Beyond the substance ontology

We have argued that archaeology recognises material things as evidence

for past events by adopting a view of substance that draws on Newtonian
physics and Cartesian metaphysics. This has enabled positive contributions
to be made to the understanding of prehistoric societies, but it may be that
a more subtle conception of materiality might enable us to develop richer
interpretations of past material worlds. It is worth pointing out that although
the everyday common-sense view of matter held by most people in the
contemporary West is that of inert substance, this has actually been
undermined by the past 200 years of science. While Newton had held that
atoms were fundamental and indivisible particles, the chemistry of John
Dalton was to show that the various elements of the periodic table were
distinguished by their having atoms of different mass and weight (Patterson
1970). This was eventually explained by J.J. Thomson’s inference of the
existence of sub-atomic particles, or electrons, on the basis of his cathode ray
tube experiments. Thus a new image of the atom emerged, not as a particle
but as a system of electrons, where atoms of different mass possessed different
numbers of electrons (Collingwood 1945: 146). Eventually, still more
complex models of atoms, involving nucleii, protons and quarks, would
develop. All of this meant that one element could be transformed into
another, by the emission of particles of different kinds, as happens in the process of radioactive
decay. Furthermore, electrons are constantly moving
in a rhythmical fashion. The implication of this is that every element is what
it is not by simply having a fixed constitution but through a process of
movement that takes place over time. So time and motion are not external
conditions that impose themselves on matter, they are intrinsic to the
existence of matter. No substance can be itself within an instant moment;
time is constitutive of material being, and matter is kinetic rather than
inert. In this respect, contemporary physics provides an interesting parallel
with Heidegger’s (1962) account of human existence. For Heidegger, our
Being is time, for we are what we are by having a past that hands possibilities
for existence down to us, by being alongside others in a present, and by
projecting our possibilities and aspirations into the future. We, too, cannot
be understood as existing in the moment, but only as ‘stretched’ across time.
Philosophy, too, has made efforts to question the character of materiality.
One area in which the issue has proved critical has been in feminist thought,
where a rejoinder to the argument that ‘biology is destiny’ has been found in
questioning the fixity and universality of human physicality (Gatens 1996:
61). Judith Butler has pointed to the way that the distinction between sex
and gender has actually Philosophy, too, has made efforts to question the character of materiality.
One area in which the issue has proved critical has been in feminist thought,
where a rejoinder to the argument that ‘biology is destiny’ has been found in
questioning the fixity and universality of human physicality (Gatens 1996:
61). Judith Butler has pointed to the way that the distinction between sex
and gender has actually reinforced a belief in biological determination. For
while it is readily accepted that gender roles are culturally variable and
socially constructed, it is nonetheless implied that sexual difference is the
point of departure for any such construction. Sexual anatomy is understood
to be foundational, and Butler considers that this is because of a propensity
to identify the body with matter, and to see matter as irreducible. Materiality
is thus exempt from any cultural construction, and is the platform
upon which constructions are built (Butler 1993: 28). Materiality and
constructedness are thus opposed to one another. But if the production of
gender identities takes place in discourse, this would require materiality to
exist prior to language. And yet, our supposed knowledge of the irreducibility
of matter is itself always constructed in language. The medical science
that tells us what human bodies are like is itself a discourse, created under
particular historical and cultural conditions. Butler suggests that we need to
address the discursive practices by which matter is awarded its primordial,
extra-linguistic status, and which turn the biological determination of sex
into something ontological. These, she suggests, will always be bound up
with power (ibid.: 29). Power forms a matrix within which materiality
becomes intelligible.
Importantly, Butler is not claiming that material things are ‘made out of
discourse’. This is not some form of idealism that gives ideas and language
priority over matter. What she argues is that our knowledge of things is
always discursively articulated, and that this articulation is always finite. It
may well be that bodies and other entities have a physical existence that
lies outside of human knowledge: but we cannot know them except as
knowledge. This knowledge is created in our engagement with the world, through which things
‘materialise’ and become intelligible. Language can
never simply refer to a materiality that we already understand. On the contrary,
language is the condition under which materiality can be said to appear
(ibid.: 31).
Now, while Butler’s critique of the modern Western understanding of
matter is cogent and helpful it arguably has the drawback of being anthropocentric.
Butler argues that it is in the citation and performance of gender
norms that the human body secures its recognition as something that
is culturally intelligible. Referring back to Freud, she suggests that the
embodied human subject is formed in relation to the psychical body image.
But as Cheah (1996: 113) points out, this model of incarnation simply has
the effect of making human bodies cultural, while maintaining the division
between culture and nature. The line is redrawn, but non-human matter
remains inert and immutable. This is because for Butler the Freudian body
image takes on the role of the Aristotelian form, and it is this that gives the
body its dynamism. We could argue that what would be more useful is a
framework which recognises that materialisation is always a dynamic process.
From substance to the event of disclosure
The ‘substance ontology’ of Western modernity is metaphysical in that it
fails to distinguish between Being in general and the specific existence of
particular entities (the ‘being of beings’) (Young 2002: 26). As we have
seen, this is an error that goes back as far as Aristotle, although it has been
compounded by the Cartesian vision of material things as self-evident. If we
believe that objects are just ‘occurrent’, lying around in the world, we will
fail to ask what Heidegger considers to be the most fundamental of all
questions, ‘why are there beings at all instead of just nothing?’ (2001: 1). In
very much the same way as we have seen in Butler’s account of the materiality
of the body, it is possible to accept that material things have a ‘raw’ physical
existence without affording this primary significance within a human world.
For what is more important is how things come to be part of a structure of
intelligibility that is constituted by, but not controlled by, human beings.
If there were no human beings, there would still be mountains, and streams,
and rocks, and trees. But they would not exist as mountains, as streams, as
rocks, and as trees, for there would be no one to recognise them as such. And
they would not exist in relation to one another, within a structure that we
call a ‘world’. So what a substance ontology misses out is the phenomenon of
disclosure, by which things ‘announce themselves’, and show up as intelligible
within a world (as addressed in Chapter 8). This involves a great deal
more than our simply ‘seeing’ them. For disclosure is a horizonal phenomenon.
Things show up in the way that they do, and take the particular place
that they do in a world, under conditions that are finite. The ways in which
things present themselves are neither eternal nor universal.