Things resist all relational designations humanity tries to impose on them.

Evidence

In 1948, the New York Times Magazine reprinted an existentialist spoof by Paul F. Jennings from the British weekly the Spectator, called ‘Thingness of Things’. It described a philosophy of ‘resistentialism’ propounded by one Pierre-Marie Ventre, dedicated to undersanding why things resist and frustrate human beings at every turn, as when they trip us up underfoot, or decline to be found when lost. Ventre’s slogan is ‘Les choses sont contre nous’ — ‘Things are against us’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 550 (#expands, via linked claim)

Here, however, we have a random collection of dead objects hanging together on the canvas like so many turnips, as shorn of their earlier life world as the pile of shoes left over from Auschwitz or the remainders and tokens of some incomprehensible and tragic fire in a packed dance hall. There is therefore in Warhol no way to complete the hermeneutic gesture and restore to these oddments that whole larger lived context of the dance hall or the ball, the world of jetset fashion or glamour magazines. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 54 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

But if it is true that the connection between a consciousness and life does not distort the nature of the “abstract moment of self-consciousness” which remains there, immersed, always capable of being discovered, is the case the same for objectivity? In other words, since we know that a consciousness is before being known, then is not a known consciousness wholly modified by the very fact that it is known? Is “to appear as an object for a consciousness” still “to be consciousness”? It is easy to reply to this question: the very being of self-consciousness is such that in its being, its being is in question; this means that it is pure interiority. It is perpetually a reference to a self which it has to be. Its being is defined by this: that it is this being in the mode of being what it is not and of not being what it is. Its being, therefore, is the radical exclusion of all objectivity. I am the one who can not be an object for myself, the one who can not even conceive for myself of existence in the form of an object (save on the plane of the reflective dissociation—but we have seen that reflection is the drama of the being who can not be an object for himself). This is not because of the lack of detachment or because of an intellectual prejudice or of a limit imposed on my knowledge, but because objectivity demands an explicit negation: the object is what I make myself not-be whereas I myself am what I make myself be. I pursue myself everywhere, I can not escape myself, I reapprehend myself from behind. Even if I could attempt to make myself an object, I would already be myself at the heart of that object which I am; and at the very center of that object I should have to be the subject who is looking at it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 694 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Resistentialism parodied existentialism as a doctrine that objects oppose humans — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 550; Political universals like nation and state resist reduction to their parts — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 731; Postmodern objects resist restoration to any prior lived context. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 54 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Resistentialism parodied existentialism as a doctrine that objects oppose humans #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 550
• Postmodern objects resist restoration to any prior lived context. #corroborates (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 54
• The for-itself radically excludes all objectivity by its own mode of being #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 694
• Political universals like nation and state resist reduction to their parts #exemplifies (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 731
• The enemy resists ontological definition despite asserting a threatening essence #qualifies (0.75) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 380