The Unrecognized Agency of Objects

When writing this commentary, I fought the urge to post it under the title “Latour vs. Everyone.” Despite his defence of the importance of sociology, he directly criticizes sociologists as a whole for their focus on the social aspects of object-person interaction, and accuses them of operating on the premise that connections are generated out of society itself through the influence of some magic and durable force. Material scientists, too, are criticized for their unwavering focus on the technical 'weight of material constraints,' with little regard for the importance of their 'discursive dimension.' He challenges sociologists to pursue all links – social as well as objective and material – and cautions the world of academia against assuming that either the social or material dimension would suffice to describe the “many entanglements of humans and non-humans.”

Latour's directly stated premise is the importance of object agency in networks. In chapters previous to the one examined here he expounds upon the idea that networks are a mixed bag of diverse actors – human and non-human – that act on and interact with each other with ultimately transformative results. He proposes an ANT (Actor-Network Theory) focus of study that highlights the importance of agency among actors; i.e., that all actors do something, and thus interact in a dynamic and fluid network.

The first question that I was left with after reading Latour's Third Source of Uncertainty was, how exactly does he view the social? It took three re-reads for me to sort through the criticisms and postulations of both continuity and discontinuity among objects and actions to arrive at a (hopefully) sound conclusion that Latour views social life as a blend of heterogenous materials and actors that act as agents in his ANT postulation. That is to say, there exists no difference between the 'material' and 'social' worlds because the idea of a division between them is erroneous. Latour views material matter as an “interpretation of causality,” and demonstrates that an object or actor can be considered to have agency if and only if it provokes some kind of change: “to be accounted for, objects have to enter into accounts. If no trace is produced, they offer no information to the observer and will have no visible effect on other agents.”

I found Latour's examples presented on page 83 especially tangible. The social distinction between a hammer hitting a nail, and a hammer being symbolically crossed with a sickle perfectly illustrates the power that objects hold over social interactions.

To again quote Latour (because he says it so well): “Objects, by the very nature of their connections with humans, quickly shift from being mediators to being intermediaries.”

My question this week does not engage further application of the reading to a broader context, but rather relates to the simple fact that I am unable to understand a part of Latour's argument. He frequently refers to object and social relationships as both 'symmetrical' and 'asymmetrical,' and to non-humans as both 'commensurable' and at the same time 'incommensurable.' I have tried to understand these paradoxes, and now admit defeat. I hope that someone will be able to enlighten me!