pynchon-l-digest V2 #5259

[david christensen]

Paul wrote on Latour and ANT

From: "Paul Nightingale" <isread at btopenworld.com>
Subject: Re: ATDTDA (2): Merle's dream, 56ff #1

One reason for mentioning Latour here is that his name has cropped up in the
last couple of days. With regard to Pasts Beyond Memory, Bennett starts with
Foucault and governmentality, moving on to Latour:

"Yet, if the impetus of Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian scholarship has
encouraged the development of an analytic gaze which looks closely at the
'microphysics of power' - in which power exists in and through the technical
forms in which it is exercised - it has often proved less adept at
undertaking such detailed, close-up inspection than other intellectual
traditions which share a sense of the importance of the mundane
particularities of technical arrangements and processes. This is especially
true of the now extensive body of work defined by the confluence of
interests and procedures between science studies, techno-science and
actor-network theory. The work of Bruno Latour, in particular, has had an
evident influence on recent approaches to museums, especially those that aim
to engage with the new relations of action and effect that are produced by
their distinctive forms of classification and exhibition. It is,
accordingly, to this literature that I look when zooming in on particular
aspects of museum practice to identify the mechanisms that are at work
within them and the new entities they shape and produce." (6)

In particular, Bennett cites Latour's Science in Action (Harvard UP, 1987)
and The Pasteurisation of France (Harvard UP, 1988).

I add:

"Latour and John Law have written extensively on what is known as Actor
Network Theory.

Objects act. That is, by their classificatory regimes they influence in
profound ways human action.

Well a rocket for example. My previous post"


Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 22:01:01 +1100
From: "david christensen" <dchristensen at kooee.com.au>
Subject: RE: pynchon-l-digest V2 #5256

For no other reason other that it seems relevant and irrelevant:

A quote from my unfinished Phd. on urban and economic geographies, it had
something to do with buildings by the way...

"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."

Now this is not a throw away line. Pynchon is by default a network dude,
everything is connected, right. Also things can be remarkably different...
things, objects, events, institutions...

Anyway Pynchon inspired my failed grasp at academia and probably was one
source of salvation of not actually ending up there... Although profound
slackness had played a major part...

------------------------------


And yet a discussion on Latour emerges. The above can all seem like academic
nonsense, but I believe it is not. Certainly the network metaphor has been
much abused within social science but with Pynchon we see its fruition and
validation. Pynchon is a technological writer and is acutely aware of these
constructs as they morph and change within the view of his protagonists. The
cry of technological determinism is of course well, shit. This is not what
Pynchon and ANT writers are about.
I find Pynchon to be a devotee of the whole praxis of ANT even if he has
never heard the term. He was writing about it from V and GR before social
scientists found an excuse to produce a social science that could explain
anything. I mean the wreck of sociology with Marx and all that ossified
stuff they still teach is rather sad.

John Law at the University of Lancaster, I think, thats the correct address
has extensive resources on ANT. Check it out.