Giraud, E.H. orcid.org/0000-0003-0845-9804 (2024) Reassembling the banal; pausing before inventing anew. Dialogues in Sociology. ISSN 2976-8667
Abstract
In Fashionable Nonsense (1998), Sokal and Bricmont describe Latour's work as ‘either true but banal, or else surprising but manifestly false’ (92). Using this characterisation of Latour as ‘banal’ as a springboard, this short commentary responds to Blok and Jensen's proposal to reinvent actor-network theory (ANT) by interrogating the stakes and risks of their account of his critics as ‘uninteresting’. Rather than dismissing critique of Latour as uninteresting, this response underscores the value of engaging with strands of Science and Technology Studies (STS) that have a long history of offering rich, provocative, and nuanced critical engagements with Latourian thought and ANT: particularly feminist STS. Drawing upon scholarship in feminist STS that has affinities with ANT, but which also centralises power, inequality, situated knowledges, and exclusion, the commentary ultimately argues that before reinventing Latour or ANT anew it is vital to draw on critical reinventions that already exist.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in Dialogues in Sociology is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Latour; feminist science studies; science wars; feminist STS |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Sociological Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Sep 2024 11:49 |
Last Modified: | 24 Oct 2024 09:03 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/29768667241291016 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:217489 |
Download
Filename: Dialogues Reinventing the Banal - draft 1.pdf
Licence: CC-BY 4.0