Bruno Latour [1947 - 2022] Material Culture MUNI, FSS SANb 2032 ( lecture 5 ) ANT Actor Network Theory ANT is a form of theorising and a methodology developed in the 1980s and 90s by academics working mainly in the field of science and technology studies. It is a controversial approach that attempts to redefine actors not so much as willful or intentional agents, but rather as any hybrid entity of ‘human and nonhuman’ which in some way influences, perturbs and reshapes the activity of a techno-social system. The notion of network is of most use when ‘action’ needs to be re-distributed. 45 mins lecture on Networks by Latour in 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7EDMRJrbU&list=PL2B4F3A8DC407E05B 0:55 / 24:13 Society – Technology – People: Interview mit Prof. Bruno Latour 24 mins Interview with Bruno Latour: Society – Technology – People https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnj73erRMjY Some of ANT's core concepts are: Agency, feedback mechanisms, hybridity, inscription, non-human, reflexivity, transcription, translation, the deployment of networks. ANT is a non-dualistic account of the relation between ‘society’ and ‘technology’, whereby society is produced through the mutually constituting interaction of a wide range of human and non-human entities (esp. energy dependent self-propelling technologies such as machines and AI. Latour, B. 1993. We’ve Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. The Parliament of Things https://theparliamentofthings.org/ Latour, B. 2004. The Politics of Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. Donna Haraway, [1944 - ] cyborg – a technological body, is a fusion of animal and machine – as well as a critique of the big oppositions between nature and culture, self and society. An automated production line of a factory, an office computer network, a club's dancers with lights, smoke and sound systems -- all are cyborg constructions of people and machines. “the issues that really matter - who lives, who dies, and at what price - these political questions are embodied in technoculture. They can't be got at in any other way” (Haraway 1997). Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing, 2019 https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/ Capitalocene. Plantationocene Chthulucene Buchli, Victor & Gavin Lucas (2001). Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. London: Routledge. Vienna Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial, Rachael Whiteread, DBE [1963 - ]