Unpacking Theory

The various human and nonhuman actors that can be isolated from within the 1969 Apollo 11 moon mission’s network of agents provide, via the isolation imposed upon them, a multitude of perspectives from which one might study how the mission disguises its status as a network of heterogeneous objects. This multitude of perspectives manifests as a series of questions generated from the body of theory explicated herein.

When we consider the notions of both ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ as defined by De Certeau (whose definitions are subsequently elucidated by Helga Wild), and apply such consideration to the contexts in which the Apollo 11 mission can be analyzed as a network, the various ways in which such a network can be viewed are further expanded and enhanced.

By taking into account Andrew Pickering’s argument about the agency of nonhuman actors, an even more expansive overview of the kaleidoscopic ways in which we can interrogate the Apollo 11 mission’s disguised network of composite and disparate actors is made possible.

Beginning with Certeau’s notions of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’, both of which are exhaustively defined in Everyday Practices, allows us to ‘blow up’, so-to-speak, the multitude of contexts in which the Apollo 11 mission can be placed, and subsequently analyze the mission through the corollary theoretical or disciplinary lenses related to said contexts.

Certeau defines ‘strategy’ as power exercised in a way that depends more upon the acting entity’s (or actor-network’s) possession of the resource of ‘space’ than upon the possession of ‘time’, two more terms Certeau defines in contexts that serve his argument.

Certeau defines ‘space’ as a concept that includes both physical space and the ’sphere of influence’ possessed by the powerful actor-network in question. Certeau then characterizes ‘time’ as a resource that the weak exploit to perform ‘tactics’, or actions that exploit the bureaucratic predictions of actor-networks reliant on their advantage of greater space. Such predictive actions, carried out by powerful entities, betray a kind of overconfidence caused by the possession of so much space. Just like the emperor in Star Wars, overconfidence is the weakness of powerful actor-networks, entities that develop a tendency to use space to predict the future, or more accurately, to prescribe or invent a future based on their ongoing plans and goals, the more space they accumulate (Certeau, 6).

Resource Dominance

Certeau relies on a binary notion of resource dominance in formulating these two definitions: tactics are used by the weak, who lack space but make better use of time, to exploit the vulnerabilities of powerful entities that rely on space to maintain their power, but use time less efficiently because they impose their space upon it.

Before moving on to how these terms can be applied to the Apollo 11 mission, I will first attempt to articulate, as briefly as I can, what I identify to be a problematic consequence of this reliance on the notion of resource dominance in defining terms.

I would argue that the main difference between the terms ‘tactics’ and ‘strategy’, with respect to how they relate to the actions of weak actor-networks vs. strong ones, should not be characterized in terms of Certeau’s “strategy = space/time, tactics = time/space” binary of resource dominance. I would argue, rather, that it is not a given actor-network’s exploitation of time over space or vice-versa, but the more subjective, more general contexts in which either a given tactic or strategy is formulated and carried out that determine the use of both time and space in that subjective situation.

I propose we look at the two terms this way: tactics are more often responsive, whereas strategies are necessarily predictive. Although these forms of action use time and space differently in many situations, they should not be confined to a definition based on an assumed resource preference.

The ability to be strategically predictive might come just as easily for a weaker entity with a greater amount of time than space (better use of time spent deliberating and formulating due to the absence of bureaucracy, even though space is limited), just as the ability to be tactically responsive might come for a powerful entity with greater amount of space than time (more power, or influence, speeds up information gathering despite a meandering bureaucracy making ill use of time, expediting action via bribery, intimidation, outsourcing of information gathering, etc.). A tactic may use space better than a strategy, just as a strategy might make better use of time than a tactic. Thus, the two terms are better defined not by an assumed resource preference, but by the subjective contexts that influence how they use said resources.

Questioning Apollo

Moving on, Wild’s discussion of Certeau provides the opportunity to determine the ways in which one might examine the Apollo 11 mission to the moon as an actor-network. Wild’s article on Practice and the Theory of Practice generates some preliminary questions we can ask about how to analyze actor-networks, while Pickering’s The Mangle of Practice delves into the status of the myriad of human and nonhuman actors that feature especially prominently in highly science-and-technologically-dependant, celebrity-generating events such as the Apollo 11 mission.

Wild notes that Certeau’s definition of strategies frames them as educated guesses, leaps that can only be justified after they have been made, and according to whatever effect they had. Wild then brings up the notion of a “Metis”, an action “difficult to grasp, precisely because it performs within [a] situation…and disappears” (Wild, 13). The notion that a strategic prediction carried out by a powerful actor-network can only be causally linked to the effect it produced after the effect has been measured is especially relevant to prolonged strategic actions such as the Apollo 11 mission, not to mention somewhat existentially displacing.

The notion begs several questions: to what extent did the Apollo 11 mission constitute a performance made possible by the sociopolitical climate at the time? How have the ways in which we view the event transformed over time? How have certain viewpoints endured, or been warped by discourse? To what extent does the memory of the Apollo 11 mission, as an assertion of a multitude of superiorities by the USA (military, cultural, technological, scientific, ideological, territorial, exploratory, etc.), fade or become rewritten by remembering? Was the Apollo 11 mission more a strategic or a more tactical act?

Following all the threads of these questions would require more space (in the normative sense of the term) than this examination allows. Thankfully, Andrew Pickering points out a particular perspective that allows us to work toward a more focused interrogation of the Apollo 11 event.

Pickering’s posthumanist analysis of the agency of nonhuman actors, and his characterization of the collision of human strategy and nonhuman agency as a “dialectic…a mangle of practice” (Pickering, 569) prompts us to ask about the agency of nonhuman actors that function as a part of the Apollo 11 network. Examples of such actors include: the creation and refinement of the rocket engine in early 20^th century, the Russians’ early victories in the space race using objects such as Sputnik, the fire in the test cockpit of Apollo 1 due to design flaws that prompted an extensive redesign of the capsule and delayed U.S. missions by two years, the failure of a switch on the Apollo 11 lander and Buzz Aldrin’s use of a pen he still has to this day to start the ignition process, etc.

Acknowledging the respective agencies of this stream of nonhuman actors, each of which was essential to the mission’s success, gives rise to further, more specific questions: what innovations and processes influenced the design, testing, redesign, and fabrication of the shuttle parts used on the mission? What instances of acceptance and resistance to roadblocks, inherent to the stubborn nature of human strategy, caused NASA technicians to change their approaches when crafting various nonhuman actors? Do objects left on the moon retroactively influence the mission that moved them there?

On another note, how does the erasure of the U.S. flag left on the moon by the sun’s radiation affect its agency?

I initially planned to write about the Apollo 11 flag as a nonhuman actor at first, but then realized that focusing on such an object would not do justice to the theoretical material I wanted to explore. Unpacking this material, ironically, made me aware not only of the amount of space I had in which to do so, but also of the amount of time I had. The potential of the theoretical material utilized in this probe to generate questions, to open us up to the possibility of considering alternate ways of seeing, is overwhelming. The next step is by no means a small one: to grapple with the array of possible questions made available by a posthumanist, actor-network approach to analysis.

Works Cited

Andrew Pickering. “The Mangle of Practice: Agency and Emergency in the Sociology of Science” in The American Journal of Sociology, 99 (3), 559-589.

Helga Wild. “Practice and the Theory of Practice. Rereading Certeau’s ‘Practice of Everyday Life’” in JBA Review Essay (2012): 1-19.

Michel De Certeau. “On the Oppositional Practices of Everyday Life.” Social Text 3 (1980), 3-43.