19. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, “Introducing the new materialisms” in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics ed. Dianna Coole and Samantha Frost (London: Duke University Press, 2010), 1-2.
Approaching materiality and agency as generative forces rather than the properties of
discrete relata requires a change of definition.
These entities can no longer be seen as static,
determinate things, fixed to the object and the
subject respectively; they must be approached as processes. I will now explore materiality and agency as processes to come to an understanding of how material and agency (or to use more processual terms, materialisation and agentialisation) might generate the ontological condition of the screen. This exploration will begin by reframing materiality as a process that generates ‘inert’ material, and the impact of this conception of materiality on screen ontology. It will then perform a similar task for agency, reframing agency as a process that is able to generate an agential material rather than discrete subjects. These relations will then be examined in terms of the relata they generate – that is, how the screen can be determined from agency and materiality as processes. The exploration will end with a discussion of what is left in excess in this determination, and the role of the use-less in provoking screenic relations.
Materiality, materialisation and the screen Chapter one found that the subject—object and virtual—real dichotomies were both reliant, in part, on a difference in materiality. The screen acted upon materiality and was acted upon as
material. I will try to show a different sort of materiality here, one that generates the screen rather than belonging to it as action or property. This section will begin by looking at the distance introduced by materiality. It will then use ideas from Diana Coole and Giuliana Bruno to discuss materialisation as it relates to the screen, and introduce Maurice Merleau- Ponty’s conception of embodiment to relate this process back to the generation of the subject- object dichotomy. The section concludes with a discussion of the impact of this conception of screenic materiality on agency.
Material distance
The materiality of things is difficult to attend to. As Coole and Frost observe, “there is an
apparent paradox in thinking about matter: as soon as we do so, we seem to distance ourselves from it, and within that space that opens up,
a host of immaterial things seem to emerge.”19
These immaterial things, amongst which Coole and Frost list subjectivity and agency, are
then taken as “fundamentally different”from matter because they arose from a distance with it. This spacing was shown in the relata- based analysis: as the material screen was considered in terms of its effects, it began to be understood instead according to nonmaterial properties – social forces, representations and
so on. Moreover, because of this spacing, the material screen could only be seen as inert and static. The distance that opens around the
screen is equal to the distance between active
intent and passive material.
This distance, however, did not quite work in
providing an understanding of the screen. The relata-based analysis found that the screen impacted matter by ‘de-realisation’, a taking- away of matter from the subject’s use. Yet this dematerialisation happened to the screen at the same time as the screen performed it. A material difference that happens both to and from the screen suggests that the screen has a role to play in generating materiality at the same time as being generated by materiality. The material difference that opens around the screen is bidirectional, it happens to and from the screen at the same time. This suggests that the materiality of the screen may be more
complex than the relatum-based definition of
matter implies.
To explore material according to the assumptions of a relation-based analysis, the familiar world of inert things, ready to be put to use, must somehow arise in perception. There must be an underlying relation that reveals inert matter, a relation that itself would be both hidden and generative. Diana Coole describes materiality in such processual
terms. I will use her essay “The Inertia of Matter and the Generativity of Flesh” here to redefine the materiality of the relata-based
chapter as a generative relation.
20. Diana Coole, “The Inertia of Matter and the Generativity of Flesh” in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics
ed. Dianna Coole and Samantha Frost (London: Duke University Press, 2010), 104.
21. Merleau-Ponty traces the distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata to Averroes, an Andalsuian- Arab philosopher. Coole, “The Inertia of Matter,” 97. Spinoza’s discussion of the terms as substance and cause (naturans) and effect and mode (naturata) are said by Deleuze to be immanently connected: “the cause remains in itself in order to produce… the effect or product remains in the cause.” Gilles Deleuze. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Franciso: City Lights Books, 1988), 92-3.
Generative materiality
Coole notes that the generation of this familiar material world is not often accessible,
as “we rarely pause to consider the contingent
processes through which our familiar, visible
world comes into being.”20 Coole addresses
this generative relation, which she refers to
as the “creative contingencies of perception” firstly by introducing a distinction between
natura naturans and natura naturata. This distinction arises in Spinoza’s philosophy as distinguishing between process and product, between nature naturing and nature
natured.21 Although the terms have been
used as a differentiation between the organic (self-generating) and inorganic (inert) stuff of nature, Coole develops these active and passive
senses of nature into a definition of materiality
as an active process. The distinction between
naturans and naturata effectively questions
the assumption that matter is inert, indicating that the process of matter’s production is an active materiality.
Coole attempts to reunite the process and product of matter, and focuses particularly on Merleau-Ponty’s work in grounding the
154 O R V I O R V R I O V I O R V I O R V R I O V I O R V I O R V R I O V I
generative force of naturans in a material way. Rather than introduce a generative materiality as a mystical and unknowable force aligned with theology; Merleau-Ponty grounded materiality within immanent, everyday life. A focus on embodied perception allowed Merleau-Ponty to propose a subject that is enmeshed in materiality, and a material world that generates this subjectivity.
I will return shortly to consider the role of Merleau-Ponty’s embodied perception in the material relation more thoroughly. Firstly, though, I would like to note that the materiality
described by Coole shows a significant change
in the direction of the argument. In chapter one, the object and subject produced a material relation. Here, the material relation arises across a difference in materiality, and generates the subject and object according to this difference. Materiality generates the relata of the ‘active’ subject and the ‘inert’ material with which they interact. Thinking of materiality as a process that generates relata poses problems for understanding the screen. The screen was found as relata only in its perceptual negation – it lacked an ‘inert’ material. For the screen to be generated by a process of materiality, materiality as a process would have to be capable of generating this lack of material as well as the static material of objects.
Inert screens and ongoing screening
One way of addressing this conflict of
materiality is to refer to the active form of
the screen – the screen in screening. The verb has implications of sorting and ordering, of allowing certain things through and others
not. Last chapter, this aspect was defined in
terms of the screening of sensorial information. This approach relied on a conception of sensory perception as the reception of relata – discrete packets of sensorial information that
pass through a filter. Such a definition is not
appropriate in a relation-based analysis as it frames perception as passive.
Giuliana Bruno, on the other hand, suggests that screening has a generative form, in that it produces a new materiality from something
else. Although she presents this as a reflexive process, a “mediation between subjects and with objects,” there is a sense in which Bruno’s
screening materiality is generative, in that it
“involves a refashioning of our sense of space
and contact with the environment, as well as a rethreading of our experience of temporality,
interiority and subjectivity.”22 Bruno’s screen
‘screens’ the senses by refashioning spatial experience. It shapes materiality in a way that suggests it is itself inside material processes, that it has a role to play in bringing about ‘inert’ materials.
Understanding the screen as generating
materiality requires a particular view of the
‘inert’ material as relatum. Bruno’s screen is a composite of the ‘real’ material of the surface and the ‘virtual’ materiality of the image.
22. Giuliana Bruno, Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality and Media (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 94; 8.
‘Material’ is thus defined as a condition
rather than a property. It is not the texture or composition of the surface that is regarded
as material, but the surface as “activating material relations.”23 This reveals a potential
mechanism for the screen’s negation – the screen reveals a reorientation of materiality, and brings into focus materiality as a virtual process.
The material of the screen is not ‘virtual’ in the sense that it ‘belongs’ to the immaterial image as the relata-based analysis found; rather it is virtual in the sense that the process of materialisation exists as a set of relational possibilities.24 If materiality is a
relational process that brings about material ‘things’, then the relation ends in an act of determination – in the formation of relata. Before this determination, materiality is indeterminate, it is the possibility of things rather than the things themselves. The screen participates in generating materiality at this point, before the determination of relata. It is only in performing the determination that these possibilities become actualised.25
The generative relation of materiality is, in this sense, a virtual condition. This may be the sense in which Bruno declares
that “in the digital age, materiality can be
reactivated, because it was always a virtual
condition.”26 Materiality in this generative sense hides behind the clearly defined relata
that it generates, as these are what remain accessible in perception. But the screen resists determination as a relatum, and so draws
23. Bruno, Surface, 8.
24. The term ‘virtual’ will be used in a number of ways in this chapter – to refer to the relatum of the virtual, to refer to possibilities for action, and to refer to things as we perceive them. In this case, the term ‘virtual’ refers to an underlying possibility that has not (yet) been enacted. The term is thus used here in a similar sense to Manuel DeLanda, as a set of “dispositions, tendencies and capacities that are virtual (real but not actual) when not being currently manifested or exercised.” Manuel DeLanda, Assemblage Theory (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 108.
25. Determination involves the drawing out of relata as a set of properties. In the action of “making-determinate,” boundaries are established around things and they become ‘actual entities. Martine, Indeterminacy and Intelligibility, 32-37.
26. Bruno, Surface, 8.
attention to the process of materialisation by refusing to become static material. The ‘inert’ material of the screen can only be seen from outside the generative material relation in which it participates.
The screen participates in an ongoing materialisation at the same time as it lies outside of this process. In as far as the screen generates materiality and refuses to become material, screening becomes an act of materialisation in itself. This understanding leads towards a conception of the screen that
defines it according to its mode of production –
the spaces it produces rather than how it itself comes about in perception. That is, we lose sight of the experience of the screen again. How can the screen be generated from within materiality even as it generates it?
Material reciprocity, person and screen
Questions about the role of the screen
in materiality prompt an exploration of reciprocity within material relations. So far,
158
this chapter has reframed materiality as a process, and found that the screen relatum surfaces from an ongoing material relation as an ‘inert’ object, but it also participates in the ongoing material relation. Referring back to the assumptions of the analysis, materiality as a process needs to be capable of generating the subject relatum from these relations at the same time as the object relatum. The dual positioning of the screen as both inside and outside materiality introduces a paradox for the subject: materiality brings forth the object and the subject as relata at once as an active material relation. But the screen also materialises spaces and materials as part of what it produces. The subject must be found alongside these materials as well. Screenic materiality asks for a perceptual split, so that the ‘subject’ as relatum can be found alongside the static object of the screen at the same time as it is found alongside the material produced by the screen.
Just as the material screen is found outside of materialisation as a static object and inside as an active process; so the materiality of the subject, the embodied person, needs to be found as the static, external subject and from within an active process of materialisation. To establish a mechanism for this dual subjectivity, I will return now to Merleau- Ponty’s ideas about embodied perception, and its role in materially situating people. Rather
than consider the person who finds themselves
alongside these screens as an immaterial subjectivity based on agency or intent, I will consider this person in terms of embodiment.
27. Merleau-Ponty writes: “To say that it is still me who conceives of myself as situated in a body and as furnished with five senses is clearly only a verbal solution; since I am reflecting, I cannot recognize myself in this embodied I, since embodiment then remains in principle an illusion and the possibility of this illusion remains incomprehensible.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald A Landes (London: Routledge, 2012), 221. 28. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 84; 95.
Embodiment inside and outside materiality
Merleau-Ponty sees the body as the locus of material relations. He shows the body as something generative as well as something
found reflexively, saying that a knowledge of
the body as one’s own materiality is different from the experience of embodiment itself.27
The body that spatialises and perceives within material relations is not the body that is known or found from these relations. The
first is a body that “is the unperceived term at the center of the world,” the second a body of which a person is conscious “through the world.” The body within material relations,
then, is unknowable. The body per se or body—
as—relatum are found reflexively as an “object of the world”; but the body within material relations is a “means of communication” with
the world.28 If this first body is within the
relation of materiality, it is cast out of it as
the second, stable and reflexive body. In this
sense, the embodied subject is found along with the material, as a casting out of the material relation. Merleau-Ponty makes a point of holding these two conceptions of the body apart.
When considering the screen in terms of the body inside and the body outside of materiality,
it becomes apparent that the reflexive body
found facing the screen may be a different sort of body to the one that was directed toward
the screen in the first place. Holding these two
bodies apart can provoke an uncomfortable experience.
Lynda Benglis’ On Screen (1972), for example, comments on the ways that bodies are found within and outside of the screen. Amelia
Jones discusses the work in “Televisual Flesh: Activating Otherness in New Media Art.” She
describes a televisual work in which the camera telescopes out from various images of the artist,
each nested within the others, “until, in the
end, we realize we are watching two (or three?) televisual screens embedded in the monitor
hovering in our space.” This disruption of the
frame, claims Jones, persuades the viewer to
“begin to feel that we ourselves might be at
any moment ‘turned off’ as part of an even larger televisual transmission, framed by a
monitor we weren’t aware of until now.”29 The
nested bodies and spaces of the work threaten
the situatedness of the viewer, who is finding
their ongoing material embodiment against constant shifts in spatial situations generated by the screen. At the same time, the viewer is aware of their situated and stable body outside of these constantly shifting material
relations. The reflexive body found by the
viewer of Benglis’ work is unstable, threatened by nested interactions within the space of her image and the space outside of it. Benglis’
work exacerbates the process of finding the reflexive body against the ongoing process
of materialisation of the other side, to such
an extent that it unsettles the pre-reflexive
directedness of self toward world.
This discussion has shown that embodiment has a dual role. As the perceptual centre, it plays a role in bringing forth materiality.
This first role for the body is a “corporeality
that is privileged as naturans”; a generative embodiment through which “productive difference and agentic capacity emerge.”30
The body is active in this sense, constantly participating in the process of materiality by enacted engagement with the world.31 There is also a sense of the body as a reflexive
recognition of a person’s own ‘inert’ or situated materiality. The body in this second sense acts as a material residue which positions and places the self. The body is present both as
a reflexive materiality and as separate from other reflexive materialities. A difference is
opened that reveals the body at the same time as it reveals the body’s excess.
29. Amelia Jones, “Televisual Flesh: Activating Otherness in New Media Art,” Parachute 113 (Jan. 2004): 72.
30. Coole, “The Inertia of Matter,” 102.
31. Hayles has an interesting take on the role of human embodiment in materiality. She states: “Materiality for me is