Objects and Agency Some Obstacles and Opportunities of Modernity

OBJECTS AND AGENCY
Some Obstacles and Opportunities of Modernity

by
Ian Russell

Abstract: Objects from the past are present all around us, everyday of our lives. It is through interaction with these
objects that we glean an interpretation of things which came before. But we must ask can artefacts act? Can they
speak? A new field of study has been put forth by scholars at previous academic meetings discussing the theory of object
agency; however, at the same time, it is admitted that archaeological artefacts are inanimate and mute. J ulian Thomas
described the urge to interpret an objects existence in our present timeframe as evidence of previous human or sentient
agency as the archaeological imagination. In psychological terms, the externalisation of individual and social
expectations for past and meaning onto inanimate objects (artefacts) creates images of the past. However, we can
argue that the interpretation of an object and the creation of images of the past are all aspects of the broader
psychological function of perception. These modern perceptions are what are used to bridge the existential crisis of
sentient beings fulfilling the desire for a notion of purpose and continuity with a greater lineage of agency. However, to
what extent do our own methods of structuring and constructing perceptions and rendering meanings through methods of
science and humanistic interpretation simply reify systems of supposedly synonymous modern dichotomies and dualities
and modern paradigms? This paper is designed to engage with how the concept of object agency obscures the
phenomenon of the construction of images of the past through the viewing, interpreting and rendering of artefacts and
objects in the world we inhabit. It will also suggest some possible ways archaeology can move beyond modernity through
an engagement with the world not as materials but as media.

Preface

In a paper written by Tim Ingold pre-circulated for this session, he asked each of us to take a
rock and submerge it in water and to place the wet rock on our desks while we read his
paper (2007). Of course by the time, I had finished reading this paper, my rock had dried up,
but the flow of ideas had not. Offering both a text and task simultaneously, Ingolds charge
only too clearly recalled the similar request of Ren Descartes (1596-1650) in his Discourse
on Method:

I would like those who are not versed in anatomy to take the trouble, before reading this, to have
the heart of some large animal with lungs dissected in front of them (Descartes 1649 [1637]: 75-6).

Descartes asked his reader to do so in order to then walk the reader through the different
aspects of the anatomy of the heart. Ingolds walk was much more theoretical, leaving me
not with facts or observations but with more questions. Sitting at my desk, a rock, now dry, is
perched on a pile of paper. Did the rock know I was observing it? Was this rock wilfully
complicit in its submersion and subsequent task of holding down the overflow of paper on my
desk? Or is this rock merely something I plucked from my garden assigning tasks as I so
chose?

It is this series of questions which I believe were the inherent tasks in Ingolds charge. If we
are to succeed in overcoming the modern invention of material culture, then we must engage
all the possibilities emanating from these questions. In this paper, I will focus on the phrase
object agency and how it impedes investigations of humans in the world and guises
modernist paradigms which reify the concept of material culture. I will also make some
suggestions of ways we may be able to transcend these difficulties in an appreciation of the
growing intermediated relationships of humans in the digital age.

Object Agency: A non-statement?

In a conversation with Andrew Cochrane, the proposition was made that presenting the
terms object and agency as a single phrase, object agency, constructed an oxymoronic
concept a synthetic conflation of modern senses of activity and passivity into a meaningful
catchphrase. Even Alfred Gell (1945-1997), the proponent of agency in objects in all its
Russell, I. 2007 Objects and Agency: Some Obstacles and Opportunities of Modernity, Journal of Iberian Archaeology
(vols. 9/10): Overcoming the Modern Invention of Material Culture, V. O. J orge & J . Thomas (eds.) (forthcoming).

many and varied dispersed forms, noted that the notion of attributing agency to objects was
a contradiction in terms an oxymoron (1998: 19). A more extreme grammatical stance
could be taken in the spirit of Stephanie Koerners philosophy. With object agency, we are
dealing with a non-statement. How can an objects do anything? How can they have affect?
How can they possibly be agents?

Both the terms object and agency have long histories of use in the social sciences, but when
fused together into one phrase, the history is significantly shorter and significantly more
theoretically contentious. With object, we are dealing with a definition of something placed
before or presented to the eyes or other senses (Oxford English Dictionary). This is
Descartes heart and Ingolds rock. The term object also carries modern connotations of
tangibility and manipulability. With agency, we are dealing with a definition of the faculty of
an agent or of acting or working as a means to an end; instrumentality(Oxford English
Dictionary). The structure of the end is determined by a cause and effect relationships
between the intentionality of the agent and the instrumentality of the object (Gell 1998: 16).
Within a modern paradigm, this is where we find ourselves (bodies, minds, embodied minds,
etc.) as beings bestowed with agency and, as some contest, objects. Fused together, the
phrase object agency attempts to unite what is a constructed separation between the role of
humans as agents and objects as instruments wielded in the pursuit of a human-defined
end. At the core of this union of terms is the assertion that material culture is not simply a
tabla rasa constructed to reflect human ideas or to complete human tasks. The objects of
material culture are active agents in the negotiation of spatial, environmental, social and
cultural contexts, structuring and affecting proceedings of events through the gestalt of their
changing materialities. However, this attempt to fuse together what are in themselves
contradictory terms is an exercise in intellectual futility a demonstration of clever
wordsmithing to avoid what is a much more fundamental problem with modern Western
paradigms the oxymoronic construction of material culture.

To illustrate this, it is important to return to a definition of terms. Perhaps a less articulated
but significantly more interesting sense of object is its adjective senses exposed or open
to injury, understanding, etc. or situated in front of, against, or opposite to, something else
also opposed, contrary(Oxford English Dictionary). This should be considered with the less
frequently cited and more theoretical sense of agency as action or instrumentality
embodied or personified as concrete existence(Oxford English Dictionary). Considering
these senses, an oxymoronic impression stems from their fusion into a single phrase. While
seeking to render itself intelligible, the object-as-agent simultaneously renders an internal
dichotomy between what is its embodied persona as agent and its concrete existence as
object. Gell noted this very problem when attempting to negotiate the issues of intentionality
inherent to the understanding of agency (1998: 20). Simply put, although object agency
seeks to unite a constructed dichotomy between humans and the objects which constitute
the matter of their observations, it simultaneously supports the dualistic paradigm of subject
and object, of agent and object.

Objects and agents: Strategies of resolution for a modern world

Throughout the evidential discourse of human thought, people have grappled with existence
and formulated different strategies to resolve their experiences of ontic crises in negotiating
lifeworlds.


Psychoanalysing Objects: Object Relations Theory

For example, some psychoanalysts have utilised strategies such as internal object relations
theory to construct a metaphor for the internal psychological relationships between
individuals and the objects (both animate and inanimate) that they encounter which can be
implemented in psychotherapy.
1
This strategy results not only in progressive coping systems
and therapeutic treatments for individuals seeking to orient themselves in the modern world
but also an assumption of modern dualistic paradigms (e.g. Cartesianism) relating to the
mind, body, other entities and phenomena and the world.

Enchanting Objects: Projecting the Spirit of Humanity

In philosophical discourse, there is also the strategy of modern re-enchantment of the
material world. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels (1770-1831) philosophy mourned the loss of
the spirit of artefacts and objects in our museums and cultural discourses:

The statues are now only stones from which the living soul has flown the works of the Muse now
lack the power of the Spirit, for the Spirit has gained its certainty of itself from the crushing of gods
and men (1997 [1832]: 455).

Continuing this mourning of an idealised spirit vested into objects within the discourse of
agency, as Ingold has warned, can tend towards the conjuring a magical mind-dust that is
supposed to set them [objects] physically in motion. Furthermore, it is a well-rehearsed path
from the search for spirit in the thought of Hegel to the utilisation of objects as tabla rasa in
Ludwig Andreas Freuerbachs (1804-1872) theory of projection (1957 [1841; 1854]). These
theories provided conditions for the modern development of kulturkreis and cultural historical
approaches to the past practiced by such scholars as Gustaf Kossinna (1858-1931) (1911;
1921). These theoretical developments in prehistoric archaeology created the philosophical
framework for the utilisation of material culture as a meta- tabla rasa onto which the meta-
narrative of 20th century European nationalist ideologies were projected (Arnold & Hassmann
1995).

Reflecting Objects: The Reflective Metaphors of Philosophy

Many philosophers have utilised objects for illustrative metaphors in their discourses. Here
again we find the illustrative and performative tasks of Ingolds rock and Descartes heart.
This tradition of reflective metaphor in philosophy is poetically evident in the recent English
publication of Walter Benjamins (1892-1940) Berlin Childhood around 1900 (2006 [1950]:
96-7):

When I had closed my fist around it and so far as I was able, made certain that I possessed the
stretchable woolen mass, there began the second phase of the game, which brought with it the
unveiling,. For now I proceeded to unwrap the present, to tease it out of its woolen pocket. I drew
it ever nearer to me, until something rather disconcerting would happen: I had brought out the
present, but the pocket in which it had lain was no longer there. I could not repeat the experiment
on this phenomenon often enough. It taught me that form and content, veil and what is veiled, are
the same. It led me to draw truth from works of literature as warily as the childs hand retrieved the
sock from the pocket.

1
There a number of theoretical approaches to Object Relations Theory within the field of psychoanalysis, but the
foundational research has predominantly been undertaken by psychoanalysts in the United States of America and the
United Kingdom. The works of Melanie Klein (1882-1960), W. Ronald Fairbairn (1889-1964) and Donald W. Winnicott
(1896-1971) represent the schools of thought in the United Kingdom. The works of Edith J acobson (1897-1978), Margaret
S. Mahler (1897-1985) and Otto F. Kernberg represent the schools of thought in the United States of America. For a good
discussion of different approaches to Objects Relations Theory in psychoanalytic literature see (Greenberg & Mitchell
1983).

We can sense the movement towards what Henri Lefebvre (1991 [1947; 1958]) later called
for in philosophical reflection an engagement with the everyday. J ean Baurdrillard (1996
[1968]) began an exploration of the significance of these everyday objects in the
construction of systems of meaning. Some of Baudrillards reflective points, such as those
about modern identification with ones automobile, would be later articulated in
anthropological literature such as Gells use of the concept of car culture or vehicular
animism as evidenced in his Toyota, which he lovingly named Toyolly or Olly for short
(1998: 19-20).

Phenomenal Objects: Objects and the Humanistic Turn in Phenomenology

Published first in his seminal work Being and Time (1927), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
began his philosophical career with the articulation of a startling breakthrough in the
understanding of objects. In his writings, he stated simply that we rely on objects all the time
as they are silently taken for granted (e.g. the air, the earth, etc.). It was his idea that these
objects did not enter into human phenomenological awareness until something went wrong
the machine malfunctioned (Harman 2005: 268). What is significant about this thought is that
it opened new possibilities for philosophies of objects which transcended anthropocentric
rationalism.

He led to the argument that we should not reduce objects or things to representations or
presences merely for human awareness. As Ingold argues, they should not be considered
tabla rasa. Later works such as Das Ding (The Thing) (1951) and Bauen Wohnen Denken
(Building Dwelling Thinking) (1951) advanced his proposition that things were not things in
themselves but they are what they are by virtue of relations to everything else (Rorty 2005:
274). This offered a great alternative to the scholastic tradition of Aristotelian substantialism.
Despite the power of this relationalist and contextualist philosophy, Heideggers academic
impact has focused more on the dasein or the specific study of human existence (Harman
2005: 269). Thus in the development of phenomenology from Heideggers work, there was a
shift from a philosophy which allowed for a world rich with objects existing without the
necessary attention of human beings to a philosophy of the embodied phenomenological
experience of the sentient mind of humans, particularly evident in the work of Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) (1962 [1945]).

The significance of this turn in phenomenological research is that it allowed for the growth of
a body of literature explicating and apologising for the romanticised plight of the sentient
human mind presented with the problems of the material world. This created the space for
the popular embracement of existentialist thought and literature, focusing on the exceptional
qualities of the human being and its grappling with its sentience and resulting will and choice
as either an exceptional gift or a burden.

Animating Objects: Object Agency in the thought of Alfred Gell

Returning to an exploration of Gells thought, in anthropological theory and archaeological
theory, there is the concept of object agency. As has been previously discussed, it
addresses the relationships between humans and objects in the discourse of agency. This
strategy has largely developed out of the growing discipline of material cultural studies. In
particular, we should consider the seminal effort of Gell in Art and Agency. Rather than
simply re-enchanting or re-animating objects, Gell chose to develop a concept of dispersed
agency (1998: 12-22). That is that primary agency was still located within the scope of
human action, but that objects, as indices of human agency, possess secondary agency.

This notion of dispersed agency was immediately appealing within archaeological and
anthropological discourse as it seemed to both redress the perceived imbalance between
humans and non-humans but also create a perceptible universal similarity between modern
material culture and that of past peoples or contemporary non-modern cultures. The power
of Gells metaphor of dispersed agency lies in its reflexive qualities of personal narratives of
the development of his personal philosophy of art and agency. Perhaps heightened by his
untimely death, Gells unrevised text of Art and Agency carries a reflexive tone which
reinserts himself as scholar within his own lived experiences and those of the communities
which he has studied.

Alfred Gell and the limitations of object agency

Despite scholars, such as Gell, effort to bring into balance the relationship between humans
and objects in the discourse of agency through the concept of dispersed agency, this does
not move beyond the fundamental issue of human existential exceptionalism. Although Gell
brings objects into play within dispersed agency as secondary agents, this does not
overcome the modern ego of human as primary agent. Thus objects, no matter how much
secondary agency they can wield, are still reducible to indices of human act, will and choice.

Gells contribution was quite useful in facilitating an understanding of contemporary Western
communities of consumption and utilisation of complex machines (e.g. cars or guns) as
similar extensions and indices of human will, empowerment, identity and expression. His
work was particularly valuable for its ability to open the possibility of considering the direct
parallels between these Western cultural patterns and past and contemporary non-modern
relationships with objects. However, this does not overcome the issue of the enchantment of
machines as objects. Although Gells observations do serve to illustrate dominant trends in
fetishisation of mechanics, his conception of mechanistic enchantment relies on a separation
between expert and public understanding of mechanics and engineering in such a way that
there are individuals who simply take machines or cars for granted. Indeed, Gells use of the
term vehicular animism or car culture could be read as an unintended apology for material
culturalist discourses which define human communities along technological and materialistic
guidelines by associating social units with materialised social agencies (e.g. Bronze Age,
Iron Age and lithic (stone) temporalities) (Gell 1998: 18-9).

How does this anthropocentric technological paradigm engage with other material entities
and phenomena? Animals, weather-systems, ecological phenomena, all have enormous
impact on the conditions and possibilities of experience within the world. For example, in a
discourse over Heideggers discussion of tools and objects, Graham Harman reminds us of
the problem of understanding ecological phenomena within a object/agency politic (2005:
268-9). He takes the example of a hail storm and a cornfield. The hail storm may destroy the
cornfield, but which is the agent and which the object? This example serves to remind us one
of Heideggers earliest articulations on materials, that is the myriad of invisible interactions
which occur throughout this shared world erosion, tidal patterns, cardiopulmonary systems,
synaptic functions or gravitational force.

Considering Heideggers conception of the appearance through failure of objects and things
in human awareness as noted above, one could argue that since the Enlightenment,
Western traditions of human consciousness, expression and science makes blind
assumptions about the structure of the world in order to place humans at the centre of the
cosmos either as victims or agents. Yet in both cases, it is only when human consciousness
has been made aware and deems it necessary to take action in relation to an object or
phenomenon that the object or phenomenon is given status as a part of a lifeworld. The risk

of the adoption of this paradigm is that it may obscure and simultaneously affirm what is the
fundamental desire of the dominant modern, rational paradigm the primacy of human will
and choice. The risk of this primacy is that it can lead to projection of the idealised human
ego-will through conflated dualities onto constructed others or objects. Thus it is critical to
expose what is a modern hubristic assumption of human ego-consciousness, agency and
power. Although the work of the natural, biological or medical sciences facilitates a rendering
of these phenomena as intelligible within human communication just as religious and faith
systems have done for many years they also reify the anthropocentric qualities of
Western rational thought. Humans are the beginning and the end of agency holding all the
cards and setting all the rules of the game.

Prime agents and prime movers

Gell articulated that he believed that there was a dispersal of agency through the world but
that there were primary agents and secondary agents. The danger of this discourse is that it
falls back into classical arguments over the notion of the prime mover. Plato (428/7-328/7
BCE) in Timaeus articulated the image of a demiurge responsible for the movements of the
world. Aristotle (384-322 BCE) in his Physics asserted that there was a Prime Mover of the
cosmos. Indeed, Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) after Robert Boyle (1627-1692) returned to
this concept in the 17
th
century in the image of the divine clockmaker who set the wheels of
time in motion. As efforts to locate a kinetic starting point for agency and action in the world,
Gell continued the socio-theological and cosmological argument for a hierarchy or chain of
command in the causal relationships between agents and objects. Asserting the conception
of a primary agent and the secondary agent still functions within the discourse of a search for
a prime mover, and the tremendous risk of this position is that it merely replaces what were
abstract conceptions of divine will with human will and choice. Thus, the questions and
concerns of this debate are of a cosmological order in that they ask us to question how we
position ourselves within the evident and experienced complexities of our shared ecologies,
environments, architectures and worlds.

Options and oppositions

If our goal is to redress the imbalance between objects and humans on the scales of agency,
then we have two distinct and radical options. The first has been somewhat rehearsed, but to
phrase it simply, it is human exceptionalism that humans are the prime movers and prime
agents and the origination point of action whether or not there is dispersed agency. The
second is to approach humans as constituent materials and functions, including them in the
spectrum of objects and materials which compose the material world. Do we reduce humans
to species and components of organic machines, or do we elevate humans above this
discourse through a belief in the exceptional qualities of human sentience?

The hubristic position asserts humans as the point of origin of agency, as the prime mover of
all objects. It also plays with a certain gnostic quality of human sentient awareness in the
world of things. Supplanting God, humans now wind their own clocks. However, this position
is untenable as has already been shown. It does not allow for the possibility of choice or will
or action by animals and does not take into account the transcendental impact of those
actions humans can not effect nor control such as earthquakes, erosion or gravity.

The humble position is best articulated in the words of Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari:


It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes,
it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines real
ones, not figurative ones (2004 [1972]: 1)

By reducing humans to their constituent functions and materials, Deleuze and Guattari
transcend the Freudian foundation upon human sentient exceptionalism and carry on the
tradition of Darwinian materialism. They see humans as desiring machines, basely included
in the inter-relationships of material entities negotiating a world obscured by the weight of
their own sentience. The difficulty of this position is that it grates against the long-standing
development post-Enlightenment of a cherished individualism. What are the implications of a
human that is merely a machine?

Although, it is heartening to consider a point brought up by Ingold at the Theoretical
Archaeology Group in December 2006; that is that there is nothing mere about being an
organism. From the perspective of science the organism is one of the most beautifully
complex phenomena in existence in this world. Although fear may have us retreat to our
sentience as a defence, we need only be prepared to share a beauty which is inherent in all
organisms from amoebas to plankton to racoons to humans but has been falsely
individualised as an exceptional quality of human beings will and choice.

Exorcising will and choice

For much of the history of philosophical discourse since the Enlightenment, we have been
obsessed with the ability to exercise will and choice as exceptionally sentient beings, making
the world into the most desirable image of ourselves. In contemporary Western culture, there
is a tyrannical universality of the exceptionalism of human sentience when conceived as an
entitlement to individual will and choice. Running counter to the flow of the devolution of
religious authority over human potentiality in the world, the trend towards a universal
appreciation of the ego or I as a brand of entitlement reconstructs an omnipresent human
agency. From the perspective of humility, muscles are strong within this world due to their
response to tensions between inter-related objects within a gravitationally bound existence.
Within the scope of atomic theory, matter stays together due to strong and weak forces
within the constituent particles of the atoms which compose material bodies. To utilise
reflective metaphors, think of your chair, this earth, this air, gravity and the strong and weak
forces that bind matter together. Considering these phenomena as aspects of our mediated
selves, how different are our material interactions between ourselves and our bodies to that
between a hail storm and a corn field? Is it that we believe that we exercise choice and will
over the potentialities of our material?

The limitation of the ideal human

Within the humanities there is an underdeveloped appreciation of the multiple expressions of
human form within the world. Only recently has there been a popular acceptance of the study
of archaeology and disability in academic conference settings (such as Tim Phillips session
on the Archaeology of Disability at the Theoretical Archaeology Group in December 2006).
Indeed, most studies of humans or humanity inherently assume a fully endowed ideal human
form. With the growth of casualties from theatres of war within Western societies and the
subsequent growth in medical technology in the supplying of prosthetic limbs, the
philosophical proposition of the ideal human is an increasingly untenable position. The recent
feature article written by Neil Shea and illustrated by the photographs of J ames Nachtwey in
the December 2006 issue of National Geographic illustrated the growing number of
individuals surviving from theatres of combat but requiring advanced prosthetics to facilitate

their lifeworlds (see Shea 2006). The resonance of the theme of the article is normalisation
of the medical prosthesis through the desire for enablement and the acceptance of this by
others through unselfish declarations of love.

The alternative to this is to assert that the prosthesis which a human uses to walk or to move
about an environment are mutually exclusive entities and that the human is reducible to that
which has no prosthesis. I feel this proposition limits understandings of the possibilities of
human lifeworlds. Ironically, academic conferences have no qualms about accepting the
prevalence of eye-glasses which could be equally described as a prosthesis of the faculty
of human sight. In many respects, we merely accept the mediated enmeshed experience of
a human with eye-glasses. I propose that this is the same attitude we must develop towards
all media be they physical or digital prosthetics. By digital prosthetics, I am referring to the
growing enmeshment, expression and enablement of human media within digital media in
digital spaces and architectures.

The limitations of physical rhetoric

Beyond the philosophical difficulties in anthropological and archaeological theory that employ
the concept of object agency, there are broader ramifications of object-based rhetoric in
material culture. This is to say that the current obsession with material culture in archaeology
and anthropology often focuses solely on the physical world, restricting appreciations for the
parallels with non-physical experience. In an age where digital media are increasingly
providing the forums for human expression and form human lifeworlds, the utilisation of an
anthropological concept such as object agency which focuses on physical objects excludes
the discipline from the enlightening parallels of experience within digital architectures.

Although these digital architectures are currently rendered through materialistic discourses of
hands bashing on keyboards, these boundaries are being consistently tested and broken by
medical science. For example, there is extensive research, such as has been undertaken by
J ose Delgado, into the development of digital brain implants which act as biomedical
prostheses which circumvent portions of the human brain disabled by strokes or traumatic
head injuries (see Horgan 2005 or Berger 2005). Indeed, the work undertaken to develop
digital components to enhance or repair human vision presents our discourse over
observation and perception with a whole new dimension of the politics of spectatorship. It
introduces the possibility of digital control.

Culturally, artists and writers have been imagining the possibilities of the digitisation and
mutability of human consciousness and thus agency. The Manga Ghost in the Shell (1991)
and its subsequent anime adaptation in 1995 present the startling possibilities of the
increasingly sought after goal the digitisation of the human mind. Blurring philosophical
boundaries between the physical, mental and digital worlds, the manga written by
Masamune Shirow provided a dramatic illustration of what is an increasing field of research
within biomedical sciences the braincomputer interface. The most notable success was in
2005, when a tetrapalegic named Matt Nagle had the BrainGate chip-implant manufactured
by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology inserted into his brain, successfully controlling a right
precentral gyrus (an area of the brain responsible for arm movement). J ust by thinking he
was able to control a robotic arm (Leigh et. al 2005).

Through this active research, we can see the practical and conceptual boundaries between
mind, material and the digital space eroding. Indeed, if a mind can communicate to non-
organic motorsystems, is it possible that a mind could be simply transferred to non-organic
components, stored, deleted or merged with other minds? To some it invokes fear and for

others hope and possibility. Whatever ones emotive response, the simple fact is that it is
occurring. Thus, perhaps it is time for anthropological and archaeological discourses to no
longer assert the primacy of either humans or objects as agents, and instead, a new
conception of the possibilities of humans and objects as media and mediation could be
explored.

Making Things Public: Assemblages and media

As a thoughtful contribution to this reflexive and reflective process relating to mediation, a
recent collaborative exhibition at the Zentrum fr Kunst und Mediatechnologie (Centre for Art
and Media) organised by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel titled Making Things Public:
Athmosphren der Demokratie (Atmospheres of Democracy) charged a group of over 100
artists, intellectuals and academics to participate in the a move from objects to things
things in the sense of the original German and English meaning of the word as an assembly
of people. In this way, assemblages of objects of art and assemblages of people can interact
in participatory exchanges which develop new and dynamic groups and concepts with every
individual who or thing which takes part. From the website of the exhibition:

It turns out that the oldest meaning of the English and German word for thing concerns an
assembly brought together to discuss disputed matters of concern. Hence the focus on the slogan
FROM REALPOLITIK TO DINGPOLITIK, a neologism invented for the show. This major shift is
reflected in the aesthetic of the show, in the ways in which the over one hundred installations and
works of art are presented, and in the general physical and virtual architecture. What we are trying
to do is compare modernist with non-modern attitudes to objects. In effect we are moving FROM
OBJ ECTS TO THINGS [capitals original] (Latour & Weibel 2005a; also see Latour & Weibel
2005b).

The effect of this exhibition was a deneutralisation the exhibition and museum space,
allowing the public to come into being through participation in the experience of
representations of concerns and issues through inter- and intra-mediated assemblages of
things (both animate and inanimate) and images whether visual, textual, digital, performative
or other. Resonating both with Heideggerian theory and contemporary mediation theory, the
exhibition rendered inert modern paradigms which reify dichotomies between assemblages
of objects and assemblages of humans in public spaces, offering a powerful exposition of the
possibilities of viewing humans themselves as media (see Russell 2006).

Humans as media (Humedia)

To move through this proverbial minefield of philosophical issues, I propose a mediation
rather than a fight for agency. In the impending development of braincomputer interfaces and
neuroprostheses, I propose a move away from the dynamic struggle over manipulative
correlations between objects and agents to shared correlations between inter-mediated
entities.

This is a step beyond agency to a discourse of mediation to an understanding of humans
not as prime movers but as a constituent media. Thus the barrier between our hailstorms,
cornfields, humans and digital media dissolves as we accept our place in the dynamic ebbs
and flows our shared uncertain world. The radical impact of this for considerations of global
ecological risks is that it forces an awareness of the constituent role that humans play in
ecological development and change without presupposing an ethical or moral position. It
does not egoistically argue that we should take care of the world so that the world takes care

of us. Rather, it asserts an acceptance of position within the larger ecological phenomena of
existence and urges participation rather than control as a means to engage these risks.

Given the growing amount of academic ink spent on articulating notions of permeability and
partibility of personhood and the concurrent research developing on brain-computer
interfaces, it is only too appropriate to explore what are the broader possibilities of humans
as capricious media as humedia.

More than simply an organism, humans are indeed weighed down by the evident task of self-
discovery, revelation and understanding. Thus, the conception of humans as media has the
added benefit in that it does not make a distinction between material functions of the human
organism and the communicative functions of, for lack of a better term, the human mind. In
an art historical sense, perhaps this concept should be articulated as human as multimedia.
However, in seeking to transcend post-humanist discourse, I feel that the term multimedia is
redundant if we are expressing human potentialities. It is redundant in that media is already
plural. Thus the addition of the prefix multi- suggests that media inherently requires choice
towards one medium. I propose that humans are immediately and always have been present
as media and are not reducible to any single medium. Following Ingolds illustrative
metaphor, humans are one of the tangles of flows and webs of interrelated media, and thus
we are a location for development and change and growth and discovery (2007).

My articulation of mediation may seem as if it gives primacy to practical experience over the
significance of sentiment in the world. Rather, though what I wish to emphasise is that the
inter-mediated relationships between humedia and other media are not reducible to human
emotive response. This is not to say that emotion is not a constituent aspect of humedia.
Rather, I would assert that emotive responses are equally permeable, partible and sharable
between intermediated entities. If agency is to be freed of its anthropocentric, egoistic
shackles, then so too must emotive affect. Thus, assuming our place in the shared world as
media is also an acknowledgement of participation and shared responsibility for emotion and
sentiment.

Mediation and discovery

Coming to the discipline of archaeology, mediation has a significant impact on
understandings of archaeological discovery. Under an anthropocentric, primary agency
model, one could say she stubbed her toe. However, from the standpoint of mediation, this is
a shared phenomenal exchange between the media of mutually non-exclusive, enmeshed
entities a human and a rock. Following Heideggerian theory, this mediation could be
described as a moment of discovery as a growth of awareness of the potentialities of
mediated participations. This is not meant to devalue the image of stubbing or the
associated sentiment. Rather, mediation highlights the narrative and poetic qualities of those
images rather than the origination point of action or the ego-centricity of primary agency.

Applying this theory to archaeology it could be said that archaeology it is not so much about
the archaeologist digging as it is an enmeshed intermediation of entities negotiating
relationships in shared ecologies. This redefinition of archaeology allows for inclusion of
digital media and digital lifeworlds within the scope of archaeological study (see Metamedia
at Stanford 2007). Following the work and thought of Latour and Weibel considering groups
of humans as things, it is not too far a step to include digitised avatars and enabled human
expression in digital media and spaces within the scope of humans as media (Latour &
Weibel 2005b). With this new understanding, archaeology could begin to be an applicable

mode of study within digital temporalities studying, documenting, archiving, reconstructing
and reimagining digital lifeworlds.

Archaeology and humedia

In Western education there is a general movement towards object-oriented learning. In
following with this one could describe the growing fascination with archaeology as an interest
in object-oriented argumentation. However, if we are to allow for full exploration of the
potentialities of human lifeworlds in digital architectures, then we must turn away from the
desire for manipulative correlations towards mediative correlations. Thus, archaeology can
move from simply attempting to discern the potentiality of human choice and will through
tracing the manipulation of objects. Archaeology could then instead explore evidence of
mediated interrelationships of entities (Ingold, 2007). This will allow for a step beyond
anthropocentric epistemologies which construct knowledge about the past through human
action. Thus archaeology can embrace humans within enmeshed ecologies of mutually non-
exclusive entities. Through this conception of humans as media, we can redirect
archaeological enquiry away from anthropocentric epistemologies of the past and explore
mediated narratives of experience of lifeworlds whether they are conceived of as past,
present or future. The significance of this application of archaeology is that it allows for the
development of archaeologies of traditional media such as stone or pottery to be considered
alongside archaeologies of new media such as the internet or other digital lifeworlds (see
Metamedia at Stanford 2007). If the proposition of overcoming the modern invention of
material culture is to be achieved, then this turn towards media can facilitate a
transcendence of the material and the cultural in favour of an exploration of shared and
mediated entities unrestrained by sentience and unrestrained by physical form.

Concluding remarks

In this short article, I sought to explore some of the philosophical problems of the discourse
of material culture. In particular, I elaborated on the discourse of object agency in order to
illustrate many of the intellectual historical developments which confine understandings of
humans and media in the world. I concluded with a consideration of contemporary scientific
research on neuroprostheses and brain-computer interfaces and the implications for human
epistemological relationships with modern material culture. I suggested that a turn towards
an understanding of humans as enmeshed media in the world could solve the dichotomy
between minds and bodies and materials while also preserving the subtleties of narrative
and poetic expression within human experience.

Acknowledgements

Firstly I would like to thank J ulian Thomas and Vitor Oliviera J orge for inviting me to participate in their
session at the Theoretical Archaeology Group in December 2006 and for inviting me to contribute to this
volume. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance and support of Stephanie Koerner, Andrew
Cochrane and Michael Shanks for their role in the development of my thought and research. I would also
like to thank Dr J ohn A. Russell for his assistance in editing this article.

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