Reassembling the Social 1.3

Because this text purports to emphasize the relationship between agents rather than the demographic to which the agent belongs, I think this can fairly be ascribed to the agent-child wing, although I am a little disturbed by the post-humanist leanings of this particular text.

I'm not at all sure how this text might be used in a literary interpretation, or how it might be relevant. I'd be interested in writing a text according to its ideas, though, and I'm curious how the final product would appear. I am reading Bruno Latour for the third time and I'm still flummoxed around the edges. He speaks very vaguely and seems to refuse to pin down what he says with practical examples. Necessarily, I believe.

What really attracts me to this piece is ANT's dedication to taking the long road. Someone truly using this social theory, or theory of social relationships, does not fall back on customary "shorthand" and doesn't look at sociology as a study of only one kind of relating. An ANT sees the minute details of a particular transaction and traces each association.

I catch a whiff of Foucault's power theories here. Although Foucault was interested in only one kind of relationship and the actors he worried about were always involved in power transactions, his narrow definition still broke out of previous assumptions somewhat, in recognizing power as a commodity and actors as actants for the transactions of the commodity. By flattening the map (Latour's language, my application) Foucault moves towards evening out the balance between actants (trader/commodity), and it is, I think, this kind of move that Latour wishes to continue, but without Foucault's narrow definitions - applying his method to other types of events and actants, perhaps, and on a micro level, certainly. Looking broadly at the "forces at work in society" (scare quotes - sorry Howard) might, as Latour points out, bring us to accurate conclusions about society, but it is less scientific or meticulous than Latour seems to like.

I admire meticulous. I'm interested in letting these ideas percolate to see how they might function within an already-written text, though I'm inclined to believe Latour is more interested in the text as a commodity, or as some other actor in some specific context.

I've attempted something similar before, and have fared rather badly. Let's hope my brain grew up in the last two years. I think it would help to slice a novel into events, rather than looking at characters, especially dynamic characters, to analyze the movement in a single scene, or chapter. A bit of dialogue, for instance.

Another thing that attracts me to this text is its delightful grammar. Although admittedly more complex, the ideas seem to nearly fit the metaphor of parts of speech working in a single sentence. Although being metaphorical excludes a non-human object from actor status (whatever that means), I like grammatical metaphors. I like calling positions "actants" and thinking about verbs and adverbs as equally as important as nouns and pronouns.