Ontological Pluralism, Modes of Existence, and Actor-Network Theory: Upgrading Latour with Latour

Abstract

Bruno Latour, one of the architects of actor-network theory, has now enfolded this approach within a larger project:An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. Framed as an empirical inquiry into the ontological and epistemological conditions of modernity, Latour argues for a radical shift in how 'objectified knowledge' is established within the world. In this article I draw on AIME in order to respond to criticisms of actor-network theory that derive from broader sociological and philosophical standpoints. I argue that actor-network theory should now only be understood as an integral aspect of Latour's newer inquiry, and ought no longer to be considered in isolation but instead as being integrated within a critical as well as pragmatic reading of Latour's AIME project.

Playboy and Pornification: 65 Years of the Playboy Centerfold

“…En este sentido, tanto humanos como no-humanos tienen agencia; de tal modo que: "el actor-red no es reductible ni a un simple actor ni a una red. (...) Un actor-red es, simultáneamente, un actor cuya actividad consiste en entrelazar elementos heterogéneos y una red que es capaz de redefinir y transformar aquello de lo que está hecha" (Callon en Tummons, 2021) última le imprime a la noción de ensamblaje para notar los movimientos y uniones entre actores, cuyas relaciones heterogéneas rearticulan los procesos y contextos en los que se desenvuelven; siendo especialmente sensible a los efectos que la agencia de un actante despliega en el resto de miembros de una red. Si Thatcher vigorosamente esgrimía en la década de los 80 que no existe tal cosa como la sociedad, la noción de ensamblaje permite llegar a esa misma conclusión -pero por motivos y caminos muy diferentes-: enfocarse en las uniones, flujos y cortes entre múltiples actantes permite pensar lo social no como un dominio específico de la realidad, o como una cosa entre otro conjunto de cosas 8 ; sino como movimientos de asociación y reasociación contingentes (Latour, 2005).…”

On the educational mode of existence: Latour, meta‐ethnography and the social institution of education

“…[EDU] provides an explanatory framework that allows the researcher to maintain the uniqueness, the specificity of educational practices alongside the ubiquity and familiarity of so much of what goes on inside schools or colleges, while being free to move beyond such institutions not because the boundaries between them are now able to be crossed, but because these boundaries were only ever spurious in the first place (Tummons 2021). With this additional tool, conceptual frameworks for making sense of how people talk and write, how non-humans and humans work together, or the ways in which objectivised knowledge is established within the social semiotic space of the mode in question, become available: the four conditions that pertain to any mode reveal what the architects of meta-ethnography have described as 'the social institution of education' (Noblit and Hare 1999: 97).…”

“…The modes of existence evince a ‘mind‐boggling’ heterogeneity (Hämäläinen and Lehtonen 2016), take account of history but not geography (Edward 2016) and through their mobilisation generate ‘malfunctions and adverse effects … fairly regularly’ (Delchambre and Marquis 2013: 571), reducing experience to the opinion of experts (Blake 2016). For others, AIME represents a simple continuation of Latour’s earlier work, a recognition by Latour of the shortcomings of Actor‐Network Theory and an attempt to gather the different strands of his work into one investigation that upgrades Actor‐Network Theory but does not pretend to be anything other than pragmatic, allowing the inquiry to travel where Latour wishes – to the unravelling of Modernism that has preoccupied much of his intellectual career (Delchambre and Marquis 2013; Harman 2016; Tummons 2021; Weber 2016).…”