On Prototyping
The work-in-progress arose from the Alter-Eco seminars and studios that were convened virtually during the Spring and Summer of 2020.
To know what a prototype is, it is useful to distinguish a prototype from a stereotype, on the one hand, and from an archetype, on the other hand. To achieve this, let us examine the case of the Marquis de Sade, the sadist, and the sadistic tendency. Consider how, to borrow a phrase from Marshall McLuhan, the figure of the Sadean libertine made the journey from being Sade’s innovation to becoming a cliché, to becoming an archetype. More precisely, consider how movies, plays, novels, podcasts, magazine and news articles, psychological studies, and the Western reading public have all come to take the Sadean innovation for granted. It could be said that Sade, in his libertine novels, created the prototype of the sadist, then Sade’s creation became a cliché or stereotype when the “sadist” became a stock character, and then Sade’s creation became an archetype when various other stock characters started being differentiated by their tendencies towards or away from “sadism”, differentiated by the degree to which they are like, unlike, attracted to, or repulsed by the sadist.
Abstracting from the case of the Marquis de Sade, we might say that the prototype of X is the model that precedes, exceeds, and succeeds any and every subsequent instance of X; that the stereotype of X functions as a (relatively) universal category to which all articulations of X belong; and the archetype of X functions more as a “pole star”, a fixed point from which to measure the difference between X1 and X2. Alternatively, one might say that a prototype is an outlying characteristic that engenders the differentiation of one population from another; that a stereotype is a characteristic that defines a population, that gives a population a measure of identity; and that an archetype is a characteristic that defines a population distribution, that gives a population a measure of difference.
Whichever formulation of the prototype-stereotype-archetype distinction one prefers, what is most important to recognize is the fact that a prototype of X is a model or a characteristic that precedes, exceeds, and succeeds any and every subsequent articulation of X. In other words, it is imperative to recognize that proto-typing is a process that precedes stereo-typing and arche-typing, yes, but that does not end where and when stereo-typing and arche-typing begin. Rather, proto-typing continues to proceed after stereo-typing and arche-typing begin and, in continuing to proceed, proto-typing exceeds those processes. What's more, proto-typing continues to proceed after stereo-typing and arche-typing end and, in continuing to proceed, proto-typing succeeds those processes. The process of differentiating one population from another continues to proceed above, below, and beyond the processes that give the differentiated population measures of identity and measures of difference.
On the one hand, our formulation of the prototype-archetype-stereotype distinction riffs off the Latin cedere ("to go" from PIE root *ked- "to go, yield") which is at the root of precede, exceed, succeed, and proceed. On the other hand, our formulation riffs off the Greek typos ("a blow, dent, impression, mark, effect of a blow; figure in relief, image, statue; general form, character; outline, sketch," from root of typtein "to strike, beat," from PIE *tup- "to push, stick, knock, beat"). Mightn’t we riff further upon the Greek typos? Aren’t there other types that can justifiably be added to our triad of typing? For instance, a transmissible “genotype” and an expressive “phenotype”? What kind of productive processes do these other types articulate or where are they located within the advance of typing processes? Do they represent phases within a linear progression of typing? What functions do they serve? And if “type” is productive as an exemplar which leads to some type of reproduction or representation—what kind of progeny do the various types entail? Furthermore, what of that which is “a-typical”, without type: a blow not struck, an impression not made? Wouldn’t the notion of the atypical imply tacit engagement with a substrate that yet-to-be struck, impressed upon, typed and, thus, yet-to-be given form? And, in this respect, if we translate directly, literally, prototypo as a “first impression”, wouldn’t the prototype be that which precedes, succeeds, and exceeds any and everything apart from the atypical or unimpressive? How does one resolve that first impression? How do we separate the entity, the object, the formed body, from an undifferentiated background of pre-individual potential, when there are no pre-existing “hints”, clues, indices, to point the way, to direct our sense-making and individuate the thing?
Let us take the last question first, and from there suggest answers to the rest of the questions posed. Our first impression is not just a moment that passes, not just the first event in an histoire événementielle ("evental history"). Rather, our first impression is the longue durée itself: a first impression, a prototype, is that which is implicated, complicated, and deepened by second, third, and nth impressions, by stereotypes, archetypes, genotypes, phenotypes, etc. More profoundly still, our first impressions continually return to the surface through processes of explication.
We can never consciously engage with a first impression as it emerges from "an undifferentiated background". That is to say, in other words, that we cannot grasp a first impression before its implication, complication, and deepening by second, third, and nth impressions. Our first impressions, prior to their implication and complication by subsequent impressions, happen to us and are received by us passively and unconsciously. To become active and conscious of a first impression is to explicate matters, to excavate a minimally differentiated first impression by faulting or fracturing increasingly differentiated subsequent impressions.
It is a mistake, however, to believe that explication is a process that comes after the formation of first, second, third, and nth impressions and simply lays them bare. First, secondness, thirdness, and nth-ness are, rather, the effects of the process of explication. Explication is the process of “typing” writ large. Prior to explication there is only tacit engagement with an atypical substrate. Explication effects implications and complications, impressing a form upon a substrate, but the form that a substrate is given via explication is always a faulted and fractured form, and the faults and fractures that characterize the given form are the expression the force with which the substrate resists explication, resists the impressions that would give it form. Ay, and here’s the kicker, these faults and fractures which express the substrate's forceful resistance to being impressed upon and given form—these faults and fractures are prototypes, first impressions. Ay, and the form that bears these faults and fractures is the result of one or more subsequent impressions and, thus, no form is prototypical. Only faults and fractures in forms are prototypical; forms, by contrast, may be stereotypical, archetypical, genotypical, phenotypical, or any other kind of typical, excluding being atypical and prototypical; and, to add further contrast, the atypical is that which is formless and faultless, the “raw” or “unprocessed” substrate, the untouched, unfiltered, unchewed, undigested, unperceived, unnamed, unknown, etc.
In this way, we might say that prototyping is a practice that aims to create a form with pronounced faults and fractures that conspicuously articulate the force with which a substrate has resisted being impressed upon and formed. Prototyping would, thus, produce forms that are conspicuously “less than perfect” in one or more of the following senses:
Prototypes as forms that have conspicuously failed to achieve perfection or functionality: e.g., the “failed” prototypes that arise in an R&D context or, better yet, a piece of pottery that a potter has “failed” to shape in some way or another.
Prototypes as forms that have been conspicuously repaired so as to achieve perfection or functionality: e.g., a piece of pottery that a potter has repaired using kintsugi or kintsukuroi.
Prototypes as forms that have achieved perfection or functionality in and through their conspicuous failure to achieve perfection or functionality: e.g., a piece of pottery that a potter has shaped with a wabi-sabi aesthetic.