…an actor is nothing but a network, except that a network is nothing but actors (Latour 800).
The possibilities of engaging with ANT as a "mode of inquiry" used to analyze literature in a statistical sense are numerous and exciting. On one hand, ANT may help reveal concrete connections where only educated guesses once abounded. On the other hand, ANT may be helpful not only for dissolving the barrier between individual and society and using technology to understand texts in a broader context, but also for questioning and perhaps doing away with the separation of text, author, and audience. One communicative medium that is particularly useful for questioning these boundaries is that genre of text which is written to be shared orally.
Both Latour's 2010 talk and Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel contain structural or narrative elements that privilege the spoken word. In creating this relationship between speaker/writer and listener/reader, Latour and Hurston illustrate not merely an interconnectedness, but something much more integral -- they assert that the very production and existence of their work occurs through its distribution.
Latour's investment in expressing a theory of networks with the language of inclusion and collaboration requires little explanation. However, it is notable just how pervasive this sentiment is in Latour's choice of words. It is "we" (attendees of the International Seminar on Network Theory) who have given the idea of network "a hegemonic extension", and "we" who go so far as to "possess individuals" through amassing data from millions of online personal profiles (796, 806) . Even Latour's directives are collective; in a telling moment he instructs that
We should be able to speed up the time necessary to transform the mass of quali-quantitative data into agreed-upon and comfortable-looking datascapes. (809)
Although contextually Latour is encouraging those with the skills and resources available to them to take up his cause of increased accessibility to datascapes, rhetorically he still frames his request in terms of the collective. This move is not only an effective means of moving a group of people to action, but symbolically it includes the audience in the production of Latour's ideas and vision for the future.
Hurston's collectivity is much quieter -- a whisper in the dark. TEWWG is structured by Janie's retelling of her life story to her "kissing friend" Pheoby; the listener "eager to feel and do through Janie", the speaker "full of that oldest human longing -- self revelation" (Hurston 8). Thus, Janie's speaking of her life story is prompted by and fulfilled through the participation of another; without Pheoby present the events of the novel may have occurred, but Pheoby would never hear them and we would never read them.
Moreover, although Janie's story is told in the solitude of the "kissing, young darkness", its message is one meant to be shared (9). When Janie returns from her traumatic goodbye to the muck, she is greeted with the hostile curiosity of a town eager "to be there and hear it all" (7). Interestingly, Janie is not bothered by the town's thirst for her story; indeed, she encourages Pheoby to
tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf. (7)
Thus, although the novel is bookended by the private ruminations of one protagonist (and written by one author), the means by which the novel's most important aspects -- its plot and Janie's parting message to us that "Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore" -- are produced and sustained through a social network, and in the spirit of commune (226).
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2 comments:
I like the idea of considering the relationship between networks, communities, and specific forms of communication. Your observation that the “we” in the Latour reading takes on a specific significance from the fact that Latour’s talk was given orally raises some interesting questions. I’m not sure if it’s a “we” that’s meant to make the subject of the talk more inclusive or more specialized. Latour could very specifically identifying the people in the room while he was giving his talk as the people responsible for taking certain actions, or his “we” might extend beyond the room, to anyone “with the skills and resources available to them to take up his cause of increased accessibility to datascapes.”(Though as you point out, this last set of people isn’t a particularly inclusive one.) Or – the third possibility – “we” could include any potential audience of the talk outside of its initial listeners.
Based on this, it seems like the existence of the text in written form gives the word “we” a more inclusive sense than it would have if the talk were only given orally. The same seems true of Janie's story - it's only available to us, the novel-readers, because it exists as a written text, and not as the oral text it is presented to be.
I'm curious how this might all tie back to networks. Is one form of communication have more or less "networkable" than the other? Or does the fact that audiences, whether listeners or readers, connect with each other in unexpected ways actually mean that the differences between written and spoken communication are in some way negligible? (After all, we weren't present for Latour's talk, but it was somehow recorded in writing and shared with us - does it continue to matter that it was originally communicated orally?)
Hi Jenny,
Like Megan, I am intrigued by how your reading of “we” in Latour’s speech opens up definitions of inclusivity and raises questions about how speech and text create a burden-of-sorts for the defined audience. For Latour’s “audience”—be they the specific few at the talk, the general field of sociologists, or the larger field of those interested in Actor-Network Theory—his description of what ANT does not only gives light to Latour’s “ideas and vision for the future” but also mobilizes “a group of people to action.” For Janie, by responding to the crowd’s curiosity by selecting to only relay her story to Phoeby, Janie also places a unique onus on Phoeby-as-listener, to “tell ‘em what Ah say if you wants to…”
I wonder, like Megan, how the contexts and modes of communication allow for certain types of inclusivity. But even so, I also wonder how the Actor-Network Theory’s more central thesis about the erasure of a distinct subject renders communication as no longer a way of including or excluding others, but constructing the self. In other words, if people are always networked, how does the act of speaking to some people or not others or in speaking in some way and not another reveal who the networked individual speaker is? What does it mean for Latour to be speaking specifically to the conference and not intentionally writing to literary theorists? What does it mean for Janie to only speak to Phoebe and not to the town-at-large?
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