Deans who like Latour Litanies

From Bruce Ferguson, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at AUC (the School in which I work when I have my faculty hat on):

“I have been thinking that you should take all your published lists, probably beginning in chronological order, starting with something like

‘islands, jungles and even fictional characters’ and going on to

‘bumbling rocks, diamonds and trees’ to

‘an assemblage of neutrons, heavy water, uranium, cannon assemblies, plutonium, implosion devices, distillation cascades, rural sites, metallurgists, security guards, loyalty oaths, government funds, physics articles, political allies, military allies, wounded egos and target lists’ or

‘Hamlet, Popeye, phlogiston, subway trains, the Dutch East India Company, the Easter Bunny, and the Holy Spirit’

to produce something like a concrete poem of the concreteness of actants….i can see it blown up and transcribed on a wall like stimulating wallpaper….it outdoes jack kerouac every time….and competes with ginsberg’s howl….”

Yeah, I’ve been thinking of going back through my books and articles and compiling all the Latour Litanies. Part of my motivation is to do a word count on them. I want to see if Shaviro is right that I have an obsession with tar in these lists.

As for Bruce Ferguson, how many Deans actually read the books written by their faculty members? Breath of fresh air, that guy.