Onto-Phenomenological Intersectionality, Assemblage, and Acceptance in Jasbir K. Puar’s ‘I Would Rather be a Cyborg Than a Goddess’ (Pseudo-Philosophy)

Intro to the Role of Entity/Identity in Dialectical Logic (Originally written for ‘Queer Ideas’, Spring 2023, Arcadia University)

3/17/2023 (Substantial Revision 8/14/2024), 3504 words

By John Corry 

Onto-Phenomenological Intersectionality, Assemblage, and ‘Acceptance’ in Jasbir K. Puar’s ‘I Would Rather be a Cyborg Than a Goddess’

ABSTRACT: Jasbir Puar’s ‘assemblage’ concept extends Kimberle Crenshaw’s ‘intersectionality’ for three-dimensional application. As the amalgamation of two-dimensional categories, ‘intersectional’ identity concentrates primordial content for subconscious apperception. On the other hand, ‘assembling’ identity, as the catapult of these two-dimensional categories into the ‘uncertainty’ of ‘conscious’ apperception, translates the primordial content into intellectual (mindful, psychical, etc.) form. This is shown through Puar’s emphasis of the ‘subject/object’ and ‘individual/collective’ dichotomies. Finally, ‘intersectionality/assemblage’ as the potentially trans-dimensional ‘acceptance’ of the paradoxical nature of ‘identical’ ontology raises the prospect of ‘power’ as a three-dimensionally phenomenal centrifugal force and hindrance for ‘conscious’ evolution.

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“Identification is a process; identity is an encounter, an event, an accident, in fact,” writes Jasbir K. Puar in ‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’[1]– or, for the more dialectical approach[2], “concepts do not prescribe relations, nor do they exist prior to them; rather, relations of force, connection, resonance, and patterning give rise to concepts.[3]” Via Kimberle Crenshaw’s ‘intersectionality’ framework[4], these ‘concepts’ differentiate in relation to ‘conscious’ phenomena through a sociological anti-aesthetic in favor of practical politics: the judgment of concepts is dependent upon political hierarchies and their subconscious functions. Through the purely intersectional lens, these conceptual relations ‘represent’ identity as ontologically diminutive[5]. “Much like the language of diversity, the language of intersectionality, its very invocation, it seems, largely substitutes for intersectional analysis itself.[6]” Conceptual ‘representation’ alone does not suffice for the wide array of phenomenal variety between intersecting identities, be it in politics or elsewhere.

Yet ‘representation’ is not the only form of axiomatic translation any concept may take. Subsequently, Puar’s solution to the problem of the inevitable ontological redux of categorized representation to pure phenomenal (observed) existence is the addendum of the more ontological ‘assemblage’ to the ‘intersectional’ phenomenon. “Assemblages do not privilege bodies as human, nor as residing as within a human animal/ nonhuman animal binary.[7]” Via this process, Puar argues for the necessity of understanding intersecting identities not only as the categorical imperative concerning how societies should be acclimating different types of people or thinking, but as how people ‘interact’ as ontologies and phenomenal relations and relationships ‘in-themselves’, as well as ‘entities/identities’ for subconscious placement in the hierarchy of dialectical complexity[8].

The goal of the present paper is to see whether there is any indication in Puar’s thinking for such a context, as presented in ‘I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess’, and to subsequently expand upon this interest, in the context of intersectional/assemblage theory at large. Such starts with a short dialectical analysis of Puar’s thinking, with an emphasis on ‘truth’ and the Other in the context of Crenshawan grids and Heideggerian ‘entity/identity’, and then moves into an exploration of how this dialectical process may affect more complex ontologies such as phenomenal subject/object and individual/collective post-three spatial/temporal ‘dimensions’. It concludes with the prospect of contextualizing these rather abstract notions into a further addendum to Puar’s assemblage which I’ve been tentatively calling ‘acceptance’ (although ‘onto-phenomenal acceptance’ would be the more technical term[9]), and how this concept may be applied not only to assemblage and intersectionality, but also to the modern state of the world circa 2023.

 Puar’s Dialectic

The dialectical process through which Puar arrives at the proposition of the necessity for assemblage in intersectional theory starts with the idea that nothing happens in reality without relationships; relationships are the only ‘real’ truth a consciousness is capable of perceiving[10]. Attempting to utilize intersectionality alone, in terms of its impact upon ‘consciousness’[11] and void of any notion of ‘assemblage’, is tantamount to ignoring this foundational aspect of ‘reality’ or ‘truth’. “Intersectional identities are the byproducts of attempts to still and quell the perpetual motion of assemblages, to capture and reduce them, to harness their threatening mobility.[12]” In other words: Puar’s ‘assembled identities’ involve an inherently, phenomenally ‘relational’ component, in addition to their purely intersectional aspects.

In this sense, ‘intersectional’ identity finds it footing in reality at the cost of its ontical juxtaposition against the Heideggerian notion of ‘entity’. “Even pre-phenomenological experience shows that in an entity which is supposedly a Thing, there is something that will not become fully intelligible through Thinghood alone.[13]”. Concepts (nor their relations with other, even indirectly related, concepts; but such is a topic for another paper) do not exist in ‘reality’ on their own, but are contextualized by some ontologically fundamental (for-Being, ‘in-itself’), phenomenal ‘relationship’ with another concept with which it shares its most foundational dialectical focus/context– concepts need dialectical juxtaposition with opposing concepts for their very epistemologico-conscious possibility.

Unfortunately, we do not have the time, nor the space, to delve into the Hegelian language on this topic, nor the more dialectico-technical reasons for why this particular juxtaposition (of identity as against entity) may the closest to ‘truth’. In ‘I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess’, this connection is wrought through an analysis of intersectionality as inevitably working towards the production of an ‘Other’[14]. Here, the notion of an Other, insufficiently acclimated to the reality of intersecting relationships, lessens the degree to which the entities are themselves defined (as a ‘woman of color’, or ‘jazz fanatic’, for examples), for sake of applying them to a strictly ‘in-action’ World where thought and intellect are but notions to advance events in time[15]. As Puar succinctly puts it, “the complexity of process is continually mistaken for a resultant product.[16]”

In other words (and this is counterintuitive– but no one has ever said that dialectics is a strictly statistical science): by emphasizing identities as concepts void of onto-phenomenal relations, the ‘entity’ as its categorical opposite (and so the conscious-epistemological opportunity for ‘identity’ as a whole [or: that which differentiates the ‘identity’ as distinct from a person’s simple ‘individuality’ or ‘personality’, for example]), is subconsciously placed on a dialectical pedestal, rendering it inopportune for counterargument. To make up for this, Puar proposes assemblage: the admixture of intersecting identities for the evolution of their phenomenal complexities[17].

Logical ‘Intersectionality’

Puar’s movement into a more intellecto-practical, and so a more direct line towards a more fully fleshed ‘assemblage’ theory, starts with the paths through which these identities ontologically ‘intersect’, as presented through the metaphor of the ‘grid’. This generally runs as follows: just as cars and trucks ‘intersect’ on the roadways, identities ‘intersect’ through their epistemological placements and onto-evolutionary paths in collective society.

In Puar, however, this is only half the story, for as much as the cars and the trucks on the roadways intersect and interact when they pass by one another or find themselves sitting in traffic for days on end, they also exist, on the road, as constantly in flux relative to everything else not only on that road, but within the entire roadway system as a whole. Figuring the ‘roadway’ as a stably ‘one-dimensional’ space/time, ‘entities’ and ‘identities’ exist in-themselves and may only act in their own interest. However, by figuring the roadway as ‘three-dimensional’, these entities and identities exist relative both to ‘themselves’ (in terms of their strictly onto-phenomenal dialectics), and to one another.

Relations between ‘dimensional’ ways of thinking are left for another essay. The point for now is that this ‘dialectical’ relationship of Puar’s assemblage adds another layer to Crenshaw’s intersectionality by raising the level of dialectical ‘complexity’ to one more in line with three-dimensional (‘conscious’) experience. In other words: where intersectionality may describe a ‘subconscious’ phenomenon, in that such never really reaches the level of consciousness nor sinks into pure unconsciousness shared equally with the fully ‘objective’[18], assemblage allows for a ‘conscious’ application: by ontologically layering one’s identity, rather than solely phenomenally categorizing it, one discovers how it interacts with the World: as simultaneously objective and subjective.

Ontological ‘Assemblage’

But simultaneous projection is generally outside the purview of any legitimate science. Therefore, an alternative may be preferable. Within the process of the movement from a ‘one-dimensional’ to a ‘two-dimensional’ space/time (or beyond), ‘identity’, where represented as ‘intersecting’ alone, ignores the epistemologico-exponential two-dimensional facet underpinning modern, three-dimensional ‘reality’ for conscious apperception, and so subsequently rescinds into one-dimensional thinking[19]. “Grids happen… at a moment… where one is tempted to be swept away by the endless affirmative becomings of movement, flux and potential, as opposed to being pinned down by the retroactive positioning of identity.[20]” Through the advent of ‘events in time’, Puar extends the notion of an intersectional/assembled ‘entity/identity’ evolution ‘through-dimension’. “The event is not defined as a discrete act or series of actions or activities, but rather the ‘folding of dimensions of time into each other.’[21]” Identity/entity in dimensions of space/time are not mere concepts for epistemological progress, but ‘events’ as conscious/subconscious ontico-phenomena as well[22].

Such places entity/identity in close dialectical proximity (i.e. potential reciprocal conceptual ‘relationship’) to another juxtaposition potentially influential for the formation of ‘consciousness’– and so, by extension, the evolution of epistemological concepts such as intersectionality or assemblage existing under any ‘context/focus’– through the concept of a two-dimensional ‘becoming’, that other juxtaposition being that of subject/object. Figuring entity/identity closer in ‘time/space’ to a type of ontological disposition (or an ‘onto-phenomenal complication’), combined with subject/object as a phenomenological inevitability in that the former accentuates the ontological function of consciousness and the latter the phenomeno-epistemological placement of ‘reality’ or ‘truth’, this two-dimensional ‘becoming’ (as the conflux of space/time in two exponentially compounded onto-dimensions; spatial/temporal ‘dimension’ as experienced by potentially trans-dimensional ontologies), renders the displacement as merely another dialectical ‘relation’ from which the consciousness may make sense of phenomenal ‘reality’ or ‘truth’, in all its infinite/obscure elasticity and/or ontological variety.

In other words, because dialectical relationships depend on a potentially infinite myriad of primordial (material, physical) and intellectual (mindful, psychical) factors, the juxtaposition of intersectional and assembling identity takes the place of its opposing function (entity) solely for the sake of the hierarchy of the conceptually complex. Reality is not ‘true’ without intersecting/assembling ‘identity’ at the cost of its objective component. Puar’s adage of consistent ‘becoming’ fortifies the ‘relationship’, but the intersectional categorical imperative still must make a distinction between object and subject, ‘entity’ and ‘identity’. Assemblage accomplishes the mitigation of this for purely intellectual phenomena, where intersectionality bridges the gap in the purely material, but it still holds to the two-to-three-dimensional representation of the subject/object at its ontological core.

Onto-Phenomenological ‘Acceptance’

This raises a potential extension of Puar. What is this ‘reality’, or ‘truth’, in the constantly shifting focus/context that is onto-evolving dimension?[23] In ‘I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess’, Puar points towards structures of power[24]. Utilizing the work Michel Foucault, ‘power’ act as the primary focus/context underneath which ontologies may ‘intersect’ and assemble. While this certainly holds in a strictly stable (or: void of any potential for post-three-dimensional onto-phenomenal transcendence) three-dimensional universe in which the spatial/temporal individual/collective is the source of all potential dimensional onto-phenomenal transcendence (i.e. the evolution of consciousness from one dimension into one more complex)[25], upholding power as the only teleological structure through which epistemological experience takes place ignores the inherent uncertainty of evolving ontologies ‘through-dimension’. For an ‘identity’, in itself, intersectionality and assemblage provide important avenues towards understanding. But, as juxtaposed against its closest opposite, ‘entity’, a clarifying factor is necessary.

In other words: presupposing ‘power’ as the most important ontological conflux for conscious evolution in the world is going to give one a World in which power is the most important ontological conflux for conscious evolution. But what happens once we consider dialectical placements of subject/object or individual/collective as ‘uncertain’? As logical/dialectical, rather than merely ‘logical’ or ‘dialectical’ alone? Further, placing the inevitability of ‘becoming’, rather than the inescapability of the power structures it implies, at the heart of potentially trans-three-dimensional experience, how may the concept of conscious/subconscious ‘power’ itself evolve ‘in-reality’, or for/from ‘truth’? And how may conscious ontologies account for this complication?

Borrowing from Puar’s evolution of assemblage-as-evolved-from-intersectionality, we may call this transgression a sort of onto-phenomenal ‘acceptance’, in that the recognition of the uncertainty of ‘truth’ or dimensionally expanding ‘reality’ is not something over which any consciousness may hold any teleological, or epistemologically ‘in-action’, sway. To clarify: this ‘onto-phenomenal’ acceptance is not the type of politico-acceptance of people’s identities/ entities which may not align with one’s own, nor the mere necessity for consciousness to accept certain things that it simply cannot change, as important as those aspects may be. ‘Acceptance’, in this case, while applicable in the primordial sense, means aggrandizement of the ‘entity/identity’ paradox inherent in assemblage and intersectional theory: that one is simultaneously an object for material presentation and the subject of both creation and pointed judgment. Potentially trans-dimensional conscious existence is predicated by an understanding ‘in-reality’, or for/from ‘truth’, as equally inherently ‘certain’ as it is ‘uncertain’. And one’s ‘identity/entity’ distinction relies on this paradox. ‘Acceptance’ of the paradox is half the game, with the other half lying in accepting the multitude of ‘intersectional’ and assembling factors contributing to the consternation between the ‘entity/identity’ function in conscious apperception.

However, the issue of a dialectically inevitable ‘epistemic power’ remains unresolved. Power, as all concepts, evolves ‘through-dimension’, as well as for-itself and in relation to other concepts. So how does this evolution affect onto-evolving, or epistemologico-evolving, identities/entities? Moreover, what may we potentially juxtapose against ‘power’ for its fundamental dialectical composition? This could nix the ‘acceptance’ concept altogether and offer recourse for the complexity of ontological assemblage or intersectionality as a foundational ‘consciousness’. Such is not a question that has been addressed in the present paper, nor in Puar’s ‘I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess’, or at least not directly. Yet it remains integral to the dialectic since Crenshaw. Moreover, the political aspects of this question, such as how to acclimate ‘accepting’ identities in a society which places the process of such ‘acceptance’ in such arguably difficult or unjustifiably judgmental terms, likely rests, at least partly, on how we understand the evolution of power or willed-survival in evolving onto-dimensions[26].

Conclusion

As a three-dimensional appendage to the two-dimensional/categorical intersectionality, ‘assemblage’ offers recourse in a complicated field: that of configuring the ‘conscious’ individual in the context of a subconscious ‘collective’[27]. Entity and identity operate on different levels of complexity in two vs three dimensions, and their ‘conscious’ activations rely on a number of infinitely progressing dialectical placements. “Would I rather be a cyborg than a goddess?” Puar asks at the end of ‘I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess’[28]. Her answer teases the difference between a ‘teleological technological determinism–culture’ and nature. The dialectical differences between entity and identity, ‘culture’ and ‘nature’, and ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ may be, for the most part, ‘abstract’ in this ‘world’, but their effects upon how people interact in reality, how they ‘understand’ ‘themselves’, Others, and the World itself, continue to find themselves heard, both in ‘action’ and in thought, even if only subconsciously.

Bibliography:

Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1241–99. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039. Accessed 7 Aug. 2024.

Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. by John Macquarrie, and Edward Robinson. Malden, MA. Blackwell.

Jung, Carl. 1959. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Trans. by R.F.C. Hull. Second Edition, 1978. Bollingen Series XX. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ, USA.

Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the virtual: Affect, movement, sensation. Durham: Duke University Press.

Puar, Jasbir K. 2012. ‘“I Would Rather Be A Cyborg Than A Goddess’: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory.” PhiloSOPHIA, 2(1): 49-66.

Puar, Jasbir K. 2007. Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press.

Footnotes:

[1] Puar 2012, pp. 59.

[2] ‘Dialectics’ via the Greeks: essentially the ‘back-and-forth’ of thinking in the mind necessary to arrive at new concepts or understanding of concepts. In the modern day, this has been mostly relegated to the fields of either psychology or axiomatic logic (the translation of logical propositions into symbols). However, where the former relies on a specific individual outcome (the cure or maintenance of an illness), the ignores the inevitability of ‘uncertainty’ in any ‘conscious’ paradigm. In ‘conscious’ reality (or ‘three-dimensional’ in material terms), logical uncertainty is inevitable (see Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty’ principle, Gödel’s ‘incompleteness’ theorem, the concept ‘death’, etc.), yet, for the ‘subconsciousness’, it is either the name of the game or is meaningless. The ‘subconscious’ (two-dimensional) can’t distinguish between ‘certainty’ and ‘uncertainty’, it only ‘knows’ what it observes or experiences (indirectly). Such is the study of axiomatic logic. Modern dialectics (post-Hegel) attempts to bridge this inequality by accounting for this ‘certain/uncertain’ paradox. Subsequently it may become difficult to denote colloquially, so, in other words: apologies for how absurd much of this is likely coming off).

[3] Ibid., pp. 57.

[4] Crenshaw.

[5] *Note that italics often denote a greater relative conceptual complexity than ‘quotes’ (relative simplicity) or Capitals (relative subconsciously hierarchical).

[6] Puar 2012, pp. 53.

[7] Ibid., pp. 57.

[8] In other words:  the ‘subconscious’ of the collective is dependent on conceptual relations or axiomatic syzygies (paired opposites), just as much as the concepts themselves, for translation into ‘conscious’ phenomena, in this case, the ‘entity/identity’ of the person severing as the center of that process.

[9] This ‘onto-phenomenology’ is a general theory on the interplay between the ‘consciousness’ concept and the advent of modern computer technology. It involves the combination of ontology and phenomenology only in the two-dimensional space of interactive computer technology (like in virtual reality or the internet of things). I hope to have an essay more specifically on this topic in the near future, and the present essay may be seen as a very brief, albeit indirect, introduction.

[10] Puar 2012, pp. 59.

[11] Ibid., pp. 55. More technically consciousness/subconsciousness; the difference between ontological relations and relationships within any particular dialectical logic generally likely depends on a purely psychological or psychical aspect.

[12] Puar 2007, pp. 213.

[13] Heidegger pp. 132.

[14] Puar 2012, pp. 52.

[15] Ibid., pp. 60. This is in opposition to a thing ‘in-time’; ‘in-action’ as the conflux between ‘event’ itself, and its conscious recognition a-posteriori (or as a two-dimensional phenomenon), and ‘in-time’ as the subconscious necessity of the three-dimensional event.

[16] Ibid., pp. 50.

[17] ‘Complexities’ as in what differentiates them from other concepts or ontologies. An ‘ontology’, in the plural sense, is the totality of a singular ontic (infinitely potentially self-referential) ‘being’ (existence). Complex concepts contribute to this totality relationally (procedurally, relatively, uncertainly) where ‘simple’ concepts do so more directly or phenomenally (as observed, experienced, ‘certainly’, etc.).

[18] Jung pp. 193.

[19] ‘Dimension’, in this case, is meant in both the spatial/temporal and ‘conscious/unconscious’ iterations: the former as material reality and the latter ‘individual/collective’ perception or the subjective/objective World.

[20] Ibid., pp. 49.

[21] Massumi 2002, pp. 15.

[22] Puar 2012, pp. 59-61.

[23] ‘Reality’ vs. ‘truth’: the former would involve a type of phenomenal complacency for consciousness, where the latter may represent something closer in dialectical proximity to pure ‘infinity/obscurity’ (that juxtaposition being the most complex ontology currently available for three-dimensional conscious apperception). I mention this only to call attention to the need for further discourse regarding how ontologies form and interact with other ontologies (or ‘onto-proofs’). These are necessitated through the three-to-two-dimensional interplay provided via computer technology and is the subject of a paper (or a slew of papers) I’m currently working out.

[24] Ibid., pp. 62.

[25] This is of course a bit loaded. I don’t here mean the type of ‘transcendence’ in the Kantian or mystical sense, but the mere transition from one type of dimensional thinking to another, or from simpler iterations of ‘consciousness’ to those more complex. Once again, I hope to have more on this in the near future.

[26] This is an allusion to what I’ve been calling ‘conspiratorial power’. Via Descartes, ‘consciousness’ comes about, at least in three dimensions, with the individual capability to ‘doubt’ that consciousness or its tangible validity. The ‘collective’, being the closest dialectical opposite to the ‘individual’, must come to ‘know’ its consciousness in a similar way. However, the collective is not ‘conscious’ in the same way the individual is (see next FN). To ‘know’ it exists, the collective therefore produces conspiracies in the same way the individual doubts, only ‘subconsciously’, where the latter requires a decision. ‘Conspiratorial power’ would denote how this operates subconsciously and is derived from a number of additional influences, namely Nietzsche’s will-to-power, Karl Popper’s extension of the founding the Americans’ premonition that ‘consciousness’ inevitably ‘deifies’ its conscious surroundings, and the Foucauldian disciplinary apparatus via Discipline and Punish. This is a fairly complicated process and is subject for another paper. (For more see Lee Basham’s ‘Joining the Conspiracy’ and ‘Living With the Conspiracy’, Federalist Nos. 27, 37, 45 and 49, and Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies.)

[27] Because the collective cannot make ‘conscious’ decisions, but instead appears as the amalgamation of the ‘conscious’ decisions made by each of its comprising individuals, the collective is ‘subconscious’– at best, it can only subconsciously appear to represent the consciousness of individuals.

[28] Puar 2012, pp. 63.