Objects Make Happy

Taffy From the Objects Make Happy series

 (SA/2024) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

At the heart of Graham Harman's object-oriented philosophy is the notion of allure.

 

Allure, says Harman, is something that "exists in germinal form in all reality, including the inanimate sphere" [2] and is the key to all causation. 

 

Allure is the way that objects - which are fundamentally withdrawn  - signal to one another from across the void: "Allure is the presence of objects to each other in absent form." [3] 

 

I love that sentence and love this (rather ghostly) theory. 

 

We may never be able to know an object in itself (i.e., in the fullness of its reality), but we can still come into touch with them and they can still affect us in a variety of ways, not always positively or in a manner that is beneficial to us; I have written elsewhere about the malevolent aspect of objects and what Byung-Chul Han terms the villainy of things [click here]. 

 

But, more often than not, they make happy, which is why when I think of happiness I think of objects [4].  

 

 

II.

 

The feminist writer and critical theorist Sara Ahmed - author of The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) - has a fascinating take on happiness and objects in terms of affect theory. 

 

According to Ahmed, there is a sustained (and sticky) connection between our emotions and objects and it's important to realise that happiness, for example, "starts from somewhere other than the subject" [5]. 

 

In other words, to feel happy is to be randomly (but intimately) touched by something; it comes from outside; it's an inner state triggered by external objects (which may include other people, or cats, but which also includes plants, stars, and ideas). Ultimately, happiness is contingent, not essential [6].

 

Of course, as Ahmed points out, as we change over time - as our bodies age, for example - "the world around us will create different impressions" [7] and what makes happy one day may no longer be experienced as so delightful the next; Locke famously talks of the man who loves and then no longer loves grapes [8].

 

Having said that, some objects hold our affection and bring joy across an entire lifetime; I can't imagine a time when Taffy, pictured above, wouldn't make me feel happy. 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] This charming clay figure, about 9-inches in height, is one I inherited from my mother and whom she named Taffy (presumably because the hat reminded her of traditional Welsh dress). Originally, it contained a small candle which, when lit, illuminated the eyes and mouth in the darkness. It made her happy and it makes me happy. 

      Of course, some will suggest that it's because the object belonged to my mother and reminds me of her that this is why it makes happy. However, whilst this certainly adds to its affective value, I don't think that's the whole story.

 

[2] Graham Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things (Open Court, 2005), p. 244.  

 

[3] Ibid., p. 246.

 

[4] All too often, cultural theorists and philosophers like to investigate negative feelings such as shame, disgust, fear, hate, etc. But it's surely just as valid - and just as vital - to investigate more positive feelings, such as happiness. I agree with Nietzsche's counter-Christian teaching that ethical behaviour is the result of happiness (not vice versa) which is why it makes sense to surround oneself with the objects (be they beautiful or otherwise) that make happy.

 

[5] Sara Ahmed, 'Happy Objects', The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 29-51. The line quoted is on p. 29. 

 

[6] As Ahmed reminds us, "the etymology of 'happiness' relates precisely to the question of contingency: it is from the Middle English 'hap', suggesting chance". See 'Happy Objects', The Affect Theory Reader, p. 30. 

 

[7] Sara Ahmed, 'Happy Objects', The Affect Theory Reader, p. 31. 

 

[8] See John Locke, 'Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain', Chapter XX in Book II of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (dated 1690 but first pubished in 1689).