pynchon-l-digest V2 #5256

[Paul Nightingale]

Latour has been difficult to avoid since starting to read AtD. What struck
me as relevant was his critique of the false separation of local and global,
and macro- and micro-levels of analysis (I'm thinking of Reassembling the
Social). The blurb itself begged the question, how will the text get from
one location to another? Well, the answer seems to be, the reading subject
is always here. Some reviewers were critical of P's lack of attention to
place, which seems to me to have missed the point. Not for the first time,
his target is the reader-as-tourist (one of the reasons for the reference to
The Princess Casamassima).

> "Lash (1999) identifies similarities in Baudrillard's conception of the
> object and that of Latour. While Baudrillard's simulacrum is a long way
> from
> network topologies, the object is given similar characteristics. In both
> theorists conceptions the object is never in a state of finality. For
> Baudrillard the object seduces, it is not sublime. To be so suggests
> finality. Seduction is a process. Latour's parliament of things is also
> wholly predicated on a non-reductionist conception of the object. The
> object
> is never final; it shifts or obtains stability only through relational
> materialism, through the network."
>