2. The Paradox of Substance

When the materiality of the glove, the rat, the pollen, the bottle cap, and the stick start to shimmer and spark, it was in part because of the contingent tableau that they formed with each other, with the street, with the weather that morning, with me. For had the sun not glinted on the black glove, I might not have seen the rat; had the rat not been there, I might not have noted the bottle cap, and so on. But they were all there just as they were, and so I caught a glimpse of an energetic vitality inside each of these things, things that I generally conceived as inert. In this assemblage, objects appeared as things, that is, as vivid entities not entirely reducible to the contexts in which (human) subjects set them, never entirely exhausted by their semiotics. Jane Bennett Jane Bennett

2.1. Introduction From Roy Bhaskar's early work we have learned that, if experimental practice is to be intelligible, the world must be a particular way. First, objects must be capable of behaving differently in open and closed systems. For this reason, the being or substance of generative mechanisms cannot be identified with its actualized qualities, but must be located elsewhere. It is only in closed systems, Bhaskar contends, that constant conjunctions of events in cause and effect relations obtain. In open systems, by contrast, objects can remain dormant, producing no events at all, or the intervention of countervailing causes can either a) hide events produced by objects, or b) produce events different from those that the generative mechanism or object would produce in a closed system by virtue of how entanglements of objects are woven together. Consequently, second, objects or generative mechanisms must be distinguished from events or actualities. Objects or generative mechanisms are defined not by their qualities or events, but rather by their powers or capacities. An object cannot be without its powers or capacities, but it can be without its qualities or events. Finally, third, if it is possible to form closed systems where constant conjunctions of events can obtain, then it also follows that objects or generative mechanisms must be independent of their relations. While I readily concede that objects can enter into relations—how else would open systems be possible?—it does not follow from this that objects are their relations. In short, if it is to be possible to form closed systems in which constant conjunctions of events occasionally obtain as they sometimes do in experimental settings, then it follows that relations cannot ontologically be internal to their terms or the objects that they relate. In other words, objects are not constituted by their relations to the rest of the world. While relations to other objects often play a key role in the precipitation of events or qualities in objects, we must here recall that objects are not identical to their qualities but are rather the ground of qualities. Accordingly we must distinguish between objects and their relations, or rather the structure of objects and the relations into which objects enter. I call the former “endo-relations” (or, following Graham Harman, “domestic relations”), and the latter “exo-relations” (or, as Harman calls them, “foreign relations” ). Endo-relations constitute the internal structure of objects independent of all other objects, while exo-relations are relations that objects enter into with other objects. Were objects constituted by their exo-relations or relations to other objects, the being would be frozen and nothing would be capable of movement or change. It is only where relations are external to objects that such change can be thought. Insofar as what Bhaskar calls generative mechanisms are the ground of events or qualities, they deserve the archaic, Aristotelian name of substance. Because substances have the power to produce events, I shall refer to them as difference engines, for the production of an event is the production of differences in the world. Because difference engines or substances are not identical to the events or qualities they produce, while nonetheless substances, however briefly, endure, the substantial dimension of objects deserves the title of virtual proper being. And because events or qualities occur only under particular conditions and in a variety of ways, I will refer to events produced by difference engines as local manifestations. Local manifestations are manifestations because they are actualizations that occur in the world. To this list of the properties of substances we can add a fourth: local manifestations are not to be confused with manifestations to or for a subject, but are rather events that take place in the world regardless of whether or not any subjects or sentient beings exist to witness them. Consequently, local manifestation is not equivalent to the empirical or what is experienced by a subject. Experience is a subset of local manifestation, but the set comprised of local manifestations is infinitely larger than the set consisting of experience. In this respect, the category of local manifestation shares some affinity to Badiou's conception of appearance as appearing without a subject to which appearance appears or is given. If, by contrast, local manifestations or events are local, then this is because the qualities or events of objects are variable depending on internal dynamisms in the object or difference engine and the exo-relations into which the object enters. Consequently, we must not say that an object has its qualities or that qualities inhere in an object, nor above all that objects are their qualities, but rather in a locution that cannot but appear grotesque and bizarre, we must say that qualities are something an object does. The concept of local manifestation is here designed to capture the context dependency—whether that context be internal or external—of the events an object produces in its manifestations. Finally, insofar as substances are not identical to events or their qualities—nor, moreover, their exo-relations to other objects—I refer to difference engines as split-objects. The characterization of difference engines as split-objects refers not to a physical split such as the idea that objects can always be broken in half or divided, but rather to the split between the virtual proper being of objects or their powers and their local manifestations or qualities. Here the point to be borne in mind is that objects are always in excess of any of their local manifestations, harboring hidden volcanic powers irreducible to any of their manifestations in the world. In this respect, the concept of split-object captures my version of what Graham Harman has referred to as the “withdrawal” of objects. As Harman puts it, “[t]here are objects [...] withdrawn absolutely from all relation, but there is also a ubiquitous ether of qualities through which these objects interact”. Harman defends the withdrawal of objects in a much more radical sense than I do here; however, there are strong points of overlap between our positions. Within the framework of onticology, the claim that objects are withdrawn from other objects is the claim that 1) substances are independent of or are not constituted by their relations to other objects, and 2) that objects are not identical to any qualities they happen to locally manifest. The substantiality of objects is never to be equated with the qualities they produce. Thus, as Harman goes on to remark, If there are objects, then they must exist in some sort of vacuum-like state, since no relation fully deploys them. The recent philosophical tendency is to celebrate holistic interrelations endlessly, and to decry the notion of anything that could exist in isolation from all else. Yet this is precisely what an object does. An object may drift into events and unleash its forces there, but no such event is capable of putting the object fully into play. Its neighboring objects will always react to some of its features while remaining blind to the rest. The objects in an event are somehow always elsewhere, in a site divorced from all relations. Onticology finds much to admire in this passage. Like Harman's object-oriented philosophy, onticology argues that objects or substances are withdrawn from or independent of their relations to other substances. Like Harman's object-oriented philosophy, onticology rejects the thesis of holistic interrelations where objects or substances are understood to be constituted by their relations to other substances. Finally, like Harman's object-oriented philosophy, onticology holds that no relation ever deploys all of the forces contained within an object. The point where onticology and Harman's object-oriented ontology diverge is on the issue of whether the independence of objects or substances entails that objects never touch or encounter one another, or that objects, by virtue of their withdrawal, must be vacuums. Were this the case, it seems that it would be impossible for any object to ever unleash the forces of another object. Given that objects often do unleash forces in other objects, it thus appears that objects must somehow be capable of perturbing one another, while the virtual proper being of an object forever remains in excess of this encounter and is nonetheless closed. In this chapter, my aim is to articulate the structure of substance and the relationship between virtual proper being and local manifestation in the production of qualities. However, before proceeding to this task it is first necessary to articulate some features of the concept of substance and respond to what Kenneth Burke has called “the paradox of substance”. If Burke’s discussion of the paradox of substance in The Grammar of Motives is here relevant, then this is because what Burke treats as a paradox, and therefore critique of substance, unwittingly provides us with a fundamental clue as to the ontological structure of substance and why it is necessarily characterized by withdrawal.

2.2. Aristotle, Substance, and Qualities It is often said that Aristotle has an analogical conception of being, holding that being is said in many senses. However, as is so often the case in the history of philosophy, the issue is more complicated than this; for while Aristotle does indeed argue that, for example, we use the term “being” differently when referring to secondary substances (qualities) and primary substances (individual things or objects), Aristotle also argues that the primary meaning of being is that of individual things. As Aristotle puts it in book Ζ of the Metaphysics, There are several senses in which a thing may be said to be [...], for in one sense it means what a thing is or a 'this', and in another sense it means that a thing is of a certain quality or quantity or has some such predicate asserted of it. While 'being' has all these senses, obviously that which is primarily is the 'what', which indicates the substance of a thing [...]. And all other things are said to be because they are, some of them, quantities of that which is in this primary sense, others qualities of it, others affections of it, and others some determination of it. And so one might raise the question whether 'to walk' and 'to be healthy' and 'to sit' signify in each case something that is, and similarly in any other case of this sort; for none of them is either self-subsistent or capable of being separated from substance, but rather, if anything, it is that which walks or is seated or is healthy that is an existent thing. Now these are seen to be more real because there is something definite which underlies them; and this is the substance or individual, which is implied in such a predicate; for 'good' or 'sitting' are not used without this. Clearly then it is in virtue of this category that each of the others is . Therefore that which is primarily and is simply (not is something) must be substance. To be, for Aristotle, is to be a substance or a thing. All other senses of being, Aristotle argues, ultimately refer back to substance for ultimately all these other forms of being reside in substances or are made possible by substances. It is this Aristotelian orientation to the being of being as substance or individual thing that onticology, and object-oriented ontology more broadly construed, defends. The question, then, is what precisely is a substance? It is this question that this book seeks to answer. Elsewhere, in the Categories, Aristotle gives us an important clue as to the nature of substance. There Aristotle writes that, “[a] substance—that which is called a substance most strictly, primarily, and most of all—is that which is neither said of a subject nor in a subject, e.g., the individual man or the individual horse”. In short, a substance is that which is not predicated of anything else, and which therefore enjoys independent or autonomous existence. Color, for example, is always predicated of a substance. Put differently, color must always reside in something else. The color red is never a substance in its own right, but is always in a ball or a strawberry or lipstick. Qualities reside in substances, they are predicated of substances, whereas substances are not predicated of anything. Thus Aristotle will remark that, “of the primary substances one is no more a substance than another: the individual man is no more a substance than the individual ox”. In short, there is an equality of objects, a democracy of objects, in the precise sense that all substances are equally substances. This does not entail that substances are equal to one another, that there are no differences among substances, and that there are not substances more or less powerful than other substances, but rather that all substances are equally substances. When I discuss the concept of flat ontology we will see that this thesis of “equal being” has profound consequences for critical theory and how we practice critical theory. In particular, it entails that we cannot treat one kind of being as the ground of all other beings. Likewise, when I discuss mereology later, we will see that the thesis that 1) a substance is not itself predicated of anything else, and the thesis 2) that no substance is more or less a substance than any other gives rise to a host of delicate and fascinating problems pertaining to relations between parts and wholes. If objects or substances are not predicated of anything else, then it follows that substances cannot be treated as identical with their parts. Were objects identical to their parts, then this would entail that objects are predicates of their parts. This, in turn, would undermine the autonomy or independence of objects. Consequently, while substances certainly cannot exist without their parts, substantiality must be something other than the parts of which an object is composed. Here we encounter one of the ways in which the realism advocated by onticology is anathema to every form of classical materialism. The sorts of classical materialism defended by thinkers such as Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius hold that objects ultimately are their parts in the form of atoms and that these atoms, in their turn, are the only true substances. Onticology, by contrast, argues that scale and whether or not something is an aggregate is irrelevant to whether or not something is a substance. As Harman nicely articulates it, “[n]o privilege is granted to objects over and against mere aggregates, as though atoms were real and baseball leagues only derivative, or individual soldiers real and armies only derivative”. “Instead”, Harman goes on to remark, “we have a universe made up of objects wrapped in objects wrapped in objects wrapped in objects” such that, “[e]very object is both a substance and a complex of relations”. Mereologically this entails that we must develop an ontology capable of maintaining the autonomy or independence of substances from one another such that parts are understood as themselves being substances independent of the whole to which they belong—i.e., they are not merely predicates of the wholes to which they belong—and wholes are treated as independent of their parts. A key feature of each and every object—in fact, a defining feature—is its autonomy. Regardless of whether an object is simple or compound—and onticology strongly suspects that all objects are compound—each object is nonetheless autonomous. As we will see, these seemingly arid ontological issues of the relation between parts and wholes are of surprising importance for a host of issues in social and political theory. Here it is also important to note that “size doesn't matter”. Insofar as no substance is neither more nor less a substance than another substance, it follows, as Harman points out, that atoms are no more nor less substances than molecules, aardvarks or baseball teams. Insofar as substances are not predicated of anything else, it follows that substances are not in anything else in the sense that qualities are in substances. As Aristotle puts it, “[i]t is a characteristic common to every substance not to be in a subject. For a primary substance is neither said of a subject nor in a subject”. Substances are not something in an individual thing, but are rather what individual things are. Consequently, all substances have the characteristic of sets whereby sets do not include themselves as a member of themselves. Thus, while all substances are “multiplicities” insofar as they contain parts that are themselves objects—though in a very different way, we shall see, than Badiou proposes in Being and Event—the substantiality of a substance is not itself a part of the substance. Substantiality, rather, is the substance. Insofar as substances cannot be identified with their parts or the objects which compose them, it follows that substances are always numerically one. As Aristotle puts it, “[s]ubstance, it seems, does not admit of a more or a less”. A substance is always a substance. As a consequence, a substance is neither more nor less than itself, nor is a substance ever any more than one. In the first instance, a substance is neither more nor less than itself in the sense that when a person gains weight or loses an arm they are still this substance. In the second instance, if a substance is always one then this is because, while a substance might be compounded of many parts or other objects, qua substance the substance is still one substance. Once again, it is clear that this determination of substance raises a number of delicate mereological issues revolving around problems of the one and the many. Finally, it is a peculiar characteristic of substances that they are non-dialectical. As Aristotle remarks, “[a]nother characteristic of substances is that there is nothing contrary to them”. Beginning with Hegel, dialectic takes on two meanings that are distinct but often conflated with one another. First, and especially in a Marxist context, dialectic can be taken to refer to thinking that is specifically relational in character. Marx, for example, shows how commodities can only exist in certain social formations characterized by wage labor and capitalism. Later, in our discussion of regimes of attraction and exo-relations we will see how some notion of dialectic in this relational sense can be retained with respect to local manifestations. Second, dialectic can be taken to mean a thinking of relation in terms of contraries and contradictions that are sublated in ever greater wholes or totalities. While onticology readily recognizes the existence of antagonisms, it sees no reason to see antagonisms as the equivalent to contraries or contradictions. Substances are not defined by contraries or opposites, but simply are what they are. This, of course, is not to suggest that substances do not come into being or that they cannot pass out of being, only that they do not admit of opposed or contrary terms. An individual ncane toad does not have an opposite. Rather, if there is contrariety, it exists only in the domain of qualities. Later, when discussing local manifestation and virtual proper being we will see that there is reason to doubt that contrariety is a genuine ontological category. Insofar as substances are not constituted by their relations, insofar as relations are not internal to their terms, it follows that substances cannot be dialectical in either the relational sense or the sense of contrariety. Contrariety, if it exists, exists at the level of qualities, not substances. It is only through an erasure of substances, through a reduction of substances to their qualities, through the gesture of actualism as discussed in the last chapter, that it can be supposed that substance is dialectical. This leads Aristotle to formulate another definition of substance that has wide-ranging ontological consequences. We have already seen that substance is that which is not predicated of anything else. In addition to this, Aristotle remarks that “[i]t seems most distinctive of substance that what is numerically one and the same is able to receive contraries”. Aristotle goes on to illustrate this point with an example: “[A]n individual man—one and the same—becomes pale at one time and dark at another, and hot and cold, and bad and good”. In short, a substance is that which is capable of actualizing a variety of different qualities while remaining one and the same substance. Later in the Categories Aristotle will remark that qualities are “that in virtue of which things are said to be qualified somehow”. Here we find confirmation of the onticological thesis that substances are not identical to their qualities for, insofar as substances are able to take on different qualities while remaining the same substance, it follows that objects must be distinct from their qualities. However, here we must take care. For, in claiming that substances are distinct from their qualities, we do not mean to imply that they are numerically distinct from one another, as if the qualities were one entity and the substance another entity. Speaking of the difference between real distinctions, numerical distinctions, and formal distinctions, Deleuze writes, We can conceive that names or propositions do not have the same sense even while they designate exactly the same thing (as in the case of the celebrated examples: morning star- evening star, Israel - Jacob, p lan - b lanc). The distinction between these senses is indeed a real distinction [ distinctio realis ], but there is nothing numerical—much less ontological—about it: it is a formal, qualitative or semiological distinction. While I do not wish to follow Deleuze in his thesis that the difference between numerical distinction and formal distinction is merely a semiological distinction that refers to nothing ontological, Deleuze nonetheless draws attention to a difference between two very important forms that real distinctions take. On the one hand, two things are numerically distinct when they exist independently of one another. As we have seen, all substances are numerically distinct insofar as they are independent of one another. On the other hand, two things are formally distinct if they really are distinct from one another, but they cannot exist independently of one another. In the case of the relation between substances and their qualities, there is a real distinction insofar as substances are never identical to their qualities. However, the distinction between substances and their qualities is not a numerical distinction but a formal distinction. Here, however, I hasten to add that the formal distinction between substances and their qualities is not symmetrical but rather asymmetrical. As we saw in the last chapter, substances can exist unactualized or without producing any events. As a consequence, substances are not dependent on their qualities, but can exist without any qualities at all (in a form yet to be specified). The contrary, however, is not true. Where substances can exist without their qualities or without producing any events, qualities can never exist without substances in which to exist. Finally, to this we must add that the distinction between substance and quality is not a distinction between what is real and what is not real. Both substances and qualities are entirely real. The point is merely that substances can never be reduced to any of their local manifestations or actualized qualities.