After reading Larval’s post about the hegemonic fallacy , thinking about object oriented philosophyand Bruno Latour I came up with the thought that the researcher requires a hybrid model for analysis. A model that avoids prescribing a determined mode of analysis and is capable of accounting for all, or at least the majority, of the dimensions of the object.
Overall, the hybrid model of analysis does not outline a metaphysical ontology, but it does hope to achieve pragmatic analysis that can cope with ontology (or at least the ontic entities that compose the world).
Here are my first brief thoughts about “Hybrid Model Analysis”
The main objective of hybrid model analysis is to construct an object-oriented approach for researchers that avoids what Larval has termed the “Hegemonic Fallacy.” Instead of the researcher relying on one style of analysis, the hybrid model forces the researcher to explain the object of analysis in its diversity. For example, when the researcher is examining the object of cars in the world, the hybrid model would not allow the researcher to select one particular dimension of cars to explain their existence. The problem of selecting one dimension is that it would only reveal and prioritise one aspect of cars and neglect other factors. Imagine if I analysed the discursive construction of cars in various discourses. While the analysis of these discourses would prove invaluable, its language bias would fail to capture the hybrid nature of the object in question. The result of examine the discursive construction would be to remained traped within the hegemonic fallacy. The hybrid model would not neglect the importance of discourses disseminating meaning about cars, but it would claim there are other dimensions (political economy, environmental factors, technological capability, and so on) that construct the object. The challenge for the researcher is to conceptualise how all these dimensions interconnect and influence one another in the object of analysis.
How then is hybrid analysis connected, or related, to an object-oriented approach? In general, I claim that hybrid analysis is object-oriented due to the fact that it forces the researcher to approach (and hopefully explain) the real (and diverse) dimensions of the object of analysis. Hybrid analysis is a form of empiricism that does not assume` pre-given entities (subject, language, mind…) and has to begin anew for every researched object. What the researcher ought to discover is that there is some transference from the object that ‘communicate’ what dimensions compose the object.
* For now I want to sidestep the important question of “what is an object?” Presently, I would only infer that an object is similar to the concept of an assemblage that DeLanda outlines in A New Theory of Society.
(More to follow soon…)
[...] under Uncategorized Over at the inaccurately named Struggleswithphilosophy, Edward proposes the sort of analysis necessary for avoiding the Hegemonic Fallacy and demanded by object-oriented [...]
A hybrid analysis seems to me to be what ANT is always pointing to. Best wishes with your studies, ailsa
Hi Ailsa,
thanks for your comment.
the hybird analysis is similar to ANT. I am myself making my way through Latour’s ‘we have never been modern’ and ‘reassembling the social.’ It is also inspired from Deleuze and Guattari’s ’schizoanalysis’ and DeLanda’s ‘assemblage ontology.’ Hopefully, I will be able to make the connection clearer in future posts.
One important difference between ANT and DeLanda (and I think Deleuze too) seems to be that the former does not aim to provide an analysis that is applicable to all objects of study. Or at least that is the case with Latour’s latest articulation of ANT: it can fail. DeLanda, on the contrary, is explicit in saying that his ontology is applicable to every social phenomenon. Perhaps, even, DeLanda ultimately builds a type of Master-Discourse: an explanation seems capable of showing up as meaningful if it accords with his own his own commitments. Everything else is banished (this may or may not be bad, of course). Latour, some of the time at least, seems only to be offering an asymmetric and incommensurable account (to use Garfinkel’s phrase). Where we fall on this seems to color directly the relationship between hybrid analysis and non-hybrid analysis (for want of a better word). And this seems to be important.
Anyway, one small comment:
“Hybrid analysis is a form of empiricism that does not assume` pre-given entities (subject, language, mind…) and has to begin anew for every researched object.”
The latter portion of this sentence is one of this things that scares me a lot (and let me admit it is a problem I have with my own, similar position). Namely, it seems to require a great deal of caution and a great deal of suspicion on behalf of the researcher. I fear, even, that it almost forces research to move so slow that it almost impossible to say anything. Or at least it moves so slowly and so delicately that it almost prohibits any meanignful engagement. I am exaggerating, perhaps.
But It seems to me that the whole point of a hybrid analysis should be to allow for greater speculation, or at least more daring in the things that we say. One might even suggest that the very propositions of hybrid analysis act as a kind of ’shield’ against the charge of reductionism or simplification. It is surprising given this, and I don’t necessarily have you post in mind when I say this, that this greater daring is so hard to fully draw out.
The difficultly, here, might be that a hybrid-type analysis places the burden of suspicion fully on the sole side of the writer — whereas it should also fall, at least partially, on the side of the reader.* For example, when Foucault reduces everything to power, we, as readers, should be suspicious of this move (as Focuault himself is) — but still aware of the cognitive value his analysis might hold. Similarly, when Comte reduces the history of Europe to his three stages, we should be suspicious of this move — but still aware of the cognitive value his work might hold. Hybridity, in other words, might best be distributed among researchers and readers of said research. This seems to be something that ‘post-modern’ theory never understood, and why it descended into endless debates over reflexivity and partiality and minor-narratives. And this is something, I would suggest, that hybrid analysis needs to more fully immunize itself against.
*This strikes on my reading of DeLanda, of course, so let me clarify that I don’t read/use him in the way that I presented him in my first paragraph.
That should read “Perhaps, even, DeLanda ultimately builds a type of Master-Discourse: an explanation seems capable of showing up as meaningful *only* if it accords with his own his own commitments.
Hi Neville,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
I agree that they are distinctions between DeLanda/Deleuze and Latour. For the purpose of a hybrid analysis the main difference, I think, will be differentiating between assemblage ontology (DeLanda/Deleuze) and ANT’s ‘ontology’ (Latour). Latour is pretty new to me, so I can not clearly outline the differences at present. I attempt to figure the difference out when I work towards defining an object. In DeLanda’s ontology I assume that an object is defined from focusing on various scales to explain how parts interact to generate an emergent whole (e.g. in certain circumstances oxygen and hydrogen produce the emergent property of water). However, all this requires a lot more thinking.
Your next point raises another interesting and difficult issue. I am caught between advocating a hybrid analysis that attempts to make grand metaphysical discovers/claims or a hybrid analysis that adopts the scepticism of empiricism (e.g. Hume) that would not participate in metaphysical discussion. Hopefully, hybrid analysis has the paradoxical capacity to be both at the same time. Even if hybrid analysis is metaphysical or purely empirical I would still expect it to avoid the reductionism of the Hegemonic fallacy.
Your point about reading is one that I agree with. As readers we should be suspicious when writers reduce everything to a certain phenomenon or dimension (e.g. discursive construction, cultural factors, power…). However, this suspicion does not mean that we are required to dismiss their analysis.
[...] we need hybrid analysis… 7 02 2009 Following the previous post that introduced a hybrid model of analysis I would know like to consider why this type of analysis is required. Larval has alrealy outline his [...]
As far as I can tell, there seems to be two criteria for an object/individual/whole in DeLanda. First, as you note, a whole is characterized by already existing emergent properties. But it also seems to be the case that an object must exist as part of a population of other objects at the same scale. I tend to think this second criteria is there only so he can deny that society exists!
In ANT, an object/actor is merely anything that resists a trial of strength. Nominally, it is only this but the actors that show up in an ANT analysis always seem to have more properties than this. For example, they always have the character, the level of stability, of a scientific fact. Actors also exist at different levels of ’scale’ for Latour, too, which is something that is often overlooked. And, of course, society is not an actor…
Based on your hesitancy as to whether you want to do metaphysics or empiricism, I am sure that Latour will be much to your liking (its why I like him). He calls himself an empirical philosopher some of the time, a naive positivist at others, and also declares that one needs to do metaphysics when one does sociology…