Originally, the notion of polyagency pertained to the causative capabilities of materialities and intangibilities in more or less a humanocentric way, similar to Gell’s agency concept (Normark 2004a, 2004b). However, now I see it as a phase of becoming and the word agency here relates to something active. Poly means many, and both words together relate to the plurality of becomings that any actualized entity generates.
Polyagency begins in the intersection of two actualizations/entities that share a milieu, either with a human being or another materiality. This is not a dialectic relationship. What is virtually inside these actualizations/entities is not unimportant, but the actualizations can be aligned to connect and create a plane of coexistence. Polyagency is how these two actualizations transform. The becoming is how the encounter between entities releases them from their actualizations, objects, entities, systems, series or organisms. In this process, the whole is transformed (Grosz 1995:134).
The short version is that polyagency is a collective term for intensive processes between actualized entities whose virtualities generate a multitude of transformations. Polyagency consists of four interrelated concepts that describe inseparable phases of becoming: the in-between, individuation, stratification and the time-shelter. These intensive processes also occur in the formation of actual entities where there is no human relation. Polyagency is used to explain how matter changes in encounters. These processes begin as a body without organs (plane of immanence) and ends in the actualized strata of matter and social interaction, a body with organs arranged as a rhizome.

The in-between
We cannot reach the virtual, and the actual is static. The only path to knowledge that comes close to the virtual lies in-between. Polyagency is the label for what is no longer virtual but still not fully actualized. It is the way two actualizations interact and change in relation to each other. This is the same process, since in order for an actualization to change, its old actualization needs to be undone. This undoing takes place in-between. Two actualizations (beings) become in their mutual milieu, in Plato’s chora, the receptacle, the in-between, which cannot be represented (Grosz 1995:84). It cannot be given any particular property, quality, identity or form, because if it is, it will cease to be intermediary and it will become an object (or a quality or a property). The in-between is what creates all qualities without having any qualities itself apart from bringing other actualizations into existence. The in-between is only designated by its function to bring into the world. It has neither existence nor becoming. It is the space without space, between being and becoming, the space that creates their separation and also makes them coexist and interchange (ibid:114-116). When the virtual is actualized into the entities our intellect identifies, this does not take place in the actualized entities themselves. The in-between is therefore neither internal nor external to the entities. It lacks a spatial location. When two actualizations (such as a causeway and a human) interact they change each other, but this does not primarily take place in either actualizations as these are static entities. It takes place in-between and affects them both as a whole. This becoming is only seen in the actualizations as soon as the change has been individuated and then it has ceased to be in-between. By then it is immanent to the entities.
Individuation
Matter is not homogenous. It consists of singularities that always diverge in their actualization. It is in the intensive where this flux and differentiation occurs. The intensive is non-metric as opposed to the metric structuration of the actual individuation that emerges. Multiplicities are meshed in a non-coded virtual continuum of an immanent and abstract space. The virtual multiplicities differentiate into the intensive and finally the actual emerges through various symmetry-breaking events of this intensive spatium (DeLanda 2002). An individuation is the result of such symmetry-breaking events. The individuation forms a difference between the virtual and its actualization. Individuality is never fully realized since this can only be done in relation to a completed reality and since vital properties are tendencies and not states, this never occurs (Pearson 1999:43, 94). Becoming is not something that happens to an actualization as this would mean that the actualization is given and substantial. The actualization can never be fully identical with itself. A being has no unity in its identity, the unity lies in its difference. Therefore, individuation is not a return to unity, it is passing out of step with its actualization (ibid:90-91). Otherwise it would be a static world where time has been erased.
Individuation is a process of self-organization. In its most simple form this is a endogenously-generated stable state where a state of minimal energy work as an attractor for a process. Deleuze argues that life individuates by closure to the external, such as membrane and skin which are territories that communicate between interior and exterior (which never are absolute) (Pearson 1999:210). However, this process is not just organic or human, it concerns everything, like soap-bubbles, pencils and engines. Individuation consists of processes that ex-centre and self-exceed. It is the self-organization of systems that are temporal and becoming more complicated with time and there is no way to predict their outcome (Grosz 1999:27; 2004:33). Individuation is also a matter of scale. A causeway is an actualization and so are the various stones in it. All materiality form boundaries or shelters in their interaction with other actualizations.
Stratification
Stratification of the non-coded intensive flows gives matter an individuated and coded form and locks intensities into redundant systems, and molecules into larger entities. A stratum consists of coded milieus and substances (Deleuze and Guattari 1988:502). There is a double articulation of the strata that create traits of expression and contents. This means that matter both turns into physical substance and function, and semiotic expressions (signs) (Deleuze and Guattari 1988:143). These strata (energetic, physico-chemical, organic, social) operate by coding and territorializing (Pearson 1999:152-153). I see territorializing as spreading on the behalf of other strata and actual multiplicities of the same stratum. It is a will to power. The other strata and actual multiplicities are deterritorialized and reterritorialized.
In the physico-chemical strata, the code for forms is located in three dimensions of the formed structure. In the organic strata, the code is a one-dimensional structure that creates the genetic code. This code interiorizes the intensive individuating factors and the organism evolves into a conservative entity. The interiorization creates an increasing complexity of the life forms. These are the centres of envelopment (DeLanda 2002:163-164). This complexity does not exist in non-organic matter, but technology and architecture can be seen as strata that through the human catalyst increase the complexity of matter that would have been impossible otherwise.
Once an individuation has taken place, it will hide the intensive processes and tendencies that brought it into existence. This also relates to polyagents formed by human activities. In this case, an important second individuation process takes place, which primarily is what the concept of polyagency focuses on. The formed strata or actual multiplicities can be destratified or deterritorialized, such as when limestone boulders are quarried out of the bedrock. These actual multiplicities are reterritorialized with other actual multiplicities (limestone marl, ceramic sherds and soil) to form a causeway in a second, third, fourth, etc. individuation process. This new individuated causeway is made up by various elements and forms a new territory. At the same time it works like a rhizome (which is a deterritorialized network). From the territory of the causeway, social territories, such as places where serial encounters occur on the causeway, may emerge (Fahlander 2003; Sartre 1991). Existing social territories may become deterritorialized, like when social units change their constellations when a causeway is constructed through a settlement. Thus, these territories are affected by the rhizomatic structure that is immanent to the causeway.
A new product, an indexical polyagent (index in Gell’s sense), has emerged with the capacity to interact with other individuations. The tendency of this individuation is open-ended. The various strata that once made up the different parts of the causeway still affects the appearance of the causeway (erosion from weathering and walking changes the physico-chemical strata of the causeway). However, to see a causeway as consisting of a conglomerate of separate strata limits the becomings of its various parts (limestone boulders and marl) since these exist for the causeway (they are organs for the body). A causeway can be seen as a body without organs that has become stratified, coded and territorialized. The stones in the sidewalls establish a form that is maintained until the stones are removed. The causeway can be seen as a new stratum or territory. However, this actualized entity is always open to its own undoing. It is always changing. The individuation processes when stones, ceramic sherds, soil and marl become a causeway, are hidden inside the new constellation. The causeway is therefore an individuation, a stratum and a territory that could not exist without the processes of territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization that do not have any absolute boundaries, since when in the construction process does the causeway become a causeway? Is it in the staking out of its sidewalls or is it when the space between the sidewalls is filled with material? When does it cease to be a causeway? Is it when half the blocks have been removed, or when there still are slightly detectable but scattered traces? The answer to these questions is that the causeway is a process of emergence, not an entity. All polyagents are spatialized moments of a durational process, they are actual. The actual is where we have fully formed entities and here the intensive is hidden in its differentiated geometric space (DeLanda 2002). This hiding forms time shelters.
Time shelters
We perceive the world as a difference of degree in which individuations/strata/ actualizations/entities have an internal and an external world. The inside of this actualized boundary/territory is in itself virtual, although it is a physical body that we interact with. This virtuality is hidden in relation to the virtualities of other polyagents, at least seen from our evolved habits. However, this boundary is not absolute. The causeway eroded and when its internal parts were shown, it needed to be repaired since the virtualities of the interior changed the actualized pattern on the surface. From the polyagentive view, it is in the encounter with other polyagents that polyagents change their actualizations. We may order actualizations as series or as groups, but we still see the series or groups as more disorganized than the actualizations that make up the series or groups. This belief in disorganization is what humans try to overcome in their daily lives and interactions with actualizations. Our intellect strives to find regularities among actualizations (Normark 2004a).
The individuation forms a frame or a territory that creates internal boundaries in the world that mediates between inner and outer. A boundary of an actualization is a way to deal with other individuations. Boundary crossing, like when a polyagent interacts with another polyagent, leads to a discontinuity in actualized relations, but not in their virtualities. These discontinuities provide shelters for spatial and temporally folded settings. The actualized time shelters are persistent forms of event-discontinuity (Wood 2000:226). The time shelter shelters an internal duration that remains united as an individuation, until it breaks up when it is actualized/deterritorialized in another direction. Thus, the interaction between actualizations forms time shelters immanent to the territory one actualization shelters. These time shelters are of different durations from our human perspective, but polyagency itself is not temporally or spatially located since it is not located in either individuation, but lies in-between. Causeways are such actualized time shelters that shelter various foldings of duration (the durations of limestone in bedrock, the quarried limestone blocks, marl and plaster). They have a semiautonomous spatio-temporal organization, which means that they consist of many simultaneous territories. Thus, a polyagent is a time shelter, but only in relation to its various phases of individuations.
Within a social world there is a constant boundary crossing between polyagents that deterritorializes and reterritorializes different strata. We use polyagents and they shape our consciousness and knowledge of the world. For there to be a reproduction, time shelters act as the environment of the social formations. Existing polyagents are the territorial surfaces from which human goals emerge and from which the social world is constructed. This means that existing polyagents direct our goals (Normark 2004a).
Summarizing polyagency
Polyagency is in-between the virtual and the actual. It is where matter is individuated in relation to other actualizations. This cannot be given a separate spatial location or spatialized time, it is a space without space and a time without spatialized time. The individuation forms surfaces (territories), or time-shelters, that interact with other individuations. The time-shelters break down from an actualized perspective but continue virtually.
Take the polyagency of a pencil as an example. It is an actualization, an individuation of the virtual that consists of singularities that has formed various multiplicities and strata (graphite and wood). These have been deterritorialized from the graphite mine and the tree, and then reterritorialized into a new individuation and territory, at one or several factories. The final result is a new territory, a pencil (an indexical polyagent). It has a physical body that is given an identity and an action by human beings. Thus, it is a social construction from a humanocentric perspective. We define this identity as a pencil related to the practice of writing (a quasi-object). It is also a time-shelter that has a “biography” or “life-history” defined by actualized stages of individuation that we abstract from true duration (manufacture, usage, discard). As an individuation the pencil affects other individuations (paper, pencil case, writer). If the intensity of bending the pencil reaches a singularity where it snaps, the pencil breaks into two pieces. There are now two individuations, but the virtual and the polyagency has not split up. It has diverged into two lines that share the same original virtual impetus. As a time-shelter the pencil has also divided and folded new durations. However, the capacity of the pencil to affect and interact with other individuations is still there, but slightly changed (with one broken part in a rubbish bin). Thus, the polyagency of the broken pencil is not located in a particular individuation. Polyagency is in-between and lacks an identity and social construction (Normark 2006). The reason why I include the physical formation of matter here is that these processes are present even in the simple interaction between a human agent and a pencil. This is because the virtual, the intensive and the actual are not in a hierarchy but overlaps. Multiplicities are not archetypes but are emergent properties of dynamic networks. The multiplicities affect and are affected by the intensive and the actual (DeLanda 2002).
References
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