The Economy of Affordances

By Joy Zhu

The New Normal think-tank student, activist, and philosopher Joy Zhu reinterprets the concept of affordance in terms of the Chinese concept of yuanfen, which contains critical moments that turn two mutual but mismatched needs into one that is matching, creating an immanent, productive relation of cooperative subsistence. Based on this interpretation, Joy reveals a new concept of efficiency, different from the naturalistic one, demonstrating it through the preservation of outdated technologies in Siberia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strelka Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9785907163102

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The Economy of Affordances

Joy Zhu

Introduction: Affordance As An Anti-Naturalist Ontology

In my essay, I would like to unify our perception of spatiality and temporality under the theorisation of yuanfen, a concept that I will develop from the notion of affordance. Affordance is the shifting perception of our environment according to our needs and desires. First, I will show how affordance generates a notion of time that corresponds to yuanfen, a Chinese temporal concept that is juxtaposed against standardised, technological time. Unlike standardized time, yuanfen are critical moments that turn two mutual but mismatched needs into one that is matching, creating an immanent, productive relation of cooperative subsistence. Then, I will show how modernist architects, in their attempt to design affordance, rob the criticality that brings subjects into immanence. Finally, I will suggest how affordance gives rise to a novel notion of efficiency that differs from the naturalist notion of efficiency, by demonstrating why outdated technology persists in Siberia.

In our world of technological acceleration, capital is not only the extraction of surplus value, but also the exportation of a technological, temporal system that has become a technocratic tool of capture. The development of data schemes, ontologies, and protocols have brought objects and users closer together through increased synchronisation and speeds of transmission, shortening the perceived temporal and geographical distance between each receiving or transmitting element in the system, condensing the world into synchronised totalities.¹ Therefore, I will challenge globally synchronised clock time, the privileged axis along which subjectivities and power relations are articulated. The definition of sustainability, for instance, relies on a definition of time. I will attempt to restructure ontology along the lines of affordance⁠—a non-technical but productive relation of mutual capture. What I mean by ontology comes from Descola’s four ontologies of relating to others, especially non-humans, in terms of the similarity and difference of interiority and physicality. These four categories are: totemism, analogism, naturalism, and animism. For instance, in naturalism, non-human and human have dissimilar interiority and similar physicality⁠—all beings are made out of atoms, but we cannot relate to animals psychologically. In animistic communities, beings have similar interiority, but dissimilar physicality⁠—non-human and human can relate to each other, but their bodies are substantially different.² It is, however, not my purpose here to expound on how these ontologies inscribe nature in different ways. I would also like to distance myself from Yuk Hui’s The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics, which takes part in the tradition of the Heideggerian critique of modernity. Yuk Hui attempts to sidestep the Heideggerian ontology of naturalist Western technology through articulating the technical relations in Descola’s non-naturalist ontologies, such as how Chinese landscape painting expresses the technical relation between man and heaven in Daoist philosophy (天人合一), or how Pao Ding’s use of his knife in dissecting his cow (庖丁解牛) manifests a perfect understanding of Dao. However, I am doubtful of how productive that is. Instead of resisting the naturalist ontology, I wish to work within it and reinscribe a non-naturalist, non-technological temporal relation within the naturalist ontology⁠⁠—yuanfen (緣分)⁠⁠—as a way of reintroducing immanence to the naturalist ontology, a term I extend and develop from the notion of affordance. As I will introduce in my essay, yuanfen is a compound word composed of yuan and fen. While yuan means the coming together of two people from different worlds, fen is the critical event that draws them together. Together, yuanfen is as a mutual, mismatching need that becomes mutual at a critical event. In danger, the subjectivities of both parties become erased, leading them to enter an immanent relationship of cooperative subsistence, of mutual need. The critical moment of fen stands in contrast to standardised time. Despite it being objective, it is arbitrarily imposed on living beings. Extending the discussion