another passage from Whitehead on relations

In the course of his latest response to Vitale, Levi CITES A NUMBER OF PASSAGES PROVING THE RELATIONISM OF WHITEHEAD. And “relationism” is not just a word, it’s a definite theory that differs from the OOO theory (and it’s Latour’s theory too, not just Whitehead’s).

I just wanted to add one other very relevant passage from Process and Reality that Levi didn’t cite, but which I cited in Claremont. It comes from pages 58-59:

“[John] Locke misses one essential doctrine, namely, that the doctrine of internal relations makes it impossible to attribute ‘change’ to any actual entity. Every actual entity is what it is, and is with its definite status in the universe, determined by its internal relations to other actual entities.”

Determined by its internal relations to other actual entities. It couldn’t be any clearer than that, and it is impossible to imagine a sentence more diametrically opposed to the spirit (or letter) of OOO.

One of the new things that happened in Claremont, it seemed to me, was that Shaviro distanced himself from this strict doctrine of internal relations, for what I believe may have been the first time. (Actually, he did this in his interesting blog post a few days ahead of the event.)

What Shaviro did instead was shift his objection so that he was no longer opposing the central OOO view that objects are devoid of all internal relations (the “relations are external to their terms” point that we do share with Deleuze). Instead, he was simply insisting that objects cannot be freed of all external relations. Objects must at all times be involved in some relation or other.

Now you might ask: “Who on earth thinks objects can exist in isolation from all external as well as internal relations?” The answer is: I myself do. That’s my concept of “dormant objects,” and thus Shaviro is not attacking a straw man may by attacking objects devoid of all external relations.

You can be an OOO theorist without believing in dormant objects. I’m pushed towards defending them by real theoretical considerations, but would hardly feel like shunning anyone who felt otherwise. There’s plenty of room in the OOO tent for Shaviro’s insistence that external relations can never be absent.