ANTHEM Autumn 2007
ANTHEM Michaelmas Term 2007/2008
Fortnightly sessions (every other Tuesday)
Time: 16:30-19:30
Room: N3, The Anchorage
We will be reading and discussing Bruno Latour’s (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reading Schedule
| No | Week | Date | Latour: Reassembling the Social |
| 1 | Week 2 | 16-Oct | Pages ix-62: The sociology of associations. Deploying controversies. Groups and performativity. Mediators vs. intermediaries. Distributed action. Translation. Empirical metaphysics. Figuration.
|
| 2 | Week 4 | 30-Oct | Pages 63-120: Agency of objects. Generalised symmetry. Tracing associations. Power. Materiality. Matters of fact vs. matters of concern. Constructivism. Realism. Science studies. Sociology. Causality. Translation. Hybrids. Objects vs. things. From metaphysics to ontology.
|
| 3 | Week 6 | 13-Nov | Pages 121-172: Writing ANT accounts. Defining network. List of notebooks. Deployment not critique. Dialog with LSE student. Tracing associations. Keeping the social flat. Agency/structure, micro/macro debate. Actor-network.
|
| 4 | Week 8 | 27-Nov | Pages 173- 218: Localizing the global. Centers of calculation. From panopticon to oligopticon. The star-like shape. Tracing the actor-network. The big in the small. Panoramas. Redistributing the local. Articulators and localizers. Equipment. Time. History. Plug-ins. Competence. Attachments. Actor-network. Translation. Causality.
|
| 5 | Week 10 | 11-Dec | Pages 219-262: Connecting sites. Actor-networks. Information. Immutable mobiles. Performing and formatting. Standards. Collecting statements. Mediators. Modes of existence. Regimes of enunciation. Plasma. Missing masses. Reassembling the social. Political epistemology. Modern Constitution. Parliament of Things. Assemblies of assemblages. Cosmopolitics.
|
Additional recommended reading Harman, G. (2007). “The Importance of Bruno Latour for Philosophy.” Cultural Studies Review: Recalling Modernity 13(1).