Latour’s ANT undermines defenses of human agency against data-driven social knowledge

Evidence

It is paradoxical when Bruno Latour, one of the founders of the wonderfully illuminating perspective on human beings’ relations with technology called Actor Network Theory, writes that “purposeful action and intentionality may not be properties of objects, but they are also not properties of humans either. They are properties of institutions, apparatuses.” Whether this is plausible as an account of human purpose or intention, it is hardly helpful to those who want to defend the role of human agency in our understanding of the social world. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 439

Categorization

• XREF: A striking internal critique: a critical-theory giant’s own framework hands ammunition to the surveillance-data school. Relevant to mapping where rival schools of critique overlap and diverge. — connects to: New social knowledge alters the social world rather than merely describing it — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 363; Representation meaning arises independently of authorial intention and depends on preexisting social knowledge — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 743; Absolute Knowledge’s anonymity threatens to abolish individual interpretive initiative — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1135
• SEED: Possible essay: ‘When Critical Theory Critiques Its Own Side’ — how influential theorists like Latour and Tarde inadvertently provide cover for the very reductionism they oppose.

Broader Connections

• New social knowledge alters the social world rather than merely describing it #expands (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 363
• Absolute Knowledge’s anonymity threatens to abolish individual interpretive initiative #exemplifies (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1135
• Representation meaning arises independently of authorial intention and depends on preexisting social knowledge #complicates (0.75) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 743