Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:48:05.545Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Going against the flow. Reaction to Veronica Strang

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2015

Johan Normark
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In her discussion article ‘Fluid consistencies. Material relationality in human engagements with water’, Veronica Strang argues that ‘water provides a useful focus for thinking about relationships between things and persons and between material properties and meanings’ (Strang 2014, 133, emphasis added). Water permeates organic things and flows and connects in a multi-scalar way. Therefore her article emphasizes ‘how material and social processes combine to provide both fluidity and consistency at every level of human–non-human engagement’ (ibid., 133). Ontologically speaking, the emphasis on fluid relations and processes makes her a relationist, i.e. objects emerge from their internal or external relations (Harman 2009). I will summarize my reactions to her article in three major points.

Type
Reaction
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 199 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alberti, B., 2014: How does water mean? Archaeological dialogues 21 (2), 159–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barad, K., 2007: Meeting the universe halfway. Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, Durham, NC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, J., 2010: Vibrant matter. A political ecology of things, Durham, NC.Google Scholar
Bergson, H., 2004: Matter and memory, Mineola, NY.Google Scholar
Bogost, I., 2012: Alien phenomenology. Or what it's like to be a thing, Minneapolis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, A. 2013: The call of things. A critique of object-oriented ontologies, Minnesota review 80, 106–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, M.I.J., 2014: Don't water down your theory. Why we should all embrace materiality but not material determinism, Archaeological dialogues 21 (2), 153–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLanda, M., 2002: Intensive science and virtual philosophy, London.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G., 1994: Difference and repetition, New York.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F., 1987: A thousand plateaus. Capitalism and schizophrenia, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, M., 2011: Fluid pasts. Archaeology of flow, Bristol.Google Scholar
Hallward, P., 2006: Out of this world. Deleuze and philosophy of creation, London.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 2013: Archaeology and the senses. Human experience, memory, and affect, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Harman, G., 2009: Prince of networks. Bruno Latour and metaphysics, Prahran.Google Scholar
Harman, G., 2011a: On the undermining of objects. Grant, Bruno, and radical philosophy, in Bryant, L., Srnicek, N. and Harman, G. (eds), The speculative turn. Continental materialism and realism, Melbourne, 21–40.Google Scholar
Harman, G., 2011b: The quadruple object, Winchester.Google Scholar
Harris, O.J.T., 2014: (Re)assembling communities, Journal of archaeological method and theory 21, 76–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T., 2007: Materials against materiality. Archaeological dialogues 14 (1), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B., 2005: Reassembling the social. An introduction to actor-network theory, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucas, G. 2012: Understanding the archaeological record, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malafouris, L., and Renfrew, C., 2010: The cognitive life of things. Archaeology, material engagement and the extended mind, in Malafouris, L. and Renfrew, C. (eds), The cognitive life of things. Recasting the boundaries of the mind, Cambridge, 1–12.Google Scholar
Meillassoux, Q., 2008: After finitude. An essay on the necessity of contingency, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morton, T., 2010: The ecological thought, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Morton, T., 2013: Treating objects like women. Feminist ontology and the question of essence, in Gaard, G., Opperman, S. and Estok, S. (eds), International perspectives in feminist ecocriticism, 56–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Normark, J., 2004: Discontinuous Maya identities. Culture and ethnicity in Mayanist discourse, in Fahlander, F. and Oestigaard, T. (eds), Material culture and other things, Göteborg, 109–60.Google Scholar
Normark, J., 2006: The roads in-between. Causeways and polyagentive networks at Ichmul and Yo’okop, Cochuah region, Mexico, Göteborg.Google Scholar
Normark, J., 2008: The triadic causeways of Ichmul. Virtual highways becoming actual roads, Cambridge archaeological journal 18 (2), 215–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Normark, J., 2009: The making of a home. Assembling houses at Nohcacab, Mexico, World archaeology 41 (3), 430–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Normark, J., 2010: Involutions of materiality. Operationalizing a neo-materialist perspective through the causeways of Ichmul and Yo’okop, Mexico, Journal of archaeological method and theory 17 (2), 132–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Normark, J., 2014: Water as a hyperfact, Current Swedish archaeology 22, 155–78.Google Scholar
Scarborough, V.L., 2014: Does water have agency? Does it need to? Archaeological dialogues 21 (2), 150–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strang, V., 2014: Fluid consistencies. Material relationality in human engagements with water, Archaeological dialogues 21 (2), 133–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutherland, T., 2014: The law of becoming and the shackles of sufficient reason in Quentin Meillassoux, Parrhesia 21, 161–73.Google Scholar