Yates presents a range of perspectives on the 1597 event he’s re-considering and re-telling. What is the orange’s perspective? Does agentive drift seem to have much in common with Bennett’s approach, or do you see meaningful differences between the two?
ENGL 365 | Medieval Object Ecologies
Dr. Myra Seaman | Fall 2014
An orange that was used in this story, according to Yates, “from the point of view of an orange, is an orange fallen on stony ground – an orange waylaid as it makes its way from Asia to the Americas and beyond.” It is an object that was taken from its original purpose- to grow another Orange tree- into other purposes such as carrying messages, nourishing human bodies, creating connections, orchestrating an escape, and ultimately converting a Protestant to Catholicism. While Yates’ exploration of “agentive drift” does share similarities with Bennett’s concept of “thing power” (for example, the orange’s call to the Butler to purchase and store it), agentive drift seems to focus more on the purposes of objects and how they change. I didn’t necessarily see a conflict between the two theories, more of a difference in focus.
From the perspective of the orange “the oranges of the Tower are oranges whose reproductive function transfers from the world of plant biology to the world of human belief” (57). Yates encourages those doubting this “quasi-Eucharistic transubstantiation” to “think again” (57). Yet I can’t help but feel that the orange would not consider itself to be the father of the gaoler’s faith. Really, this kind of reading on perspective simply shifts the previous human focus to a fruit focus, with no change in distribution whatsoever.
I think Bennett’s notion of assemblages would be much more useful (and accurate) in describing the curious events that took place in the tower, with each actant playing a part only he/she/it could play. While I think Yates intends for his version of agency to be seen as blurry, a sort of smearing in the lens of focus, for me, it is undone with his small paragraph on the orange’s perspective.
I really agree with Kaleb’s description here of the orange’s perspective. It does change in terms of what the orange ends up doing, in comparison to what it would be doing naturally. In Yate’s analysis, the orange is not only a cleaning agent “to remove the stain” (48), but ink for secret, clandestine messages from the prisoner, allowing for his escape. I also agree with Kaleb’s understanding that Yates seems more focused on the transformation of the purpose of these objects, rather than their inherent “thing-power” as Bennett describes. I will further that thought in connecting Yates’ agentive drift with Bennett’s notion of assemblages. Yates notes that “what we have called ‘random’ or ‘contingent’ has all too frequently masked the presence of a host of non-human actors or entities in our midst” (57). Yates looks at how the agents (the non-human ones included) change in purpose, which then becomes an important part of the assemblages, which these specific agents (in new positions, which are adrift from their original purpose) are crucial to.
The orange’s perspective is something entirely complex brought on by Yates’ idea of agentive drift. While the orange originally had a purpose to it’s own, it transcends this by being subject to the environment around it. It’s originally described as an “orange in the tower of London, from the point of view of an orange, is an orange fallen on stony ground – an orange waylaid as it makes its way from Asia to the Americas and beyond,” but this is shown as not complex enough. What’s important to the POV of the orange is the differences gained through it’s journey; “by the random, swerving course of one man’s liking, the material characteristics of the orange are shifted into the world of social relations and discourse” (57).
Agentive Drift and Vibrant Materialism seem different but work at the same time. I agree with Kaleb’s idea of the shift of focus. The transformative properties definitely take center stage in Agentive Drift, but could the outcome of the orange could very well be attributed to that of an assemblage? It’s temporary put into this greater-than-an-orange perspective due to circumstance and the bouncing off of other objects that couldn’t be predetermined. Maybe there’s something there.