Risky business

“There are risks entailed in putting forward an ontology: making metaphysical assumptions explicit exposes the exclusions upon which any given conception of reality is based. Yet, the political potential of deconstructive analysis lies not in the simple recognition of the inevitablity of exclusions, but in insisting upon accountability for the particular exclusions that are enacted and in taking up the responsibility to perpetually contest and rework the boundaries.”

-Karen Barad, 1998 (“Getting Real: technoscientific practices and the materialization of reality”  Differences 10(2) pg. 103-4)

The strength of objects

“In talk about meaning and interpretation the physical body stays untouched.  All interpretations, whatever their number, are interpretations of.  Of what?  Of some matter that is projected somewhere.  Of some nature that allows culture to attribute all these shapes to it.  This is built into the very metaphor of ‘perspectives’ itself.  This multiplies the observers – but leaves the object observed alone.  All alone.  Untouched.  It is only looked at.  As if it were in the middle of a circle.  A crowd of silent faces assembles around it.  They seem to get to know the object by their eyes only.  Maybe they have ears that listen.  But no on ever touches the object.  In a strange way that doesn’t make it recede and fade away, but makes it very solid.  Intangibly strong.”

-Annemarie Mol, 2002 (The Body Multiple.  Durham NC: Duke Pg 10)

More than connect-the-dots

“…not a network connecting agents which are already there, but a network which configures ontologies.  The agents, their dimensions, and what they are and do, all depend on the morphology of the relations in which they are involved…

“In the social network…the agents’ identities, interests, and objectives, in short, everything which might stabilize their description and their being, are variable outcomes which fluctuate with the form and dynamics of relations between these agents…

“This means that the agent is neither immersed in the network nor framed by it; in other words, the network does not serve as a context.  Both agent and network are, in a sense, two sides of the same coin. “

-Michel Callon, 1998 (“Introduction: the embeddedness of economic markets in economics” In The Laws of Markets.  Malden MA: Blackwell.  Pg. 8)