Material Turn of Social Theories: New Materialism, Actor-Network Theory, and Object-Oriented Ontology

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 7-53
Author(s):  
June-Seok Lee ◽  
Yeunchul Kim
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology

scholarly journals Notes Toward an Extimate Materialism: A Reply to Graham Harman

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-123
Author(s):  
Russell Sbriglia
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
The Future ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology

Abstract This article mounts a defense of my and Slavoj Žižek’s co-edited anthology, Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism, against the two main criticisms of it made throughout Graham Harman’s article “The Battle of Objects and Subjects”: (1) that we and our fellow contributors are guilty of gross overgeneralization when we classify thinkers from various schools of thought – among them New Materialism, object-oriented ontology, speculative realism, and actor–network theory – under the broad rubric of the “new materialisms”; and (2) that despite our pretensions to the mantle of materialism, our Lacano-Hegelian position is actually a full-blown idealism. In responding to and attempting to refute these criticisms, I make the case that our Lacano-Hegelian model of dialectical materialism is an “extimate materialism.”

scholarly journals A Questionnaire on Materialisms

October ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 155 ◽  
pp. 3-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Apter ◽  
Ed Atkins ◽  
Armen Avanessian ◽  
Bill Brown ◽  
Giuliana Bruno ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology

Recent philosophical tendencies of “Actor-Network Theory,” “Object-Oriented Ontology,” and “Speculative Realism” have profoundly challenged the centrality of subjectivity in the humanities, and many artists and curators, particularly in the UK, Germany, and the United States, appear deeply influenced by this shift from epistemology to ontology. October editors asked artists, historians, and philosophers invested in these projects—from Graham Harman and Alexander R. Galloway to Armen Avanessian and Patricia Falguières to Ed Atkins and Amie Siegel—to explore what the rewards and risks of assigning agency to objects may be, and how, or if, such new materialisms can be productive for making and thinking about art today.

The Politics of Nature: New Materialist Responses to the Anthropocene

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianne Françoise Conty
Keyword(s):  
Coral Reefs ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Polar Bears ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Technological Tools ◽  
Ecological Politics ◽  
Politics Of Nature

In order to explore some of the divergences within new materialism and elucidate their relationship to actor-network theory, this article will develop Latour’s theory of agency and then compare it to those new materialists who uphold a ‘flat ontology’ that includes technological tools (Jane Bennett) and those who uphold an animate/inanimate distinction (Tim Ingold and Eduardo Kohn). In light of the ecological crisis called the Anthropocene, the dissolution of the animate/inanimate distinction will be defended in order to address both polar bears and glaciers, coral reefs and clown fish. Though Latour himself has defended such a dissolution, his political proposals to address the ecological crisis revert back to the modern and dualist position he has himself critiqued for so long. Using the gains of actor-network theory, while differentiating a new materialist ecological politics from that of Latour, will be shown to be necessary in order to find a solution to the crisis of the Anthropocene.

Ecological Democracy and the Co-participation of Things

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Disch
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Material Politics ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Ecological Democracy

Is ecological democracy possible? If so, what would it entail? This chapter first reviews the literature based in deliberative democracy that proposes to extend communicative competence to non-humans, and then traces an alternative constructivist line of environmental political thinking from its beginnings in the strand of science and technology studies pioneered by Bruno Latour and others known as actor-network theory, through two actor-network theory-inspired approaches to political theory, “object-oriented democracy” and “material politics/participation.” Whereas this alternative approach solves some of the conundrums to which the communicative model gives rise, it is neither as radical a departure from politics as it is “normally understood,” nor aspoliticalas its proponents claim.

Telling Nonhuman Stories: ‘The secret contours of objects’

2019 ◽  
pp. 96-125
Author(s):  
Danielle Sands
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
First Philosophy

This chapter puts the novels of Jim Crace in conversation with Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of the development of OOP in contradistinction to Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory, it assesses the claims made by Harman for the superiority of OOP over contemporary relational ontologies such as that espoused by Jane Bennett. Turning to Crace, the chapter argues that his fiction enacts a sustained movement away from anthropocentrism, demonstrating the collaborative nature of storytelling and absenting the human from a variety of different landscapes. It argues that, in their examination of the ‘allure’ of objects, these novels espouse a position closer to Harman than Bennett. Finally, the chapter interrogates Harman’s presentation of aesthetics as first philosophy, arguing that the clear alignment between Crace’s fiction and Harman’s work reinforces the claim that aesthetics gives access to the ontological, and demands a reconsideration of agency.

Decadence in the Biographical Sense

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Graham Harman
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Object Oriented Method ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Primary Meaning

This article summarizes the author's 2016 book Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory, outlining the book's five criticisms of actor-network theory (ANT) and its fifteen provisional rules of object-oriented method in social theory. The article also considers Bruno Latour's criticism of Immaterialism, in particular his view that such terms as “symbiosis” and “decadence” rely too heavily on an inappropriate “biological” metaphor that has no place in discussion objects in a wider sense. In response, the authors claims that the primary meaning of the symbiosis and decadence is not biological, but biographical.

Objects of journalism, revised: Rethinking materiality in journalism studies through emotion, culture and ‘unexpected objects’

Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492098573
Author(s):  
Rachel E. Moran ◽  
Nikki Usher
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
News Media ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Soft Objects ◽  
Digital Objects ◽  
Emotional Dimensions

Despite attempts to reinvigorate studies of materiality in Journalism Studies, research has often failed to move beyond a narrow application of actor-network theory focused on the affordances of digital objects of journalism. As a result, journalism studies has missed a productive opportunity to consider the emotional, cultural and aesthetic potential of object-oriented study. This article makes the case for focusing on how objects of journalism are felt, experienced and are otherwise culturally situated. Drawing on cultural studies, we advocate for a rethinking of materialism to more expansively reckon with the affective and emotional dimensions of journalism. Further, we develop Schudson’s (2015) theory of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ objects to include a third category: ‘unexpected objects’ of journalism. These objects, such as art on newsroom walls, news media merchandise, and daily ephemera, often have little directly to do with newsmaking processes, yet play an important affective role in journalism.

Actor–Network Theory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annelies Kamp
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Data Generation ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Social Studies Of Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment

Actor–network theory (ANT) is an approach to research that sits with a broader body of new materialism; a body of work that displaces humanism to consider dynamic assemblages of humans and nonhumans. Originally developed in the social studies of science and technology undertaken in the second half of the 20th century, ANT has increasingly been taken up in other arenas of social inquiry. Researchers working with ANT do not accept the unquestioned use of “social” explanations for educational phenomena. Rather, the social, like all other effects, is taken to be an enactment of heterogenous assemblages of human and nonhuman entities. The role of the educational researcher is to trace these processes of assemblage and reassemblage, foregrounding the ways in which certain entities establish sufficient allies to assume some degree of “realness” in the world. Aligning most closely with ethnographic orientations, ANT does not outline a method. However, it could be argued that a number of propositions are shared in ANT-inspired approaches: first, that the world is made up of actors/actants, all of which are ontologically symmetrical. Humans are not privileged in ANT. Second, the principle of irreduction—there is no essence within or beyond any process of assemblage. Actors are concrete; there is no “potential” other than their actions in the moment. Entities are nothing more than an effect of assemblage. Third, the concept of translation and its processes of mediation that transform objects when they encounter one another. Finally, the principle of alliance. Actants gain strength only through their alliances. These propositions have specific implications for data generation, analysis, and reporting.

scholarly journals From anthropocentrism to sociology of things and digital sociology

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
S. Kibakin
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Information And Communication

The genesis of socio-humanitarian and sociological knowledge, namely: understanding and studying the phenomenon of human life, its biological, vital, informational and social aspects has been revealed. The regularity of the transformation of anthropocentrism under the influence of the development of science and technology, the emergence of the concept of post-humanism has been substantiated. The examples of man-made disasters, the use of weapons of mass destruction, as social facts, that had a significant impact on the development of mankind, have been adduced. The conditions for the emergence of object-oriented sociology and the sociology of things have been shown, some scientific approaches have been disclosed within the framework of this concept of Graham Harman, Brun Latour and his followers. Separately, the methodological approaches of the actor-network theory have been disclosed, the main one has been highlighted. Separately, the methodological foundations of cognition of the world of things have been described within the framework of object-oriented sociology, related to the rejection of opposing pairs of the concepts “society and nature”, “truth is non-truth”, “structure and process” and others. The connection of this theory with the sociology of translation has been shown. The characteristic of the problems of development of the scientific and methodological base of digital sociology in the context of changing the content of social relations “man – machine” on the example of the information and communication network Internet has been given. Among them, have been allocated the problems of delegation to digital technologies, more and more powers in solving complex socio-technical problems, the global centralization of digital resources management, the emergence of virtual actors of social interaction. The author reduces specific examples of the use of actor-network theory to interpret the processes and phenomena of interaction between users of Internet resources with individual components of the Internet. Separately, promising areas of research in this area, related to the phenomena of the Internet of things and neuronet, have been highlighted.

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