In the mode of metamorphosis: ANT and Latour after Latour

Abstract

This short piece responds to five commentaries to our own suggestions on ‘What Next for Actor Network Theory?’ after Latour's passing. Charting a path through very heterogenous ideas, we attempt to re-scenarise what we consider the wheat of fruitful theoretical questioning and extensions from the chaff of worn-out adversarial gestures around actor-network theory (ANT) in sociology and beyond. Inventing around Latour on a planet in distress, we affirm with our commentators, certainly brings ANT into fruitful dialogues with broader strands of feminist Science and Technology Studies, political ecology, alongside the kinds of more-than-human anthropology that we ourselves brought to the table. At stake, we believe, is the willingness to extend ANT's descriptive capacities in new directions, at the limits of Western social theory's current conceptual preoccupations with Capital and Nature.

Keywords

actor-network theory Anthropocene feminist STS generative social theory political ecology proximate critique

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Blok

(2020) The anthropologist, the moralist, and the diplomat: Bruno Latour in the world of knowledges. Common Knowledge 26(2): 212–229.

Blok

Jensen

(2019) The Anthropocene event in social theory: On ways of problematizing nonhuman materiality differently. The Sociological Review 67(6): 1195–1211.

Blok

Jensen

(2024) What next for actor network theory? Inventing around Latour on a planet in distress. Dialogues in Sociology. DOI: 10.1177/29768667241285397.

Callon

(1999) Whose imposture? Physicists at war with the third person. Social Studies of Science 29(2): 261–286.

Crawford

(1993) An interview with Bruno Latour. Configurations 1(1): 247–268.

De la Cadena

(2015) Uncommoning nature. e-flux. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/65/336365/uncommoning-nature/

Giraud

(2024) Reassembling the banal; Pausing before inventing anew. Dialogues in Sociology. DOI: 10.1177/29768667241291016.

Hage

(2015) Alter-Politics: Critical Anthropology and the Radical Imagination. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Heinich

(2024) Bruno Latour from a French and fresh perspective. Dialogues in Sociology. DOI: 10.1177/29768667241292572.

10.

Hennion

(2024) Open comments on Blok & Bruun Jensen's paper ‘What next for actor network theory? Inventing around Latour on a planet in distress’. Dialogues in Sociology. DOI: 10.1177/29768667241285710.

11.

Hennion

Latour

(2003) How to make mistakes on so many things at once – and become famous for it. In: HU

Marrinan

(eds) Mapping Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Digital Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 91–97.

12.

Inglis

Almila

Thorpe

, et al. (2024) For sociological polyphony and conviviality: enhancing sociology’s intellectual aspirations. Dialogues in Sociology 1(1). DOI: 10.1177/29768640241249531.

13.

Jensen

(2020) Disciplinary translations: Latour in literary studies and anthropology. Common Knowledge 26(2): 230–250.

14.

Jensen

Blok

(2013) Techno-animism in Japan: Shinto cosmograms, actor-network theory, and the enabling powers of non-human agencies. Theory, Culture and Society 30(2): 84–115.

15.

Latour

(1998) To modernize or ecologize? That is the question. In: Braun

Castree

(eds) Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium. New York and London: Routledge, 221–243.

16.

Latour

(2004) Whose cosmos, which cosmopolitics? Common Knowledge 10(3): 450–462.

17.

Lenton

Dutreil

Latour

(2024) Gaia as seen from within. Theory, Culture and Society 41(5): 69–90.

18.

Malm

(2018) The Progress of this Storm. Nature and Society in a Warming World. London and New York: Verso.

19.

Moore

(2016) Introduction. In: Moore

(eds) Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Oakland, CA: Kairos, 1–14.

20.

Nimmo

(2024) Modes of existence, capitalism, and lived socio-ecological struggles: Whither actor-network theory in a world in crisis? Dialogues in Sociology. DOI: 10.1177/29768667241288261.

21.

Smith

(2005) Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

22.

Stamenkovic

(2024) The actor-network fantasy. Dialogues in Sociology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/29768667241312684.

23.

Stengers

(2000) The Invention of Modern Science. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

24.

Strathern

(2002) Foreword: Not giving the game away. In: Gingrich

Fox

(eds) Anthropology, By Comparison. London and New York: Routledge, xiii–xvii.