The posthuman problem of nature

In an anthropocentric view of the world, the dichotomy between nature and culture is relevant to a point; separating that which is man-made from all that appears naturally. That might form understanding in certain circumstances, but it is also a very simplified and romanticised view.

The human subject is given agency while nature just happens. Nature is scenography standing by to be admired and populated by man. To paraphrase Karen Barad (2003): nature is there passively waiting for human and cultural inscription.

Several of the post humanist writers are moving away from dualisms such as subject/object, human/non-human and, of course, nature/culture.

Deleuze and Guattari (2012) uses the term rhizome to describe interconnectivity without linearity, hierarchy or taxonomy. Multiplicities does away with subjects and objects in favour of “determination, magnitudes and dimension” (Deleuze and Guattari 2012: 97).

Barad (2003) introduces the theory of agential realism where agency is described as a phenomena constituting intra-action, rather than a trait attributed to certain subjects. Again moving away from the dualism of subject/object.

Callon (2012) describes the symmetrical relationship between objects, animals, humans, environments and machines as an actor network using the principle of generalised symmetry. The human act (culture) together with animals and environment (nature) enacts reality and constitutes agency.

Location as scenography or rhizomatic multiplicity

In my projects …and Gravity and Innate Structures the shoots take place on location. In  some sense featuring natural environments as backdrop or scenography for the photograph. That is a androcentric way of describing the process. The man-photographer (human subject) given agency and being the one inscribing the landscape with cultural meaning.

Seeing the phenomena of photography as intra-action including several actors or agents, one does away with the order of power where humans are supreme. The resulting photograph is a rhizome, a multiplicity, including nodes such as camera, landscape, weather, photographer, compositional rules, animals, insects and more. Seing these actors as symmetrical in their relationship, points towards the photograph, or even the photographer, as becoming with (1) all of these agents in a reciprocal relationship. The human being is not superior. The human being is not the center of events. The human being does not feature location or environment in their work. Because the human being does not possess sole or superior agency to do so.

(1) Becoming with is Donna Haraway’s (2008) term for describing the ongoing, reciprocal relationship between human and non-human agents.

BARAD, Karen. 2003. ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter’. Signs, 28(3), 801-831

CALLON, Michel. 2012. ‘Några element av en översättnings-sociologi: domesticeringen av pilgrimsmusslor och fiskare vid St. Brieucbukten’. In Cecilia ÅSBERG, Martin HULTMAN & Francis LEE (ed.). Posthumanistiska nyckeltexter. 1st edn. Lund: Studentlitteratur, 153-174

DELEUZE, Gilles and GUATTARI, Félix. 2012. ‘Introduktion: Rhizom’. In Cecilia ÅSBERG, Martin HULTMAN & Francis LEE (ed.). Posthumanistiska nyckeltexter. 1st edn. Lund: Studentlitteratur, 93-104

HARAWAY, Donna Jeanne. 2008. When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press