Assemblage Thought and Archaeology

Ben Jervis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138067493
• eBook ISBN: 9781351657037
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

From examinations of prehistoric burial to understanding post-industrial spaces and heritage practices, the writing of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is gaining increasing importance within archaeological thought. Their concept of 'assemblages' allows us to explore the past in new ways, by placing an emphasis on difference rather than similarity, on fluidity rather stasis and unpredictability rather than reproduceable models.

Assemblage Thought and Archaeology applies the notion of assemblage to specific archaeological case studies, ranging from early urbanism in Mesopotamia to 19th century military fortifications. It introduces the concept of assemblage within the context of the wider 'material turn' in the social sciences, examines its implications for studying materials and urban settlements, and explores its consequences for the practice of archaeological research and heritage management.

This innovative book will be of particular interest to postgraduate students of archaeological theory and researchers looking to understand this latest trend in archaeological thought, although the case studies will also have appeal to those whose work focusses on material culture, settlement archaeology and archaeological practice.

1

ASSEMBLAGE, ONTOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Introducing assemblage thought

It may, at first, seem odd to turn to a collaboration between a renegade philosopher and former school teacher (Gilles Deleuze) who rejected the mainstream canon of philosophical writing and a psychoanalyst and Marxist political activist (Felix Guattari) to build a framework for understanding the past. In their collaborative writing, however, we find tools and ideas which can be used to challenge orthodoxy and structure, to enable us to engage with the past in alternative, and potentially fruitful, ways. These tools, known collectively as assemblage thought, are concerned with understanding the ways in which orders emerge, how they hold together and how they fall apart and, crucially, their implications for shaping the world as affective processes.

Importantly, we should not see assemblage thought as originating with Deleuze and Guattari, as this would contradict their very approach to research, which is less concerned with origins than middles, with ongoing processes; Deleuze and Guattari’s writing emerged from a range of influences, philosophical, artistic, political and historical, and has gone on to flow through a scholarship in a range of disciplines; as a body of thought it is never complete, but always being worked on, adapting and changing as it is applied. As a body of thought it acts as the very ideas which underpin it; immanence, emergence and difference. ‘Assemblage theory’ was not a term used by Deleuze and Guattari, having been coined by the philosopher Manuel DeLanda (2006; 2016) in his re-imagining of their writing. It is best understood not as a unified theory, but as a set of ideas and tools which can be used to build a radical view of an immanent world, in which core themes which have dominated archaeological theory in recent decades; structure, individuality and identity, representation and power, are critiqued and re-conceptualised. The result is that they are not frames for understanding action, but emerge from, and are manipulated by, the ongoing productive processes which constitute a world which is always emerging. This is a world which is always in a state of becoming, rather than existing in a fixed state.

As we will discover, everything is an assemblage, from a pot to a city, from a house to an economy. Objects are assemblages not only of materials, which are constantly changing, for example as they corrode, but also of ideas and are, themselves, components of other assemblages; households or communities, being active participants in the formation of the relationships which constitute those assemblages. Assemblages are not fixed entities, but fluid, ongoing and finite processes. Thinking through assemblages therefore turns entities into processes and calls on us to question temporal and physical boundaries. Assemblage thought shifts our focus to the intensities which are productive of societies; we come to encounter a material world which is not representative of the past, but is productive, unstable and full of potential to destabilise received ideas, recover new stories and craft pasts which reveal the complexities of power dynamics which transcend any division between the human and non-human, past and present or near and far.

The ideas discussed in this book are derived from Deleuze and Guattari’s principal collaborative works, known collectively as Capitalism and Schizophrenia, these two volumes are Anti-Oedipus (first published 1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987, first published 1980). A great deal has been written about the nature of the collaboration between Deleuze and Guattari and the context of their writing and it is not appropriate or necessary to offer a full analysis here. It is, however, worth briefly reflecting upon the aims of the authors and the immediate context in which they were writing. As a philosopher, Deleuze had, by 1972, carved out a reputation as a character not afraid to challenge the dominant philosophical ideals (see Bogue 1989, 1–3; Holland 2013, 2–3). He rejected mainstream philosophical writing as being too egocentric and, whilst embracing structuralism’s move away from this approach, was also opposed to the imposition of structure itself. Instead, he focussed on the writings of less well known philosophers, with ideas derived from Nietzsche, Bergson and Spinoza featuring strongly in elements of his collaborative writing with Guattari. His principal work before the collaboration with Guattari was his thesis Difference and Repetition (1968), in which he argues that the concepts of difference and becoming should have priority over identity and being; that is an emphasis on experience and emergence rather than on a world defined and conceived of in advance; as Tamsin Lorraine (2005, 159) summarises:

In Deleuze’s view, common sense notions of space and time as totalised wholes within which everything can be either spatially or chronologically related with respect to everything else are no more than retrospective constructs.

Guattari on the other hand was less established from an academic perspective. He was a well known Marxist activist in France and worked as a psychoanalyst at the La Borde clinic. He had similar concerns to Deleuze, in challenging the orthodoxy of scholarship in his field, in particular seeking to rethink concepts of reality and group dynamics. This was achieved through a realisation that reality is defined through relations and, from a political perspective, should be free-formed and emergent rather than rigid and hierarchical, effectively seeing institutions as repressive and subjective group processes as enabling. The political implications of this were recognised in Guattari’s critique of the working of the Communist party (1972; see Bogue 1989, 86–7; Holland 2013, 3–4).

The collaboration between Deleuze and Guattari coincided with the student revolt of May 1968. The relationship between Anti-Oedipus and this event is contested and, whilst the revolt was unlikely to be the catalyst for writing, it certainly had an effect in framing the ideas developed within it (see Buchanan 2008, 7–12). Deleuze and Guattari were clearly sympathetic to the anti-capitalist sentiment of the uprising, but did not seek one political order to simply be replaced by another; they had a bigger intention, to shake up power structures and change them from within so as not to replicate repression, but to create potential for alternative systems of governance and society to emerge. When taking the tools offered by assemblage thought it is easy to forget the radical political motivation of the authors (see Russell et al 2011) but it is, perhaps, useful to find parallels with their ideas within the discipline of archaeology; our aim in using assemblage approaches should, perhaps, be to challenge structures and ideas which repress free thought and imaginative interpretation, which reproduce subjective ideas as objective facts, and, in doing so, embrace the diversity of the past.

For the archaeologist seeking to engage with assemblage thought for the first time, the dense and abstract writing of Deleuze and Guattari is extremely challenging. A more accessible rendering of their key concepts can be found in the writing of Manuel DeLanda (1997; 2002; 2006; 2016), who seeks to employ their concepts in a more practical way to explore the emergence of western hegemony in the modern world and, particularly, explores questions surrounding the city and its implications (particularly DeLanda 1997; 2006) and scientific process (particularly DeLanda 2002; 2016). As will become clear in the following sections, at times DeLanda has taken the original ideas and developed them (most notably in his consideration of the relationship between the meshwork and hierarchy), but he also successfully simplifies concepts which are referred to in multiple ways in Deleuze and Guattari’s writing, to create a more manageable set of theoretical apparatus.

It is not my aim here to reflect in detail on the genealogy of Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas, but rather to explore in direct, practical, terms their potential for archaeological research. In doing so, this introductory chapter situates the emergence of assemblage approaches within archaeology, seeing them as a part of a wider ontological turn across the humanities, exploring its parallels with other bodies of sociological or philosophical literature (particularly Actor-Network Theory) and introducing some archaeological articulations of these ideas. The following chapters go on to introduce some of the key concepts which characterise assemblage thought (Chapter 2) and apply these to the study of material culture (Chapter 3) and urban archaeology (Chapter 4). The book concludes with a consideration of the implications of assemblage thought for archaeological practice (Chapter 5).

Stimulating alternative archaeologies: the ontological turn

Archaeologists are turning to approaches such as assemblage thought because over the last two decades there has been a mounting critique across the social sciences of the implications of modern western thought, both for our practices of research and our interpretations of how things are. This has been driven largely by the application of post-colonial approaches within archaeology and anthropology and the reading of anti-humanist thinkers such as Foucault and Heidegger (see Thomas 2004; Henare et al 2007, 7–12; Watts 2013; Harris and Cipolla 2017, 171–80 for overviews). Fundamentally, we have called into question the justification for framing our research around the modernist dichotomies of society/nature or culture/material (Henare et al 2007, 3; Olsen et al 2012, 29). A representational approach, in which things are not seen as beings occupying a world with us, but as standing for human ideas or behaviours, has been argued to have left things behind, making them intermediaries, rather than mediators, in social action and underestimating their implications for the world (Olsen et al 2012, 20–22; Jones 2012, 6–7). This realisation, and the reaction against it, has been conceptualised in the literature as a ‘turn to the material’ or as an ‘ontological turn’. This ‘turn’ has not been without its criticisms, with some claiming that it has led to a de-humanisation of archaeological study (Van Dyke 2015; Barrett 2016) and others suggesting that the so-called turn is nothing more than a re-dressing of ideas and arguments (Ingold 2014). Whether a new development, or an intensification in the application of old ideas, we have reached a point where the representational orthodoxy of archaeology has come under sustained critique.

Benjamin Alberti (2016) has identified that there are two key strands to ontological work within archaeology. The first, which he terms a “new metaphysics for archaeology” (2016, 165), is concerned with the implications of how we think about the past in general terms, as a process of unfolding relations. We must be able to step away from a modernist position to be open to the potential of these relations, which may exceed those which are deemed possible from the ontological position of the ‘modern’. The second is an ontologically focussed archaeology, in which indigenous theories form the basis of archaeological interpretation and in which we make indigenous ontologies an object of study. There is also a need to find common ground between these two approaches, in order to fully comprehend the implications of the ontological turn for our understanding of the past. From the outset, my position is largely one of using assemblage thought to exploit the methodological and interpretive benefits of an ontologically enlightened archaeology. With its rejection of structure, its emphasis on becoming and relations, as well as its conscious effort to overcome modernist dichotomies, I argue that assemblage thought is one toolkit which can be used to achieve this goal. However, as we come to reflect on the implications of our own ontological position on our work, the potential to examine the ontologies of past societies a research question in itself will inevitably emerge (Alberti 2016).

The first question has to be why is ontological awareness important? Ontology can be conceptualised in two ways: “as a people’s ‘beliefs about’ reality or as a people’s reality” (Alberti 2016, 164). My preference is for the latter definition, for two key reasons. Firstly, the former implies a form of meta-ontology, the existence of a single reality which is interpreted, and the second is that it is exciting to be speculative in thinking about the richness that an awareness of other realities could offer. To think about ontology is, therefore, to think about the multiple ways in which the world might exist, to be aware of possibility and the potency of a world beyond our own experience (Alberti et al 2011, 897–8; 901; Henare et al 2007, 1, 13). Whilst it might be proposed that assemblage thought itself makes ontological claims, for example that the world is in a state of becoming and that it is relational, my position is that its core value is methodological in that its focus on relations and their implications creates a space in which multiple realities can exist; rather than being an ontology in itself, for me assemblage thought is a method from which various ontologies might emerge. Deleuze and Guattari do not deny the existence of a modernist ontology, being more concerned with how it emerged, how it persists and its societal or political implications. This is not possible if we adopt a modernist ontological position, as this effectively translates the other worlds of the past into a purified, anthropocentric and bounded history, one in which elements not compatible with modern western story-telling, like the potency of materials or objects, are lost (Anderson 2015, 287–9). Furthermore, as Timothy Pauketat (2013, 5–6) states “beliefs about science rooted in modern rationality fail to appreciate the alternate ontologies – the theories of being- of ancient worlds”, meaning that our understanding of the motivations and behaviour of past people are left lacking. Approaches such as assemblage thought help us to overcome this problem by getting to know our evidence in new ways (Alberti et al 2011, 899). An awareness of ontological difference forces us to reflect on the implications of how we think and write about the past: even if we are alive to difference we may continue to write in terms unrecognisable to the societies that we study, however we can adopt a degree of sensitivity or contextual relevance by framing questions in ways which problematise the evidence, rather than being focussed around our western ‘truths’ (Anderson 2015, 803).

It is these western ‘truths’ which have arguably served to colonialise the past, to represent it in our own terms by homogenising experience and masking difference. Therefore, being alive to difference offers one route to de-colonialisation (Haber 2013, 88). Yet, we cannot simply adopt another ontological position, to do so would reify some other dichotomy; to reject a modern nature/culture divide is to acknowledge and reify a difference between modern/non-modern, for example (Bessire and Bond 2014, 442). Furthermore, by uncritically adopting the ontology of the other we are arguably being equally colonial by abducting that reality, rather than reflecting upon it from our own position (Bessire and Bond 2014, 443). Our approach to ontology might be characterised in two divergent ways; what Bruno Latour (2009) terms ontology as a ‘type’ or as a ‘bomb’. This characterisation derives from a consideration of the differences in the use of animism (the attribution of the characteristic of a living being to things which may not be conventionally perceived of as alive from a western perspective) by two of the anthropologists most influential within the ontological turn. For Phillipe Descola (2013), animism is a type of ontology. This approach should appeal to the archaeologist, as we can plug an archaeological culture into an ontological typology and use this to create more nuanced and culturally appropriate interpretation. However, I follow Lucas Bessire and David Bond (2014, 447) in suggesting that the idea of ontological purity is a fallacy. The non-human does not respect ontological difference, it moves between ontological realms, both human and non-human action overflow their bounds and have wider implications. Rather than adopting a particular ontological position it is, perhaps, more fruitful to be aware of the potential for difference and the value of speculating beyond our own ontological bounds, whilst holding on to a critical awareness that our own perception is based upon our own experiences and relations with the world. In other words, to use an awareness of ontological difference as a ‘bomb’ to destabilise our understanding of the world and the worlds of others. This is effectively the way in which Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998; 2004) utilises the idea of Amerindian perspectivism (in which the non-human such as animals are objects which take on the characteristics of the human), not to suggest that this is a type of ontology which can be widely transferred but, rather, to open up productive spaces for enquiries into the potential for other modes of existence.

It is this role of animism as ‘bomb’ which I am most interested in, and is critical to the way that the ontological turn has impacted upon archaeological practice. It was only until recently that alternative ontologies were seen not as ontology (other worlds) but as epistemology (ways of thinking about the world). This is a key concern of Viveiros de Castro (1998; 2004; 2014), himself inspired by Deleuze and Guattari, who argues that this is the result of a purification of ontological difference, undertaken to allow for this difference to exist from the modernist position as a primitive set of ‘beliefs’ set in opposition to scientific reality, rather than being a potential reality in itself. In other words the discussion of animism has been undertaken in western terms (Alberti and Bray 2009, 337). Once we take these other forms of knowledge seriously and realise that they might be a resource for our own theory building (Alberti and Marshall 2009, 344) then we must accept that things are not just thought about differently but are actually different for those communities of knowledge (Holbraad 2009, 434). Take, for example, the powder known as Aché discussed by Martin Holbraad (2007), used in Ifà worship in Cuba. From a western perspective it is an inert powder taken to be representative of power, but within the Ifà ontology the powder is not analogous to power, but is power itself; the thing does not represent the concept, the thing is the concept. As such, we can take this ontological difference as a challenge to our own assumptions, to embrace plurality and know things differently, rather than simply thinking of them differently in a way which continues to purify knowledge by converting ontology to epistemology (Zedeño 2009, 408).

Because an animist ontology is based on action and relations, rather than representation, we can shift the focus of enquiry from one which is anthropocentric to one which problematises the effects of relations; humans do not act alone but as beings in a world of things (Bird-David 1999; Bray 2009, 314). Critically, the value of seeing animism, and by extension, other ontologies, as a ‘bomb’ is not in simply transferring ontology by analogy to archaeological datasets, but in allowing us to explore whether and how past societies, both animist and non-animist, have had to live with vibrant materials, a notion which sits uneasily within a modernist ontological position (Pollard 2013, 184–5; Ingold 2013, 78–81) and that knowledge and realities are not transcendental but emerge through these relations (Groleau 2009, 399). The concern here is with giving credibility to other possibilities and questioning our assumptions (Alberti 2013, 45; Field Murray and Mills 2013, 135). As Tim Ingold (2006, 13–14) and Alf Hornborg (2006, 22–4) highlight, ‘moderns’ do animate, they do ascribe agency to the non-human (think, for example, about how we might call our broken computer a “stupid thing!”) and, therefore, whilst potentially not being animist in the anthropological sense, they are not purely ‘modern’ either. The ontological turn acknowledges that this awareness is reality, not a juvenile or irrational fetishism of the material. Therefore, the ontological turn, if nothing else, reminds us that things can be beings in the world, that they have implications...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Key Concept Boxes
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Assemblage, Ontology and Archaeology
• 2 From Archaeological Assemblage to Vibrant Assemblage
• 3 Material and Form
• 4 Assemblage Urbanism
• 5 Doing Assemblage Archaeology
• Bibliography
• Index