Monday, March 19, 2007

Foucault as Latour's Mr. Miyagi?

One of the interesting parts of reading Latour has been to see his way of incorporating other scholarship. In Reassembling the Social, he's careful to acknowledge some of his influences, which include an eclectic range, Tarde and Diderot and many more, but he includes fewer names than, say, LeFevre. This becomes even more interesting when he defines a text that renders a network as one that, basically, shows its sources. He seems to do that less than some, but to wield his mentioning of others as a sign of ANT authenticity--not in an inauthentic way, at all, just as a special kind of mention. Instead of the normal parenthetical citations and quotes, he sets his sources off in boxes and footnotes.

This leads me to wonder who his primary influences might be, and to wonder about the presence of Foucault. My knowledge of Foucault's influence on ANT extends mostly to Law's use of him, in the one essay I've read, but some of Foucault's broad contributions seem to ghost the ANT project: his problematization of traditional systems of power, his persistent representation of complexity, and his refusal to essentialize or totalize. I could see Foucault teaching Latour how to fragment traditional sociology's practices, and represent that in writing--the post-structuralist equivalent of catching a fly with chopsticks . . . except, as Donna very helpfully pointed out last night, the post-structuralist project of applying broad terms to define things is one of ANT's main bugaboos.

If anyone has any thoughts, or would like to extend this to other martial arts metaphors :), I'd be grateful.

1 comment:

Court said...

Chad,

Hi. I was posting a similar message when I saw yours and I decided to instead augment what you said--the connection to Foucault is something I would like to explore next week, as well, so I hope you breach it tonight, as it'll make it less digressive for me to do so later. :)