A-Lex-I-Con

I recently organized with a group of friends an event on unpublished manuscript “Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics” by Graham Harman. In the symposium Professor Bruno Latour engaged with the author of the manuscript and other participants in an illuminating discussion about the relationship between empirical investigation and philosophical analysis. Here are some miscellaneous picks from the discussion. The full audio recording of the event is also available (we are currently exploring possibilities to have it transcribed).

In a friendly exchange with Graham and other speakers, Bruno re-iterated his view that the social scientist must stick to describing social configurations instead of trying to explaining them with more fundamental constructs. While philosophy and metaphysics are indispensable tools for this task, Bruno made it clear that empirical investigation is paramount on his agenda. He also accepted somewhat humorous label as a “serial re-describer”.

The insistence on sticking to descriptions made Professor Chrisanthi Avgerou to argue that although Bruno makes it sound easy on the surface, the type of description he actually calls for may actually turn out be rather complex task. Bruno seemed to agree with this. Moreover, Professor Lucas Introna pointed out a practical challenge to decide when the description is complete. Including an entity in the description can always necessitate including some more entities. The answer to this question might, after all, require some social theory (despite its name ANT is not a theory of the social).

Since my interest is first and foremost on understanding the empirical reality I was delighted when Graham and Bruno took up my question on the possibility of both methodological and metaphysical interpretation of ANT. While I have been happy to notice that Graham’s careful interpretation of Latour on the question where were the microbes before Pasteur is aligned with my reading, it is puzzling that Graham says this is where Latour makes one of his few mistakes.

The answers of the two interlocutors to my question diverged. Graham said that to him empirical research does not necessarily have to be founded on correct metaphysics while for Bruno metaphysics is a tool for going about in empirical research. To me it seems that the both answers can be taken as a green light to continue drawing methodological insights by moving the focus from stable things to the coming together of various human and non-human ingredients. The day before Bruno had just highlighted in a public lecture at LSE how the scope of the analysis and the scale of its entities should not be fixed but let vary naturally. According to him it is precisely the movement how things grow large and go far or diminish out of existence that we should focus upon.

Given that the event was organized by research students I have to say that I am pretty proud of our team. In addition to our distinguished speakers Prof. Bruno Latour, Edgar Whitley, Graham Harman, Prof. Leslie Willcocks, Prof. Lucas Introna and Noortje Marres, we had a number of top academics in the audience such as Prof. Chrisanthi Avgerou, Prof. Claudia Loebbecke, Prof. Nigel Trift and Prof. Peter Miller.

More information

• The recording of the symposium part 1, part 2 and part 3
• The program poster
• My question on the possibility of two different interpretations of Latourian ANT
• Entry at ANTHEM blog with links to audio recording
• Entry at Peter Erdélyi’s Research File with links to audio recording
• Events at the Information Systems and Innovation Group at LSE

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The symposium “Harman Review: Bruno Latour’s Empirical Metaphysics” took place on 5 February 2008 at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The event was organized by Peter Erdélyi (lead organizer), Aleksi Aaltonen, Maha Shaikh, Ofer Engel and Wifak Houij-Gueddana with the generous support of the Information System and Innovation Group. The organizers wish to thank in particular Cheryl Edwardes, Edgar Whitley, Frances White, Prof. Jannis Kallinikos, Prof. Leslie Willcocks and Melissa Waller. Finally, the event would have not happened without the indispensable engagement of Graham Harman who has provided tremendous support for our ANTHEM group.