Notes on: Kirby, V. (Ed) (2017) What If Culture was Nature all Along?. New materialisms. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dave Harris Foreword They have developed a critical reading group over the years, initially criticising each other and then reading with each other. They are focused on biology's and naturalism, the tendency to replace natural to cultural explanations. But there is a [dialectic], where one is the other of the other. What if nature itself is 'plastic, and agential and inventive' (x)? This book has lots of arguments to suggest that culture ['ideation, agency, mobility'] is an inherent expression of nature. Lots of problems remain — what if '"the natural order" is essentially sociological, errant, and always "out of place"'. Evidence presented here requires some sort of intra-disciplinary understanding. Content covers allergic reactions, hormonal and neuronal plasticities, climate, and the behaviour of simple organisms [might be slime moulds. The argument is that everything we have assumed to have been cultural has 'always been in the nature of nature' (xi) , even our essential humanity, with all its dark sides. This is 'reconfigured vitalism', which questions every truth. There are 'muddled' 'implications of a "natural sociology"', and the sequence of chapters an attempt to bring coherence — beginning with oppositional logic and its problems, three actual large-scale issues, which also rework 'political and ethical concerns about human exceptionalism'. Then some chapters on the body, 'that reflexively speaks of itself'. Descartes in particular is 'significantly displaced', especially by recent discoveries about 'intelligent synaesthesia of biology where, for example, the ear can see and cognize' (xii). There are implications for hormonal behaviours, race, and the slime mould. Overall we want to 'revisit the complicity' that makes it difficult to break with nature/culture divisions without leaving nature and everything it implies, including the feminine and the racialised other 'a position of passivity, inherent threat, original purity or brute animality'. The main question here is to ask that there might be nothing before the social, no given before culture, and so no Fall. The very drive for change might be itself natural. Interesting bits: 'We were learning to read grammatologically… Deconstruction is the methodology that eschews methodology' (viii)  and it has been seen as reductionist or hermetic, which makes it peripheral. Nevertheless other scholars argue that it might have of value in debates about post-humanism and deep ecology, and link the humanities and the sciences. We are not applying Derrida here, but 'many essays deploy deconstructive strategies' (ix). 'The conventional reading of Derrida's well-known axiom, "no outside text", is usually interpreted to mean "no outside culture". However my own revision of this apparent enclosure to read "no outside nature" discovers a comprehensive landscape when nature is literate, numerate and social… We have not left the text ...nor privileged nature… Because… There is no outside, no remainder that is not already involved and evolving as text'. Of course the idea of text becomes questionable so matters of methodology take centre stage. Fortunately this 'complicates the triumphalism of negative critique and dismissal' eg those easily attached to new materialism as not [rigorously] epistemological. We need to counter it with an 'ethics of generosity' Chapter 1 Kirby  V. Matter out of Place: 'New Materialism' in Review: 1--26 Scientific observation used to mean objectivity, transparent perception, and mind and reason as 'incorporeal and transcendent over nature' (1), and this is still the stereotype. However the real issue is how symbolic systems connect to what they supposedly represent. This has already been understood as a problem in science, for example a mathematician [Wigner] asking how it was that mathematical models often contain particular terms, such as pi, implying that nature itself connects the circumference of circles to other observations [a good example is the imaginary number in the Schrödinger wave equation]. There must be some translative power here and also a capacity for mathematics 'to conjure a material world' (2) [I still think this happens because some mathematical terms clearly do represent real objects or events, but once we have mathematised them we can perform much more abstract operations]. Most physicists are quite happy with this 'riddle'. In the humanities and social sciences it is not just a pragmatic matter, because we already see the world as 'inherently symbolic', but this is still a problem. It might be that the world is made meaningful through cross-referencing different 'webs of significations' to 'induce a "worlding" effect', a matter of realising the only world we can know. This would be human exceptionalism, and we would be the only species that are unnatural. The assumption is that there can be no escape from representation, no 'extra linguistic or causal origin' (3), and that culture produces second nature. First nature might still exist but it can never be perceived directly without interpretation, it has no 'unmediated presence' and is inaccessible and unknowable. Pragmatism in science and maths normally stops us worrying, as long as results can be reproduced. But this depends on 'social rules of compliance… normative structures of observation', and this sits oddly with the attempt to control subjective judgement and interpretation [not if you have this 'escalation' view that subjective judgments get subjected to and regulated by 'objective' rules in science -- even Foucault sees this] . Nevertheless, constant replication of results makes findings resemble 'the facticity of the natural order' making the whole enterprise self-evident. Kirby says this is akin to the sleight of hand in find the lady [she calls it the shell game] where intense focus on a shell means we cannot observe what is really happening. This technique can produce replication even though observation is 'deceptive, subjective, and yet predictable' (4). There is also pressure on those who would question science rendering them as 'the know-nothing ninny who fails to understand what seems perfectly apparent to everyone else'. There is clearly a theological element, and appeal to just believe. It is like Althusser and 'hailing', which is hard to trace because there is no original moment for ideology, it is 'always/already' [so it was him!]. It is 'a performative pragmatism' essential to being in the world, and Althusser implies that constant practice increases our belief. So humanities and social sciences seem little different to the sciences in that both demand a belief in representation and reproducibility '(often re-theorised as performativity in social analysis)'. Yet there is incommensurability. Scientific methodology involves a bridging instrument to link the interpreter from the interpreted [the real role of apparatus -- it guarantees objectivity, almost the opposite of Barad here]. And this renders human interference 'relatively inconsequential' (5), but for some cultural theorists, the object is actually produced by the representation process, and depends on 'webs of subjective and cultural significance'. Butler is exemplary [and Kirby has interviewed her]. For her, the 'enduring truth of sex' becomes a matter of locating it in language and discourse as the only way to make it sensible. Thus it becomes a specific artefact, lacking 'the thingness of an object'. In a subsequent interview, Butler explains that all data must be interpreted through a cultural lens, but Kirby wants to ask where these signs come from, and whether or not we might find 'languages in nature', seeing life itself as 'creative encryption' as in biological codes. Apparently bacteria can crack codes to decipher antibiotic data, both reading [epistemology] and re-engineering themselves [being, or ontology]. This is a 'collapse of epistemology with/in ontology' (6). Butler's response shows the powerful issues at stake — she worries that the notion of biological codes simply conflates natural and human linguistic activities, unless it is a metaphor. The shift into biological ontology is particularly difficult, especially if we understand this through mechanistic models [— she worries that something is causing language here?]. There may be a [tautology] in saying that life defines life. There might be politically motivated conceptions of the difference in terms of illusion or fact or whatever. However, we cannot defend human culture by reducing the 'perceived insistence of the world around us'. Some constructionism argues that reality is experienced through the political to produce our most intimate convictions or compulsions or identities, and that these 'quite specific cultural forces are intrinsic' to human life. Even if this is an illusion, it clearly has material effects. However, constructionists 'are convinced that social and political forces are comparatively mobile', precisely because they are not natural — they can morph over time and change, and this helps us challenge injustice. This has been 'almost hegemonic'. Recently, there has been a challenge, partly driven by developments in technological and medical research, and ecological degradation, which themselves have become politically urgent. Ironically, much of this depends on 'scientific evidence for their political credibility and gravitas' (7). Cultural constructionism has also been accused of anthropocentrism, the domination of the other and this 'feels increasingly bankrupt and just plain wrong'. The general critique of negative versions of otherness is undermining human exceptionalism, because ecology can also be seen as 'an intimate and involved sociology of sorts', making the linguistic turn 'hermeticism'. The politics and language of human beings look like 'overreach' (8) and we should get back to basics and new materialism. New materialism has different strands, however. Alaimo and Hekman criticised the linguistic turn and its emphasis on epistemology, which has made the real less important. They think we should add ontology, but insist that, somehow, we should not just see ontology as a matter of language [hence all the stuff on feeling and affect, I imagine?]. Coole and Frost pursue this in a particular 'juggling act' suggesting that although material lives are always culturally mediated, they are not only cultural — the balance is restored by 'an almost celebratory focus on science' (9) and a demand to encounter objects, 'all things ecological, geological, climatic' as well as animals and plants. This is a complaint that we have just grown tired of self absorption, and so it is 'generous, more inclusive and outward -looking, and certainly more self-critical about the narcissistic self-congratulation of human exceptionalism'. Another contribution is from Dolphijn and van der Tuin, a collection of commentary and interviews with other scholars, 'a prism of diffracted perspectives rather than a unified position'. Commentators include DeLanda and Meillasoux, who argue that the previous hegemonic focus looks like solipsism, and that there is 'contingent being independent of us'. However this still embraces complex subjectivity for humans as exceptional, that our ability to think and do philosophy proves that we are independent, that 'our very biology is in a contingent relationship to mind' -- and this is what Descartes concluded. Barad is even more puzzling in this collection, because she does not offer conventional hard science 'to clarify the ambiguity' (10), but asserts that matter feels and desires and so on, that it is subjective, that it can remember and think. This 'unapologetic anthropomorphism' might be 'a glaring mistake', endorsing the emphasis on signification. Or it might be that 'certain affect theory, a popular expression of new materialism' is affirmed, 'because corporeal matter's pre-symbolic behaviour is thoroughly and differently agential' before it encounters our own discursive regimes which comply with it [still a problem that our agency is caused by matter's agency]. Barad understands representation and language as ontological, with human language as a particular location of a more general ontology of the object. This 'chiasmatic model' is not just unidirectional, from human culture to nature, as in simple anthropomorphism. If the object is also 'a subject '"who" interprets', this threatens human exceptionalism and also implies that human interpretations were already 'inherently ontological'. There is no longer a gap in space or time between humans and the natural world, no mediation or (mis)representation as in Butler. Nor is it just a matter of 'including matter and objects into the mix' and acknowledging only matter's 'agentic resistance and independence'. Barad apparently finds 'diffractive resonance' in Böhr but also in Derrida, although the insistence that there is nothing outside the text is bound to be seen by new materialism as an error Kirby just inverts it as in the Intro]  As a result, we have a 'cacophony of arguments', confusion. Nevertheless, there has been useful critique of conventional wisdom and a more sympathetic approach to science. Nevertheless problems of what language and communication involve remain. Attempts to see the nonhuman ecological '"socius"' as having a 'lingua franca' are just seen as too ambitious. It would involve bringing a wide range of materials from soil samples to climate data 'into one implicated concretion' or condensation. Meillasoux suggests that maths might help us bridge the gap between the realms of subjectivity and objectivity in cultural constructionism: he develops 'speculative realism or object–oriented ontology' instead of finding near correlations and reciprocal relations [he also seems to imply that just attaching the word 'co –' produces an illusory philosophical principle]. Nevertheless, there is some shared understanding that human beings are individual entities even if among others. The reliance on maths in M runs in the problem suggested earlier, that reality must be itself mathematical, while some parts of the world like subjectivity or culture seem to be outside it [is that so though? They can also be mathematised?]. Why should mathematics have nothing to say about natural languages, affects, subjectivity and cultural behaviour? Maths itself seems to have a split between internal objectivity and outside subjectivity. It is no more difficult to argue that the differences between nature and culture are [only] similar than to argue that they are dissimilar [not just correlated]. The problem remains of explaining difference. We might consider the example of machine cryptography, say at Bletchley Park. At one level, the Enigma Code seem to be one which only involves 'pure reference: every sign conjures another' and so on (13). However, in the middle of all this sliding there is also 'at the same time a punctum', where somehow different languages come together. What looks originally as a meaningless pattern, lacking coherence is somehow also the pattern of a natural language, even another one – German. Somehow, it still preserves coherence, implying that an individual language itself can 'have myriad manifestations or translations within it'.. This looks like an argument for mathematics as a universal cipher, but the problem is only transferred — how can mathematics be ubiquitous and so diverse that it can include everything, even that which it is not? We might find Derrida on the 'general text' helpful: 'it evokes a sort of dynamic tower of Babel whose cross reference animates each and every language' [something transcendental?]. We see this with algebra which originally meant '"the reunion of broken parts"'. It has no foundation as referent. Derrida sees it consisting of ideal objects produced by human beings, a tool of access authored by a subject, and not the mirror of an algebraic world. But this implies a displaced humanist subject, dispersed and fractured [across cultures and history?]. This is a deconstructive reading which breaks out of culture as much as does M, but without some of the implications of a split between culture and nature [I am not at all sure why]. Certainly, it is no longer just maths that has no foundational referent or centre. This is important if we want to see new materialism as progressive, moving away from earlier errors without devaluing what went before [this seems important, and it is possible, apparently, because we have no longer a need to 'narrativise' that way — but doesn't the notion of being progressive imply such a narrative?]  New materialism can feel liberating by claiming to be given access at last to material reality and all those things that were once banned, from biology through animals and plants. At the moment the respective identities of these objects still remain 'intact' (14) [although they must surely have some common ontological origin for materialists?]. What if we could contest the identity of terms and contents? At this point we can turn to Mary Douglas and her point about human societies and dirt: the need to remove it seems common despite the specifics. What underpins all the diversity is 'the need for clear structures and legible borders' [sociological determinism or transcendentalism — functional prerequisites?], which persist even when they are transgressed. This underpins conformity as 'the stuff of the political', since a breach threatens collective identity. [Weird this -- seems to be used only to flesh out --sic -- Wilson below] Apparently, we can learn from this and apply it to the 'turf wars' between different materialisms, linguistic turns, and so on. If we  'identify materiality oppositionally', that leads to all sorts of wrangles about what are right and wrong adjudications, in particular, we can get 'forms of critique [that] can be more intent on managing a threat than exploring a question' (15). It is better instead to focus on confusions and paradoxes. 'My assumption is that matter and its cognates are morphologically plastic and that these transubstantiations are myriad, appearing as words, as plants and objects, as blood and belief' [badly needs the virtual unless it is transcendental?]. To introduce divisions is to misshape and make monstrous material. This should not be seen as reductionism privileging the cultural, because matter is also seen as imbued with 'forces and capacities'. Braidotti explicitly refers to the univocity of Being and a notion of becoming that ensues [which is explicitly deleuzian?]. Universal differentiation can still produce apparent oppositions, between physics and literature, the biological and the social, however. If the order of things is modelled, and things are inseparable, we have to think again what we mean by 'mediation and identity' (16). For Barad it is '"intra-action"' to replace pre-existing relations and mediations. This means that there can be 'no "things" or givens' [but why do we get apparent oppositions?]. This also implies that we can have conjunction or aggregation without posing inseparability. This is an 'apparent contradiction' and has led to much misunderstanding of Barad even by her fans. The problem is that any way forward will be 'counterintuitive and mindbendingly strange'. Somebody called Jagger has misunderstood Barad [praised her against Kirby, and Grosz], and not understood the central point which is that 'matter is always "out of place" and its agentive capacity ubiquitous' [this is not wrong but merely 'unfortunate']. It preserves the difference between culture and nature and reads Barad's responsibility and accountability as humanism [me too]. Jagger sees aggregate identity but not 'the enigma of univocity', where the discursive is the material, and there is no outside nature. Barad 'offers us a provocative invitation' in her 2007 book — agential realism which denies all mediation between culture and the real world. This is echoed by Derrida. Neither sees entanglement or différance as just active participation by both sides [apparently like Jagger does]. The unpublished seminar by Derrida thinks about information transfer and the language of genetics, and compares them with human 'pedagogical instructions and rules' (17). He asks if there is any discernible difference and this leads to questions of segregating nature from culture and human exceptionalism. It will not do to argue that a model is not the reality, recalling Butler on biological cryptography. Derrida and Barad question the whole notion of an in-between, a mediating third term between subject and object — the text is a complex product of life, and the result is not exterior to the subject or the object, not a third term but '"the very structure of the living as shared structure of the biologist — as living — of science as a production of life, and the living itself"' [ludicrous mysticism really, unless he's just repeating the old argument that once you've written the text it takes on a life of its own, and applying that to genetic code?]. Engaging this confusion helps us also understand 'the perverse agility of the political', of differentiation. We will still find prohibitions and censoring limits, but they will also appear to be brittle and vulnerable [because philosophers have questioned them!] There is no universal answer in Barad or Derrida, because their understandings themselves result from 'a diffracted, nonlocal manifestation of the world's Being' [relativism beckons again, surely? --fascism is also a local manifestation of the univocity of Being]  [and how does lead to political activism for both of them?]. This provides the uniqueness of individuation [close to Deleuze again, on the haecceity]. One implication is that we can learn lessons from social enquiry, even for the realm of objects. Social enquiry can also be regarded as 'intrinsically scientific and technologically transformative'(18) although we would have to alter these terms, just as we have revised the subject. We will come across 'hidden onto–epistemological transitivities' to 'pervert and entangle' old divisions between thinkers and other thinkers objects and other objects as well as thinkers and objects. There will therefore be a ' critique of critique', a new form of the corrective will, moving away from error. Derrida himself explains that authors of readings and any reading or writing 'is life itself' [which implies relativism in those readings], but different perceptions of the world is not forbidden. There is however 'life's seemingly superior and transcendent overview' [so it all turns out to be elan vital after all. The appeal to life is itself a product of social and political contexts]. This can also explain why there appears to be different entities in the world — it is 'a chiasmatic mangle of the world's own individual perceptions of itself' [so we should not worry about chiasm and contradiction in our writings] . Human becoming can be seen as 'processual enquiring/perceiving', with 'life's self reflexivity [as] a working science, a dispositif' with a myriad of methodologies and perceptions, which still place subjects within objects, even in their will to 'be/other'. How can we write from this position if we are immersed? [what makes our writing so wonderful?]  There are suggestions. Wilson, for example, refers in Gut Feminism, to the complexity of the body, while retaining something 'elusive, experimental and even maddening' [so now mystical complexity is a sign that we are on the right tracks?]. The problem is to talk about the body's interior while we are ourselves body, and must reject the Cartesian division with its conservative implications. We should not see biology as an embarrassment to be removed from the political. Wilson proceeds by 'getting down and dirty' looking at the enteric system and how it has been connected with 'words and images, psychological states, glances and memories'. This is to some extent a reworking of Freud on conversion hysteria 'where cultural significance is said to be somatised', and there is  now a new way 'to find value in "dirt"'. Wilson is really asking what biology actually involves, and this produces a 'frustratingly banal and inescapable' riddle. How to understand corporeal interiority just under the skin. How to grasp the fragility of identity if a body blow can damage it? This clearly opposes the all-powerful humanist subject as a pilot. The broader question is whether this 'discursive analysis of the body is authored by that same goop and spill' that seem to contradict most notions of personhood. [Biological determinism then]. These issues show how biology is thoroughly political, and how it questions our very identities. Wilson's conclusions are based on scientific evidence [gosh] , but they are baffling — for example how placebos work, whether it is worth asking if some organs can be 'transferentially "alive" to each other's moods and reasonings [sic]', whether the gut is itself psychological and cognitive. How can we make physics political if it is always provisional, except by risking the idea that 'nature, in essence, is "under construction"'. [Note 9 (22) is interesting in referring to a big dispute in feminism turning on Ahmed's criticism of the new materialism — Ahmed sees it is misguided, rhetorical to prevent biophobia of earlier feminisms. Kirby's response is that A has homogenised different approaches into a common set of commitments and decontextualised citations. It is 'extremely difficult to find common ground', and new materialists would agree with some reservations. The common ground seems to me here to argue that biology can appear both as Cartesian separations, and different accounts about itself, explaining the split between Ahmed and Barad. This means we are all involved in 'materiality schizoid methodologies of self enquiry, which includes disavowal, repression and denial' so difference appears within univocity. So we should not write 'corrective' texts!] Chapter 2 Barnwell, A. Method Matters: The Ethics of Exclusion: 26 – 48 [A long overdue corrective] There is often a 'generational rebellion' in the growth of new intellectual movements, indicated by terms like 'post' or the softer 'neo-'. However, it is hard to shake off the commitments of the old schools of thought — for example post-colonialism tries to understand the effects of colonialism but is never entirely 'free of its legacy' (26). History is vital to understanding new movements, producing a particular 'agonism' when dealing with past errors. There is a 'necessary contradiction' involving exclusion of those practices that are themselves accused of exclusion. This exclusion is often ignored, and the issues covered by referring to older traditions 'as stale and static' (27) ignoring all the 'lively and enduring complications'. In fact those provocations and unresolved queries often inform the present understanding, in an agonistic 'living dialectic'. It may be that we can never dissociate ourselves from past methods and ideologies, and indeed, it might be necessary to pursue 'a troubled identification with a previous "other"'. Questions of reflexivity and method are implied. It might be impossible to fully acknowledge an error from our own past, or to account for our own new exclusions [especially if we want to claim a new and complete break — familiarity often intrudes]. In the turn from humanism to post-humanism we see all these features. The claim is to 'move away from human centred to ecological models of agency', and there is a claimed radical inclusion of all forms of life as agents. But what exactly is the relationship with humanism? In particular, despite the claimed shift towards ontology away from epistemology, questions about the ethics of methodology persist. Why are the new interventions somehow superior, unless we are claiming some form of 'assumed progress' (27 – 8). By exploring new agency, there is also a claim that existing ideologies have structured the earlier terms [very marked in qualitative inquiry with its ambivalence towards hegemonic media] — so it might be possible to extend rather than replace 'traditional sociological questions' [we can certainly do a sociology of knowledge of the new post-humanist approaches]. We can examining methodological claims of several variants, especially Bennett's Vibrant Matter… and Massumi's staff on affect. Both are influential and both explicitly grapple with the relation of their views to past intellectual trends, so we can see how exclusion is managed and leverage derived. There is of course theoretical heterogeneity in post-humanism and it is a 'dissonant' field [the example given is that some insist on the 'sentience of matter' while affect theorists say that 'bodily instinct is precognitive']. However there is 'a generational or collective spirit' especially an anxiety about human exceptionalism. It seems more inclusive because we recognise nonhuman animals and things as agents. This overall reassessment affects many different schools from ANT to eco-criticism. What animates life? What is considered living? We are familiar with Barad's notion of the intra-action of life. Yet the intellectual inheritance still has to be excluded, especially methods and existing concerns. After all the 'key critical movements' (29) of the recent past were animated by studies of 'subjectivity, language and structure.' [Delightfully, we might include Denzin in this now transcended tradition]. Ontology replaces epistemology, above all 'the method of critique', the scrutiny of ideology, how norms are generated and get entrenched. This now seems exclusionary, but some of these methods are still used. The danger is that we will lose the set of 'intellectual nuances and tensions' in any general exclusion, especially if we move away from 'critical modes of reading and writing'. The notion that critique is no longer suitable is found across several arguments, including Barad [citing the 2012 article], and Latour seems to have been important. In his view, critique was once useful in debunking prejudices, but this assumes some true world of reality behind appearances. He uses the idea of a hammer to break down things, but not repair or assemble them, and stresses composition instead. However, it's not so easy to split creative and destructive capacities, as in 'the demolition of the Berlin Wall', and we can use hammers to build homes or repair cars. The same arguments appear in the humanities, not just the post-human offerings [feminism is a driver here I think], but those that claim to be able to turn towards '"real" experience' rather than representations. Best and Marcus argue that symptomatic readings should be replaced by a claim that people can now see through ideology and develop their own hermeneutics of suspicion now that we know about Abu Graib, Hurricane Katrina, and the lies of current politicians [clearly written before the populist turns in the US and UK which had liberals crying out for ideology critique and journos doing their own amateur versions]. There is no need to demystify any more, says Felski [writing in 2008], so no need for scholars to base their expertise on critique, no need to preserve a gap between scholar and social reality, suspicion about the pleasures to be gained from 'revelation'. So critique is clearly seen as outside and above current experience, becoming an element of hubris [or elitism]. We need to get back to 'the real matter of life' (32). People like Meillassoux [and some Baradians] insist we cannot get out of ourselves, that representation is always biographical. There is an appeal to realism, and 'a renewed faith in material facts' instead [citing Latour], that human perceptions get in the way, that studies of [the material in particular] are 'foolish and even pompous anthropocentric concerns of a generation past'. There is an implicit exclusion. Bennett suggests that we include nonhuman participants in politics, that we assume a vitality in nonhuman bodies. Her case studies turn on public health and environmental issues — one of the suggestions is that we can profitably  rethink policy if we consider electricity as an 'actant'. The force of the argument is that humanist politics contain 'oversights'. Bennett proposes that we turn away from our earlier focus on humanity and subjectivity, and consider what has been previously excluded from anthropocentric politics — a classic combination of exclusion and inclusion. The project gained strength by critiquing the past. Different traditions are elided if they are human centred, and can now be 'given "short shrift"' (33). This includes previous concerns of politics such as speech acts, or the agency of subjects, which were themselves 'foundational' for postcolonial methods and historical relativism. Now they are barriers offering inadequate representation and "'fetishisation"', and we abandon epistemology altogether in a turn to ontology. [Barad wants to combine epistemology and ontology of course with hyphens, although episto really collapses into onto]. Specifically, Bennett wants to abandon the old agency versus structure debate, because structures are seen as acting only negatively, as constraints, or possibly as a context. No dynamism is discussed. Structures are not always constraining but can be 'malleable and responsive' and thus be seen as actant's themselves 'in the ecology of political life' [no examples are given here, but it might turn on the notion of global agents as actants in the work of Urry or Law?]. Bennett still seems a role for demystification if used with caution, and if we can somehow abandon its residual and implicit human agency [but how can we do that?]. She seems to accept different sorts of limitations that limit her own radical inclusion, especially ignoring 'structural and ideological realities' (34) even those which had a role in anthropocentric political discourse. She pursues revelation using critique. She has [rhetorically] seen previous approaches as 'essentially un-dynamic and thus inessential to an inclusive ecology'. This is based on 'a certain faith' that if we remove human constraints we will come to some 'natural, "freethinking" liberty or agency… as it truly is' [definitely present in Barad too]. It gets more complex if we have to decide which agencies are productive, and which methods and questions are over constraining. A general charge of anthropocentrism also ignores the way in which new ecological understandings might have evolved out of earlier ones. Bennett seems to be suggesting that any humanist topics will 'direct and disable the unwitting scholar'. [Here we have anthropocentrism as a kind of ideology, almost an unconscious one]. Bennett proposes that we just postpone humanist topics to avoid anthropocentrism. This suggests a limit to human agency, a notion of unconscious guidance, implicit obstruction. It might be so powerful an impulse that anthropocentrism might even be seen as 'ecologically impelled rather than simply erroneous' [unless we have some Hegelianism notion of intellectual progress here]. If so, we can't just postpone it. We might look instead at Kirby, whose 'originality humanicity' denies these temporal sequences and moves from seeing 'the anthro as a modern parasite on an otherwise balanced, or unhindered, ecos' (35) [apparently, the project involves 'reorienting rather than ignoring the insistence of questions about what constitutes subjectivity'.. Apparently one implication is that the system 'interpellates anthropocentrism' — which is just detectable from the summary of her chapter above]. Has critique failed to recognise the vitality of things and their productive capacities? Not if we consider 'language, faith, desire and morality' themselves as things. Bennett openly admits that she wants to change the reader's political ideology, but this requires an understanding of what it is that is driving 'the ontological push and leverage' of present systems. She wants to develop concern for all the environment and to change human attitudes and culture — by writing a book! By developing 'ethical and political discourses'! She has 'the conviction that her hunch is right' which apparently removes the need for any analysis of assemblages or networks. Just listing the material agents that might be involved, apparently including the graphite in her pencil, ignores the crucial question of what gives particular 'interpretations, methods and values' of events their weight [exactly-- there is no attempt to prioritise among these different agents or to consider human constraints that give them priority] If we can't see these arrangements 'omnisciently, as if outside and above them' [the God's eye perspective] then we must see ourselves as inherently 'involved apparatus that cannot be pulled apart' [implying we can't disentangle our earlier humanist concerns — applies to Barad on the apparatuses as well: for her, all that humans bring is cognitive understanding, as in the brittlestar - no nasty commercial or ideological inputs]. The implication is indeed that human intentions 'will ultimately matter'. Bennett sees social responsibility only for the human, specifically the scholar — we must change and follow an environmentalist project to see ourselves differently. This is 'founded on a faith' (37) [idealist politics]. So somehow humans are both the main agents of destruction and a potential solution — clearly 'the productive substance of social norms and habits of thinking' will be crucial, and we might even see them as actants. Critique still has a major role in 'detecting exposing and revising' those assumptions that privileged humans as custodians of the environment. This turn to ontology is therefore inseparable from 'the quixotic history and experience of critical commentary and evaluation' turning on 'what it is to be human'. Epistemological questions are inherent in making judgements. Generally, values uncertainties motivations and methodological struggles are not seen as a material force. Ways of seeing the world are important in some respects although they can be simply postponed in others. Human traditions cannot just be 'outgrown and shed like an old skin' leaving an entirely different and innocent perspective in its place focusing on 'a pure dynamic manifestation of matter'. Method is not just an external lens, but is implicated in the whole of human life including self-importance and hubris. We must include this intellectual inheritance. The material itself seems contesting [chiasmatic for Kirby] — the same material promotes both climate action and climate scepticism [example? Or is this just saying that if concern for the environment is materially produced as some hidden voice of nature, so must be climate scepticism?] We might see the old traditions as 'a particular perspective' produced by the same material world, not just an external instrument. If this is so, we should be far more careful in what we choose to exclude. Why not rethink humanist theory? Why not consider humanism 'not as an error… But… As a provocation to trace out the social body, in its complexity can and does overlook, negate and misrecognise itself' (38). [Rephrasing the next bit — how is it the contradictory strands of materiality relate together, sometimes conflicting]. These questions are swept away in 'generational progression positing liberation from the errors of the past' [and also implies an autonomy for the material, separate from methodology]. We have excluded 'epistemology critique and structure', and assume that 'forces of potential and intensity are essentially liberating'. A certain Berlant has critiqued Sedgwick in her proposal that we head from 'paranoid' to 'reparative' reading [apparently influential in affect theory]. This will involve idealising the new program, but how would we know that repair '"is not another form of narcissism or smothering will? Just because we sense it to be so?"'. There is an 'unshaken faith in the acuity of human discernment', and for Berlant [to whom I am warming] this is an occupational hazard for the scholar [and grounded in micropolitics, of course] . We should be exploring different perspectives not just excluding some. It is exclusionary [and equally godlike] to claim to step outside an existing realm of what matters, a reversion of anthropocentrism. Assumptions of relevance are clear, and decisions are involved which may not be very 'different from the arguments of the past'(39). We all make exclusive decisions every day. It is not just critique that features perspectivalism, which affects all enquiry [he prefers to see it not as an individual matter but as 'inevitably socially authored']. Some philosophers have seen the exclusions of post-humanism as far more important than their actual contribution to knowledge, despite their intended inclusivity. Cole, for example says that earlier philosophical histories have been excluded [his particular beef seems to be mediaeval views of vitalism which fully embraced idealism and mysticism, and this leads to a plea to fully include existing disciplinary traditions, and even to consider 'structural determination of values']. We see this with affect theory, which has also excluded 'myriad different theories' [and not added much of positive value, the implication is]. For example Massumi separates affect from emotion, and this involves dividing language from bodily impulse, and structure from dynamism. Emotion is constrained [and domesticated] affect, which reduces the dynamism. We should consider instead intensity as an aspect of affect rather than trying to pin down emotions [as psychologists do?]. Language does not have affective force, but serves as a constraint and anchor, while affects operates outside of structure [this also implies that structures especially linguistic ones must be oppressive and lacking in dynamism]. In search of liberation or 'to invent something new' effect also renders critique obsolete because it cannot be owned or recognised, and that we should attend instead to practices based on '"affective connection and abductive participation"' (41). In other words experience rather than judgement, which renders critique redundant if it leads to judgement, and abstracting the vitality of life itself. This simply writes out of existence all those critical concerns and methods about language and judgement, the 'semiotic, structural and critical capacities or workings of affective force', and especially their effects, maybe even their causal effects on affect. As a result, the main point of it is to exclude in order to arrive at 'what is deemed properly corporeal or vital', abandoning questions of humanity or culture or intention, which is seen as too rigid. For critics, this theorisation actually is active in making judgements about priorities in intellectual questions and narratives, despite disowning judgement. Massumi's objections to quantitative methods might be appropriate, but to reject all interpretation is to suggest that only '"philosophers can imagine"' the characteristics of affect. In particular, Hemmings argues that we would not be able to engage affect in existing critical projects. We see the results of exclusion particularly in the claims to be interested in engagement and openness. Is it necessary to break with the old concerns? Might the critical questions be read differently? In particular, the new theorists still use critique themselves even while eschewing it, and the same might be said about method [except we don't know what methods are being proposed]. Can we just ignore questions of ideology, even when discussing post-human ethics? How well grounded is the post-humanist faith in human responsibility? Even Barad wants to revise scholarly ethics and methods. It is not enough to try to get out of the constraints of the old approaches, without thinking about what they should be pursuing. We should not be excluding issues [arbitrarily] on the grounds that they do not or should not matter [Barad, of course has such a general and abstract definition that she offers no advice about what to exclude or include, explicitly anyway]. 'All intellectual interventions will privilege and discount particular perspectives to some extent' (43) [but why be so generational about it?]. Post-human arguments can be traced back to conventional sociological questions anyway, and practices of critique. Focusing on anthropocentrism means that speculative realism longs to be 'a "pre-– critical" philosophy', but this is not just a matter of being astonished by reality. We should retain 'critical value and professional ethics', and continue with 'critical authorship'. There are detectable values in both Bennett and Massumi about 'neoliberal regimes of environmental looting and fear mongering morality' [but whether valuing nonhuman agencies will correct this is uncertain]. The shift of perspective from epistemology to ontology, for example already assumes a methodological shift. The challenge is often to 'the social facts, representations and structures' that preserve the old stances. Post-humanist ethics are therefore 'often expressions of, investments in, and pronouncements upon' humanist concerns' (44). This should be acknowledged and included as a contradiction — 'as Bennett does when she explains that her elision of the human is driven by a concern for humanity'. This will prevent us drawing any easy divisions which are implied by using the term 'post', even at the price of making debates 'a little more mired'. Chapter 8 Dalziell J Microbiology as Sociology: The Strange Sociality of Slime: 153--78 [ I really like this one, although it is a bit convoluted. Here's my take. The issue of how human individuals are also social is one that Sociology has investigated {long overdue}, via Durkheim, for example, and it is mysterious. The sociality of slime moulds is similarly mysterious. The underlying assumption is that human consciousness is always superior, and so even scientists are inhibited in describing this puzzling slime mould behaviour using terms like 'consciousness' or 'decision-making'. They use inverted commas, or playful anthropomorphism to evade the issue -- Barad does too ;[/as we know.  They have professional standards to uphold! What if we took the experimental results seriously, at least in thinking that slime behaviour shows the sort of proto-consciousness that evolved into human consciousness? Of course, I want to question the operationalisms in the experiments where slime moulds 'solve' puzzles too, but I think Dalziell is right to push this as an issue]. Consciousness is seen as the prized end of evolution and a distinctive human achievement. It manifests itself in cognition language and memory. If other species are considered to have any of these, human manifestations are superior. Animal studies and post-humanist studies have not so much challenged this view is added to it through 'the logic of supplementarity' (153),  'adding or subtracting certain abilities'. The logic of anthropocentrism is not contested. There is a subsequent question about why this is so. At the moment, we have a tautology whereby we define consciousness in terms of human cognition and the other way around We can use slime moulds to get into this issue. We will end with asking whether there is humanity in cells or sociological consciousness, that human self enquiry and self reflection might have a microbiological origin. This particular slime mould (Physarum polycephalum) shows a diversity of various forms, including a macroscopic one. It appears to show 'cognitive literacy' (154), and has been 'chosen as a working model of decentralised modes of organisation. Its ability to consistently calculate and take the shortest path to any destination' has led to claims that it can '"learn", "memorise" events and routes, "make decisions", "form preferences"' (155) and even perform better than human engineers and supercomputers, for example in designing 'transport network organisations'. A number of ingenious forms of intelligence testing have been devised to see if the mould possesses intelligence. It turns out that it 'measures up rather well'. There is now quite a body of research published in prestigious journals, and focused in particular at different schools in Sydney, Bristol and Hokudata. It is now thought to be a 'protist', a new taxonomic group, with a definite indeterminacy: 'unicellular and multicellular simultaneously'. If you cut the group into two they would display different behaviours, but when placed back together they exist as one creature. The individual cells 'oscillate' in response to both neighbouring cells and environmental cues, and this seem to be emergent movement and actions in the macro form. It is still unclear how it should be classified as individuals or as a system; each part seems to be not a component but somehow an expression of a larger whole. Some scientists just stop worrying about this. There is no standard way to refer to the organism either. It doesn't seem to be described as 'assemblage, interaction or admixture'(156). These questions are found in sociological thought to, in Durkheim, for example, interrogating agency causality and determinism. What makes an individual unique while still belonging to a social fabric? He defines sociology as having a particular set of distinct objects — social facts external to the individual and able to coerce them, existing prior to and outliving individual consciousness, even if individuals enact them. We find 'the very equivocation of individual forward/collective agency at play' (158), and this led Durkheim to talk about social organisms rather than systems, causal factors with both individual and social behaviour, but also collective currents. A thoroughgoing holism at one level, displaying all the ambiguities of sociology. There are understandable questions and contradictions, like how this externality actually imposes itself, if individuals have to express it, did the socius come from anything external and is there an original source of agency? [Leading to all sorts of ideas subsequently as we know, American functionalism and Parsons in one direction, and various Marxisms in the other --nice to see them back]. Durkheim himself varied between social determinism, and an unsolvable ambiguity. There is even a time dimension for the development of the social. Boundaries surrounding individuals are also binding collectively. We can take a post-humanist line on this and suggests that this is a central problem relating individuals and the socius, how wholes appear in parts inextricably, without determinism or free will, how agency is dispersed, never focused in one individual, the social origins of apparently individual behaviour. We can see these ambiguities in human culture, appearing as 'torrents of power and agency that are neither local nor collective and yet both at the same time' (160'. We find the same riddles in biology, including the same difficulty in pinning down a distinct disciplinary object. Maybe there are no sustainable disciplinary boundaries? Could we use Durkheim to understand the slime mould, or would this be 'a mistranslation'? If we consider Durkheim [in biology], we get 'a much more involved and convoluted notion of social ecology', which would challenge anthropocentrism. There might be biological versions of social organisms or even conscience collectives. The social organism would no longer be seen as only human. Back to the slime mould and the experiments [which are marvellous]. One tried to look for the existence of 'comparative valuation rules, so far found only in humans, mammals and some insects. This is how they judge values used in choices — comparatively not absolutely. For example if we have a choice between two options, we can establish an agreed rational choice, but when another option is added, 'many people will change their initial value judgement and [choose it]' (161), acknowledging a whole system of value, like 'the Saussurian sign'. The slime mould was offered a choice between two food sources [actually quite a complicated one, one was more nutritious but brightly lit, and the beast is photophobic — so what is the rational choice here? The beast was indecisive {I think I would be} and chose each one 'with equal frequency']. A third option — even less nutritious although in shadow — forced a choice, and the new middle option chosen [medium nutrition, in shadow]. Thus 'the presence of the 1% option made the 3% option more appealing' [but why complicate it by introducing light variables as well?] The researchers conclude that the beast can make "'trade-offs between light exposure and food quality"', and balance the values of high nutrition against light exposure, showing that the beast 'must "rank each attribute"' (162). Apparently there were 'consistent, transitive decisions' in this behaviour. Yet the creatures lack brains! How do they make '"the same comparative decision-making processes as do neurologically sophisticated organisms"'? Despite this compelling experiment, though, human centred notions of decision-making are not problematised, and instead the choices made by the mould will be seen as 'more apparent than actual'. Another experiment involved navigating 'intricate dynamic environments'. The creature leaves behind a mat of slime as it moves, and the experiment was designed to show what this might do for navigational ability. Could the beast do a maze or escape from a trap? They designed a Y-shaped maze with food sources at the top of each arm. If they put slime on one arm, the beast travelled down the other one: if both arms were covered in slime it would still move over them. So it likes to avoid areas covered in slime, but 'avoiding the slime is overridden in the absence of choice — its avoidance is preferential' 'the researchers argue that this behaviour "is a choice"', (163). But they put the word in quote marks. Why indicate this doubt? Then they created a U-shaped trap, 'traditionally used in robotics'. The point is to see if the slime can escape. Robots require 'symbolic maps of their surroundings in their hard drive and an ability to discern where they've been in the past… [A]… Memory system'.  You put the trap in a petri dish full of agar, and make a U-shape out of plastic which the slime mould cannot travel over. On one side of the U [inner side?] there is [attractive, in the sense of providing an 'attractive chemical gradient'] glucose and water but that dispels gradually through the agar. You can lure the beast along the gradient until it is trapped within the U. They compare the behaviour with plain agar and with agar including fresh slime. Where there is no slime, the beast 'escaped the maze'[meaning entered the inner side of the U with the nutritious food? But this is also rendered as being trapped? ]. In '96% of cases it used slime trails'. It followed a path 'very close to the optimal length'. When the slime was added, its success rate fell to 33%, and the length of time increased 'almost tenfold'. The researchers say that the beast can sense slime and also use its presence to avoid areas it has already explored. They render this as 'an "externalised  spatial memory system' [which is a bit of a talk up — responding to different objects in the environment is another way to put this?]. In this way it can 'circumvent the trap' not just navigating by trial and error. When it encounters slime 'it recognises that it has previously attempted that route and tests an alternative' (164). It is like ants putting a trail of pheromones to guide the rest of the colony. This is a way 'to inform collective decisions', or even an ability to construct 'a map of its environment before constructing a solution'. Being able to avoid unproductive areas clearly increases search efficiency, and is 'one of the hallmarks of intelligent foraging behaviour'. It must also involve a 'memory system'. This is not to be understood just as 'a chemical reaction to concentration gradients, or what is termed "reactive navigation"' [I must say I can't see why not]. Instead the slime mould 'preferentially explores before deciding where to go' [what observable behaviour shows this?] and there is 'quantifiable presence of this ability'. Thus the slime mould is 'in the same realm as insects and mammals that can do symbolic mapping'. This may be a first sign of memory, if even a brainless organism can do this, replacing the previous view that what was required was '"learning or otherwise sophisticated" abilities'. We can compare its behaviour positively to that of robots. Some external ised memory is a '"functional precursor"' to internal memory. These are still apologetic for Dallziel, though, and labelling this behaviour in this way closes down any further elaboration or investigation — for example what might be meant by the term 'precursor'?. This sort of evasion is 'thematic in this research'. Researchers prefer to use terms such as programming or signalling, instead of cognition and language, and terms such as simple or lower appear frequently. Terms are placed in quotation marks, animals are referred to as computers or programs. Even an expert claims that the slime mould is no more intelligent than a stone rolling down a hill and thus 'choosing' the shortest path. This diminishes the actual evidence, though [she thinks, but I am not at all sure, I think the scientists here are right]. Why these evasions and euphemisms? What if we removed the quotation marks? It may be that working assumptions are much more 'open and nuanced' than published work, and that there are disciplinary constraints. Scientists themselves might police the use of certain terms, via 'strong disciplinary dictates' (166), and provocations have to be managed. Publication criteria also suggest avoiding controversial issues — 'policing... this question' of potential intelligence (166). As a result, 'anthropocentrism is not only enabled, but required'. Standards are set through what is deemed to be publishable. It is the scientific culture that is anthropocentric. A particular scientist working on slime mould was much less certain about microbiological intelligence when interviewed, and this uncertainty 'was provoked by intimate, close work' with the animal (167). The main problem seems to be that the organism has no brain or nervous system, and even classifying the beast is difficult. So the 'objective truths about the scientific object' require that its parameters are known and stable, but in this case, they can't even describe the borders around one individual. The beast looks particularly like a lump of passive matter, yet it does seem to be able to flexibly respond to conditions. There doesn't seem to be any particular part doing the thinking, because each part is identical. There is no biological core or centre of intelligence, nothing like a mind. It looks very much like '"thinking cytoplasm"'. There are clear implications for notions of mind and body in humans. Scientists have to manage 'cognitive dissonance' between observation and how to describe what is observed in an acceptable way. What looks like a technical or semantic issue is instead 'symptomatic of all the ideological, disciplinary and emotional complexity' in the problem of sociality. It is the slime mould that is the provocation, but humans still seem to want some special authority in identifying it. Scientists appear to avoid particular questions, perhaps realising that there is a lot at stake. It might be possible to extend the meaning of existing concepts such as 'program and algorithm' (169) to acknowledge complexity, instead of grasping them in their existing context of computing as 'predetermined and comparatively inflexible'. If the slime mould actually is processing information or making decisions, why assume that the program it uses is 'diminished and automatic when compared against the human'. It might be a different sort of programme — 'one that decides, mutates, rewrites itself, and responds with agility'. The movement of slime mould can apparently be predicted using algorithms, but does this mean that it behaves like a machine? This gets to the vexed issue of what sort of language mathematics is. Is the slime mould practising mathematics? Is it mathematics itself?, Some people think it is displaying random thinking. What if nature has a whole range of programs and patterns, including human intellect? Perhaps 'the stuff of human specificity is a chemical, biological, algorithmic expression'. Reversing the implication, perhaps our own decisions are also like a stone rolling down a hill? This might offend people — but why? Scientists are not mistaken in their terminology, but they are evading via a double standard, anthropocentrism, by relegating slime mould to biological determinism. But there is always some biological determinism in any behaviour, and it need not be simple. The same might go for terms like programme or computation, which are not necessarily Cartesian. They should not just be rejected as an exercise of intellectual authority. The issue is why they attract such rejection. Perhaps the whole vocabulary needs to be rethought because it 'cursorily adjudicates difference' (170). What follows for distinctions between mind and body if matter can think? Do we need a cognitive centre for intelligent thought, responding to enactments. The slime mould seems to offer direct 'somatic or corporeal reaction or enactment'. It processes information somatically, has a corporeal intelligence, a 'fully intelligent literate and articulate' anatomy, consciousness as the body, intelligence is material, a biological possibility, matter is the capacity to think. It is not just slime moulds who solve mazes — drops of oil do as well [pick optimal paths] . So are they able to think?. Scientists might refuse to use these words because they might not seem objective, but they still use human terms, suggesting that we should research the issues and not censor them. If they are uncertain about intelligence in animals, perhaps they should extend this uncertainty to human affairs as well, and what human claims rest on. This is the same problem as established by Durkheim, and by sociologists since, [in the form of reflexivity — we are ready implicated in the objects we study]. Sociology has also been content with differentiating between human and natural worlds, however, maintaining intellectual omnipotence for humans, and objectivity dealing with objects. What if humans are to be seen as 'an individuation of nature's ecological system' (172), with no divide between the natural world and human sociality. The same problems of reflexivity would then applied to claims of objectivity in science. Maintaining the split between intelligent humans and stupid animals actually involves 'an objective third party, an externality, to make this judgement' and this is where God might creep back in — 'Cartesianism "fades into Creationism"' in DeLanda's terms, a particularly theological version of anthropocentrism. The point of all this is not just to rethink what counts as intelligence, or insist that we should accommodate even slime moulds as having agency [a 'Latourian gesture']. Rather we should pursue a puzzle to thoroughly investigate the traditional notion of the material, and of the human as 'a corporeal shell containing a cognising agent', of human identity that relies on a notion of consciousness. We might be left with a broader question about whether consciousness is located in a much more extended and diverse corporeality — 'what if Nature thinks' (173). Chapter 6. Davis, N. Material Culture: Epigenetics and the Molecularisation of the Social: 110 –33 In recent theorising, the role of biology has become newly important, 'what bodies can do' rather than as a passive substrate. Apparently, Merlau-Ponty [MP] has been important in criticising empiricism for not being able to represent the complexities of experience, and incorporating traditional views about linear time, science as progressive accumulation of knowledge, objects of science as discrete entities and so on. And a split between mind and body This is reductionist and atomistic, because knowledge depends on 'the intricate involvement of our embodied experience' (111), relationship between parts and whole. We can register forces, but never totally master them. At the same time, we cannot assume that bodies or scientists 'do not alter the world they study'. 'Sensory life experiences' (112) are crucial, and 'we are immersed with/in the dynamic energies that circulate through the world' [still MP?], So knowledge is always relational, and truth a matter of immanence to contingencies. Affect theories adopt a similar approach. Latour says we should focus on what bodies can do rather than what a body is. There has been a special issue of Body and Society devoted to affect, apparently (2010), where again bodies of processes not entities, '"entangled processes"', capable of affecting and being affected, vibrant, resonating with forces that impact them. However, feminists are still reluctant to engage with biology, and how these affective capacities might have been developed 'biologically, chemically, neuronally, hormonally and metabolically realised' (113). This anti-biologism sees biology as determinist, apolitical. Biologists themselves have seen that 'their research could benefit from sociological insights and input', but only a few social scientists want to engage. Our understandings of ourselves will be poorer if we do not follow 'interdisciplinary entanglements', and if we preserve two cultures. Can we develop an enquiry into the biology of bodies without reifying them? Will existing biological research help us challenge 'implicit empiricist underpinnings' (114) while engaging in empirical research? Epigenetic research might be a way forward, — 'dynamic gene–body–environment conversations', 'how context shapes the genome, or how an organism's phenotype is materialised'. Environment apparently includes diet, history, cultural practices, climate and 'even feminist theorising'. We can queer linearity by arguing that there is no simple aggregation here, but rather 'the materialisation of differentiations', clearly illustrated by epigenetics. Bodies and their physiology are located in a dynamic system, so we do not have to reduce them to fixed entities with no agency. Nor do we just refuse to explore the biological mechanisms 'through which matter expresses itself'. We will gain even more respect for the body's capabilities. Barad and Kirby talk of an entangled world where bodies and the world are formed by 'constitutive cuts' determining what matters (115). This explains particular entities as materialisations. For Kirby there can be no outside of Nature, because everything we see shows that nature enacts itself differently, including those things we normally ascribe to culture. Barad provides more detail and can be used to explain an initial entanglement of the biological and the social rather than starting with 'an originary disjuncture'. The issue becomes one of tracing practices that constitute differences that matter, 'active practices of materialisation' rather than independent characteristics. 'The agent of this performative production is a material – discursive apparatus' for Barad (115 –6), working within an indeterminate system through intra-action, both producing and produced by boundary making practices. That includes apparently abstract aspects of the world like theories or concepts that should be seen as 'physical arrangements embodied in and through the apparatuses that produce, frame, and give them meaning', so even the social and conceptual are be seen as inseparable from matter, in a double constitution, cutting together apart. She manages to bring in hauntology because past and future are also entangled, providing what Kirby calls 'a "mysterious clairvoyance"' where encounters are structured before they happen, and receivers prepare themselves before the message is sent and so on — 'haunting by future possibility' (117). It also appears in epigenetics. Phenotypes are materialised in ways which include the politics of race [citing Saldanha], but he still seems to maintain a separation between nature and culture. He argues that race is never 'solely social', nor just a political category, but there are biological dimensions, which makes race a real phenomenon not just a mental category. Race is understood as phenotype, with the intention to reject older biological determinist justifications. Bodies do not just possess 'a fixed characteristic called race', but are produced by 'animated practices of rationalisation', but these include material as well as social encounters. Racism is therefore embodied, always specific to particular environments, so we need to look at how distinctive characteristics emerge in specific contexts. We can develop 'a material account of race (or any other bodily materialisation of social asymmetry)' (118), although Saldanha still eschews biological and physiological explorations. He wants to criticise Butler, who sees bodies as outside of discourse, 'an inert exteriority to language and signification'. Bodies are productive in their own right. He cites Fanon describing how the sight of a Negro frightened a young boy and how he responded himself — 'Fanon's phenotype'. This involved social and physical factors, including genetic endowments, diet and disease. We will not find Fanon's phenotype constructed only by the boy's exclamation. Language can affect possibilities and possible responses from stigmatised people, but 'it does not alter the biological expression of a phenotype' (119). Puzzles remain with this approach, including wanting to just parallel culture and biology, and describing overall effects as 'aggregative'. Racial phenotype is an 'assemblage of properties' which maintains boundaries between nature and culture. For Davies, discriminatory remarks can actually 'affect phenotype, as epigenetic research shows — 'biology (in this case phenotype) is discursive' and entangled with the social. Epigenetics does not concern itself with things that go on on top of genetics. Epigenetic mechanisms are integral to development rather than just a supplement. They 'are the mechanism by which cell differentiation takes place' (120), the ways in which cells differentiate into various organisms and tissues, producing the phenotype — '(the patterning of genetic expression specific to this organism)'. Biochemical and bioelectric mechanisms are involved that affect the receptiveness of the gene and how it binds with various proteins. These can 'attenuate or amplify the degree of a gene's expression', so genes in themselves do not give organic forms according to some pre-given code. Instead phenotypes are materialised in context, through 'a dynamic crosstalk' between molecules, and bodies and the environment. There are critical periods in development where epigenetic factors have most effect, but 'genetic expression is always open to environmental modification', sometimes affected by early exposures, but never determined. Organisms always respond to specific contexts, and phenotypes are always open to environmental modifications. Bodies are not inert or static, and  we see 'somatic maintenance' following 'a constant gene–environment interrogation'. Phenotypes continually re-materialise epigenetic patterning. [At this stage I looked up the concept of phenotype, and found an interesting section in Wikipedia. The definition of the phenotype is that it is precisely a combination of genetics and interactions with the environment, and a population within the same species can have different phenotypes as in different colour patterns in the same species of dogs — polymorphism. The Wikipedia entry notices that there are some problems — is everything that is dependent on the genotype phenotype? Do we have to just take what is visible in the appearance of an organism, which was what was intended in the original definition in 1911, apparently. There may also be processes involving the metabolites which arise from 'chemical reactions of enzymes'. Phenotypic variation is crucial to the notion of evolution by natural selection. I'm not at all sure if this is precisely what Fanon is getting at]. There may be implications for sociological research, for example asking when environmental factors first affect development, and whether they might explain intergenerational transmission [apparently epigenetic modifications can be transmitted across generations]. Current views suggest that 'we are always already in conversation with the environment and with our inheritance' (121), and that generational transmission is never cultural alone. Different possibilities may be realised in individuals drawing on the 'storehouse of environmental experience and propensities', a 'gene environment entanglement'. This fits with Baradian terminology or Kirby's clairvoyance about being haunted by past and future possibilities — genetic inheritances are prepared to influence developmental pathways before the actual individual even exists. [But we only mystify this by giving it verbs that have human meanings]. Any differences which emerge between body and environment, biology and the social 'are relations of externality within us' (122). This means that our identity contains already differences that may have an effect, so [in a typical exaggeration] 'the very status of the entity… is an enduringly tentative one whose apparent finitude can't even be clarified retrospectively, by the seemingly final cut of death'. Let's apply this to stigmatisation. The usual understanding involves social labelling, 'in short, words'. These can affect experience in the form of 'psychic pain', and this can be 'manifested in biology', even in descendants. This will correct Saldanha. The evidence apparently turns on the repetition of social mortality patterns across generations, of people born out of wedlock — grandparental illegitimacy increase the risk of heart disease in the next two generations [in Sweden], while unmarried mothers apparently 'increased disease risks in the offspring' [in Denmark]. There are associations with poverty, nutrition, lack of social network, social class coping strategies and 'highly psychosocial stress' but the researchers saw social stigma and moral condemnation itself as contributory factors, because 'there are differences between the experimental and control groups that cannot be explained by the shortage of material resources' (123) [pathetic search for simple material factors]. It looks like 'values, attitudes and moral condemnation' are 'passed on physically'. Other researchers noted that differences in health could not be explained by 'mental health problems or socio-economic status' either. [We really do have argument by residue here]. Other studies also showed that the health of people could not be explained by simple demographic factors or material resources 'or other concrete indicators' so that stigma itself 'must be factored in' [did they go on to actually do this, try to define it and measure it?]. Further studies of family dynamics suggest that reactivity might be the mechanism, the development of '"minority stress"', which the stigmatised receive on top of the everyday stresses. Quality of family life might release stress hormones which can produce several effects — 'activation of inflammatory pathways, insulin resistance and hypertension… Diabetes and heart disease' (124), and 'increased hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal function', which also heighten stress reactivity. There might be hypervigilance to guard against ever present possibilities of stigmatisation. Apparently these have been 'associated with a sustained change in the expression of genes in regions that mediate responses to stress'. Stress produces behavioural disturbances with which can produce a further cycle of abuse or neglect and entrench the stigmatised still further. This in turn can increase stress reactivity. It is not just a matter of attitudes because these behaviours 'are being made chemical, hormonal, metabolic… materialising, molecularised'. As a result 'the individual's very being is thus an active performativity'. A particular epigenetic researcher even talks about anticipatory development in a stressful environment, 'reminding us of Barad's hauntology'. Individuals have an 'inheritance', 'messages from their environment... signalling... life conditions'. They are 'epigenetically prepared to respond [only negatively?] to a high stress environment' So we have more than a linear progression. Epigenetic mechanisms can be seen as Baradian apparatuses materialising indeterminate genes into determinate individuals with particular characteristics, boundary making practices differentiating organisms internally and from their environment. Cause and effect are also materialisations, specific configurations. We can also see entanglement, as physical and social factors are materialised in the body, even at the molecular or chemical level. Past and future also entangled in combinations of 'anticipation and inheritance' which appear in 'the now of this individual'. This is cutting together apart. There is no identifiable author. It is all one intra active movement constituting the phenomenon. We have no absolute separation but rather a systematicity that differentiates itself, in Kirby's terms. Otherness and heterogeneity are already in the system, as is history and memory. All parts of bodies, both physical and mental are reconfigured as 'dynamic, discursive, performative re-materialisations of all their constitutive conditions'. The social is materialised in bodies, but in molecular and hormonal history we also find 'a biology always already social' (126). So biology and politics are 'corporeality enacted'. Stigmatisation is both a discursive experience and a 'molecular biochemical process', so it is no surprise it produces considerable consequences. Simple empirical research will only reify the components. There is no simple cause and effect, but rather an active performance, 'an enfolding of past–present–future in one constitutive movement'. We should not see it as a return to determinacy. So political problems of intervention in social problems face a new challenge. There are political issues relating to particular contexts, but we have to see that 'biology is political and politicised and internal to our social concerns' (127). No simple interference in a supposed causality will be effective. Instead 'interventions must reconfigure the embodied future potentials that are being made possible by the past, anticipations'. Words and language matter. Insults cannot be brushed aside, but can 'physically wound', across generations. Most of the studies hitherto fall into the problems of empiricism, including Saldanha's on the phenotype there are constant materialisations of both the biological and the social. Bodies are always implicated with 'cultural and discursive performativity'. Notes include a fascinating study of the joys of Jamaican dance hall scenes (note 3, 128). Apparently there might be a vibrational account of the excitement based on sound wave dynamics, 'visceral experience of the sound'. Better epigenetic research might suggest that sound frequencies can have physical effects, even affecting 'gene expression' as well as the strange metabolic states like rapture and energy, which may themselves be 'biological responsiveness. Note 4 says there is still a problem explaining how biology actually affects the social — residual empiricism, even found in requests for interdisciplinary engagement. Davis thinks she has cracked it by repeating the formula that 'the biological is already social; that is, the social is always already 'under' the skin and we cannot ultimately disentangle biology from culture', solving an ontological problem by rearranging the words. Note 6 predicts even more epigenetic mechanisms being discovered. Note 9 says that epigenetic processes 'are not limited to the negative and dysfunctional' although the dysfunctional ones are more informative (130). Note 10 says that stress reactivity 'is neither good nor bad in itself but must be viewed in context' [as usual] — it may produce high achievement, but perhaps at the expense of a later propensity to disease and mortality. This is reworked as 'the results are not already determined for they remain open to other forces, which nevertheless include this inheritance', which is a much more sensible way of rendering all this hauntology stuff.