What’s Wrong With the Assemblage Theory?

Abstract

The paper examines Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage theory in order to show that two of its key concepts - flat ontology and the idea of emergence - are incompatible with each other. The philosophical context of assemblage theory is outlined with a brief consideration of different interpretations of Deleuze’s ideas and an examination of DeLanda’s reconstruction of Deleuze’s ontology, which served as the conceptual foundation for assemblage theory. The author then exposes key flaws in this reconstruction, in particular the conversion of the scientific ontology of dynamic systems theory into a univocal philosophical ontology and metaphysics of assemblages. When coupled with the universalization of relations of exteriority, this leads to numerous conceptual deficiencies ranging from infinite reductionist regress and mereological atomism to overlooking the relations of necessity between assemblages. The lack of such a relation is a key to evaluating assemblage theory. DeLanda interprets the concept of emergence as a product of exclusively exterior relations while ignoring interior (internal) relations. Consequently, he refuses to regard assemblages as ontologically dependent on each other. The existence of interior relations between parts of assemblages suggests that causal interactions between those parts precede assemblages with emergent properties not only, or not merely, as a matter of logic or chronology. They precede assemblages transcendentally as conditions of their possibility. This presupposes that there is ontological dependence between an assemblage and its elements, and this dependence itself presupposes a hierarchical structure in the world such that, for an assemblage to exist as a whole, its parts must also exist. This structure is incompatible with the main tenet of assemblage theory, which is the concept of flat ontology. In closing, the implications of the epistemological problems in assemblage theory are discussed, and a position that follows logically from solving these problems is considered. This position is the ontic structural realism of James Ladyman and Don Ross, and its main thrust is that mathematical structures are all that really exists.