Responsible objects : how human-nonhuman relations reconfigure authority, responsibility, and activism

Abstract

This thesis is an exercise in reconceptualising and re-evaluating a set of familiar problems, or as I argue complex objects, involving authority, responsibility and activism. It does so through the lens of an object-oriented ontology framework, and through the analysis of the way in which the relationships between the human and the non-human can reconfigure our understanding of events and concepts associated with these. The chapters describe an entailed set of problems around a series of 'network objects': the internet community and the operation of a 'network authority' therein; the multinational corporation and questions of corporate responsibility when humans are nearly impossible to hold responsible when things go wrong; and the emerging trend of internet 'shaming' as a strategy for activism and the questions it raises about the responsible treatment of human beings. I conclude that the problem of finding a responsible object is indelibly tied to the contemporary circulation of responsibility, of responsibility being shifted and distributed across or amongst any number of objects. I describe the circulation of responsibility as a feature of a contemporary money ontology: the unspoken but evident belief that money is not just paramount, but in some way constitutive of reality itself, or at the very least, is treated as the best guarantor of what is truly 'real.' I conclude by proposing a speculative response rather than a solution to the problem of responsibility and the search for a responsible object.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English