Acts of Artifacts (Continued) Davide, Genevieve, Cho, Shih-En, and Amna

As Verbeek points out, Latour uses the previous observations to say that the relation between humans and the world in the post-phenomenological view is complementary to the classical hermeneutic view. He does not believe in phenomenology being able to describe the world through words since descriptions themselves are mediated only through a set of words. Though it does not seek to explain empirical reality, Latour’s view does show how human lives can be technologically mediated as well. Phenomenology may be rejected by Latour, but actor-network theory itself is not primarily about the dichotomy of the subject-object, but rather, it is about the emergence of relations between networks. It looks for chains of associations.

However, as sound as they may seem, Latour’s theories should probably not be taken universally. For example, the aforementioned chains are a bit more differentiated than Latour’s post-phenomenological view; according to Verbeek, they should be separated into categories such as presence-at-hand, readiness-to-hand. Another Latourian concept that might be problematic according to Verbeek is delegation since it creates an asymmetry between humans and non-humans, something that is against his main idea of mutual relationships. Rather than being a social constructivist, Latour is simply a constructivist who tries to escape the subject-object dichotomy because of the constant rise of new entities, hybrids that simply cannot be defined under this category. Ironically, as noted previously, it is exactly because they cannot be concretely categorized that they thrive. Perhaps we not only need to analyze our technological culture similarly to how anthropologists study other cultures, as well as through Latour's four meanings of mediation, but also by incorporating other ideas that might fit into a more empirical reality.