Toward the abstractors: modes of care and lineages of becoming

ABSTRACT

This paper explores an ontological version of ‘abstraction’ as it manifests in the commonalities and differences across social scientific research events. Drawing on a range of writings that focus on the potentiality of the event, on Whitehead’s concept of the ‘eternal object’, and on the notion of attractor as discussed by DeLanda, the notion of abstractor’ is tentatively proposed. The aim is to show how abstractors introduce particular potentialities, or ‘lineages of becoming’. However, in the specific context of the research event, these abstractors are subject to modes of care (with their own linages of becoming) that inform how analysts might engage with the potentialities of a research event (understood as an inventive problem space). This broad schema is initially illustrated through a particular abstractor, that of the ‘blackest black’ as partially actualized in the nanotechnology VANTAblack. Subsequently, the case of VANTAblack is used to prompt a number of heuristic questions with regard to how we might practically and carefully explore the commonalities and differences across research events. The paper closes with reflections on the broader status of the approach sketched here.

KEYWORDS:

• Abstraction
• abstractor
• process-oriented theory
• nanotechnology
• care
• becoming
• eventuation

Acknowledgement

This paper has benefited immeasurably from the criticisms and comments made by the anonymous referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Mike Michael is a sociologist of science and technology, and a professor at the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter. Research interests have touched on the relation of everyday life to technoscience, the use of design to develop a ‘speculative methodology’, and the role of aesthetics and affect in the making of publics. Recent Publications include (co-authored with Andy Boucher et al.) Energy Babble: Entangling Design and STS (Mattering Press, 2018) and Actor-Network Theory: Trials, Trails and Translations (Sage, 2017).

Notes

1 The use of inverted commas, here and below, serves to indicate that the term ‘abstraction’ is used in the sense of an ontological commonality across events as opposed to an epistemologically derived commonality, and, crucially, to distinguish it from Whitehead’s technical version.

2 Eventuation is here used simply to connote the processuality of the event, that is, how it takes form and becomes cogent, or attains ‘satisfaction’.

3 https://www.surreynanosystems.com/media/images-videos (last accessed 4 April 2018).

4 http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/1355044/lynx-creates-coated-blackest-material-planet# (last accessed 4 April 2018).

5 Anish Kapoor is banned from buying the world’s pinkest paint,

Kevin Holmesm November 10 2016, The creators project. http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/the-worlds-pinkest-paint (accessed 16 January 2017).

6 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2016/feb/29/anish-kapoor-vantablack-paint (accessed 16 January 2017).