first reference

The first published reference to Prince of Networks appears in an article by MYRA HIRD, a very productive and interesting sociologist based in Canada.

Hird, M. J. “Coevolution, Symbiosis and Sociology.” Ecological Economics In Press, Corrected Proof.

“My research is engaged in thinking through two implications of bacterial symbioses for ecology and sociology. First, the proportional representation of ANT’s parliament of things – microbes, fungi, flora and nonhuman animals occupy the bulk of the biospheric parliament – is all but entirely absent from current sociological formulations of ecology. As Harman puts it ‘all reality is political, but not all politics is human’ (Harman, forthcoming, p. 118).”

This touches on a point that is always important to remember about Latour. For instance, when he says “there is no difference between might and right,” this could be read as reducing reality to human politics, but only if one forgets that for Latour “might” refers equally to the force of soldiers, aircraft, Thomas Hobbes, priests, comets, and tsunamis. “Might” does not just mean human political violence for Latour.

If there’s a problem with this view, it lies not in the (completely non-Latourian) view that reality is arbitrarily constructed by human power dynamics, but in the fact that “might” for Latour is always purely relational. It is might only as exercised here and now, with no residue lying outside.

ADDENDUM: This was not sent to me by Hird herself or by a personal friend of hers, so I assume it must be publicly accessible.