Ranking (part 4): Assemblage as a start for a theory of lists and rankings

Nico Nico Douga’s ranking is one form of ranking. Rankings are one form of lists. So what is a list? What looks like a simple question turned out to be a rather complicated one. To develop a sytsematical approach, I moved up even one branch higher in a tree hierarchy of concepts: Lists are one form of assemblage. Then what is an assemblage? Oh dear, I think I cannot move up even further. So I take assemblage as a starting point, even though it sounds a bit Deleuzian. Leaving Deleuze to the Deleuzians, I want to come up with a very simple and non-Deleuzian definition: An assemblage is a plurarity of elements.

Let’s look at some examples. In a network the elements are connected to each other via relations. A group would be another example: Here, the elements are placed inside a boundary. A system is a more complex form of assemblage: All elements influence each other. Some forms of assemblages are even more complex: An organism would be one example, a machine another one, an organisation a further one. In such forms of assemblage the elements need to cooperate to a certain degree.

Different forms of assemblage are not mutually exclusive. One element can be, for example, part of many groups, not only one. Not only that. A group can also be at the same time a network. An organism can be network, an organisation can be a group, and so on. However, very often you have a situation, where one form of assemblage is dominant. It can make sense to look at an organisation as a group (for example if you are interested in corporate identity), but if you do so exclusively, and look at an organisation as if it would be only a group, you miss the essential trait. The same applies to all forms of assemblage: They are mostly one thing – a network, a group, or an organisation -, but they have often traits of other forms of assemblage incorporated and can thus be also looked at from a different point of view.

This is all very abstract. So let`s take one example: Tags, for example, create assemblages (it is not their only function, but it is one). I would argue: On Nico Nico Douga, their main basic function as assemblage is to create groups of videos (this differentiates Nico Nico Douga from other video platforms). Groups are often organised in complex overlapping landscapes. One thing is an element in many different groups. To take the example of tags: One video can have many tags. But tags are not only groups. They are also part of networks: tags have relations to each other. This means: When you look at the tags on Nico Nico Douga, you learn that group and network are not mutually exclusive forms of assemblage. They can overlay each other, and can exist in complex forms of mutual entanglement.

You can look at this complex forms of mixes also in a different way. Assemblages are often a specific form of assemblage to a certain degree. One particular example is here the system. Most assemblages have a certain degree of systemic quality: All elements more or less influence each other. Indeed, I was tempted to use the word “system” instead of “assemblage” as starting point, but as I personally think that not all assemblage are to the same degree systemic in the above described sense (mutual influence of elements), even though most are.

With this groundwork I can now look at lists as a linear form of assemblage. This definition sounds simple, but it does not stop here. In the next posts I will look at what kind of linear form of assemblage lists are.