There is a weakness in the tool model, I believe, very much of
the character I think Michael Glassman was proposing in his more
recent message. This is that if we think in terms of mediation,
we have the image of a single mediation _between_ two actants
(typically called Subject and Object, though we won't keep the
Cartesian baggage in this case). But there are always more than
two actants in real cases. I do not mean simply, as in my earlier
message, that there are multiple mediations between a Subject and
an Object, as with language, images, gestures, artifacts, etc. I
mean also that there is never just a single triad. Any triad, and
so its elements, is itself dynamically constituted by its
participation in larger _networks_ of mediated interaction. Other
Subjects, in other mediations with other Objects, also cross-link
with every particular mediated activity on which we focus. This
is where the social, and even the macro-social, dimensions of
each activity and action intervene.
Bill Penuel reminded us of the Latour actor (I prefer _actant_)
network model. Within such a model we can see the functioning of
the mediational relation (or interaction) pattern characteristic
of the triad I described in my earlier posting. What is a Subject
(i.e. actant functioning in Subject role in this pattern) in one
triad, may become (i.e. function as) a Tool or Sign in another
process. What is Object in one, may be Tool in another
(sequentially or simultaneously). None of them have an Essence;
each is continually constituted and reconstituted, both
functionally and materially, by its participations in various
interconnected mediational processes/activities. This is what
gives us the multiplex 'Subject' (vs the absolute, real, fixed
Ego), the protean 'Tool', the manifold-constructed 'Object'.
Every semiosis, every action in an activity, begins _in medias
res_ with multiple other processes already on-going through which
its elements are constituted (or have been historically
constituted). What shifts are the momentary roles in the triadic
pattern, and the extended network of interconnected triads that
reach out from any one node, now.
We can also then shift scale, in time and space, and view this
network at the macrosocial level and across historical time.
(There is no discontinuity, one can pick all intermediate scales
as well.) Now one can inquire into the historical-social
conditions of constitution of particular _kinds_ of Subjects,
Tools/Sign systems/Genres, and Objects (including here in my
usual perverse Anglophone way both Goals and Substances). And
into the sequence of changes and its dynamical origins.
Latour's (or my) 'trick' here is mainly to absolutely negate the
Subject-Object distinction: Americans and hammers are equally
actants, and any actant can in principle occupy any role in the
triad pattern. The point is not to reduce persons to objects the
better to rationalize controlling them, nor to personify Hammers
to emancipate them from their oppression, but to enable us to
think past the deeper blockages from our Cartesian tradition, to
see that all actants are mutually constituting and that the
networks are always essentially heterogeneous (persons are not
constituted primarily by their interactions with other persons,
etc.) I think this is an essential complement to the notion of
mediation itself. Mediation breaks the Subject-Object dichotomy
by adding a Third and its dialectic; Actant Networks breaks it by
reducing all to a common class. Each needs the other, I think, to
provide an adequate (both local-actional and global-
sociocultural) framework for analysis. JAY.
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JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU