December 2, 2015 - 19:25
Latour offers lots of ideas about a lot of things.
The dichotomy of matter and materiality, in which time flows as a causality from past to present, and then the other flowing from future to present. The flow of materially is baffling to be—it’s backwards—going from future to present. What I also don’t understand is why Latour describes materiality as having a break – why can’t it encompass a past? He describes time as a present moment, though matter is understood differently from the past versus the future. I don’t understand what we gain from this dichotomy, in having these two divided temporal modes, by way of matter. Why do we have to choose?
Regarding the deanimation of matter: Why have this temporal distinction of seeing time by way of matter? How are we supposed to think through a politicized agency or subjectivity?
As told by Latour we are suspended in the space between these temporalities, pulled away from the emergent causality behind the event, occasion, or phenomenon – yet we are not to not subtract from it by tracing the forces that preceded it...how to we go about doing this?
The Anthropos cannot act in isolation, as told by Latour. We are actors and bearers, one moves in relation to other beings. The illusion of mastery, the divide between the leader and the follower, the actor and bearer, is all a misunderstanding of action, as formulated by the sciences.