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The return to things
Ewa Domaska
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This text analyses the so-called return to things, a movement which appeared in the
humanities and human sciences in the late 1990s. The author attempts to move beyond
both the positivistic and the semiotic approaches to the description of things and discuss
the so-called new material culture and technoscience studies (Don Ihdes material
hermeneutics) as approaches which inspire this field of inquiry. The author claims that
the enchantment with things can be placed within the context of the prevailing discourse of
the Other and the ongoing attempts to create counter-disciplines, such as counter-history,
counter-archaeology, etc. In such counter-disciplines, things, which hitherto have been silent
and reduced to passivity, are allowed to speak in their own voice or manifest themselves in
their individuality. However, even if scholars claim that things should be incorporated into
history as something other than passive recipients of human actions, they appear to remain
unable to transcend conventional epistemologies. To illustrate this claim, the author analyses
the biographical approach to things and concludes that this approach is characterized firstly,
by the personification of things that results from anthropocentrism and provides a way of
neutralizing the threats posed by nonhuman entities; and secondly, by a kind of genealogical
and genetic thinking, which by no means helps us create an alternative epistemology of history
but, on the contrary, revives in a different context the fetish of origin.
It appears that a discourse in defense of things (and in general of non-humans) is in the
end a discourse in defense of the human being. Things are coming to be existential, stable
markers that help unstable humans to orient themselves in the world.
KEY-WORDS: things/objects; defense of things, agency of things, biographies of things,
ethics of things
The anthropocentric character of history construed as the science of people in
time (Marc Bloch) and the constructivist view of the world prevailing in recent
history have resulted in the neglect of things. Today, with the development of coun-
ter-history, the history of victims, and insurrectional and repossession history, things
should also be incorporated into history as something other than passive recipients
of human actions.
I formulate these ideas in the context of the so-called return to things, back to
things and turn to the non-human which has became visible in the humanities
since the late 1990s. (see for example: Brown 2003; Brown ed. 2004). Actually,
a
Adam Mickiewicz University, Pozna, Poland
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Domaska
it comes as no surprise that after the long-lasting dominance of deconstruction,
constructivism, and narrativism, we have finally began to long for reality as such.
However, the perception that constructivism may have taken us too far away from
the real past and from reality in general can only partially account for the return
to things. I would like to distinguish five main tendencies underlying the recently
renewed interest in things, important for my argument: 1. the critique of anthro-
pocentrism (rejecting the idea of the supreme importance of the human being
and turning to other, equally important forms of existence, such as animals,
plants, and things); the critique of humanism; 2. the changing conception of the
dichotomy between spirit and matter, or the mind and the body, in which matter
is no longer perceived as inferior to spirit; 3. the crisis of identity: at the general
level, re-addressing such questions as what does it mean to be human? what is the
difference between the human and the non-human? what is organic and what is
inorganic? Things (relics of the past, keepsakes) can be used to help us determine
who we are; the thing becomes the other of human being; the thing participates
in creating human identity, legitimates it, and becomes its guarantor; it also marks
changes in human identity. At the collective level, things help build and strengthen
interpersonal relations as they serve to connect people (as in the gift Marcel Mauss);
4. the critique of consumer society, and an attempt to see things as more than com-
modities or tools for use; 5. rejection of constructivism and textualism and a longing
for what is real, where regaining the object is conceived as a means for restoring
contact with reality.
1
Of course, the very definition of a thing is problematic. In dictionaries a thing is
defined as an entity having material existence; the real and concrete substance of an
entity; an entity existing in time and space; an inanimate object. The word object
is used as a synonym (object is defined as a material thing; a tangible and visible
entity that can cast a shadow). We also differentiate between res and persona.
A persona as the civil law stated is a subject of rights, while res is an object of
rights (this understanding is challenged when we talk about the rights of things).
Archaeologists often use the word thing interchangeably with artefact (Latin
arte+factum), which means a manmade object or, in a broader sense any material
remnant of human activity. In this sense, the artefact is in binary opposition with
an ecofact, that is a natural object produced by natural processes without human
intervention. Thus, if we do not want to think of things in terms of binary opposi-
tions, the concepts of artefact and ecofact will act as a hindrance. What concept
would subsume artefact and ecofact? Could it be the concept of production?
1
I might add that another factor in the return to things were the traumatic events of 9/11, which
reminded us of the harshness of reality. In this sense, we might say that the reality of 9/11 itself consti-
tuted a critique of constructivism with its idea of the world as produced by a variety of discourses.
The return to things

173
I should note that many of the scholars interested in things studies are referring
to Martin Heideggers distinction between an object (a material entity present-at-hand)
and a thing (useful thing; a material entity ready-to-hand). Heidegger was interested
in useful things that are encountered in taking care and in their being. For example,
a hammers being reveals itself by its handiness; this handiness, in turn, is discovered
in the act of hammering. By objects, however, Heidegger means entities that are objec-
tively present and about which we can reflect and make statements. Thus, handiness
(Zuhandenheit) reveals itself when a useful thing is utilized, whereas the objective
presence (Vorhandenheit) of an entity as occurrent or at-hand (vorhanden) requires
a distance in order to look at it and speak about it. Thus, the thingifiers are not
interested in recreating debates about Kantian things in themselves, but rather in the
things around us, in the being of things, in how things manifest themselves, in putting
things in relation to humans and treating them as active agents of social life.
2
Speaking of the return to things I do not mean, of course, that things have
been totally neglected by history. On the contrary, the study of things is the principal
task of the history of material culture. Nonetheless, as mentioned above, I would
like to find a way of moving beyond both the positivistic description of things and
the semiotic approach to the thing as text, symbol, or metaphor. One such possibility
is afforded by the so-called new material culture, developed by British archaeo-
logists who in 1996 founded the interdisciplinary Journal of Material Culture. The
journals studies of materiality reject constructivism, narrativism and textualism as
approaches which have dematerialized things by comparing the thing to the text
and research to reading, and by perceiving the thing as a message or sign. In an
attempt to reverse those negative tendencies, new material studies point to the
agency of things, accentuating the fact that things not only exist but also act and
have performative potential.
3
Of course, the notion of the agency of things does not
mean that things have intentions but that things enjoy a particular status in their
relations with people. For scholars inspired by Marcel Mausss idea of the gift, things
perform a socializing function, they solidify interpersonal relations, they participate
in the creation of human identity at the individual and collective levels and mark
its changes. On the other hand, scholars influenced by Bruno Latour are interested
in how humans and nonhumans interact through various processes of mediation
and form collectives; how through various crossovers they exchange their properties.
2
According to Heidegger, things (things-at-hand) are important for Da-sein to exist since Da-sein
is always already also Mit-sein being with and for the others. A return to things, following his
approach, would mean to study a way of being of things (what a stone is as a thing?; what is its being?)
and investigate how to let things uncover what has reminded hidden. See: Heidegger 1996: 6271,
1970; cf. also works by a representative of the so-called Heideggerian archaeology (Thomas 1996).
3
Addressing the agency of things, scholars often cite the works of Bruno Latour (1999) and Alfred
Gell (1998).
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We should not be considering artifacts as things, writes Latour they deserve better.
They deserve to be housed in our intellectual culture as full fledged social actors.
4
Another way of moving beyond both the positivistic description of things and
the semiotic approach to the thing as text, symbol, or metaphor is proposed by
technoscience studies. One of its representatives, Don Ihde, develops what he calls
a material hermeneutics. Ihde claims that the belief that the natural sciences (posi-
tivism) and the social and human sciences (hermeneutics) have different methodo-
logies is outdated and that an expanded notion of hermeneutics might cancel this
Diltheyan Divide (as he calls it). The main point of an expanded hermeneutics
writes Ihde is that what the natural sciences teach us is that there are ways,
through instruments technologies by which things can show themselves. A mate-
rial hermeneutics is a hermeneutics which gives things voices where there had been
silence, and brings to sight that which was invisible. He is interested in how tools
relate and influence the production of knowledge. In his approach, mediation has
replaced alienation as the key concept for analysing technology.
5
Technologies should
not be conceived solely as instruments to estrange people from themselves and their
world, but also as the means that mediates their existence and experiences.
Ihde examines the case of tzi the Iceman. The frozen remains of a man who
lived 5,300 years ago were discovered in 1991 by hikers on the Austrian-Italian border.
Ihde describes how through various instruments (microscopes, spectrographs, radio-
carbon dating, etc.) tzis history has been re-constructed and what could not have
been seen suddenly became visible. Ihdes argument is that the tzi story could have
been uncovered without the aid of textual hermeneutics and thus, that material
hermeneutics is not a supplement to, but rather a necessary part of, fragmentary
textual hermeneutics (Ihde 2003; see also: Ihde 1999). Instruments enable scientists
to perceive aspects of reality that cannot be perceived without them. The history of
tzi the Iceman is co-shaped by the instruments with which he is studied. This
means that instruments co-constitute the reality studied by scholars. Their role is
not simply instrumental, but hermeneutic: they shape the ways that people gain
access to reality. In such an approach we witness an expansion of hermeneutics from
4
In the case of non-human, Bruno Latour prefers to use the word actant, which is borrowed
from semiotics, or social actor, than agent. Actor for Latour has a specific definition: An actor in
ANT [Actor-Network Theory ED] is a semiotic definition an actant that is, something that acts
or to which activity is granted by others. It implies no special motivation of human individual actors,
nor of humans in general. An actant can literally be anything provided it is granted to be the source of
an action. (Latour 1996; cf. also: Latour 1999: 180 and 214).
5
On the role of mediation in archaeological research, see: Witmore 2004: 60. For Christopher
Witmore, mediation is a mode of engagement, which takes us beyond narrative. [...] I argue, following
Michael Shanks, that it is a way of rescuing the ineffable. Moreover, mediation is a process that allows
us to attain richer and fuller translations of bodily experience and materiality that are located, multi-
textured, reflexive, sensory, and polysemous.
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175
texts to materiality. Human interpretations of reality are not to be understood in terms
of textual and linguistic structures only, but also as mediated by artifacts. In the
same vein as Latour, who claims that the social sciences have too exclusively focused on
humans and forgotten about nonhumans, it can be said that hermeneutics has only
been using half its capacity, occupying itself only with texts and neglecting things.
In the next part of the paper, I will not continue to explore the potentiality of
techno-science for including things into history but rather indicate where my suspi-
cion toward thing studies begins and why I intend to claim that things considered
within a framework of social sciences ties us to a modernist epistemology.
IN DEFENSE OF THINGS
In his manifesto in defense of things, Bjrnar Olsen writes:
Archaeologists should unite in a defense of things, a defense of those subaltern members of the
collective that have been silenced and othered by the imperialist social and humanist discourses.
I am tired of the familiar story of how the subject, the social, the episteme, created the object;
tired of the story that everything is language, action, mind and human bodies. I want us to pay
more attention to the other half of this story: how objects construct the subject. This story is not
narrated in the labile languages, but comes to us as silent, tangible, visible and brute material
remains: Machines, walls, roads, pits and swords. ... It is interesting, and probably rather revealing
too, that the discipline known as the discipline of things, even as the discipline of the spade,
devotes so little time, so little place, to its own instruments, equipments and dirty practices, when
recollecting its own past. [...] Instead, attention turns to thought, meta-theories, politics and
society, in short, to the noise of discourse. Thus, the need for a new regime, a democracy extended
to things (Latour), becomes ever more evident.
6
We might ask on what assumptions does Olsen presuppose that things should
and need to be defended? Do objects/things have rights? Should people act as advo-
cates of things and speak in their name? What kind of change in human-things
relations does this manifesto suggest?
Gsli Plsson describes three paradigms of human-environment relations: orien-
talism, paternalism and communalism. Orientalism establishes a fundamental break
6
Olsen 2003: 100; cf. Latour and Weibel eds 2005. Latour asks the question how would an
object-oriented democracy look like? Latour notices that Res-publica is not interested in res, he on
the other hand is interested in things that create a public around them. To indicate this shift of
interest, Latour introduces the German neologism Dingpolitik as a substitute for Realpolitik. For him
politics is no longer limited to humans, but extends also to things; parliaments are extended to various
gatherings and forums like supermarkets, computer networks, scientific laboratories, churches, markets,
etc. For Latour politics is about things and he is interested in how a public gathers around things and
how things attract various gatherings.
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between nature and society; it legitimizes anthropocracy (humans are masters of
nature) that engenders an exploitative attitude toward nonhumans and an aggressive
colonization. Things are seen as usable objects that, because they have no rights, can
be treated in any way whatsoever. In this kind of relationship with things there are
no ethical considerations. Paternalism, on the other hand, presupposes a protective
attitude toward things. It still implies human mastery and relations of hierarchy, but
presumes a certain responsibility not only toward other humans but also toward
nonhuman beings. In this approach people act on behalf of things thereby fulfilling
a protective contract. Such an approach still promotes a colonizing discourse in
which a thing is treated as the fragile and victimized other in a vein similar to that of
women, children, and the disabled; however, it is not as aggressive as the case of the
orientalist approach. Communalism rejects the separation of nature and society,
and it is characterized by the notions of contingency and dialogue. It suggests general-
ized reciprocity, engagement, and an ethical attitude toward the nonhuman based
on close, even intimate relationships. Plsson stresses that communalism does not
mean a return to the pre-Renaissance, Medieval idea of humans as the integral centre
of the world, or to naive Romanticism (Plsson 1996).
Lets illustrate these three paradigms by examples:
1. Orientalism
Recently psychologists devoted their attention to a phenomenon that is called
computer rage. They claim that more and more often men and women express
their anger and frustration with computers by performing various acts of violence
on them. Kent Norman, who directs the Laboratory of Automation Psychology and
Decision Processes at the University of Maryland, conducted an online survey last
year in which nearly 20 percent of the respondents admitted they had thrown
a computer on the floor out of anger. They described smashing, microwaving and
cursing at their computers. One confessed to urinating on his. Another said he had
thrown his laptop in a fryer. At least three claimed to have fired shots at their hard-
ware. Reading comments of respondents to the computer rage survey conducted by
Norman, we encounter statements such as: I once shot a computer with a .50-cal
BMG sniper rifle; I took great pleasure throwing an old monitor into a dumpster
hard enough to smash it completely; Taking a hockey stick to an old monitor
is very satisfying; Poured gasoline on a computer and set fire to it.
7
Norman
proposed various techniques for handling rage, such as bashing, burning and
barbecuing old computer parts. There are also so-called Geek Squads (which follow
a specific dress code, for example, wear clip-on ties and white socks) that offer help
in repairing a computer (Seligman 2005: A19 and A21). Certainly, it is all about
7
Normans survey can be found at www.lap.umd.edu/computer_rage
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177
saving men/women from the kind of frustration caused by computer failure and not
about saving computers themselves.
2. Paternalism
As noted above, we differentiate between res and persona. Persona as stated by
civil law is a subject of rights, while res is an object of rights. Thus, if we talk about
the rights of things, we transgress an old dichotomy between persona and res. And
yes, certain things have rights that are guaranteed by, for example, the 1954 Hague
Convention that protects objects of special cultural importance for the heritage of
humanity during armed conflict. Unfortunately, this convention has not always been
effective, as the case of the Dubrovnik bombing has shown; and to prevent similar
destruction in 1999, the so-called second protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention
was introduced. This protocol establishes individual criminal responsibility for
violations of the Hague Convention. It says that a state party must either prosecute
or extradite any person found in its territory who has been indicted for serious viola-
tions of the Hague/Protocol II rules.
On 31 January 2005, Pavle Strugar, a retired Lieutenant-General of the then
Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for crimes
committed on6December1991, in the course of a JNA military campaign in the
area of Dubrovnik in Croatia in October, November andDecember of 1991
(Jungvirth 2005). The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
charged Strugar (case no. IT-01-42-PT) not only with murder, cruel treatment and
attacks on civilians but also with unjustified devastation, unlawful attacks on civilian
objects, destruction or willful damage to institutions dedicated to religion, charity
and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and
science. The bombardment on 6 December 1991, which lasted more than 10 hours,
destroyed much of Dubrovniks protected Old Town, which had been a UNESCO
World Heritage site since 1979. An analysis conducted by the Institute for the
Protection of Cultural Monuments, in conjunction with UNESCO, found that, of
the 824 buildings in the Old Town, 563 (or 68.33 per cent) had been hit by projectiles
in 1991 and 1992. Six buildings were completely destroyed by fire. In 1993, the Institute
for the Rehabilitation of Dubrovnik, in conjunction with UNESCO, estimated the
total cost for restoring public and private buildings; religious buildings; streets,
squares, and fountains; and ramparts, gates, and bridges at 9,657,578 US dollars.
8
In the context of such expressions of hostility, rage and physical violence against
things like cities (buildings, monuments, etc.) and computers we might ask: what
kind of rights do we have in mind when speaking about the rights of things? Do
8
At the same time, the head of UNESCO was attempting to intervene and stop the destruction
of ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban authorities. On the new international rules
for the protection of cultural heritage in war, see: Sandholtz, forthcoming.
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Domaska
things also have obligations and liability for the damage they might do to us? As
Latour points out, some things have acquired the properties of citizenship. They
have the right not to be enslaved. Considering a thing as a persona in legal terms
(personification of things) allows human beings to treat it in a certain way that may
also have negative aspects: things might be arrested, prosecuted, sentenced, exiled
and executed (Tamen 2001: 79).
History provides us with many interesting examples of the personification of
things and their treatment as responsible beings. Pausanias in his Description of Greece
(6.11.29), for example, tells a story of a bronze statue of the famous athlete,
Theoganes, erected on the island of Thasos, his home city. The statue was whipped
by his former enemy every night, until, finally, it fell on its oppressor and killed
him. The sons of the deceased prosecuted the statue for murder. It was put on trial,
found guilty and sunk in the sea following the view taken by Draco, who, in the
laws on homicide which he drew up for the Athenians, enacted that even lifeless
things should be banished if they fell on anybody and killed him, wrote Pausanias
(Pausaniass Description 1913: 2989; cf. also: Hyde 1916).
Cases of trials of things, as the one told by Pausanias and connected to the ani-
mistic conception of nature, and the destruction of objects belonging to a cultural
heritage related to modernist thinking have shown that certain things (such as monu-
ments) appear to have not only rights, but also legal standing. In these approaches
human beings are still mastering the world of nonhumans and claim rights to
control them and speak in their name (paternal contract). What we need, how-
ever, is to make the next step and establish a human-nonhuman relation based on
a non-anthropocentric approach and a relational epistemology, as proposed by the
paradigm of communalism.
3. Communalism
The principles of communalism are found in hunting and gathering societies,
says Plsson referring to work by Nurit Bird-David on the Nayaka in South India.
Her work should be of a particular interest for thing-scholarship since she reformulates
animism and considers it as a relational epistemology. For Bird-David this episte-
mology is marked by an absence of the ontological dualism of nature and culture
and body and mind that are characteristic of Western thought; self and personhood
are relational, and not separated from the world, but rather the self is in-the-world.
The world in this approach is a heterarchical one, rather than hierarchical.
9
9
The term relational epistemology is also used by Latour, especially in his Actor-Network
Theory. Referring to the collective of humans and nonhumans, this epistemology as it is in Bird-
Davids approach rejects the positivist view of objects or actors as closed and separated from the
world of individuals, existing in themselves prior to any participation in ecosocial and semiotic networks
of interactions (including the interactions in which they are observed, named, etc.). See: Latour 1996.
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179
The traditional understanding of animism defines it as a characteristic of primi-
tive peoples who believe that certain beings such as trees, rivers, animals and non-
organic things possess a spirit or animating power and thus, are not only alive but
possess something approximating to personhood. Bird-David states that modernist
notions of personhood misunderstand animism, taking it as a simple religion and
a failed epistemology. She wants to rescue the practices connected with animism
thereby liberating animism from identification with religion, while holding onto
the distinction between religious and scientific knowledge. She proposes a non-
modernist concept of a person and seeks to demonstrate its possibility in her studies
of animistic practices. She borrows from Marilyn Strathern the notion of the
dividual (a person constituted by relations, as against the notion of the indi-
vidual, a person regarded as a single and closed entity that exists prior to all rela-
tionships). Bird-Davids analysis shows how the Nayakas believe that personhood
is constituted by sharing relationships both with humans and with members of
other species. I relate, therefore I am, writes Bird-David, describing the intimate
engagements of the natives with their environment. For the Nayaka, a person is
someone or something with whom one shares. Bird-David, does not reify the notion
of relationship into an entity but prefers to talk about relatedness, meaning
two beings/things mutually responsive to each other.
10
For Bird-David, animism
involves responsively engaging with beings/things, then perceiving them as persons.
She proposes to treat animism as a relational epistemology and a performative
act of knowing, which allows her to focus on what is done in animistic acts rather
than what is represented in it.
This short description of Bird-Davids understanding of animism and personhood
that focus on relatedness with other beings and engagement with them directs us to
a possible model of relations between humans and nonhumans that is also found in
the works of such advocates of things as Bruno Latour and Bjrnar Olsen. However,
while the paradigm of communalism seems to project a utopian future, the paradigm
of paternalism still constitutes the dominant approach in thing-studies. I will inves-
tigate its positive and negative sides in more details in the next parts of this essay.
10
In a traditional objectivist paradigm, speaking about mutual responsivity between beings/things
does not make sense, but in Bird-Davids approach it is explained as follows: If cutting trees into
parts [like botanists do in order to study the tropical forest ED] epitomizes the modernist epistemo-
logy, talking with trees, I argue, epitomizes Nayaka animistic epistemology. Talking with is shorthand
for a two-way responsive relatedness with a tree rather than speaking one-way to it, as if it could
listen and understand. Talking with stands for attentiveness to variances and invariances in behaviour
and response of things in states of relatedness and for getting to know such things as they change
through the vicissitudes over time of the engagement with them. To talk with a tree rather than cut
it down is to perceive what it does as one acts toward it, being aware concurrently of changes in
oneself and the tree. It is expecting response and responding, growing into mutual responsiveness and,
furthermore, possibly into mutual responsibility (Bird-David 1999: 77; see also her: 1990).
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THE THING AS OTHER
One of the most visible approaches to things in the framework of the paradigm
of paternalism is the biographical approach. It has recently become popular in the
human sciences.
11
But this approach involves an ineluctable anthropomorphization
of objects: they are said to have identities (scholars speak of a material identity
(Holtorf 2002: 64), or many identities which change in time together with the
change of context
12
); they are said to have their lives and biographies which begin at
point A and end at point B and in the course of which something happens to them;
for example, they are excavated and described by an archaeologist. Note that the
biographical approach has two features typical of traditional epistemology: firstly,
the personification of things that results from anthropocentrism and provides a mode
for neutralizing the threats posed by nonhuman entities; and secondly, genealogical
and genetic thinking, which by no means helps us to create an alternative epistemo-
logy of history but, on the contrary, revives in a different context the fetish of origin,
one of the foundations of traditional historical thinking so vehemently contested
by Michel Foucault. Thus, while the biographical approach is certainly attractive as
a research interest, is still based on a rather conventional epistemology.
Notwithstanding its epistemological conservatism, the biographical approach puts
forward the interesting idea that things have agency and can influence interpersonal
relations. The conception of things as active participants in life processes redefines
the relationship between people and things. In fact, it is only innovative in that
it shifts attention from subjects who create relations to the relations created by
subjects. Moreover, the biographical approach perpetuates thinking in terms of
difference, namely, the difference between the human being and the thing. That
difference is hierarchical insofar as the human being is a reference point and model
for how the thing should be perceived (in this respect it resembles the so-called
feminism of difference).
The enchantments with things observable in todays humanities can be placed
within the context of the prevailing discourse of the Other and the ongoing attempts
to create counter-disciplines, such as counter-history, counter-archaeology, etc. In
such counter-disciplines, things, which hitherto have been silent and reduced to
passivity, are allowed to speak in their own voice. Counter-history or counter-
archaeology becomes part of the insurrectional and repossession discourses, in which
things are perceived as Others who demand their place in discourse. The object is no
11
The 1999 thematic issue of World Archaeology was titled The cultural biography of objects;
Gosden and Marschall eds 1999; see also: Kopytoff 1986; Holtorf 2002 and 1998; Hamilakis 1999; cf.
also a fresh and inspiring approach to material culture offered by Lynn Meskell (2004).
12
For discussions of identity in terms of race, class, and gender, see the essays included in Archaeo-
logical Dialogues, vol. 11, no 1, June 2004 (debate about Adam T. Smiths essay The end of the essential
archaeological subject).
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181
longer seen as a subaltern other: the choice of the word thing instead of object in
Heideggerian archaeology attests to this change.
13
Ironically, however, the thing
conceived as other shares the fate of those others who cannot speak for themselves,
such as animals or the dead. Living people speak in the name of things, which mean
that the discourse of things is always incorporated in our discourse, our needs and
expectations, and our pragmatics, such as gaining knowledge, the discourse of
mourning, the discourse of reconciliation or of justice. A question arises whether
such an apparent defense of things is not a means for neutralizing and taming their
threatening otherness; or whether it is not a perverse method of disciplining things
by the way of their domestication. Things as others are welcomed insofar as they are
somehow integrated into a dominant discourse; but only if their difference can be
neutralized. The dual process of anthropomorphization of things and the reification
of humans proves the adage: become like me and I will respect your difference (see
a criticism of the politics of difference by Alain Badiou, 2003).
THE OBJECT-IN-PROCESS OR THE PROCESSUAL OBJECT
Contemporary theories of subjectivity and identity shape our understanding
of the identity of things. Just as with human identity, the identity of things is said
to be changeable rather than stable; manifold and diffused rather than unified
and homogeneous. Thus, Gell speaks of a divided identity, while others speak of
hybrid identity or diasporic identity). These ideas, wittingly or unwittingly trans-
ferred to scientific research, seem to reverberate in Holtorf s proposal that instead
of focusing on what things are, we should focus on how things have become (in
case of his research ancient) artefacts (Holtorf 2002: 55). It is noteworthy that the
emphasis here does not fall on being but on becoming.
Paraphrasing Julia Kristevas (1986, 1998) term, we might say that this kind of
research is interested in the object in process (or the processual object), that is, the
object as it is manufactured and transformed, as it wears out and acquires meaning.
Just as in the prevailing conceptions of subjectivity, the object is not seen as stable
and closed but as changing and open. This conception of the object is marked by
the still dominant constructivist approach, which supports and legitimates the post-
modern condition with its affirmation of change, recovery, and reconstructive capaci-
ties. This way of thinking underlies Holtorf s approach, too, despite his promising
declarations. His goal is to examine the transformation of a thing into source evidence,
that is, to investigate an object in process. The thing as such, situated outside of
pragmatics, is not his focus of interest.
13
True enough, counter-archaeology departs from the simplistic approach to things in terms of
their functionality and usefulness, and the new archaeologist sides with things as active creators of social
life. However, is counter-archaeology anything more than a clever move on the part of the dominant
system of knowledge which attempts to incorporate and neutralize all potentially threatening discourses?
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Domaska
Like any other, things can be approached in a twofold manner: We can either
treat their otherness as pathology and try to normalize them, making them resemble
people; or we can perceive them as a culture (or cultures), autonomous and self-con-
tained in their non-human otherness. In archaeological research, the former approach
is exemplified by social anthropology with its preference for writing biographies of
things, while the latter approach is manifested in Heideggerian archaeology, which,
more or less successfully, attempts to preserve the autonomy of things. However, things
are discussed in a manner similar to people: they have empires, they form relation-
ships, they have their lives, they are affirmed or humiliated; research in the field of
cultural heritage emphasizes the need to protect things and take care of them. Some-
times things are made infantile, since they require the kind of care that children do.
It is worth reminding ourselves of the obvious fact that taking care of someone
involves a hierarchy, since the person who is taken care of is regarded as weaker,
while the caregiver is in the position to exercise control. Indeed, care means control
in the case of both people and things. We tend to see things from a pragmatic point
of view; the thing is important inasmuch as it serves people and can be used by them
in a variety of discourses: scientific (the thing as a source of knowledge), legal (things
and remains used in genocide trials), aesthetic, religious, etc. The pragmatic approach
to things predominates.
14
The most conspicuous example is the treatment of human
remains. Even the archaeologist of death Mike Parker Pearson, whose works display
thorough knowledge of contemporary problems and great intellectual sensitivity,
says that dealing with the dead, recent and ancient, inevitably must serve the living
(Parker Pearson 1999: 192; Domaska 2005).
Arguably, all the approaches to things discussed above are permeated by the poli-
tics of colonization, the conquest of unknown and exotic territories. Significantly,
in such a book as, e.g., The empire of things by Fred E. Myers (2001), the very title
with the term empire implies thinking in terms of imperialism and conquest. An
empire is a sovereignty, which raises the question of who or what rules the empire
of things. Is there a hierarchy of things?
ETHICS OF THINGS
When a thing is considered as an other, it is possible to raise the issue of an
ethical relation between humans and things and to speak of an ethics of things in
general. Silvia Bensos book The face of things is an attempt to save things from
oblivion. She does not intend to anthropomorphize things but to thingize ethics
14
This is why defenders of things seek help in Heidegger for whom using does not mean
exploitation; using is preserving a thing in being, it gives a thing its destination and purpose; see:
Heidegger 1972: 187.
The return to things

183
(Bensos term). The inspiration of this work, writes Benso in the introduction,
is the conviction that not only the Other, but also the other of the Other things
must become the (nonthematic) theme of love of philosophical discourse.
Inspired by Martin Heideggers understanding of things and Emmanuel Levinas
ethics of the Other, Benso writes about the encounter with things in their facialities
(not faces).
15
For her, ethics is the dimension within which a nonviolating encounter
with a nonhuman other takes place. She also, like Latour, tries to protect things
from their reduction to objects. To be sure, there is no place for nonhuman others
(and especially for things) in Levinasian ethics, but Bensos project aimed at filling
this lack by turning to the later Heideggers understanding of things as conditioners
of other things and of what is gathered within them. As Benso writes: things are the
place where the gathering of the Fourfold (the mortals, the gods, the earth, the sky)
occurs (Benso 2000: xxxvi). What is important in her interpretation is that there
are no relationships without things; things as gatherers open up the place of a rela-
tionship. Thus, things are in a way places, and not merely belong in space.
16
In this
context, ethics is considered not as set of rules or principles but as a locative descrip-
tion, a place where what is good is defined in terms of what preserves the maximum
reality from destruction, whereas what is bad is what works against reality, for its
destruction and annihilation (Benso 2000: 131).
The interesting approach to ethics offered by Benso, does not, however, rise above
the paradigm of paternalism. It seems that a fundamental problem of this paradigm
resides in the concepts of otherness and difference that have been adopted by
various discourses concerning relations with humans and nonhuman others and that
tie us to a modernist way of thinking since they were developed in its framework.
Perhaps we should look for other concepts to describe our cohabitants in the world,
for the concept of the Other seems to be more and more oppressive.
An overview of the intellectual trends which purport to defend things in the
framework of the paradigm of paternalism demonstrates that just as in the other
disciplines in the humanities, those trends cannot rise above the categories of modern
philosophy without coming up against the aporias of anthropocentrism. Representa-
tives of these trends continue to think in terms of hierarchical difference, in various
ways objectify the things they study, and treat relations in terms of the economy of
exchange (pragmatism). Perhaps Derrida is right when he says that we can only
resort to deconstruction, which exposes the foundations of modern philosophy and
15
For Susan Benso (2000: xxx), facialities evoke the possibility of the existence of faceless faces,
which, despite their facelessness, are yet endowed with the intimating power of the face to demand
an ethical response.
16
According to Heidegger, originally the word thing denoted a gathering. Benso (2000: 113 and
118) reminds: It is the event of gathering that Heidegger assumes as the being of things. A thing is
a thing, rather than object, insofar as it gathers when it gathers, the thing things, Heidegger claims.
184

Domaska
prepares us for what is to come. Perhaps this time practice will substantiate theory
rather than being constructed by it.
Recently a biotronic transformer was constructed which combined organic tissue
with a microprocessor. The binary opposition between the organic and inorganic
was thus dissolved, with the result that theory had to come up with a new idea of
subjectivity to describe this product. Similarly, the opposition of the human being
and the thing may soon be challenged. We must be receptive to what is to come, and
this receptivity is only possible if we realize that modern thinking has exhausted its
potential and that contemporary reality poses problems which modern thinking
has a difficulty to handle (I mean such specific attributes of modern thinking as
thinking in terms of binary oppositions and anthropocentrism). The alternative
trends in contemporary social sciences and humanities demonstrate that scholars
are perfectly aware of the limitations involved in traditional epistemology and try
to transcend it. Such approaches as, for example, Heideggerian archaeology, techno-
science studies, or revised animism create potentialities for new approaches.
Meanwhile, a conclusion drawn from the above considerations might be that
a discourse in defense of things (and in general of non-humans) is in the end
a discourse in defense of the human being. Things are coming to be existential,
stable markers that help unstable humans to orient themselves in the world.
Stories about things are rei-fictions about unique identities and biographies of
things.
17
We can only hope that thanks to things we might become more human in
the future (Droit 2005).
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