Download Coming together in rotational motion

Coming together in rotational motion
An introduction to the presentation at the Kiertoliike 2016 event
Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
Basic physics teaches us that an object continues its motion unless it comes across obstacles.
Pragmatism also emphasises that a human is constantly acting and moving. Only when we come
across a problem do we stop and find a new direction for our movement. It is a mistake to think
that objects and people remain stationary and that movement or human action only begins when
someone takes action or something happens. Movement comes first. What does this revelation mean
regarding communal thinking?
For some reason, our everyday habits of talking about the actions of people–but also the habits
of psychologists and sociologists of examining togetherness–disregard the fundamentality of
movement. It is often said that "we are at a turning point" as if this could be a surprise, as if it
was somehow clearer or simpler not to turn, to change.
We often talk about community by almost unobservedly assuming that it is a stable, stationary
thing. As if we could know exactly what shape, size and type all the members of a community
are. At the same time, we are also prone to thinking that being a community means invariance. In
a rural community, everyone knows each other; in a religious community, everyone shares a
stable content of thinking. In a commonwealth, the borders of countries are clear, which enables
peace.
In this presentation, I will examine another way of perceiving the nature of togetherness. I will
use the writings of French philosophers Michel Serres and Bruno Latour as a basis to discuss
community as a collective whose existence means movement, active self-collection of a
community, rotational motion. It is not a stop or a break. Another important emphasis in the idea of
Serres and Latour is that any time people come together, there are also other factors involved;
different natural elements, technologies, even sceneries and spaces. We are always together
through an indirect connection. There are always more than two of us. Even when we are alone.
Perhaps the most important change produces by Serres and Latour to the traditional way of
thinking about a community is the notion that we do not actually know what a community is and what it
can comprise. Even a sociologist does not know what makes a community. That is why they must
study it. The fundamental motion of togetherness means that a community must be constantly
rounded up and that the elements taking part in it are diverse, manifold, and changing.
Togetherness is a problem, an open question, a factor constantly directing action, which makes it
an object of interest.
The fundamentality of movement leads to a few points. First, being stationary is relative; stability
only means movement which is slower than its environment instead of something absolute. The
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movement of a wall is slower than the movement of human bodies. The movement of a road is
slower than the movement of a car travelling on it. Second, if everything is moving, creating
movement is not difficult. Staying still, however, is an achievement. The stability of things is an
accomplishment. The stability of a religious community requires strict adherence to the way of
life, a rural community requires a vast amount of repeated, shared action and rituals, a
commonwealth requires constant diplomatic interaction.
If all existence is togetherness, no one can dance alone. Dancing means dancing with spaces,
objects, technologies, and natural elements. Always. However, to put this in a reverse perspective,
as all dance is communal, this means that there is nothing particularly interesting about the
communality of dancing. What is interesting is to discern to which particular togetherness people
are paying attention and which is decided to be left and stabilised in the background. What is
surprising? Which movement rotates forward?
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