More hype

Bryant is here discussing capitalism as a hyperobject. Some points of interest:

 

"In the language of my machine-oriented ontology or onticology, we would say that we only ever encounter local manifestations of hyperobjects, local events or appearances of hyperobjects, and never the hyperobject as such.  Hyperobjects as such are purely virtual or withdrawn. They can’t be directly touched.  And what’s worse, contrary to Locke’s principle of individuation whereby an individual is individuated by virtue of its location in a particular place and at a particular time, hyperobjects are without a site or place....how do we target something that is non-local and that is incorporeal?" 

 

All of which reminds me of previous discussions of DeLanda’s reading of Deleuze’s virtuality. For example, starting here with a link to his book Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. Some reminders:

 

Reply by theurj on March 29, 2012 at 11:14pm

 

“Unlike essences which are always abstract and general entities, multiplicities are concrete universals....[and] is typically divergent....unlike essences, which as abstract general entities coexist side by side sharply distinguished from one another, concrete universals must be thought as meshed together in a continuum. This further blurs the identities of multiplicities, creating zones of indiscernibility where they blend into each other, forming a continuous immanent space very different from a reservoir of eternal archetypes" (22-3).

 

Reply by theurj on March 30, 2012 at 7:54am

 

As he said earlier, he uses the science of dynamic systems. From this he explores how undifferentiated, intensive capacities give rise to differentiated, extensive forms. As but one example he uses embryogenesis. When an extensive form is completed we get an idea similar to Bryant's withdrawal. He says:

 

"But the basic idea is that is that once a process of individuation is completed, the intensive factors that defined this process disappear or become hidden underneath the extensive and qualitative properties of the final product" (59).

 

Reply by theurj on March 30, 2012 at 9:34am

 

Here's more on the virtual, similar to the withdrawn. (Bryant discusses the differences between the concepts in TDOO, particularly chapter 3.*)

 

"An individual may be characterized by a fixed number definite properties (extensive and qualitative) and yet possess an indefinite number of capacities to affect and be affected by other individuals.... Deleuze, in fact, always gives a two-fold definition of the virtual (and the intensive), using both singularities (unactualized tendencies) and and what he calls affects (unactualized capacities to affect and be affected)" (62).

 

*  For example: "Another way of understanding the concept of virtual singularities or attractors is in terms of Spinoza's concept of affect....[which] links the concept of affect to the capacities of an object.... Tthese affects consist of both an entity's 'receptivity' to other entities and the various capacities an entity has to act" (3.4).

 

Reply by theurj on March 30, 2012 at 9:57am

 

More from TDOO on DeLanda:

 

"The attractors of a substance....are the generative mechanisms within an object that preside over the events or qualities of which the object is capable. However, while serving as the condition of these events or qualities, these attractors are not themselves qualitative or events. As DeLanda puts it, 'attractors are never actualized, since no point of a trajectory [of an object] ever reaches the attractor itself.' As such, the attractors or singularities inhabiting the endo-structure of an object are radically withdrawn. They are that which serves as the condition for the actual dimension of an object, for the local manifestations of an object, but are never themselves found on the actual side of an object" (3.3).

 

Reply by theurj on March 31, 2012 at 10:21am

 

In TDOO Bryant criticizes Deleuze's virtual, which "seems to consist of a single continuum, such that there is only one virtual, one substance, that is then partitioned into apparently distinct entities" (3.2). Whereas DeLanda's reconstruction of Deleuze in ISVP says: "This virtual continuum cannot be conceived as a single, homogenous space, but rather as a heterogeneous space made out of a population of multiplicities, each with a topological space of its own" (69).

....

And yet what I'm suggesting is that the hyperobject universe does indeed have a singular endo-structural autonomy, something I've previously fought. Granted that endo-structure is indeed multiplicity as DeLanda defines it, which is also how I see differance. It is a universal in both Bryant and DeLanda and yet they cannot accept universals... Yes, each suobject has an indivdual topological space, but it is within a larger topological space of a hyperobject. Bryant has not trouble seeing individual endo-spaces being dominanted by hyperobjects like class or capitalism, so what about the Big Kahuna Hyperobject? Multiplicity or differance itself?