionally, Bennett's statement that assemblages have "energies that confound them from within," highlighting the chaos of assemblage from which order emerges, is also reflected in this historical event (Bennett 24). This asymmetry, the tendency of the vibrations to not align, is in fact what leads to order and predictability. That the system is not aligned is in fact what leads towards a normative progression. Again, we are confronted with the synergy of scientific knowledge and new materialism's notion of assemblage, as resonance, intensive difference, and lines of flight coincide.
Challenging yet another false dichotomy and oversimplified notion of boundaries, the complimentary work of theorists of new materialisms and scientists has revealed a fundamental misconception about order and chaos. Assemblage theory and the concepts of vibrant matter, emergence, virtuality, intensive difference, and lines of flight demonstrate that far from oppositional, order and chaos are deeply interrelated and co-constitutive.
Bibliography:
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Puar, Jasbir K. âI Would Rather Be a Cyborg Than a Goddess.â philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism 2, no. 1(Fall 2012): 49-66.
"Resonance."Â The Physics Classroom. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
Saldanha, Arun. âWhat Materialismâ in Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 21-28.
[1]Modes are also types of musical scales. Each of the seven modes are scales with different melodic progressions, and thus different vibratory relations between the notes. Even to a person with no musical training would be able to distinguish the clear affective difference between these scales, an emergent property of these assemblages of vibrations. Additionally in musical terms, strings, for example, have a normal mode of vibration, as well as a series of overtones or harmonics, which sound simultaneously, adding depth and quality to the sound, impacting the affect of a sound. For example, bells, which have more pronounced overtones, have a haunting, unearthly quality. Thus, a musical or harmonic approach further supports the notions of the vibrancy and intensive difference of the assemblage, while also allowing us to engage with affect as an emergent property of assemblages.
Are lists relevant? A list of lists we all know and love
Grocery list
To-do list
Playlists
Excel Spreadsheets
Buzzfeed and to a lesser extent, all blogs. This is what thoroughly convinced me that lists are quickly becoming a dominant genre of written expression. My generation seems to love lists a lot. This is in large part due to the fact that lists are so easy to consume, and while some people would argue this is because of intellectual laziness, maybe instead of moralizing modes of reading, we could see it as a shift with no particular positive or negative connotations. Maybe Buzzfeed is to popular culture as "Close but Not Deep" by Heather Love is to literary theory, and together, these shifts in reading practices indicate a broader phenomena, and the rise of a different mode of knowledge production and consumption that glides across the surface.
Emily's list
Bucket list
List serves
And for the recently graduated/unemloyed (like me): Idealist, Craigslist, Monster, Simply Hired, Indeed. Job databases are one example of how complex the "simple" writing form of the list can be. By filtering by keywords, location, field, salary range, hours, you can access multiple overlapping, interconnected lists.
Wish list
End of year best-of lists (like this feminist one)
Guest list
Course syllabus
For more lists, see Wikepedia's "List of lists of lists" (I don't know why I was surprised to find that that exists. I should have known Wikipedia would be on its game.)
The list is perhaps the most basic form of writing as it is a quick, convenient, and straightforward way of presenting information. In his book The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing, Robert Belknap states that "The list form is the predominant mode of organizing data relevant to human functioning in the world." The earliest known lists appeared in 3200 BC, and list-like record-keeping relying on tallies or other marks even predate writing (Belknap 8). Despite the apparent simplicity of lists, which can be purely utilitarian, scholars of the list such as Belknap have noted the "extraordinary variety" of the "size, shapes, and functions" that lists can take on, from the practical to the poetic (Belknap 6).
Belknap insists that the literary list is a separate category from the purely practical list. He characterizes literary lists as collections of things or concepts whose content and organization are "neither truly random nor strictly principled" (Belknap 6). The stylistic device of the list has been used by poets, novelists, and theorists alike in order to push the boundaries of what can be said, and how one can say it, and can be used "to display the pleasurable infinitude of language" (Belknap 2). In his dissertation on lists in literature, Robert Oxley argues that writers use lists as a stylistic device that fragments and decenters the text (calling to mind the questions of boundaries and positionality). He also notes that in the second half of the twentieth century modern writing has seen a return to the list as writers "struggle to give existence and form to their thoughts" (Oxley 2). Poets who rely on the list include Whitman, Borges, Homer, Joyce, and others (Oxley 107). The simple structure of this form of writing is thus a useful tool for writers to voice complex ideas that resist being shaped into traditional forms of narrative.
In the interest of clarity, I will refer to practical, ordered lists as "catalogues" in this project. Though some authors use the terms "list" and "catalogue" interchangeably, they are distinct entities with vastly different functions. Catalogues are practical organizational tools that serve as "recorders of the quotidian," and have a "static" and "strict utilitarian nature" (Krause 2). As such, the catalogue serves a different purpose altogether from enumeration as used in literature, which encourages readers to challenge these utilitarian forms of knowledge formation. While catalogues are used to build a clear structure undergirding knowledge, lists can be open and speculative. While enumerations can be used to close down the meaning of a text by creating a definitive and exhaustive catalogue, lists can also serve to open up the meaning of a text, and an enumeration "becomes something greater, depending upon its degree of openness" (Oxley 21).
Unlike catalogues, which are closed lists that do not create the possibility for new meanings and encourage speculative engagement with a text, when utilized in a literary context, lists have the potential to take on "another dimension, one tending toward expressivity, uncertainty, play, juxtaposition, and chaos, one that belied the smooth lines of enumerated objects with a running subtext of unforeseen correspondences, and that even questions the possibility of comprehensiveness itself" (Krause 2). While the catalogue is a tool for organization, the list " is less orderly (in fact, it is often a search for order) and more playful, and therefore invites the reader to combine items in new ways and to include whatever connotations each item may have. The list is a beginning" (Oxley 4). The list invites us to engage with disorderly ideas, to create new systems of order, and even allows our thoughts to remain disordered. While a catalogue insists on coherence, lists allow for incoherence to remain an integral part of the creation of meaning. Therefore, lists allow for knowledge-creation that defies traditional notions of order and categorization, defying the insistence on conceptual, linguistic, and organizational mastery. Because of the freedom of the list, "the items can lose the fixity of their order and swim about in confusion" (Oxley 2). This open ended style of writing allows ideas to take many shapes, unconstrained by traditional structures of writing. Lists are thus a vital tool for engaging with complex ideas that resist objectification through language. As the new materialisms engage with abstract concepts and challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing the organization of bodies, populations, and things, the list seems to be a perfect form of writing for this body of thought.
Lists allow authors to be descriptive without providing a coherent structure, as they allow "discourse [to] flow freely, unbounded by complicated syntax" (Oxley 2). Additionally, lists can "provide imagined sites for clusters of images that are so simply structured and yet so potentially complex that they accommodate all themes and interplay of themes" as new meaning emerges from the list once the objects come together, forming what could be viewed as a conceptual assemblage (Oxley 11). Oxley's characterization of lists thus clarifies in part why lists are so prevalent in the new materialisms: flow, viscosity (resistance to flow), gathering, assemblage, and emergence are at once characteristic of the list and key terms in the new materialisms (concepts which I hope to expand upon throughout this blog).
This section has served as an introduction to the form of the list and to scholarship on the work it does as a literary device, while suggesting some ways that the form and function of the list relates to the project of the new materialisms. I will now take a closer look at the list as used in specific texts in the new materialisms.
For further reading on lists/Works Cited:
Belknap, Robert E. The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004. Print.
Kadir, Djelal. "Neruda and Whitman: Short-Circuiting the Body Electric." Pacific Coast Philosophy (Penn State University Press)Â 8 (9773): 16-22.JSTOR. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
Krause, Timothy. "Twentieth-century Catalogs: The Poetics of Listing, Enumeration, and Copiousness in Joyce, Schuyler, McCourt, Pynchon, and Perec." Diss. City U of New York, 2012. Print.
Oxley, Robert Morris. "Lists in Literature: Homer, Whitman, Joyce, Borges." Diss. U of Wisconsin, Madison, 1982. Print.
 Nathalie Sarraute's Les Fruits d'Or challenged the genre of the novel in an attempt to give birth to a new way of writing fiction: "le nouvel roman." Les Fruits d'Or has no plot and no main character. It is a book about a book, "Les Fruits d'Or," and its rise and fall in the eyes of literary critics. This "new novel" was supposed to be capable of doing all of the work that the old novel had not, to succeed where the old novel had failed. Despite its claim to the "new," however, it seems quite clearly to be a reprise of surrealism, which also sought to say what had thus far been unsayable.
The nouvel roman and the new materialisms share the qualifier "new," yet neither is truly new as they take up projects that have already been theorized. The nouvel roman follows surrealism, and the new materialism follows the work of women of color feminists. Neither of these projects truly acknowledge the legacy of work that came before them, and in the case of the new materialisms, the statement of the "new" materialisms becomes a violence towards women of color, as it ignores their contributions to scholarship. Additionally, these two projects share a will to say what was unsayable, and to push the boundaries of language, literature, and scholarship farther than had been possible with previous methods of intellectual exploration. Furthermore, Les Fruits d'Or and new materialisms share a penchant for lists.
In the passage cited above, a critic gives their response to "Les Fruits d'Or," speaking in a list of contradictory adjectives: "A fierce humor⊠Human. Ruthless. Dry. Moist. Frozen. Burning" as well as both "real" and "unreal." What meaning can we pull from such a paradoxical list? In the absence of prose establishing any logical connections between the enumerated characteristics, the reader is left with the lion's share of the work. The contradictory, ambiguous nature of this list is captivating and thought provoking. Is this incoherent? Is there a metaphorical underpinning to these juxtapositions that the author hopes to evoke? What defines the boundaries of this list, what descriptive terms have been left out, and why? It is unclear whether this list is efficient or unintelligible, and while this list subtly pokes fun at literary criticism, it also quite seriously calls into question the nature of the real and the unreal, as well as text, criticism, and meaning.
Throughout the semester, our class has noted the prevalence of lists in the new materialisms as well. This led us to question what it is about the list that makes it so widely used by multiple authors in the new materialisms, and what conceptual work the form of the list accomplishes in these texts. As such, this project will examine put new materialist texts in dialogue with work done by scholars of poetry about the list, in the hope of illuminating the role of enumeration in new materialist thought.
