IN REDUCTION
Combinations of matter, whether it involves a junkyard of metal and plastic or a mycelial network of trees and fungi, have the potential of inciting action. Jane Bennett describes this phenomenon in response to seeing a vial of gunpowder residue involved in a homicide case:
This composite of glass, skin cells, glue, words, laws, metals, and human emotions had become an actant. Actant, recall, is Bruno Latour’s term for a source of action; an actant can be human or not, or, most likely, a combination of both. Latour defines it as “something that acts or to which activity is granted by others. It implies no special motivation of human individual actors, nor of humans in general.” An actant is neither an object nor a subject but an “intervener,” akin to the Deleuzian “quasi-causal operator.” (10)
Bennett makes the case that we should be viewing non-human bodies as actants instead of as objects and that often these actants are humans and non-humans, similarly to the lichen’s autotrophic and heterotrophic relationship. This relates back to Karen Barad’s theory of intra-action. Together, through relationships, things can become vibrant symbionts of intervention and agency. Sometimes, as Bennet states, the relationship is between glass, skin cells, glue, words, laws, etc. or, in my case, the relationships between pine needles, fruit flies, theory, fungi, soil, and garbage. My work positions itself within this realm of interveners.