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Towards an Ethical Understanding of Nonhuman Agency in Urbanism and Architecture
Author: Engjëll Rodiqi
Life; an attribute of the nonhuman
We can say that life is an immediate consciousness, an exterior event experienced everywhere, and expressed through relations
which are supported on principles of association, contiguity and causality. (Deleuze, 2001) It, life, escapes a humane expression,
is an attribute of the nonhuman too.
Terrestrial; an agency of the nonhuman that shapes earth
This is where all the activity of the planet is experienced and lived. Latour refers to the Terrestrial to portray a new geo-political
orientation which involves the composition of organisms and the physical matter coproduce the living conditions for all.
Terrestrial can also refer to the agency portraying a desire, or persistence, which can be referred to Wall Street, birds, cars, plastic
bottles, computers, etc. (Latour, 2018)
Representation; an important step to evoking terrestrial agency
This sort of agency, the terrestrial, has to be embraced. It is an observable entity whose reaction can be felt from scientif ic
measuring and modeling. Such entities are always represented by us people, we invoke them continuously, but now different
from before, according to Latour, the quality of their representation matter, a human that embodies their interests has more
potency to claim their agency (Latour, 2017). Therefore, new representatives are crucial, and here the architects could
potentially participate through their accessibility and knowledge.
Modernism; a break in the relation to the terrestrial
Unfortunately, today’s dominant narrative of anthropomorphic creation is based on a “modernist” mindset. Unfortunate,
because according to Latour’s in-depth criticism of this social trend, the belief in progress and a linear development of a modern
society ignores completely the complex network of dependencies between humans and nonhumans (Latour, 1989).
Equity; Concluding Terrestrials as equal beings
We can conclude that all entities on the planet are interrelated and mutually dependent. They carry powers with which they are
capable of affecting their surroundings and themselves. Shaviro writes “Casual and perceptual interactions are no longer held
hostage to human-centric categories… there is no hierarchy of being”. (Shaviro, 2014, Pg. 29). All entities interact in the same
field and are ontologically equal because they are defined by the same relations within that field. We are always affected by
things around us, the outer reality is capable of interfering within our subjective self, and the other way around, a duality of
experience and expression occurs.
Applying; creating a response to the ecological mutation
Situated knowledge therefore can help us form new narratives of our relation to the terrestrial. It could help us be responsible,
to respond, create a response to the catastrophe we have created, by approaching case by case, milieu by milieu in order to
embody the terrestrials’ requirements (Stengers, 2015).
Envisioning; conducting new forms of comprehension of the nonhuman being
Guattari invokes ethical paradigms to underlined this necessary responsibility. Learning to think through the attribute of being
so that we can articulate better the relations that participate in our society, a self in relation to other selves (Guattari, 2000).
Ethics; a relational evaluative form
Primarily, life in Spinozist concept is a way of being, an eternal mode expressed in all its attributes (Deleuze, 1988). From this we
can determine that a state of being escapes a human centric narrative, it is an internal attribute to all. Secondarily, since this life
and its material escapes anthropocentric vision, it is still anthropomorphized when we invoke it to produce our urban and
architectural systems. That is simply the nature of architectural production.
Therefore, a sort of evaluative process is required to determine with whom are we to share our territories and through what
consequence are we to proclaim these entities and transform them into building blocks of our cities? I claim that such evaluation
is found in the Ethics of Spinoza and the Deleuzeian interpretation of his literature.
We can start from the idea that architecture and urbanism are relational disciplines. If indeed architecture and urban planning
could be defined as structural processes that are constituent of and constructed of social and physical relations, then their very
fabric is assembled of interactions which involves the dynamics between such entities. Deleuze writes that those entities, or
terrestrials to use Latour’s more contemporary term, share an appetite to persist and preserve their becoming, they do this b y
affecting one another (Deleuze, 1988).
The outcome of such movements is a formed and shared heterogeneous network which could be called Gaia, or nature, or the
Critical Zone. This is the physical surface where the relations between terrestrials produce the matter and life as we know. Each
relation is however unique, meaning that it carries a statement only based on the interaction. Differently from Morality, which
refers to a hierarchical evaluation of judgment, Ethics replaces morality by questioning the capacity of such terrestrials, in
relation with each other, in their own power of being affected (Deleuze, 1988). This power to affect one another is what puts
two separate entities to communicate and act positively or negatively upon each other. Deleuze through Spinoza further
elaborates that these relations can objectively be observed if they act as a good or a bad interaction for the terrestrial. “The bad
appears when the act is associated with the image of a thing whose relation is decomposed by that very act (I kill someone by
beating him). The same act would have been good if it had been associated with the image of a thing whose relation agreed with
it (e.g., hammering iron). Which means that an act is bad whenever it directly decomposes a relation, whereas it is good
whenever it directly compounds its relation with other relations” (Deleuze, 1988, pg. 35).
Therefore, through an empirical observation weather an act is increasing the acting power, compounds a relation, or it decreases
the power to act, decomposes the relation, we can associate an ethical presence in urban relations as well. For example, the
relation between soil and a concrete surface, or noise pollution with human comfort. The relations are potentially infinite, but,
due to the categorization of the nonhumans in order to propose the typology, as mentioned before, the ethics of relations could
be narrowed down in-between the determined groups and thus empirically be determined which increases or decreases the
others power of acting.
References:
Deleuze, G., 2001. Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life. Translated by A. Boyman. New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, G., 1988. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by R. Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights.
Guattari, F., 2000. The Three Ecologies. Translated by I. Pindar and P. Sutton. London: Athlone Press.
Latour, B., 1989. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by C. Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B., 2017. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Translated by C. Porter. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Latour, B., 2018. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Translated by C. Porter. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Shaviro, S., 2014. The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Stengers, I., 2015. In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism. Translated by A. Goffey. London: Open Humanities
Press.