Deleuzian Intersections: Science, Technology, Anthropology

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DELEUZIAN INTERSECTIONS Science, Technology, Anthropology

Edited by Casper Bruun Jensen and Kjetil Rodje

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Berghahn Books New Ymk • < )xfill'd

Contents Published in 2010 by Bergbabn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com ©2010 Casper Bruun Jensen and Kjetil Rodje All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Acknowledgements Introduction

37

I.

Experimenting with What is Philosophy? Isabelle Stengers

39

2.

Facts, Ethics and Event Mariam Fraser

57

3.

Irony and Humour, Toward a Deleuzian Science Studies Katie Vann

83

4.

Between the Planes: Deleuze and Social Science Steven D Brown

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper. ISBN: 978-I -84545-6 I 4-6 (hardback)

101

Part II: Sociotechnial Becomings

I2I

5.

A Plea for Pleats Caffrey C Bowker

123

6.

Every Thing Thinks: Sub-representative Differences in Digital Video Codecs Adrian Mackenzie

I 39

7.

Cybernetics as Nomad Science Andrew Pickering

Part III: Minor Assemblages 8.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

I

Part I: Deleuzian Sciences?

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Deleuzian intersections : science, technology, and anthropology / edited by Casper Bruun Jensen and Kjetil R0dje. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- I -84545-6 I 4-6 (alk. paper) I . Deleuze, Gilles, 1925- I 995--Criticism and interpretation. 2. Technology-­ Anthropological aspects. 3. Technology and civilization. 4. Science and civilization. 5. Culture--Semiotic models. I. Jensen, Casper Bruun. II. R0dje, Kjetil. B2430.0454D485 2009 I 94--dc22 2009045266

VII

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163

Cinematics of Scientific Images: Ecological Movement-Images Erich W Schienke

165

Social Movements and the Politics of the Virtual: Deleuzian Strategies Arturo Escobar and Michal Osterweil

187

I 0. l ntensive

2I9

Noll'S on ContTihutors

255

lndl'X

257

Filiation and Demonic Alliance Eduardo VIveiros de Castro

Acknowledgements

The idea for this book was conceived during conversations at the Description and Creativity: Approaches to Collaboration m1d value from Anthropology, Art, Science and Technology conference at King's College, Cambridge, in July 2005 between Casper Bruun Jensen and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Later conversations with numerous scholars - about the interest and viability of putting together a volume that would put Deleuzian thought in the context of science and technology studies and social anthropology generated invariable enthusiasm for the project; several are now contributors. The editors' Delcuzian inclinations are, of course, themselves the result of intellectual engagements and conversations over a longer period, in Casper's case not least with Geoff Bowker, Steve Brown, Manuel de Landa, Adrian Mackenzie, Evan Selinger and Isabelle Stengers. Versions of the introduction have been presented at the 4S conference in Vancouver, November 2006, at the PhD workshop 'Ethnography and Technology in Relation to Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy' held at the IT University in Copenhagen, May 2007, and at the International Seminar on Symmetrical Anthropology held at the Museu Nacional - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. We would like to thank the audience for their stimulating feedback and the organizers of the latter two events for letting us present our material. We are very grateful for the constructive criticism of the introduction offered by Martin Holbraad, Morten Nielsen, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Marcio Goldman and especially Morten Pedersen, who read it carefully in several versions. Finally, we want to express our appreciation to Marion Berghahn of Berghahn Books, for her continued support of this project.

Introduction Casper Bruun Jensen and Kjetil Rodje

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Gilles Deleuze was a thinker whose main concern was creation and differentiation, and according to whom new assemblages constantly emerge, reconfiguring reality in the process. Rather than accepting already established philosophical categories and distinctions he reassembled thought in new and inventive ways, thereby producing conceptual hybrids with unusual qualities and different potentials. The basic elements in Deleuzian thought are not static but entities in becoming. Consequently, the qtle_sti?!l_!:g_h�_�§.ke.d__is JlOt_ wh_at§9me.thing is> but. rather what it. is. turning into, or migh!_�� _c.a.p�ble of turning_in_tq. Practice,.kno.wledge,.politics, culture and agency are seen as _so11_tinually produ�ed in heterogeneous processes without definite control mech;;�isms. Further, such processes traverse modern distinctions including the human and non-human, the material and ideal and the theoretical and practical. This volume raises the question of what a Deleuzian approach might entail for social anthropology and for science and technology studies (STS).1 While ideas related to and inspired by Deleuzian themes have emerged in fields/areas such as actor-network theory and non-humanist theory, there has been little sustained exploration of the specific challenges and possibilities that Deleuzian thought could bring to STS.2 And while Deleuze and Guattari made use of anthropology 'in free variation' relatively few anthropologists have made use of their work in turn:' The distinction between STS and anthropology evoked here is somewhat elusive. Indeed, several Deleuze-inspired anthropologists are, precisely, anthropologists of science. However, it is not our ambition to attempt to disentangle these complicated relations. Rather, our general argument is that Deleuzian analysis offers many opportunities for rethinking important issues both i11 and among social anthropology and STS. It offers, we suggest, new insights into methodology, epistemology and ontology in these fields. It facilitates an arguably increasingly important rethinking of the relations between science, technology, culture and politics. And it suggests different ways of conceiving the links between these fields and the practices they study. There arc scwral reasons why it is both an enriching and a challenging task to tease out thl� implications of Dclcuzian thou gh t for anthropology and STS. Dclcuze was a prol ifi c wl·itl't' hot h almw and wit h Fl·lix Guattari:1 Hl� was also a nottwiously d i[flcult wl'itt't' and till· intl'rlm·tation of his omvrr is a mi nor industry in coutl'lllpor"t·y t'ontint'lltal ph i losophy nnd rultuml tlwory.-' In tlwsl' disrussinns, Ddt•u:r.t• nnd

2 Casper Bruun Jensen and Kjeri! Rodje

Introduction 3

Guattari's work is often presented as especially radical, both by their advocates and opponents, a description with which we largely concur. Yet it is far from obvious what kind of radicality can be claimed for their philosophy. Commenting on their use of social anthropology, for example, Christopher Miller notes that the ethnographic material Deleuze and Guattari make use of bears little resemblance to what he would consider 'a truly radical, transformed ethnography'. He estimates that in comparison with the stylistic requirements of such a transformed ethnography 'A Thousand Plateaus appear to be quite old-fashioned' (Miller 1993: 13). However, it might appear so because Deleuze and Guattari's radicality has little to do with achieving an appropriately reflexive writing style.'' If. indeed, Miller's truly radical ethnography is 'defined neither by form nor by relation to external objects' this description is certainly a far cry from Deleuzian thought, which emphasises interactions between multiple material forces. Delcuze's analyses moved across fields, drawing for instif1ce on mathematics, ethnology, biology, political theory and anthropology. Yet Deleuze was never faithful to any of these disciplines. Rather he used their materials for what he viewed as the unique philosophical task of producing new concepts (see contributions by Brown and Stengers). As we shall see below, his idiosyncratic use of ethnographic material makes his relation to anthropology unusually complicated. Deleuze's interest in the sciences also indirectly intersects with STS. However, even though Dcls:uze-sha.t.�;U9J!!e analytical concerns with non-humanist STS approaches such as onna Haraway's (Haraway 199� and Annemarie Mol's empirical philosophy (Mol 2002) and has directly inspired others such as actor­ network theory (ANT; see Latour 2005) and Andrew Pickering's The Mangle if Practice (Pickering I995Y his approach differs from such analyses both in scope and in the manner in which it treats scientific material. Whereas STS is often characterized by close empirical studies 9f scientific practice and discourse, and, at least in the guise of social constructivism, Has .had the aim of redefining science from a rational truth­ seeking endeavour to a product of social interest and negotiation, Deleuze drew freely on physical, mathematical and biological concepts while paying little attention to the social processes through which these were generated (see, for example, de Landa 2002). Thus, while Delcuze has offered a plethora of interesting concepts that anthropology and STS might use to rethink their own vocabularies, these latter fields and his own philosophical pursuits appear incongruent in certain ways (see Brown, this volume). How to relate to this tension? We can indicate immediately that our own approach to this issue is as pragmatic as was Deleuze's use of anthropology. He connected pragmatism to the notion of forming a rhizome and argued that, indeed, the term pragmat�� no other meaning: Make a rhizome. But you don't know what you can \vith, you don't �now which subtl'ITancat: stem is cffec�:ivdy going to mak . make a rh1zome, or enter a bccommg, people your dcsat. So cxpll' 'lllll'llt (Dcll'UZl' and Guattari T987: 25 I). This pra�matism pmvidl'S a rationall' fi1r w rkin� with anthropological matl•rial in what Dl•li·tlill' and