Category Archives: Attention-grabbers

Eternal Darkness of the Objectless Mind

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind invites us to speculate on memory’s permanence and importance. It also invites us to practice an object oriented reading (or viewing, I suppose). For those of you unfamiliar with it, the film tracks Joel and Clementine’s romantic history as it is actively erased from Joel’s mind. Midway through Dr. Mierzwiak’s “Lacuna” operation, Joel regrets his decision to erase Clementine and must navigate through his memories to preserve as much of her as he can.

Much of Dr. Mierzwiak’s success in eradicating Joel’s memories draws from his manipulation of the objects associated with those memories. Rather than having Joel simply recount his soon to be forsaken memories of Clementine, Dr. Mierzwiak presents him with the physical objects that Joel identifies with her. In the presence of these things (a hodge-podge of souvenirs) Joel’s recollections of Clementine are much more vivid and extensive, and easier for Dr. Mierzwiak to map. Dr. Mierzwiak tells Joel, “We’ll dispose of these mementos when we’re done here – that way you won’t be confused by their unexplainable presence in your home.” Dr. Mierzwiak’s reason, though, is likely two-fold. Yes, unexplainable pictures and purchases may cause confusion, but altogether they may work to provide answers. The objects that littered Joel’s house throughout his relationship with Clementine created the context in which he learned to love her, the assemblage that brought them together. Outside of this assemblage, Joel may never have fallen in love with Clementine. To return to this assemblage, though, would make a flood of loving memories, and possibilities, readily accessible to him.

As the assemblage is stripped down, Joel nearly falls out of love. His resistance, though, attests that true love can never truly be relinquished. I think Marie would approve.

God’s place in object-oriented theory

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An issue recently discussed in class was God’s influence on agency, and whether imbuing something with spiritual agency reduces its original thing-power, because it becomes merely a divine tool. Also, we addressed how viewing actants in an assemblage as subservient to one actant’s agency in that network is troubling, as it implies that things don’t control their actions.

While it’s possible that an almighty power is part of our assemblages, focusing on this reaps no rewards regarding altering our approach to creating a better world, Bennett-style or otherwise. This is especially true when such a belief gives people a reason to disregard efforts to stop global warming, for example, with the reasoning that everything is divinely-ordained. Object-oriented theory is based on the principle that everything has agency, even if this agency is not equally spread out amongst all the actants involved in any given network. It is therefore not important to consider God’s existence, or whether the heavenly origin of the cherries in Sir Cleges takes away from their agency, because their effects are felt regardless. Cherries don’t grow out of nothing, and even without a divine influence, they would’ve needed an ecological miracle to come into being. What matters is not where something came from originally – we do not place any importance on the source of creation for Melion’s ring or Sir Degaré’s broken sword. The cherries are able to save Sir Cleges from his impoverished state, thus rendering how they entered into an assemblage with the protagonist practically pointless. The focus should instead be on what actions things take when interacting with other actants after they are brought into this world.

In terms of God’s presence in life’s assemblages, since we cannot safely judge what divine effects are, we should concentrate on controlling our response to God as best we can. Belief in an almighty power is potentially an extremely powerful actant, but its factual basis is not important. Rather, the crucial point is how we allow this actant to influence other things in its assemblage.

Inherent Value In and Of Thing-Power

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Jane Bennett is careful to distinguish her notion of “thing-power” from Hent de Vries’s “the absolute” (3).  She acknowledges their apparent similarity (both concern liberating things from objectivity), but insists that “thing-power” departs from “the absolute” in a fundamental way: it does not privilege “intelligibility” (3). “The absolute” is a rare liberation from objectivity that depends on the limits of intelligence (the thing’s being beyond the confinement of subject’s intelligent grasp). De Vries’s notion of “the absolute” triumphs the occasional thing, but consistently “give[s] priority to humans as knowing bodies” (for their intelligence, or perhaps its limits, decides who escapes objectivity) (3). Bennett’s particular word choice, “priority,” suggests the hierarchal order of human and non-human, intelligent and unintelligent, things.

This hierarchy, or its criterion, was a source of contention just a few weeks ago in Michael Berube’s lecture at the College of Charleston, “Life as Jamie Knows It.”  Berube voiced his discontent with cognitive intelligence as the criterion for value judgments. He cited the tactics of the early animal rights movement, which used such standards (if only for demonstrative purposes) to value gifted animals over mentally disabled humans.  Such a maneuver just tantalizes anthropocentrics (Humans must always reign superior! But what makes them superior, if not their intelligence?). Bennett’s “thing-power” discourages such hierarchies by using a different criterion for value judgments: “conatus” (the indiscriminate empowerment of being). The universality of Bennett’s criterion ensures that “the status of the shared materiality of all things is elevated” (13). Could it be that materialists “distribute value more generously” than humanists (13)?

Objects save Sir Degaré from incest and patricide

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Throughout Sir Degaré, the protagonist is rewarded, either for his familial ties or his noble behaviour as a knight, with gifts. Time and again, these and other objects protect Degaré and his loved ones from bodily harm and great dishonour, and in this way assert their agency on the tale.

The woman who the main character falls in love with gives him “Gold and silver an god armur”, which is seen as generous and affectionate. However, the way in which the armour saves Sir Degaré from injury is completely ignored, thus denying it any impact on the text. Similarly, the women’s actions, namely to “Drauwe the bregge and sschet the gate” to spare themselves from “oure enemi”, take precedence, while the objects’ vibrant nature is dismissed. This pattern is present because the things in this text are often perceived as extensions of the characters personas, such as that of Degaré’s grandfather: “The King hath the gretter schaft”.

However, the effect which objects have on Degaré’s life cannot be underestimated, for the gloves and sword bestowed on him protect the protagonist from terrible, oedipal consequences. The mother only discovers Degaré’s identity through the gloves, and though she exclaims “God, mercy, mercie!” for their incestuous marriage, the things prevent the consummation of such a union. The joust between Degaré and his father is also halted by the discovery of an object, namely the sword, which puts an end to a potentially deadly dual. The protagonist’s father rightly classes the appearance of the distinctive weapon as the most important factor in recognising his son, more so than Degaré’s words: “bi thi swerd I knowe hit here”. Again, pleas of “merci” are voiced, but the sword’s assertion of its existence prevents the scene, and thus the entire tale from quite possibly ending in death and tragedy.

My Problems, Today.

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Marie de France’s Le Fresne was definitely my favorite reading this week.  The story flowed very well and was beautiful to read but I did have several problems with it as a whole.

My first problem was with the punishment of the mother who had foolishly misjudged her neighbor and had to pay for her spiteful slander when she gave birth to her own set of twins.  The mother was not a likeable character to me and I wish she had been more appropriately punished.  Marie de France really never revealed whether or not the mother grieved over the child she abandoned. She slandered her neighbor, contemplated murdering her child, and then abandoned it, instead, yet she walks off into the sunrise with a happy ending and a forgiving husband.  All of this seems a bit too unrealistic to me.

I also battled with the hefty importance that was placed on being born of a noble blood line. I realize that this was an accepted notion of the time period but it is still hard for me to grasp.  Fresne was depicted as a beautiful woman with a kind heart but her marriage to Gurun still couldn’t be accepted simply because she couldn’t prove noble birth.  I absolutely hated this idea as well as the idea that Fresne was born with “noble” blood that allowed her to conduct herself in the manner in which she did.  Noble blood obviously did not help her mother when it came to being cruel to her neighbors.

Another problem I encountered was with the nuns whom we hear very little out of.  I wondered why exactly they allowed Fresne to run off with a man she wasn’t married to. Gurun was generous enough to donate them money, but they shouldn’t allow their morals to simply be bought.  I thought that maybe they had no say so in what Fresne did but how can that be true when women weren’t allowed to make any decisions without the permission of their father, brother, or the next male of closest kin in their family?

The final problem I will harp on is the character of Fresne’s father.  He just seems entirely too good to be true.  He allows his wife to slander the wife of his dear friend and then he forgives her for casting his daughter out as an infant.  Really?  He reminds me of the clueless dad from a sitcom.

Inanimate Objects in Cartoons

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Studying Bill Brown’s essay “Thing Theory” and Bennett’s preface to Vibrant Matter, I couldn’t help but think of the many Disney cartoons (or just cartoons in general) that give life to inanimate objects. Animals, because they are animate and we tend to attach meaning to them more readily, are used often in animation as substitutes for human experience. We have more or less come to accept this as a normal practice. What is fascinating to me, in light of the readings, was how we also do not find it unusual to see inanimate objects in action.

In Beauty and the Beast, for instance, Lumiere and Cogsworth are two humans that have been transformed into a candelabra and a clock respectively. Their roles, regardless of their temporary existence as objects, are central in advancing the mostly human-driven plot of the movie. Furthermore, there are talking gargoyles in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and equally animate household appliances in The Brave Little Toaster. When things are given human characteristics, we inevitably begin to think of them differently. Objects suddenly become not only useful, but vital because they fit more easily into our anthropocentric way of viewing the world. Why do we enjoy seeing objects and/or things act like humans anyway? Is that the only way we can identify with objects?  We cannot seem to comprehend that an object, in and of itself, is worthy of consideration beyond its inherent function or purpose.

It’s undeniably strange that we discard objects in real life, but experience (in some cases) an emotional attachment to them in animated form. It’s as if we really do want to think of objects in that way but cannot bring ourselves to in a real-world setting. The interest in seeing talking animals I can understand well enough, considering we have acknowledged higher-class animals as possessing value. However, we have not even begun, as human beings, to reach the same point when it comes to inanimate objects. Objects seem to only have meaning in various animated fantasy worlds, but perhaps we might grow to think of them in the future as not merely things (with no conscious thought, and therefore no right of being thought of as “agents”), but entities worthy of being considered beyond how they relate to human beings.

Our overwhelming anthropocentricism, and its negative ramifications for the environment

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Jane Bennett reasons in her preface that accepting the idea that things other than humans can have agency is necessary, if only to stop us from ruining the environment: “the image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption.” To consider this properly, a surprisingly enormous shift in mindset is required, which illustrates just how overwhelmingly important we sub-consciously consider our needs to be. It’s nigh on impossible to claim that we treat the natural world with respect, but to imbue objects which aren’t man-made with agency, we must overturn our most basic principles.

This is due to the fact that from a young age, we are socially indoctrinated into believing that events are only meaningful if humans or man-made constructions are affected. Defacing books or artworks, for instance, would inevitably result in a child being reprimanded, where as carving names into a tree is often perceived as romantic. This is especially true when it comes to natural phenomena, such as earlier this year, when fish and birds were dying in their thousands, often for unknown reasons. Instead of grieving for the animals’ untimely demises, people instead focused on whether these events formed a harbinger of doom for humans.

We detach ourselves as a society from non-human things in order to protect our emotions from the hurt that would be caused by recognition of our misdeeds against the environment. If something fails to exhibit human characteristics, we class it as inferior, and deny it any agency. This is perhaps clearest in our treatment of dogs and cats as pets, in contrast to cows and sheep, which are cultivated to eat. A leg of lamb forms a perfectly acceptable part of any meal, yet the idea of eating a creature which can, through its behaviour, affect our mood is considered barbaric. No hamster burger with a side of goldfish nuggets for us.

Anyone who subverts this cultural norm by displaying respect or even an emotional attachment to something which doesn’t have an anthropocentric purpose is considered either strange or childish. Thus, it’s expected that broken or obsolete objects will be disposed of, not as loved ones are disposed of when their bodies fail them, respectfully, but instead with uncaring abandon. However, even this piece is anthropocentric, for if the environment being destroyed didn’t affect humans negatively, I probably wouldn’t worry about it.

Sir Iron Man

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A professor once told me that although it is often differences we study, similarities are also just as important. I try to keep this in mind when learning about a new culture/time period, and was again reminded of this fact when we were comparing the varieties of English that have existed and how many words have stayed relatively recognizable, if not the same, over hundreds of years.
I was reminded of another similarity when talking in class yesterday. I was very interested in what Dr. Seaman said about how much more common it is than one might think for a knight to have a helpful woman assistant/aide at his side, offering advice or helping to keep him on track in medieval literature. I don’t think I ever would have expected it, but it got me thinking about our own modern day heroes and the need for heroes in general. Iron Man and his assistant, Pepper Potts, immediately popped into my mind. Pepper is no damsel in distress, but is instead there throughout the movie to keep Iron Man grounded (when possible) and even help him survive various life-threatening scenarios. She is integral to his well-being. The Green Hornet also has an equally intelligent and independent office secretary, Lenore Case, who offers him advice and helps him (although unwittingly) decide on what actions to take. Some of the characteristics that we’ve talked about in class that appear in knightly tales are a confrontation with danger, maintenance of reputation, and responsibility to do the right thing. I think these characteristics can be found in modern super hero stories as well. Both Iron Man and The Green Hornet face very dangerous and violent situations, they both take pride in their altar ego’s reputation, and they both feel a strong sense of duty when it comes to righting a wrong.
Are comic book super heroes no more than modern day knights’ tales? What function did a medieval knight tale serve, and is it the same function that superhero stories serve today?