10 - Subjects versus Objects

Summary

There is currently a strong movement in the human sciences to recognize what is often referred to as “distributed” agency. Originally stimulated by Bruno Latour and other proponents of Actor-Network Theory, a fundamental point of this perspective is to reject the “Cartesian” dichotomy between subject and object, in which the human subject is perceived as acting upon passive, nonhuman objects. The alternative, endorsed by Actor-Network Theory and many exponents of the ontological turn in the human sciences, is to perceive the various nonhuman entities with which humans interact as similar sources of agency. This view has proven congenial to several categories of researchers aiming to relativize and challenge traditional paradigms associated with a Western or modern ontology, whether natural science, Eurocentric anthropology, or the anthropocentrism of humanism. Central to what these researchers have in common is the conviction that the Enlightenment view of nature is inextricably tied to colonial European ambitions to dominate the world. Over the past three decades, there has thus been a discursive convergence between STS, postcolonial theory, feminism, and avant-garde ethnography. I refer to the worldview in which these schools of thought converge as posthumanism.¹ Their proponents tend to present their perspectives as subversive of the hegemonic worldviews associated with the powerful interests of Euro-American science and technology, siding instead with repressed categories such as indigenous peoples, women, and nonhumans.