This is a paper that I wrote this year for the ‘Cyborg Studies’ module under Professor Andrew Pickering, whose papers (a few cited below) I highly recommend reading for a good grounding in posthumanism and his ontology in general. I did appear to be waxing rather lyrical in this essay, but I found the subject especially compelling so perhaps got somewhat carried away.
How does Bergson’s critique of representationalism and Eno and Reich’s art open up the possibility of experiencing other selves outside of representation?
The predominantly Western ontology of humanism and representationalism . “There persists,” says Whitehead, “a fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being” (22). This is a key argument of post humanists and philosophers such as Henri Bergson. Representationalism, which purports to explain everything, is actually valueless. The question that needs to be explored, then, is: what is the alternative? We “enframe” (Heidegger, 296) the world, turning something into a static resource, denying its heterogeneity “the earth reveals itself as a coal mining district, soil as a mineral deposit” (296) . But in enframing the world we also enframe ourselves, “Ontology makes a difference. Ontology and action hang together. How we understand the world and how we go on in it reinforce one another” (Pickering, “Sigma” 11). In enframing the world, representing it as a homogenised unit, we also participate in an ontology that seeks to define human selves versus other human selves. This results in the “the modern self” being in “need of policing and enframing ’subjectivisation’ (Pickering, “PoT” 16). People are seen under a representationalist idiom as “merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other” (Watts, Taboo 103). We deny ourselves of agency just as much as we deny the rest of the world’s.
But, if we realise representationalism’s failures, we can explore other selves that are available to us. These selves, instead of standing apart and above the world “get on” with it. Firstly, in this paper, I provide a critique of representation, through Henri Bergson’s metaphysics. He denies the detour that representation takes through reality. Bergson wishes to get into the thing, rather than at its surface. I use Bergson’s critique of time as an example of representation’s falsehood. I then explore the disparity of classical and generative music as an analogy of Bergson’s representation versus intuition, introducing Pickering’s Dances of Agency, applying to the composition of Reich’s “It’s Gonna Rain” and subsequent concepts. This leads to the thought of cybernetician Beer and Buddhist thought. These ideas express the potential for a new narrative. It provides an almost spirituality. A sense of wonder from a posthuman and Dao narrative follows. “In Modernity, science and spirituality have nothing to do with one another” (Pickering, “BD” 16). But with a posthumanist narrative perhaps a fertile ground will be prepared,”from which a glorious Phantom may / Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day” (Shelley). I make no apology for the spiritual bent to this paper. I feel that, in our current lifeless representational idiom, a little mystery and wonder, a recognition of the richness and endless variety that is intrinsic not just within ourselves, but within everything, is something that we need in our lives.
Bergson’s Critique of Representation and Science’s Representation of Time.
We represent everything and quantify it, neglecting the reality of the thing we are representing. “We are not dealing here with real parts, but with mere notes of the total impression” (Bergson, ItM 7). The Enlightenment’s ideology of scientific materialism — representationalism — denies “anything which does not conform to the standard of calculability and utility”. It is “viewed with suspicion” (Adorno 3). Our epistemology is of a “scientific knowledge” that is a “pale simulacrum of the world […] a simulacrum one nevertheless finds it hard not to mistake for the thing in itself.’ (Pickering “BD” 18) A shell, devoid of any externality with its surrounding universe, a ‘simple line drawing’ (Lawlor 24). Representation “multiplies to infinity its observations of this material from outside points of view. It soon comes to believe that by putting together all these diagrams it can reconstitute the object itself “(Bergson, ItM 8). “For Bergson, the apprehension of real processes as discrete parts is a misrepresentation”. (Vaughan 18).. A movement away from a representational model is required in order for us to “get on” with the world. Bergson gives the solution against representation: Intuition. “Intuition […] requires the experience, from the inside, of life itself before its differentiation into discrete things […] and grasp, at the same time, the nature of the participation” (Vaughan 18). Bergson’s critique of the representation of time is useful to explore this notion of representation as a whole here. Bergson terms true time as ‘duration’. Rather than a whole split into divisible parts, duration is intermingled and inseparable — it is the real lived reality. It is impossible to point to where one thing begins and another ends. There are no distinguishable parts, for there is no stability. However, through the representation of scientific materialism, space is superimposed onto time. Time is seen as a frame by frame process; whereas actually it is pure duration. For the materialist to fracture this, then would be only showing a mere simulacra of the real, rather than the real itself. To grasp duration, then, one must move outside of homogenising representation. Bergson uses ‘intuition’ as the method of grasping the real of duration. It is a performative interaction with the world, outside of representation. One views time from intuition, rather than representation to intuition. “One cannot move from without to within, from analysis to intuition, just as one cannot isolate a moment, and attempt to reconstitute it into its whole” (Yusa 124).
Time is but one example of where representation gets it wrong, however. The world is also forced into representation. It is quantified and dissected, as we seek to enframe all things classified, static units. The forest turned to the lumber will; the hogs running wild kept in cages in the factory farm. As hown in Pickering’s Dances of Agency, however, the universe is very much alive and heterogeneous, despite our attempts to contain it. He argues that one needs to forget “about the representational aspects” and to “begin with questions of practice, performance and agency” (“IoS” 3). Dances of Agency are open ended dialectics of resistances and accommodations and, I argue, are analogous to Bergson’s ‘duration’. There is no centre or privileged position. Like Bergson’s duration, were one to isolate one dialectical moment and represent it, one would lose the quality of the whole thing. Reality is that of endless flux. “Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not” (Heraclitus, Barnes). A post-humanist ontology opens up to us. Real “reality is mobility. Not things made, but things in the making, not self-maintaining states, but only changing states, exist” (Bergson, ItM 151). One is in a performative relationship with the world. One does not stand above it. This abstract talk of duration and representation works well. But through Reich and Eno’s generative music and dances of agency, one can see performativity in action.
Simulating Posthumanism Through Reich and Eno’s Generative Music
Art is viewed by Brian Eno as “A simulator where new ideas are formed” (1). Generative music is a posthuman process. It expresses the interrelationship of human and non human. There is a no privileged position between the agents. There is a clear distinction between generative music and that of the representationalist classical music. The latter “specifies an entity in advance and then builds it”. Generative music does not do this. It “specifies a set of rules and then lets them (author’s note: non-human agent: computer, algorithm and so on) make the thing” (Eno 2). This generative music moves out of representation and is instead based on performativity between human and non human. A Dance of Agency. Rather than representing and dominating the non-human, the human is a cultivator of the seed of a coevolutionary creative process. In classical music, the human represents and dominates the music. These posthuman methods of music, these simulators of ideas can provide us with a microcosm of thought that expresses other ways of being and perceiving the world. To continue the music analogy: there is beauty in my dropping the pin on the vinyl player. However, I know that I will hear the same track over and over (unless I rather horrifically scratch the disc) if I stick to the same LP. New ways of thinking about the songs may occur, but those ways of thought are confined to the boundaries of that disc. In the same sense, we may move within our current humanist and representationally constrained ontology, but it is trapped within the limits of our represented world of which we spin upon. Representation is a “valuable substitute where the intellect can be thoroughly at home”. However, “they do not in the least represent reality as it is” (Costeolle 12).
An apt example of generative music, that inspired Eno himself, is Steve Reich’s composition, “It’s Gonna Rain”. ‘Composition’ is an inappropriate word here, however. Reich, in contrast to the classical composer, sets the initial conditions of the piece and allows the rest of it to become of itself. As the music progresses in the piece, the two same samples begin to move out of sync with one another. Sounds emerge that could not be predicted beforehand — they reveal themselves in real time. The compositional process, which occurs in real time, is a perfect example of a dance of agency between human and non-human. The human sets the conditions, cultivating the seed of its inception, and then the music goes of its own, in its own dances of agency with the other sample and the conditions first set. This is not just within the compositional process itself, though. To our human ears, too, the piece moves from dissonance (resistance) to consonance (accommodation and synthesis), sounds appear out of nowhere. At 5.00, the two samples of the preacher yelling “It’s gonna rain!” suddenly begin to produce the sound of cannon fire, which then fades away to the sound of a strange type of birdsong. Rather than attempting to represent everything, reducing and fixing them in place, we “get on” in a performative relationship with the piece. “Something happens because of one’s perception rather than because of anything physically happening” (Eno 2). So, then, where am I going with this analogy? “If you move away from the idea of the composer as someone who creates a complete image and then steps back from it, there’s a different way of composing. It’s putting in motion something and letting it make the thing for you” (2). To move away from representation is to ‘step back’, engaging with the non-human in coevolution, rather than enframing and domination. One draws art out, rather than stamping one’s own representation of art onto the notation sheet. This is a form of hylozoism, which “stages the idea that everything, including art, is already there in nature, so that the work of the artist is less to create art than to set up the conditions for nature to manifest itself as art (Pickering “Sigma” 10).
自然
“That Which Happens of Itself”
Hylozoism to Daoism
However, “the arts alone cannot carry enough weight to sustain a revolution” (Pickering, “Sigma” 12). An ontological shift from humanist to posthumanist is necessary that starts with a change of how one perceives oneself. A narrative needs to be formed, or rather, found. Hylozoism was also expressed outside of art, in the practical designs of Beer. He noted that “man has become accustomed to regard his materials as inert lumps of matter which have to be fashioned and assembled to make a useful system. He does not normally think first of materials as having an intrinsically high variety which has to be constrained” (209). Rather than building systems that were top-down organised, treating matter without agency, he ‘latched on’ to the world. Like Reich’s ‘compositions’, Beer cultivated the seed, rather than imposed upon the concept. Beer devised plans for wonderful and, at first blush, bizarre ideas, such as running industrial practices with Daphnia pond life. Though fascinating, it is with the hylozoist thought that I wish to focus on. His hylozoism and posthumanism harkens to the East. “Beer’s awe at the excess of matter, towards a Buddhist and very non-modern image of the human mind as extending beyond the Modern self in performative engagement with the nonhuman mind-stuff of the cosmos” (“Beyond Design”, 249). In China, 自然, (Ziran) is a central tenant of Daoism: “That which happens of itself’. Rather than constraining the world, one lets it go about of its own volition. This concept flows through the ideas of Bergson, Pickering, Beer and the generative art of Reich and Eno. Agency is innate as “all beings and phenomena exist or occur only because of their relationship with other beings or phenomena” (Yun 19). If we acknowledge the agency that has been “suppressed in the modern ontology”, and the “sheer agency and liveliness of nature itself” (Pickering, “Sigma” 9), and turn oneself away from representation and towards Bergson’s intuition, or to Pickering’s “getting on” we begin to realise that the human:non-human asymmetry is a delusion. One sees the self as a part of the whole. An ontology of the self as intrinsic, but not over and above the rest of the university. “The mind turns according to the external environment; it does so effortlessly and exquisitely” (Nishida 668).
Different Ways of Perception:
Meditation as a Technology of the Self
Following on from the aforementioned thought, that “nothing can exist in absolute independence of other things or arise of its own accord” (Yun 19), one sees the self as a performative agent that is another aspect of the world. “We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean ‘waves,’ the universe ‘peoples.'” (Watts “Meditation”) We are just another agent in multitudinous dances of agency, living in duration, rather than representation: a “going with the flow” (Asplen 163). Distinction between human and non-human seems immaterial, we just “get on”: “Getting along is what everything does in the world—animals, bacteria, rocks and stones, stars and planets. We’re all in the same boat.” (AHE). Other ways of perceiving the world become open to us, outside of the representational idiom, such as Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, in which Huxley takes mescaline to explore other worlds and ways of being. However, there is a more immediate ‘technology of the self’ that is available to us, inherently. A brief exploration of Foucault’s Technologies of the Self is necessary first, however. He writes of the self-technologies that were used to deny the self in relation to the world. For Christianity, for instance, one is forced to focus on the other world — the transcendent, heaven and so on. These technologies of the self are methods of self-regulation which control one’s perception to the world: to the Christian, this would be the reaffirmation of dualist interpretation of the mind being irrevocably separated from the natural world. Essentially, this Christian method was based on the concept that “you cannot disclose without renouncing” (Foucault, IV), yourself. There are two methods of self-control discussed by Foucault: Exomologesis, which “had as its model martyrdom. In exomologesis, the sinner had to ‘kill’ himself through ascetic macerations.” The second, Exagoresis, which is “modelled on the renunciation of one’s own will and of one’s own self” through “martyrdom or through obedience to a master, disclosure of self is the renunciation of one’s own self”. In renouncing oneself to both God and their master, the self is fixed in the world and constrained into ”renouncing your will and yourself” (Foucault, VI).
These technologies of the self do not necessarily have to be for the constriction of the self, however. They can also be used as a way of opening up the self to new ways of perception. One can move away from the ascetic technologies of the self to a different kind of technology of the self: meditation. Meditation is a method used by the Daoists as well as many other movements —both secular and non-secular (though prominently — Eastern religions and philosophies). It moves away from representation and is just ‘to be’. “The art of meditation is a way of getting in touch with reality” (Watts, “Meditation”). It is a simple act. One, usually, sits with eyes closed, focusing on a chant or on simply existing without judging one’s own thoughts. The mind’s thoughts go on. But it is just chatter. Thoughts that are not judged, like someone watching traffic go by, rather than trying to frantically move after each car going like an over-excitable dog. The eventual aim is to move to a mode of no-thought — completely out of representation. One moves from Bergson’s surface of representation to the core of reality, through meditative intuition. Meditation is a way of 自然. “Most civilised people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it is with the world as they think about, and talk about it, and describe it” (Watts). If the self can move out of representation and in to intuition and we view “this reality is mobility. Not things made, but things in the making”. The self becomes just as fluid as the music on Reich’s composition. Without the intellect needing to represent everything, living in the intuition of duration, where there are “no self-maintaining states, but only changing states, exist. Rest is never more than apparent, or, rather, relative” (Bergson, ItM 15). If the self is never fixed in one moment, and the entirety of existence is comprised of dances of agency that are constantly flowing and moving, then this leads to the conclusion that “the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination” (Watts, Taboo 1). ‘The Self’ as a fixed concept is a myth — we are forever changing.
The Dance of Bliss
I think to draw this paper to a close, a narrative that appeals to the wonder of agency is required. What better tale than that of the cosmic dancer. It preceded the post humanists by a couple of thousand years: Shiva’s Dance of Nataraja (sanskrit for ‘Lord of the Dance’). “Shiva first performed Ananda Tandava (the dance of bliss), to enlighten some sages who had been so immersed in their scholasticism that they had forgotten the existence of God” (Shakti). Shiva continues the dance — encapsulating both creation and destruction in the dance — the underlying dance of agency in the universe. Capra, author of The Tao of Physics “saw the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this cosmic dance of energy; I felt its rhythm and I heard its sound, and at that moment I knew that this was the Dance of Shiva, the Lord of Dancers” (11). We can view ourselves in relation to the universe as a part of it, another expression of the universe, in a cosmic dance of agency with everything else. Following the Hindu story, we can see the self also as the God, Brahman, who is playing a game of hide and seek from himself. Brahman is so good at hiding that he has forgotten he is just playing a game. Like Brahman, we need to realise, through the ontologies of posthumanism and eastern philosophy, that the self that we assume is separate from the world, is actually It: An expression of the world. We dance out of stars, form into human beings. And, when when Brahman’s human game exhausts itself, he dances the Ananda Tandava again, playing another role as another agent in the dance of the cosmos.
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