Paper ontologies: reading Sterne with Bruno Latour

Abstract

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Sterne amongst the philosophers

“…Tristram Shandy would seem to be made for Latour's theories with its recognition that words cannot always explain a reality beyond their material existence and that often gestures have to be made -the blank or coloured pages, the squiggle that represents a stick's movement -in order to try and bridge an unbridgeable gap. For Lupton Sterne's long novel functions 'as a text that signposts its own elusiveness as object', 23 a crucial acknowledgement early in the history of the modern novel that the text was a material entity and that the philosophy contained within its covers needed to be discussed in terms of this material reality INTRODUCTION that philosophy sought to explain. In the last essay, in the collection Duncan Large continues his previous work in showing the significant extent of Sterne's influence on German philosophy.…”