Thu 3 May 2007 Clarifying Observations on Space-Time Processes Posted by larvalsubjects under Marx , dialectic , Materialism , Relation , Networks , Emergence , Uncategorized In the preface to the new edition of The Limits of Capital, David Harvey writes, [...]
Setting aside Harvey’s specific concerns to articulate a theory of capital, any materialist theory worth its salt faces the sorts of difficulties that Harvey outlines here. If one begins with the premise that existence is relational as every materialist theory should, then the work of theory necessarily faces the challenge of expressing this relationality in a medium that is necessarily linear and can only treat one theme at a time. A book, a writing, a conversation, is incapable of saying the simultaneity of interdependent relations at one and the same time. As such, thought and debates are perpetually haunted by abstraction (I need a better word) in the sense that the temporal limitations of language invite reification of concepts by resting them from their fields of relations.
This can take a few different forms, which I will not exhaustively outline here. First, it can take the form of abstract universalization. For instance, one might speak of the “human”, without specifying what assemblages one is referring to, their geographical locations, their structuration, etc., etc. Such talk might have made sense when groups were more geographically isolated allowing a term like the ‘human” to function as shorthand for “what we do”, but in a globalized context it becomes clear that such usages always take a paradigmatic example from one group against which all other groups are then measured. In other instances, this temporal limitation of language can invite ones interlocutor to assume that one is treating one particular issue as the cause or source of all other problems, when in fact the issue here is that one can only talk about one thing at a time. The question here is thus one of how it is possible to think a form of philosophy, a way of writing, that avoids these sorts of pitfalls. Clearly any form of foundationalism will not work here as the founding of an element is dependent on its inter-relations to other elements, not one element that serves a privileged or transcendent role with regard to all the other elements.
Time-space-process. Absolute time-space, relative time-space, relational time-space. I have thrown this passage up as a placeholder for further thought and inquiry. I am not certain that I agree with Harvey’s sorting of different time-spaces, but I am convinced that he is correct in claiming that materialism necessarily entails a thought that attends to time, space, and process. There are key issues here that converge nicely with N.Pepperell’s own luminiously emerging project, pertaining to questions of self-reflexivity and emergence. It is not enough to simply treat things in the world in terms of process, time, and space. No, if one is genuinely a materialist, then thought itself is subject to exactly these same principles. Thought is a material reality. It produces effects. It is a process. It has its geography. As a result, questions of self-reflexivity emerge. In short, we must avoid exempting concepts from these criteria, but must instead grope after the material a priori surrounding the emergence of different concepts, their history, their geography, and their processes, and the processes they spawn in the social field. These remarks are pointers for questions I need to work through. Difference and Givenness Levi Bryant
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