Alien Phenomenology, Or What It's Like to Be a Thing by Ian Bogost

Criticism Volume 57 Article 10 Issue 2 Critical Air Studies

2015 Book Reviews: Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing by Ian Bogost, Jet Plane: How It Works by David Macaulay, andVibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett Nathaniel A. Rivers Saint Louis University, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Rivers, Nathaniel A. (2015) "Book Reviews: Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing by Ian Bogost, Jet Plane: How It Works by David Macaulay, andVibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett," Criticism: Vol. 57: Iss. 2, Article 10. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol57/iss2/10 Nathaniel A. Rivers Aircraft fairing, High-lift device, Vortex generator, Aft pressure bulk- head, Ballute, Monocoque, Fuselage, Alien Phenomenology, or What Flight test instrumentation, Drogue It’s Like to Be a Thing by Ian parachute, Empennage, NACA Bogost. Minneapolis: University cowling, Accessory drive, Flight- of Minnesota Press, 2012. Pp. 168. data acquisition unit, Wire strike $60 cloth, $19.95 paper. protection system, Duramold, Air data boom, Skin, Arming plug, Jet Plane: How It Works by David Auxiliary power unit, Airframe, Macaulay (with Sheila Keenan). M10 smoke tank, Air brake, New York: David Macaulay Longeron. Studio, 2012. Pp. 32. $13.55 library binding, $3.99 paper. Airbus A319 STL → PHX → LAS. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett. Well, don’t you look at me like life Durham, NC: Duke University don’t hold you anymore mystery. Press, 2010. Pp. 200. $74.95 cloth, —Modest Mouse, “History Sticks $20 paper. to Your Feet” (2009) The human experience of flight is thoroughly objective, driven, as it is, by the airplane as an object. But airplanes are not simply objects to which we, as subjects, attend. Airplanes lay claim on us, get their blades into us, and so modulate the way we think about and engage them. Broadly speaking, airplanes take part in how we think and talk about flight. They are objects that mediate our relationship with air, with gravity, and even with our own bodies. But airplanes are perhaps even more than this and for things other than us. What Ian Bogost argues with respect to com- puters is equally applicable here: “[F]or [it] to operate at all for us first requires a wealth of interactions

to take place for itself” (10). Jane three books do critical, specula- Bennett resonates with Bogost in tive work in providing explicit her insistence that things “act as articulations and implicit perfor- quasi agents or forces with trajec- mances of alternative ontologies tories, propensities, or tendencies from which critical air studies of their own” (viii). Our critical might benefit. Gathered around engagements with flight must be Jet Plane, Vibrant Matter, and about more than what Bennett calls Alien Phenomenology, we can get demystification, which “presumes a taste of a speculative critical air that at the heart of any event or studies: the philosophy of nondu- process lies a human agency” (xiv). alist ontologies and the politics What approaches such as of distributed, material assem- Bogost’s and Bennett’s bring to crit- blages. I begin with Bogost, move ical air studies from their external to Bennett, and conclude with a vantage point is an insistence that in reading of Macaulay’s children’s critically engaging flight we work book, which productively, if not only to reveal, expose, or unveil implicitly, performs the philoso- the human in the cockpit, but also to phies of Bogost and Bennett. find even more objects that enable Asking about “what it’s like both flight and our thinking of it. to be a thing,” Bogost articulates As Christopher Schaberg writes of other ways of doing philosophy what he calls “airport reading” in while at the same time explicating The Textual Life of Airports, “[T]his his own unique strain of specu- type of reading depends on the air- lative realism. Bogost places his port itself to have already emerged work in media studies and com- as a primary text of sorts, a legible puter science in a line with object- space where there are . . . planes oriented philosophers Graham roaring into the air . . . (among Harman and Levi Bryant and many other informational signs, sociologist-turned-all-things- auditory cues, and aestheticized for-all-people Bruno Latour. views).”1 To think about airplanes Primary for Bogost is the argu- is to already be with airplanes. ment that “all things equally exist, In this short essay, I review yet they do not exist equally” (11, Bogost’s Alien Phenomenology his emphasis). This means simply (2012) and Bennett’s Vibrant that differences between humans Matter (2010) alongside David and nonhumans are not ontologi- Macaulay’s Jet Plane (2012), cal, but specific. For instance, our which is devoted to a child’s expe- human capacity for language does rience of airplanes. While com- not quantitatively set apart our posed for different audiences in being from a toaster’s, but marks traditionally discrete contexts, all a (rather important) qualitative ON SPECULATIVE AIR STUDIES 335

distinction in our mode of being. reveal the operations and relation- The implications of this for phi- ships of objects “without necessarily losophy (Bogost’s field of deploy- offering clarification or description ment) are far-reaching. Of of any kind” (38): “It shows how particular importance is Bogost’s much rather than how little exists argument that philosophers must simultaneously” (59). Examples walk the narrow path between of ontography include Latourian a realism that treats all matter as litanies (38–40), visual ontographs inert (i.e., a billiard ball reality) (45–50), exploded views such as and an idealism that reduces all those found in instructional manu- matter to what humans have to als and children’s books (50–52), say about it (i.e., social construc- and ontographic machines such as tionism). This troubling binary card games like In a Pickle (56–57). stems from the ontological distinc- Ontography exposes the strange tion between humans and nonhu- reality of all units by disrupting tra- mans. Bogost’s alternative, strange ditional human logics, which often realism acknowledges both that work to simplify accounts of units. objects are more than we have to In a similar vein, metaphorism is say about them and that their real- an attempt to understand nonhu- ity is not something we can crack man relations and operations that open and fully comprehend; this avoids the frequent reductionism is neither idealism nor standard of the scientific tradition. Whereas realism. science is an attempt “to define Flying this narrow path, Bogost the physical and causal relations proposes “[t]he act of wonder,” between objects” (62, emphasis which “invites a detachment from added), metaphorism operates by ordinary logics, of which human speculative analogy. Rather than logics are but one example” (124). making sense of how a bat relates Bogost means wonder in two to its environment by breaking senses: (a) “awe or marvel” and (b) down the components of its eye, “puzzlement or logical perplexity” which would get us no closer to (121). To wonder is to be drawn seeing the world through them, to objects, or what Bogost calls metaphorism would argue that units (23), precisely by their abil- “the bat . . . operates like a subma- ity to exceed our grasp. The work rine” (64). Bogost acknowledges of wonder can take many forms, that metaphorism can quickly including ontography, metaphorism, become anthropomorphism in this and carpentry, the descriptions of regard; however, in the risk there which account for the bulk of his is reward. Drawing on Bennett, book. Ontography is the practice of Bogost argues that the very strange- ratcheting up logical perplexity to ness of the metaphor attends to the 336 NATHANIEL A. RIVERS difference between submarines a series of thinkers who have and bats. Bats are not reduced by taken up stuff—and her politi- analogy but are actually made far cal project—by engaging a spe- stranger. Metaphorism, in this way, cific piece of nonhuman stuff. For leads Bogost to carpentry, the prac- example, she writes extensively on tice of making things that do philo- the 2003 North American black- sophical work. Carpentry, Bogost out. Understanding the blackout as writes, is “constructing artifacts a vibrant assemblage requires that that illustrate the perspectives of we neither boil it down to human objects” (109). The sonar signals by motivations lurking beneath the which bats navigate could, via car- behavior of electricity (e.g., the pentry, be morphed into something incompetence or greed of elec- akin to a heat map—wherein closer tric companies) nor pin it down obstacles show up red and distant conclusively via a reductionist obstacles blue—that humans could realism (e.g., electricity has no voli- then move in response to. Bogost’s tion). Bennett argues that we must carpentry, like his metaphorism, address “the cascade of effects” resonates with the work of Bennett. that includes humans and nonhu- Moving through vibrant matter, mans. As she remarks in an earlier Bennett enacts both a philosophi- version of the chapter, “[e]lectric- cal and political project. Bennett, ity too contributed swerves and who, like Bogost, works with quirks.”2 Whereas Bogost’s project Latour, additionally pulls from the is squarely philosophical, Bennett’s work of Baruch Spinoza, Henri project employs philosophy on the Bergson, and Gilles Deleuze and way to politics. “What difference Félix Guattari, especially the lat- would it make to the course of ters’ idea of assemblages. Bennett energy policy,” Bennett prods us to (whose area of deployment is politi- ask, “were electricity to be figured cal theory) argues that our political not simply as a resource, commod- and philosophical work needs to ity, or instrumentality but also and attend to the agency of assemblages more radically as an ‘actant’?” (viii). and the vibrancy of matter, which The stakes of any ontology are she describes as “thing-power.” high: ignoring the thing-power Bennett explores the force of of electricity or fatty acids bears things, or what she calls actants, on how we approach public prob- such as minerals (chapter 4), lems such as energy and obesity. fatty acids (chapter 3), stem cells Working as she does from Latour, (chapter 6), worms (chapter 7), Bennett echoes him in calling “for and electricity (chapter 2). In each people to imagine other roles for chapter, Bennett advances her phil- things besides that of carriers of osophical project—by engaging necessity, or ‘plastic’ vehicles for ON SPECULATIVE AIR STUDIES 337

‘human ingenuity,’ or ‘a simple my fantasies of human mastery, white screen to support the dif- highlight the common material- ferentiation of society’” (30–31). ity of all that is, expose the wider The vitalism of her vital mate- distribution of agency, and reshape rialism sees that vitality as “the the self and its interests” (122). In capacity of things—edibles, com- order to chasten such fantasies, modities, storms, metals—not Bennett’s project, like Bogost’s, only to impede or block the will calls for experimental tactics fueled and designs of humans but also by naiveté and wonder. to act as quasi agents or forces The look and feel of the chil- with trajectories, propensities, or dren’s book Jet Plane activates tendencies of their own” (viii). precisely this wonder in and Bennett’s project asks us not to dig engagement with airplanes as vital deep past the facades of objects, objects important in their own but to play with their surfaces to right (and not simply as means to get at just how matter (or assem- an end). Jet Plane (as an exemplar blages of matter) exerts agency of a rather robust genre) relates and produces effects in the world. a childlike view of the mechan- Taking matter at face value, “[w]e ics of flight that tends to leave us see how an animal, plant, mineral, as we grow older, when airplanes or artifact can sometimes catalyze become simply a mode of trans- a public” (107). And there is more port. I review this book not only than just philosophical recognition for how it speaks to children but at stake here: “[W]e might then also for how it speaks to us as see how to devise more effective scholars—as a work that engages (experimental) tactics for enhanc- in thoughtful philosophical and ing or weakening that public” political work. (107). At stake in the philosophical Jet Plane opens to the image of recognition of matter as vibrant is a child gazing out at an airplane the political necessity of activating approaching the terminal. We are such recognition. What a public looking at the airplane through the (as an assemblage) is is not only eyes of a child, and it is with these human but nonhuman, as well. eyes that we should linger over Where Bogost raises the stakes airplanes. Bogost writes, “Our job for philosophy by crafting ways of is to go where everyone has gone engaging the nonhuman, Bennett before, but where few have both- doubles down on these stakes ered to linger” (34). But this linger- in attending to the political and ing, to which Jet Plane is devoted, ethical implications of nondualist is of a special quality, which Bogost ontologies: “I believe that encoun- describes as wonder. The linger- ters with lively matter can chasten ing of Jet Plane, then, isn’t mastery 338 NATHANIEL A. RIVERS but a mixture of “awe or marvel” experienced is a function of these and “puzzlement or logical per- (figure 1). plexity” (121). This is the kind of “A jet plane stands at the gate,” lingering I’m promoting for criti- Macaulay opens the book (4). The cal air studies, and it is the kind of jet plane is first an actant. This lingering we see performed in Jet grammar of object agency is present Plane. This illustrated reader was throughout the book: “They [the written by David Macaulay (with pilots] are surrounded by instru- Sheila Keenan), who is famous for ments and screens. These tell them his other books Castle (1982), City everything” (9). Bennett’s argu- (1983), Underground (1983), and ment hinges upon the acknowledg- Mill (1989), which tell the stories of ment of this grammar: “[W]e are each of these places through nar- much better admitting that non- rative and complex line drawings humanity infects culture, for the often sketched from impossible, latter entails the blasphemous idea nonhuman perspectives. These, that nonhumans—trash, bacteria, too, are books of wonder, which stem cells, food, metal, technolo- fascinated me as a child and con- gies, weather—are actant rather tinue to fascinate my son and me. than objects” (115). As the child Macaulay’s books are composed in moves through the airplane, he is wonder in order to cultivate won- surrounded not by simple, inert der—to marvel at how much the objects, but actants that enable world is full of and composed by flight (figure 2). strange, nonhuman matter. Jet Plane fosters an acknowl- Jet Plane is likewise narrative- edgment of object actancy, peering based. A child is moved through into the world of flight on a child’s networks of flight: from the behalf: cutaways, miniscule details, terminal, through the gate, past the exploded views. This work does cockpit, into the cabin, away from more than explain the airplane or the terminal, down the tarmac, up reduce it to component parts, but into the air, into the night, around rather exponentially increases the a storm, down through the clouds, airplane’s strangeness and its air- onto the runway, and back up to planeness. Airplanes are more puz- the gate. At each step, the part of zling when we linger over their the jet’s assemblage that makes minutiae. Jet Plane aims not at such movement and experience mastery or demystification but at possible is introduced: instruments intimacy. We are suspended in air and screens, air traffic control- by the slight curve of a wing. The lers, engines, fuel, lift, drag, thrust, sheer awe and puzzlement with satellites, storms, landing gear, which the child attends to the air- and grounds crew. What you have plane opens up an entire world of ON SPECULATIVE AIR STUDIES 339

Figure 1. Illustration from Jet Plane: How it Works. The wonder of a child as he lingers over the airplane’s wing through the airplane’s window—a view itself already shaped by the airplane. From Jet Plane: How It Works © 2012 by David Macaulay. Reprinted by permission of Roaring Brook Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 2. Illustration from Jet Plane: How it Works. A modified exploded view of an airplane turning to avoid a storm. As Bogost himself writes of children’s books, “[A] child pores over the cutaway view of a submarine . . . not to learn how to operate it but to fathom a small aspect of its murky otherworldliness” (52). Note the dropped cup of coffee feeling the effects of the turn. From Jet Plane: How it Works © 2012 by David Macaulay. Reprinted by permission of Roaring Brook Press. All rights reserved. 340 NATHANIEL A. RIVERS objects and things. Bogost describes with flight. To inhabit an airplane this kind of lingering as a job; for as a child is to attend to the airplane children, lingering is not a job but as an active ingredient in the expe- a pleasure-filled way of being in the rience of air. It is the critical com- world. portment of wonder and naiveté: to The payoff here is simple. In believe that an airplane will never any critical engagement with fully divulge its secrets no matter flight, with air, we must attune how long or intently we peer at ourselves to the vibrancy of air- or through it or how ever long we planes. Airplanes must be more sit in it. Flight does not need to be than a means to an end and other demystified. than signifiers, representations, Our understanding of flight cultural artifacts, or containers for is predicated upon our being in human interaction. What a chil- airplanes, which are not simply dren’s book like Jet Plane does is a part of the experience of flight, to engage the airplane with an eye but a necessary condition for our neither toward the reduction of experience of flight as such. We scientific certainty nor the reduc- are attuned to the air by the air- tion of cultural significance, but plane: when our ears pop, as we with an eye toward wonder and chew gum, as we breathe the air, enchantment, which are surely as we taste the food, as turbulence critical tasks, as well. Jet Plane jostles the plane and our confi- wants to suck us into and expose dence in it, and as we take a cau- us to airplanes in their strange tious peak into the air-sickness reality. In this book, airplanes are bag. We cannot abstract our expe- things to linger on and with. rience of flight from our mate- What I find additionally com- rial relations with airplanes. Our pelling about such a speculative attitudes change with altitude. approach is the willful mixture of Designed by humans to be sure, closeness and distance. It is a real- but in response to any number of ism born not of critical distance, the forces, human and nonhuman, usual way one obtains objectivity, airplanes are themselves an ongo- but born of a kind of puzzled prox- ing negotiation among humans, imity from which things can then gravity, rain, wind, clouds, elec- withdraw. Objectivity is an effect of tricity and fossil fuels: airplanes intimacy rather than its opposite. are diplomats. They are objects The closer we get to airplanes, the we both work with and are with. stranger they become as an object. Bennett and Bogost articulate this This strangeness, I’d wager, would explicitly; Macaulay performs it serve well any critical engagement implicitly. ON SPECULATIVE AIR STUDIES 341

Nathaniel A. Rivers is an associate profes- NOTES sor in the Department of English at Saint Louis University. His current research 1. Christopher Schaberg, The Textual Life addresses new materialism’s impact on of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight the articulations of public rhetorics such (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), 12. as environmentalism and urban design. 2. Jane Bennett, “The Agency of His work has appeared in journals such as Assemblages and the North American College Composition and Communication, Blackout,” Public Culture 17, no. 3 Enculturation, Kairos, Rhetoric Review, and (2005): 445–65, quotations on 457, 451. Technical Communication Quarterly.