lukesimcoe replied to your post: Onticology,...
So, this was an interesting back and forth. I don’t really have a desire to keep the discussion going on the same track after it seems to have run its course. I also don’t have any insightful comments on OOO to add—I’ve read so little of the literature. What I have, mostly from Harman and Bryant has been, has been clever and, as Dan points out, innovative. Although Luke’s right about the self-righteous language it’s sometimes surrounded by.
What I’d like to do here is inject some clarity into the discussion of how Marx viewed the object. Dan’s quite right, Marx(ism) views the object as historically constituted. This does not, however, mean that the object is reduced to “only” the commodity form and the social relations occasioned by such in the work of Marx or HM. Marx doesn’t talk much about chairs—I haven’t read everything he’s written, granted—but he does focus on industrial technologies. His longest chapter in volume one of Capital, in fact, is devoted to the discussion. And in this, although Marx is concerned with the myriad social relations involved in industrial technology acting “as a power inimical to workers,” the object of industrial technology exceeds its status as commodity. Indeed, if this discussion occurs in that chapter, I can’t remember it. More on this below.
The discussion of industrial technology has roots in the 1844 Manuscripts. Here Marx develops the subject-object problem in a development/ extension of Hegel’s concept of alienation. For Marx, the object is the necessarily correlate of the embodied subject. Under capitalism the worker is estranged from the process/means of production, from other workers, from that which they produce, and from their species-being—parts of the Grundrisse would suggest that estrangement in production is not unique to capitalism. If the subject is alienated from their natural correlate under capitalistic social relations, the separation of subject from object, Marx believes that this state would be overcome in revolution (and, in his early work, the antinomies of philosophy overcome too!).Understanding the object as a necessary correlate of the subject is problematic for reasons OOO point out and more. I’m thinking here of the critique based in Heidegger’s insight, that the tool will always exceed our ability to comprehend it, extended and further ontologized in OOO, that Dan gestured to.
It’s a relevant critique which has a history in the left. But the object is not reduced to the commodity form in Marxism. Indeed, what Marxism can do well, w/r/t to technology, is provide a basis for design critique—See Noble (1984), Feenberg (anything), Braverman (1974), Marx (1867[obvs]). Yes, the human is centered by these theorists. But I’m not entirely sure what re-focusing on the object itself would have added to these. Industrial technology reflected interests seeking to diffuse the power of guilds and other collectives. These technologies exist outside of us, fair enough, but what does appreciating this fact add? Technology doesn’t come into being without us, and the process of creation (See here Feenberg’s excellent discussion of primary and secondary instrumentalization [building also from Heidegger]) reflects biases inherent in the lifeworld.
These are all good points! Disclaimer to those reading: I’m painting with broad strokes here and I’m sure to say a few things that might seem a bit hyperbolic, but that’s what happens when you are just bloggin’ and sayin things.
I think what Matt is saying is central to something I want to think more about, in that what exactly is offered by being object-oriented in our work. What would this specific ontological position add to Marx or other critical theorists of technology? Maybe not much, other than adding to some of the philosophical conclusions that such work draws. But that work has already been done, so lets use new philosophy to move forward with something new, that’s what I mean to do when I point out deficiencies in the work of those who came before.
