One interim conclusion that might be drawn from part 3 is that objects are not known through a description of their properties, but objects are known through the difference that they make. Moreover, if the difference objects make are as participant-comparisons, then this is the material and dynamic work of finding what goes with what, the testing of connections and separations. Hence, knowledge is not longer description (with its assumed separation between the collective metric objects and minds, and its assumed connections via correspondence), but the practice of connecting and separating which is local, material and always open to challenge (from both humans and non-humans).
When Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen ask the question ‘then who is doing the treating and the inquiring [knowing]?’ their answer is ‘Planet M’ from which they take the title of the paper ‘Planet M: The intense abstraction of Marilyn Strathern.’ This paper is directly concerned with comparison, and how it contributes to knowledge if we reject abstraction as the cutting of properties from objects (or in grammar cutting predicates from subjects). According to Holbraad and Pedersen, Strathern also rejects an understanding of comparison which would hold number as the ultimate/universal abstraction, the cutting off of the most foundational property of all things: extension. They argue that Strathern offers an alternative. Their Strathern develops comparison by sharing some of the power of objects with subjects. This power is the ability to express oneself at the same time as the means of that expression. This ‘self’ is considered more like an object in that it becomes able to be interrogated, and hence more able to express itself together with its form of expression.
The key term used in this paper to mobilise comparison is ‘scale’. There are two conventional ways of doing scale. Quantitative scaling holds form constant while altering content (Afghanistan is USA’s longest War holds duration as ‘days-long’ constant and alters the different wars, Afghanistan vs Vietnam). Qualitative scaling holds content constant and alters form (the Gulf Oil spill is so many square kilometres big, has caused so many job losses, so much environmental damage). And these can be done together for example in saying ‘yes, the war in Afghanistan is longer, but only 1,000 soldiers have died whereas in Vietnam 58,000 soldiers died.’ Holbraad and Pedersen say that qualitative scaling is ‘arguably a more metaphorical usage of the term ‘scale’ (2009: 373-4), but I don’t think this is so. Both their quantitative scale and qualitative scale assume the form/content division which relies on objects being metric. Qualitative scaling need only be ‘metaphorical’ if we accept quantitative scaling (exemplified by numbers) as a ‘literal’ form of scaling, which I have been arguing in parts 1, 2 and 3 is not the case. Numbers simply deny that they scale (compare or envelop) the world in their image.
The important move this paper makes to to recognise that both these scales are external to the object (time is external to the war in Afghanistan, square kilometres is external to the oil spill), whereas Strathern proposes entities having a scale internal to themselves, or perhaps better put an agency to ‘scale’ from within. Hence, what we work with are comparisons as active object-scales, or objects with the agency of their own scaling rather than discrete passive entities (I might just note here that such comparisons – as self scaling therefore dispersive entities – are what Deleuze argues is characteristic of a control society. In a control society power works not through imposed ‘scales’ which constrain such as prison walls, but modes of scaling which produce on goings forms collectivity such as community correction). Another character of the Stranternian comparison is that it is both more and less than itself, in that it is always more than itself as it holds within it a multiplicity which can transform it, but it is always less than itself because it is always part of something else.
So how might we talk about this ‘intensive self-scaling’ of these self-comparisons? Holbraad and Pedersen suggest the term abstention and provide a diagram of a cone. They write, ‘Indeed, one way of characterizing abstensions would be to say that they are what abstractions become when they are no longer thought of as generalizations, i.e. as concepts that group together in their ‘extension’ things that share a particular feature’ (2009: 379). They use the cone digram to show of how an entity scales itself towards being more scale-like (towards a pointy end of the cone and less than itself) or scales itself toward being more thing-like (toward the fat end cone and more than itself). Here are two ways they contrast abstention to abstraction.
‘Rather, to consider a dog as a quadruped, on the postplural image of abstension, is just to turn it (to scale it) into something different, namely, that thing-cum-scale that one would want to hyphenate as ‘dog-as-quadruped’. This new ‘third’ element is a self-comparison in just the sense outlined earlier: it is ‘more than itself ’ because, qua dog-as-quadruped, it is a full-blown dog; and also ‘less than itself’ because, again qua dog-as-quadruped, it is merely an ‘abstracted’ (though we want to say abstended) quadruped.’ (370-380)
and again …
‘Rather, the potential for comparison is enhanced by the capacities that what a plural metaphysic would call ‘things’ (e.g. the dog) have to be transformed by being ‘cut’ in particular ways, ‘sharpened’ so as to have particular aspects of themselves revealed (e.g. the dog-as-quadruped). And the effect of such transformations is to provide, not a point of more general vantage, but rather one of further departure. As thing-like (and scale-like) as the dog from which it was derived, the dog-as-quadruped presents further possibilities for comparative transformation in a whole spectrum of directions – including cats, locomotion, mammals and so on.’ (381)
So a dog can be a quadrupled thing, but this is a transformative act not an act of abstraction from an independent mind. My worry about this ‘coning’ is the way it’s transforming work is described as something ‘being ‘cut’ in particular ways, ‘sharpened’ so as to have particular aspects of themselves revealed (e.g. the dog-as-quadruped).’ These metaphors of ‘cutting’, ‘sharpening’ and revealing are from an extensive world in which space-filling things are cut and sharpened by a external tool (and one may asks, what happened to all the bits cut off, all the shavings, where did they go?). This metaphor misses Strathern’s main point that difference is internal and has expressive agency rather than being the object of an external revelatory agency. Perhaps ‘coning’ is more so the result of an internal differential, say of speed or pressure, where one end is moving or expanding faster than the other, creating a stretching from within. Hence, we don’t need ‘tools’ to explain away ‘how things-cum-scales transform themselves in specific ways’ (386). Rather we need to pay attention to how things transform themselves. Perhaps there is even a danger of ‘abstention’ becoming such a tool of analysis, helping us cut away and sharpen our objects. This is certainly not what the paper is saying, but the metaphors of cutting and sharpening are dangerously extensive.
The major conclusion I draw from this paper is that objects, scales, abstractions are all the same in that they are all emergent through and as transformations. And these transformations themselves are comparisons.
So now let’s turn to my number as a participant-comparison. To begin this number is specific and located – it is the number that participated in the workshop Maths as a Cultural Practice. But it is not ‘there’ as in back in 2007 in the seminar room School of Australian Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Rather, that time and place was part of the event of the emergence of this number, but this writing is also part of the event. Lactic yeast was the participant-comparison for Pasteur just as it was for Latour also. For both of them paying attention to this comparison they were able to described what held together and what did not. Pasteur and the bath of lactic acid was the event for the emergence of lactic yeast, which again emerged slightly differently for Latour when Whitehead participated. Lactic acid was the participant-comparison that together with Latour brought Whitehead to the bath and Pasture to philosophy. And so, my participant-comparison is also what brings me to this workshop and the workshop to philosophy.
This participant-comparison is a matter of concern. The central concern is can Western knowledge and Indigenous knowledge find ways of living together in the educational institutions in North East Arnhem Land? As participant-comparison number is an active entity in the problem, holding both the potential for making comparisons but also rejecting comparisons. As a participant-comparison number may also be accepted or rejected. The point is, in a workshop involving people from very different knowledge traditions, number participates not as the answer, not as what is to be achieved or not, but as a participant in the very problem of what this comparative work is doing.
- Holbraad, M. & Pedersen, M.A., (2009) ‘Planet M: The intense abstraction of Marilyn Strathern’ Anthropological Theory, 9(4), 371-394.
