The relation between “action” and “existence” from the existential point of view are established in the introduction to this chapter, although only the action portion of this discussion is looked at in detail through the work of Latour.
The most fundamental aspect of Latour’s work is that he examines entities dichotomically. For the purposes of this discussion, the entities he refers to are humans and nonhumans, whom are further classified as “actants”. Through Latour’s “actor-network theory”, these actants all stand in relation to one another while emerging and acting equally through a network. However, Latour admits that this theory is not perfect, and those that do not fit into his theory are known as “hybrids”.
Latour goes on to explain how these actants are intertwined with one another. In his example, he uses the example of “weapons kill people”. The conclusion he draws from this is neither the gun nor the person alone kill, but instead it is the gun that affects the person and merely acts as a mediator. When technology such as the gun in the example is called to mediate, it translates a “program of action”, which in this case, is killing. Therefore, mediation can be described as a translation of one action into a new one which is brought forth by the relations that actants (the person and the gun in this example) have with one another. This definition is what allows Latour to avoid a unification of subject and object and instead focus on the blending of humans and nonhumans.
One final point made by Latour is the notion of delegation. As its name implies, this refers to how one actant thrusts responsibilities unto another actant. Although he speaks of delegations from nonhumans to humans, Latour does not indicate them as such, despite their importance to postphenomenology. This perspective believes that a third entity may be responsible for creating relations between actants. Finally, translation is described as being the mediation of the action itself.
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