Like Jenny, I want to declare 2006 the Year of the ANT. I’ve become very attracted to Actor-Network-Theory for all kinds of reasons - its emphasis on the network as a site of transformation and translation, not just connectivity, its definition of the social, its focus on relations, and so on. But I’m also attracted to its willingness to self-critique. In the intro to Actor Network Theory and After, John Law drives home the point:

• We who came up with the name, no longer like it.
• Actor-Network-Theory, by its own theory, can’t be a theory.
• Theories make themselves out to be stable identities.
• If relations are about transformations, the theory itself must be allowed to transform. Its stability is always in doubt. ANT can’t actually be ANT.
• To which I add: In the language of other theoretical principles: chora over topos

I’m reminded of Elizabeth Grosz’s talk here yesterday and the emphasis she placed (borrowing from Deleuze) on “vibrations” for understanding what we mean by “biology.” The vibrations - bloc of sensations, and so on - which construct a meaning system (we can replace biology with another system: writing, technology, rhetoric) continue to have affects. The place of meaning is not as stable as we are led to believe.

And I’m reminded of a variety of conversations we have with each other professionally over what it is we do, who we are, what we write, how and what we think. The lesson ANT might teach those of us interested in new media is just how important it is to allow the practices and theories of new media to inform the “field’s” growth and transformation. Saying that is not repeating the endless (and unproductive) debates over “what’s ‘new’ about new media” nor is it to repeat the equally unproductive arguments that polarize theoretical work to always consider race, class, gender before it can stabilize and transform. Instead, it is to consider the very principles new media is draw to (at least, in some areas) as transforming agents. If folksonomy, for example, is vital to new media, then the principles of folksonomy (how we name and how we distribute such names to categories and organizational schemes) must be applied to ourselves as well. We can employ other principles for similar purposes.