Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann, Joost Van Loon - Discussing New Materialism - Methodological Implications For The Study of Materialities (2019, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden - Springer VS) PDF

Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann
Joost van Loon Editors
Discussing New
Materialism
Methodological Implications
for the Study of Materialities
Discussing New Materialism
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann · Joost van Loon
Editors
Discussing New
Materialism
Methodological Implications for the
Study of Materialities
Editors
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann Joost van Loon
Institut für Sozialwesen Fachbereich Soziologie
Universität Kassel KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Kassel, Hessen, Germany Eichstätt, Bayern, Germany
ISBN 978-3-658-22299-4 ISBN 978-3-658-22300-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7
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Contents
Part I Introduction
New Materialism and Its Methodological
Consequences: An Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann and Joost van Loon
Part II Postphenomenology and Actor-Network-Theory

What Makes Sensation of a Sentient Thing Possible:
The Concept of Time in the Work of
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Historical Materialism and Actor-Network-Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Joost van Loon
Part III Cyborg and Agential Realism

The Cyborg, Its Friends and Feminist
Theories of Materiality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Anne-Jorunn Berg
“Cutting Together/Apart” – Impulses from
Karen Barad’s Feminist Materialism
for a Relational Sociology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Susanne Völker
v
vi Contents
Part IV Praxeology and Communicative Constructivism

Rethinking Bodies and Objects in
Social Interaction: A Multimodal and
Multisensorial Approach to Tasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Lorenza Mondada
Materiality, Meaning, Social Practices:
Remarks on New Materialism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Robert Schmidt
New Materialism? A View from Sociology of Knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Reiner Keller
Part V Algorithmic Culture and Doing Science

From Hardware to Software to Runtime:
The Politics of (at Least) Three Digital Materialities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Jan-Hendrik Passoth
Of Rabbits and Men, or: How to Study
Innovation in Nanomedicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Wiebke Schär
About the Contributors
Anne-Jorunn Berg was Professor and Director of the Center for Gender Research
at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has been central in the development of
gender and technology studies in Scandinavia. Her work is based at the inter-
section of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and feminist theory and she
has been involved in several national and international research projects explor-
ing implications and possibilities given this vantage point. She has worked
extensively with Donna Haraway’s theorizing on the material-semiotic and
conceptualizations of nature. Her research interests are varied: smart homes,
intersectionality, innovation, whiteness studies, digital feminism, materiality,
research methods or housework, always with a keen eye on gendered processes,
formations or relations. Currently, she is Professor at the Faculty for Social Sci-
ence at Nord University, Norway.
Address: Faculty for Social Science, Nord University, PO box 1490, 8049 Bodo,
Norway
e-mail: ajb@nord.no
Reiner Keller is Professor of Sociology at Augsburg University (Germany) since
2011. Currently, he is Scientific Director of the Jakob-Fugger Center for Transna-
tional Studies, Augsburg University, and, since 2015, a member of the executive
committee of the German Sociological Association. He has developed the Sociology
of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) since the late 1990s. His research
centres on sociology of knowledge and culture, discourse studies, sociological the-
ory, qualitative methods, risk and environment, politics of knowledge and knowing,
and French sociology. He has published extensively on these areas and subjects.
Address: Philosophisch-Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Augsburg,
Universitätsstr. 10, 86135 Augsburg, Germany
e-mail: reiner.keller@phil.uni-augsburg.de
vii
viii About the Contributors
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann is Professor of Sociological Methodology of Qualita-

tive Reconstructive Research at the University of Kassel, Germany. Since 2018,
she is Director of the Center of Empirical Research Methods at the University
of Kassel. Her research focuses on the interpretive paradigm of Alfred Schütz
and its further development. With reference to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, she has
made other forms of intentionality such as fleshly habituality fruitful for phenom-
enology, moving beyond the classic model of interaction with two human actors,
limited to their content of consciousness. On this basis, she has developed a meth-
odology and method for video hermeneutics that take into account the special
content of fleshly behavior. With her work, she brings Merleau-Ponty’s ontology
of the flesh into sociology of knowledge and expands classical hermeneutics. She
has been involved in numerous important studies such as the analysis of video-
recorded interactions of doctor-patient consultations or the effect of computerized
knowledge in the operating theatre (funded by the German Research Associa-
tion). Currently, her research is located in the field of child welfare and the con-
struction of violence.
Address: University of Kassel, Department of Social Welfare and Social Work,
Arnold-Bode-Str. 10, 34127 Kassel, Germany
e-mail: ulrike.kissmann@uni-kassel.de
Lorenza Mondada is Professor for Linguistics at the University of Basel and
Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Helsinki. Her research deals
with social interaction in ordinary, professional and institutional settings, within
an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective. Her specific focus
is on video analysis and multimodality, integrating language and embodiment in
the study of human action and sociality. Her work on multimodality in interaction
studies how the situated and endogenous organization of social interaction draws
on a diversity of multimodal resources such as, beside language, gesture, gaze,
body posture, body movements, objects manipulations as well as multisensorial
practices such as touching, tasting and seeing. She has extensively published in
J. of Pragmatics, Discourse Studies, Language in Society, ROLSI, J. of Sociolin-
guistics, and co-edited several collective books (for Cambridge University Press,
Benjamins, Routledge, De Gruyter).
Address: University of Basel, Department of Linguistics and Literature, Maiengasse
51, 4056 Basel, Switzerland
e-mail: Lorenza.mondada@unibas.ch
About the Contributors ix
Jan-Hendrik Passoth is Privatdozent at European University Viadrina in Frank-

furt (Oder) and Research Group Leader of the Digital/Media/Lab at the Munich
Center for Technology in Society (MCTS) at Technische Universität München.
His group of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers study digital transformations
in ethnographic cases studies on industrial production, borders and migration or
public broadcasting. He studied sociology, computer science and political science
at Hamburg University where he also completed his dissertation on “Technology
and Society” in sociology. He has worked in Hamburg, Bielefeld and Berlin and
has been a visiting scholar at Indiana University, Pennsylvania State University
and a fellow at ZIF in Bielefeld and the Locating Media Group at the University
of Siegen. His research draws on insights from science and technology studies
(STS) and focusses on the use of standardized and interconnected software tech-
nologies in popular culture, politics and the media and the changing role of com-
puter science for contemporary societies.
Address: Technische Universität München, Munich Center for Technology in
Society, Digital Media Lab, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 München, Germany
e-mail: jan.passoth@tum.de
Wiebke Schär is Senior Researcher at Sine-Institute Munich. Her research
interests include STS, health studies, studies of innovation and sustainabil-
ity as well as studies of risk. She is a qualitative researcher, specialised in ANT
(Actor-Network)-analysis. She worked on the following issues: the social impact
of infectious diseases such as SARS, the natures-cultures of the Danube River, the
risk of dietary supplement, controversies and participatory tools and visualization
tools in social sciences. Her doctoral thesis is concerned with an ethnography of
innovation in nanomedicine. Currently she works in a project in cooperation with
the City of Munich, which is focused on health promotion and prevention.
Address: sine – Süddeutsches Institut für empirische Sozialforschung e. V., Schwan-
thalerstr. 91, 80336 Munich, Germany
e-mail: wiebke.schaer@sine-institut.de
Robert Schmidt is Professor for Process-Oriented Sociology at Catholic Uni-
versity Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. After studying sociology and theatre in Erlangen,
New York and Berlin, he completed his doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin
and his habilitation at Technical University of Darmstadt. From 2000 to 2010
he was a research fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cul-
tures” at Freie Universität Berlin. He held visiting professorships at the Institute
for Advanced Studies in Vienna (2011), the Technical University of Darmstadt
x About the Contributors
(2011–2012) and was Interim Professor for Sociology and Qualitative Methods in
Empirical Social Research at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürn-
berg (2012–2013). His research focuses on the sociology of social practices,
the ethnography of organization, and process-oriented methodology. His recent
publications include: “Soziologie der Praktiken. Konzeptionelle Studien und
empirische Analysen”, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2012 and “Reflexive Knowledge in
Practices”, in “The Nexus of Practices”, edited by Ted Schatzki, Elizabeth Shove
and Allison Hui, pp. 141–154, Routledge 2017.
Address: Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Kapuzinergasse 2, 85072
Eichstätt, Germany
e-mail: RSchmidt@ku.de
Joost van Loon is currently Chair of General Sociology and Sociological The-
ory at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. He has published exten-
sively on issues related to sociological theory, media- and cultural studies, science
and technology and risk. He is author of among others Risk and Technological
Culture (2002) and Media Technology: Critical Perspectives (2008) and is Editor-
in-Chief of the transdisciplinary journal Space and Culture.
Address: Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Kapuzinergasse 2, 85072
Eichstätt, Germany
e-mail: joost.vanloon@ku.de
Susanne Völker is Professor of Methods and Methodology for Social and Edu-
cational Sciences and Gender Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany.
She is Scientific Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at Cologne Univer-
sity (GeStiK). As a qualitative researcher in social sciences, she has entangled
the praxeology of Pierre Bourdieu with feminist new materialist approaches. Her
areas of research are located in the field of queer theory, gender studies, theory of
precarization, practice theory and research on social inequality.
Address: University of Cologne, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department for
Educational and Social Sciences, Richard-Strauss-Str. 2, 50931 Köln, Germany
e-mail: Susanne.voelker@uni-koeln.de
Part I
Introduction
New Materialism and Its
Methodological Consequences: An
Introduction
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann and Joost van Loon
What to do with a term that is too broad to stand for anything specific and too
despised to find anyone defending it? We were confronted with this question when
reflecting new materialism on our panel session during the 2016 Biannual Confer-
ence of the German Sociological Association (“Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziolo-
gie”). Originally, the panel session consisted of four discussants, representing each
a specific perspective on materiality. Later, we decided to edit an anthology and
to compare more than four approaches. We are aware that some authors currently
have worked through the myriad of materialist standpoints and their critiques (see,
e.g., Bath et al. 2017; Keller et al. 2013; Henkel and L indemann 2017). However,
our edited volume is the only one that explicitly puts the emphasis on the ensuing
methodological consequences. From our perspective, it is necessary to broaden the
discussion on new materialism by a thorough reflection on empirical methods. Up
to now, Deleuzean “assemblages” and so-called posthuman concepts have given
rise to what has been termed “post-qualitative” thinking in qualitative methodol-
ogy (see, e.g., Koro-Ljungberg et al. 2017). Our publication aims at presenting
a wide range of theoretical approaches together with the corresponding concep-
tualizations for empirical enquiry. Therefore, the contributions each locate them-
selves within the discussion of new materialism and elaborate on the theoretical
assumptions that lead to the respective methodology as well as method. They ask,
U. T. Kissmann (*) 
University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany
E-Mail: ulrike.kissmann@uni-kassel.de
J. van Loon 
Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany
E-Mail: joost.vanloon@ku.de
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature 2019 3
U. T. Kissmann and J. van Loon (ed.), Discussing New Materialism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_1
4 U. T. Kissmann and J. van Loon
for example, which requirements have to be met to study matter and whether tradi-
tional sociology furnishes sufficient tools for it.
From the outset, we have to ask what is new materialism? It is perhaps best
described as a loose gathering of rejects. Those associated with it have almost
without exception deployed different terms to describe their own position: Agen-
tial realism (Barad); schizoanalysis (Deleuze and Guattari); cyborg feminism
(Haraway); posthuman feminism (Braidotti); speculative realism (Harman);
actor-network-theory (Latour, Callon, Law, Mol); speculative constructivism
(Stengers); monadology (Tarde); process-theology (Whitehead). They are a loose
gathering because they derive from divergent, sometimes even completely oppo-
sitional, ontological and epistemological considerations, analytical methods and
even disciplines. They have been gathered by a process of ascription, usually by
those who disagree with the challenges these interventions have offered. To put it
differently, the postfix “ism” is a very reliable index of rejection.
We have opted for a pragmatic use of the term to enable us to explicate the
nature of the allergic rejections that have been invoked. In that sense, we under-
stand new materialism as a label associated with ontological and epistemologi-
cal interventions. As good interventions interrupt, irritate and therefore challenge,
they should not expect a warm welcome from those whose vested (institutional)
interests and personal preferences (prejudices) are being questioned. The nature
of these allergic reactions can be simplified as an itch that refuses to go away.
This itch is the matter of matter, or better: the matter that matters. In other words,
what has been gathered under “(new) materialism” as label of rejection, is matter
as matter of concern.
To state that matter matters is a truism bordering on tautology. Who would
dare to say that matter does not matter? That matter matters is deeply inscribed
into the semantics of the very word matter. Starting with the verb, to matter is
to make a difference. “It matters” means that “it” makes a difference. As a noun,
matter refers to substance for which the Greeks used the word hyle (“mere”
substance). Matter as noun is remarkable because it is alluding to something
extremely concrete, whilst it itself remains extremely abstract (the same could be
said of its related word “mass”): i.e., materiality. However, in everyday E nglish,
the question “What is the matter?” is usually not understood as a request for a
specification of a particular substance, for example, the identification of its
molecular structure; but instead invoking concern: “Please tell me what is of con-
cern to you; what is on your mind.” So the noun matter can also be invoked as a
performative stand-in for (representative of) “of concern.”
These simple vernacular exercises are important because they highlight the
way in which in the social sciences, the concept of matter is most likely being
New Materialism and Its Methodological Consequences … 5
specified. We assert that those most irritated by it are more likely to invoke
matter-as-noun in the sense of hyle, naked, formless, or better general substance.
Some authors (see, e.g., Kalthoff et al. 2016, p. 11 ff.) suggest that sociology
should only concern itself with “socio-material constellations” instead of tak-
ing matter seriously. That is, sociology should have no interest in general, amor-
phous substance; but only in substances that are social, or perhaps better: socially
shaped (morphe). Matter only matters when it has been socially formatted. Simi-
larly, social constructivism conceives matter solely as sociomateriality, i.e., as a
practical bundling of human actions and nonhuman artefacts (see, originally,
Berger and Luckmann 1966). It, too, deploys the opposition between sociality
and materiality analogous to Aristotle’s separation of hyle and morphe, or Kant’s
separation between ideas and things-as-such; to state that “pure matter” (amor-
phous substance) is sociologically irrelevant. What matters to sociology is social,
or perhaps even better socialized matter.
The distinction of “matter” and “the social” has been extremely influential
and persistent. After its appearance in Aristotle’s and later in Kant’s work, it was
solidified during the emergence of the “human sciences” (or “sciences of man”)
in the 19th century (Foucault, 1970, p. 344–387).
Matter was excluded from the human sciences and left to the realm of the nat-
ural sciences. All that remains are social “forms,” often equated with particular
functions (e.g., Durkheim, 1912). This perspective on disciplines as fundamen-
tally opposed can also be found in the phenomenological tradition of sociology.
The Schützean distinction between first-order and second-order construction
in “The Problem of Social Reality” (Schütz 1962) is a means to separate epis-
temologically the social sciences from the natural sciences (as well as sociolo-
gists from lay people). Schütz ascribes the first-order constructions to the natural
sciences whereas the social sciences proceed through second-order constructions.
Many protagonists of new materialism challenge these traditional disciplinary
boundaries. Deleuze and Latour, for example, each draw upon the early sociology
of Gabriel Tarde, who analyzed society through an unapologetically (quasi-) sci-
entific, biological lens, as he perceived society as organism made up of many
microorganisms. Barad, too, refers to the physicist Niels Bohr in order to compre-
hend reality. New materialism therefore is not only a rejection of the distinction
between “matter” and “the social,” but also a critique of the separation of the nat-
ural sciences and social sciences and, with this, Schützean social constructions.
In the following paragraph, we will analyze the idea of reality within social
constructivism. We have chosen this example because Berger and Luckmann,
together with their predecessor Alfred Schütz, conceived reality as social and,
at the same moment, as a field for sociological enquiry. This suggests that “the
social” and sociology function as each other’s precondition. We will ask why and
how sociology is conceptualized as investigating the social and in how far matter
is excluded from the discipline.
The basic contentions of the argument of this book are implicit in its title and subti-
tle, namely, that reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge
must analyse the process in which this occurs. (Berger and Luckmann 1966, p. 13)
Despite attempting to sidestep the philosophical question, what might be con-

sidered “reality,” Berger and Luckmann still attempt to address it sociologically.
Before doing so, they explicitly position the realm of sociology as falling “some-
where in the middle between that of the man in the street [sic] and that of the phi-
losopher” (ibid., p. 14). That is, 1) sociologists are not “men in the streets” and 2)
sociologists are not “philosophers.”
Ad 1) Berger and Luckmann claim that “the” man-in-the-street1 takes their real-
ity for granted, “unless he is stopped by some sort of problem” (ibid.). When such
a man cannot continue his stroll, for example because an obstacle is in his way,
he has to navigate his way around the obstacle. In Latin, an obstacle that stops is
understood as “thrown (jacere) – against (ob),” i.e., an object. In English, to object
means to resist.
Our first question therefore is as follows: Do followers of Berger and Luck-
mann accept the logical deduction that their “men in the street” cannot always
take “their reality” for granted; namely not in those instances that reality gets in
the way, i.e., becomes an object?
Men in the street can no longer take “their” reality for granted because this
reality objects to being taken for granted, perhaps in the same way as the wives of
men in the street object to being taken for granted as domestic servants (when at
home) or prostitutes (when on the streets). The figure of the “man-in-the-street”
is thus not at all innocent, even if Berger and Luckmann used as a conventional
expression for “ordinary person.” A man-in-the-street, as a figuration of an ordi-
nary person, might be on his way from home to work or vice versa, or might be
simply loitering. Both are generic entities of “society.” However, “man” is always
gendered. If we were to use the expression “woman in (of) the street,” we might
conjure very different figurations and strong, historically entrenched, patriarchal
1We have used “man-in-the-street” to refer to the idiom as intended by Berger and Luck-
mann, namely as figure of speech, and to men in the streets to highlight the actual empirical
corollary of this, to highlight the gender-blindness implied in the generic use of the idiom.
connotations that suggest that the public sphere (the agora of the polis) is no
place for women; that is, a woman loitering in the streets is not something one
would associate with the figuration of “ordinary person.”
The undifferentiated use of the category of “man-in-the-street” subsumes gen-
der to the generic conception of “ordinary person.” A principle feature of mascu-
linity consists in “the hypostasis of masculinity to the general human” and that
“the constitutive impact of gender as common ground is masked in homosocial
communities” (see Meuser 2001, p. 14). The relevance of gender therefore is
obscured through the use of the modes of being “ordinary” versus “sociological.”
Sociologists are not men in the streets, not because they are women of the streets
or men or women at home, but because they are not ordinary persons. The modal-
ity of “being sociological” is extraordinary.
Based on this, our second question is: Assuming that followers of Berger and
Luckmann understand both categories – i.e., men in the street and sociologists –
to be human beings, do they also assume that both categories are mutually exclu-
sive? That is, one is either a man in the street or a sociologist? Or is it by virtue of
their shared human nature that sociologists are also “men in the street”? And can
the reverse be true, too: Can men in the street be sociologists? If they are mutually
exclusive, then sociologists have no access to the modality of being associated
with “men in the street,” just as a lay people, i.e., men in the street, have no access
to the modality of being called “sociological.” One could also put it differently:
Is the difference between an ordinary person and a sociologist ontologically and
politically more essential as a modality of being than, for example, gender?
The extraordinary modality of being a sociologist, however, has been expli-
cated by Berger and Luckmann as the inevitability of the “systematic aware-
ness of the fact that men in the street take quite different realities for granted
as between one society and another” (ibid.: 14). It is rather safe to assume that
this systematic awareness is due to their very definition of what a sociologist is
(a sociologist is a human being who “forced by the very logic of his discipline”
(ibid.) has to work on the basis of a systematic awareness of the taking for
granted of different realities by different people) and not some mysterious bio-
logical trait or mental infliction.
In contrast to the man-in-the-street, the sociologist operates with two realities
at the same time: a) the (different) realities as taken for granted by men in the
street and b) the meta-reality (they call it a fact) that different men in different
streets take different realities for granted.
Ad 2) However, the sociologist will not go as far as to decide which particular
version of reality that has been taken for granted is more or less true; his meta-
reality does not include criteria for establishing the validity of particular realities
as taken for granted. That is delegated to the realm of philosophy. The question of
the validity of particular takings-for-granted (truths?) is a philosophical and not
a sociological one. That is, whereas according to Berger and Luckmann, philos-
ophers are concerned with truth; sociologists restrict themselves to truth claims
(for which they introduced the term “knowledge”).
“Sociological interest in questions of ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’ is thus initially
justified by the fact of their social relativity” (ibid.: 15). Unfortunately, this sen-
tence came completely out of nowhere on the third page of the introduction. Until
then, there was merely a whiff of the notion that the “taking for granted” might be
some kind of social event. That is, what is being taken for granted as reality a by
person A and reality b by person B, is not the consequence of individual experi-
ences, perceptions or choices by A and B – which, after all is quite a plausible
explanation of why different men in different streets take different realities for
granted – but “to be understood in relation to various differences between the two
societies” (ibid.: 14). That is, the streets (may) matter.
Two paragraphs later, all doubt has been removed: Streets do matter and there-
fore the taking for granted of a reality differs between person A and person B
because both are in different streets (dubbed “social contexts”). “It follows that
specific agglomerations of ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’ pertain to specific social con-
texts, and that these relationships [sic] will have to be included in an adequate soci-
ological analysis of these contexts” (ibid.: 15). It is not clear what agglomerations
of “reality and “knowledge” might be concretely and how they differ from what
is referred to as “social contexts,” but in the same paragraph, the authors refer to
the “taking for granted” of “realities as known” (ibid.). As these “pertain to” social
contexts, we have stumbled across the famous Durkheimian edict that “the task for
sociology should be to explain the social through the social” (Durkheim 1894).
This mysterious adjective “social” gathers different realities and knowledges
into “aggregates.” Social, context and agglomerations of reality/knowledge thus
seem to become equivalents and can be replaced with “social construction.”
These do not originate from singular, isolated individuals, but from the commu-
nication of shared experiences. Hence, the street (rather than the home) is such
an important trope, as it is the place of haphazard encounters between individuals
(which is less likely in the home), who despite their singularity (and an absence
of intimacy) engage with a “shared context.”
Of course this is what Berger and Luckmann had in mind all along. There is
no need for sociology if different constructions of reality are simply the conse-
quence of individual opinions (“free will”). The relativistic base line, that there
are different constructions of reality existing alongside each other, was never
thought to be a completely random occurrence, instead it has a structure and logic
that resides beyond individual opinions. This “beyond” of individual opinions is

what Durkheim had dubbed “society” 70 years before the appearance of “The
Social Construction of Reality.” Berger and Luckmann have simply adopted the
same formula without critically reflecting on the baggage that has thereby also
been imported.
Within the span of two paragraphs, “the social” becomes the epistemological
backup of how to consider constructions of reality as being a suitable object of
scientific analysis. Just as Durkheim (1894) did all those years ago in his “Rules
of Sociological Method,” Berger and Luckmann also justify the relevance of soci-
ology by means of a tautology: Sociology is necessary and sociological analysis
is justified because of the constitutive primacy of the “social.” The task for sociol-
ogy is thus to explain the social socially.
A shift has already taken place between “the street” (where ordinary persons
(at least men) can be found) and “the social” or “society,” as streets are still tied
to concrete places, whereas society is an abstraction and therefore imagined. The
difference between “ordinary man in the street” and “sociologist” as mentioned
under (1) is thus also a shift in the location of practices of knowing. The knowl-
edge of the man-in-the-street has close ties with concrete experiences of concrete
places. The knowledge of the sociologist depends on abstraction: Just as streets
can be seen as part of a wider constellation called “society” (for example when
considering their names), so can the knowledge of the street (“street credit”) be
seen as part of the wider knowledge of society.
Can the difference between the sociologist and the philosopher be understood
analogically? Here we could perhaps invoke echoes of the work of Comte as he
declared the modern age to be the age of positivism (and of sociology), in con-
trast to the age of metaphysics (and of philosophy). For Comte the difference
was simply an extension of Kant’s critique of pure reason. Kant located the criti-
cal faculty of pure reason within the human mind, which was the location where
empirical experience and conceptual reflection were attuned in relation to each
other. Kant’s call for “sapere aude” was a call for heroic individuals to free
themselves from the shackles of prejudice and obedient, mindless imitation (tak-
ing for granted). Hegel had already pointed out that such a heroic move requires
historical as well as intellectual preconditions and thus a dialectical engagement
between subjectivity and objectivity, rather than raising the awareness of a moral
obligation to do so. Comte’s critique however went in a different direction: The
objective historical and intellectual preconditions for developing the courage
to think critically reveal themselves as the inevitable location for enabling each
moment of individual awareness. It is in the multiplication of cogito that the
social becomes itself the location of truth. Berger and Luckmann were far more
Comtean than Hegelian in relation to their understanding of the epistemological

primacy of the social.
The retreat to the position between men in the street and philosophers can also
be described in relation to one of the oldest analogies in European philosophy:
Plato’s cave. Unlike the ordinary men-in-the-cave (there were no streets) who are
chained to the wall and forced to accept the shadow-play on the wall as reality –
which, one may presume, they have developed interactively – both the sociolo-
gist and the philosopher are able to free themselves from the chains, by virtue of
their courage (sapere aude) or intellect (cogito ergo sum). Stumbling in the dark
towards the light of the fire, both begin to realize that the shadows on the wall
are in actual fact constructions of another kind (perhaps to be understood as an
early form of a culture industry). However, whereas the philosopher carries on to
explore the cave further and discover the exit and the light of truth, the sociologist
remains with the fire inside the cave and attempts to find out what functions this
deceptive shadow-play might have.
Why did Plato carry on? Why do Berger and Luckmann remain near the fire?
One logical explanation might be, that unlike the latter, Plato realized that there
might be more than one layer of deception; after all, he escaped one to stumble
across something that was clearly also deceptive (in a performative rather than
a representative sense). The only way Plato could end the infinite regression of
deceit was to escape from the cave. Berger and Luckmann were perhaps not as
courageous or as intelligent as Plato, and were happy to have escaped one layer of
deception. The second-order deceptions are perhaps for them not as bad as those
of the first-order because at least we now know deceptions are taking place.2
However, if we follow the tradition of the German sociology of knowledge
(“Wissenssoziologie”), then we can see that there might be another reason why
Berger and Luckmann believed that sociologists should not complete their jour-
ney from the cave. For sociologists, the shadowplay on the walls, performed by
the manipulators and rhetoricians, still matters somehow. Whereas Plato sim-
ply rejected the simulated reality as irrelevant for the pursuit of truth (but not,
as Socrates tragically discovered, for the attempt to share this truth as this led to
his death), Berger and Luckmann were interested in the effectiveness of certain
displays, their development, their fine-tuning, their transformations. Occasionally,
they might have wanted to go back to the prisoners and observe them during their
2One could simply replace the term “deception” with “social construction” and apart from
the loss of the moral condemnation, there are no differences in the logic of the argument.
social construction work or even interview them about their social constructs.
They might also go back up again and tell the spin-doctors what their findings
were, for example, when sociology is applied to market-research.
The return of the sociologist to research social constructs is what Berger and
Luckmann see as the main objective of their brand of sociology of knowledge: to
understand social constructs as embedded in the everyday life worlds of “men in
the street.” The culture industries cease to be manipulative agents of some sinister
conspiracy, but become neutralized as “society” and each society has produced
its own shadow-play. “The Social Construction of Reality” is an ambitious title;
especially since reality is defined as that which occurs as something exterior to
the cogito.
For most lay people, the idea that reality is socially constructed is ludicrous.
For example, a sceptic would point to the sun and ask the social construction-
ist, whether she had constructed this entity by herself. Of course, sensing the
risk of solipsism, the social constructionist would answer “no” and then faces
a choice: either it was constructed by us together (this would still qualify as a
social construction, since the social is usually thought of as a human collective)
or she might pull “a Weber” and admit that the sun itself is not a social construc-
tion, that it is in fact a natural object, but that the “social construction” pertains
“only” to our understanding or notion of the sun. The first option is the more radi-
cal as it would mean that everything we experience as real is the product of col-
lective hallucination, a bit like the Matrix or the cyberspace of William Gibson’s
Neuromancer. The second is therefore more likely to be what social construction-
ists would adhere to: Our understanding of what we perceive to be real is socially
constructed.
Now that is not saying much. It is merely stating that how we understand the
world has been learned from others or in communication (negotiation?) with oth-
ers. By pointing out to the close affinities between “understanding,” “knowledge”
and “language,” the analytical attention of social constructionism then quickly
shifts to semantics, as the more tangible and practical and thus empirically more
accessible “surface” of social constructions. As Heidegger (1978, p. 208), once
stated: “language (as the “house of the truth of being”) is always ahead of (i.e.,
before) us.”
For Berger and Luckmann, language – logos – belongs to the same realm as
knowledge – episteme – and it is therefore not surprising that on most occasions
the two could be used interchangeably without making much of a difference.
The reality that is socially constructed is not the full reality, but the house of the
truth being in which the human being dwells. It is the reality that makes sense
and is meaningful in contrast to the reality-as-such, which remains inaccessible.
Just as Kant had separated experience from “Dinge-an-sich” and proclaimed

that philosophy should only concern itself with the former, so have Berger and
Luckmann left Plato to venture on out of the cave by himself and turned back
to the functional question of how things are projected as shadows and how the
prisoners (men-in-the-street) make sense of such shadows. That is to say, the
social construction of reality focuses on the way in which logos and episteme are
held together, by human beings as they collectively (socially) make sense of that
which lies before them as the house of the truth of being. The social construction
of reality is thus not the social construction of the whole of reality, but the social
construction of social reality.
Now if this sounds tautological it is because it echoes the same tautological
trick that Durkheim had turned into the cornerstone of his version of sociology:
to explain the social exclusively through the social. Knowing that social construc-
tionists are often very clever people, we cannot assume they have been blind to
this. Then the question becomes: How did they manage to continue this proceed
in spite of this?
The first and most important part of the trick consists of the separation
between pure matter and pure ideas. By making ideas ontologically independ-
ent from matter, they are believed to be of a different substance (res cogitans)
and have a different origin (the mind). Being independent allows the realm of the
ideal to encounter the realm of matter (res extensa) on its own terms. However,
unlike Descartes, whose meditation was based on trust in God, social construc-
tionists follow Kant, who deployed a conception of experience as the encounter
between subject and object, which still maintained their fundamental ontological
difference, whilst allowing them to interact. Here, matter became socialized mat-
ter or – in Kant’s terminology – the human experience of matter.
The second step of the trick was separating the subject-object encounter
(experience) from the realm of pure ideas (concepts). This principle constitutes
the difference that Hans-Georg Soeffner invoked between first- and second-order
“experiences” as the baseline of his version of hermeneutic sociology of knowl-
edge and which can also be found in Schütz’ as well as Berger and Luckmann’s
separation between lay and sociological knowledge. At this point, matter was
reduced to the position of object in human interaction. Sociomateriality was born
out of the bundling of human actions with nonhuman artefacts.
The third step of the trick is to conflate the two to one term: subjective expe-
rience, knowledge, language, interaction, consciousness, intentionality, mean-
ing, sense-making, interpretation, or understanding. They all have in common
that they conflate a subjective encounter with something that is not subjective
to the subjective itself. By using different terms, for ontologically very similar
phenomena, a chain of analytical tools has been invoked which suggest a logical
unfolding. With this, the primacy of mind was established as a matter of course.
Sense-making was thereby understood as the intentional act of ascription of
meaning, i.e., the Husserlian “noesis.” In contrast to this, the Husserlian “noema,”
the content which is ascribed, was made dependent on the human subject. Matter
scarcely had an effect on “noema.”
The fourth step of the trick is to collectivize the subject. The conflation
between subjective experience and pure ideas takes place in the realm of interac-
tion, communication, i.e., the intersubjective. This is one-to-one equated with the
social. The same realm is created by the aforementioned chain of equivalences
and is usually referred to as “civilization,” “culture” or “society” or the “socio-
historical pre-given of symbolic associations.” Here, the primacy of mind still is
powerful because collectivization is explained on grounds of the mental life of
actors. “Civilization,” “culture” or “society” are tied to consciousness. If matter
becomes a “social” issue, there are good (human) reasons for it.
The fifth and final step is to reverse the logical order and assert that it is the
social that generates both individual experiences of reality and its “objectified”
working as a reality that we collectively take for granted. By extending the chain
of concepts, the fact that it is based on a circular logic fades away.
What they still cannot claim, however, is that the things-as-such have been
socially constructed. The only reality that is socially constructed is our collective
understanding of reality, i.e., a social reality. That is, as we have already seen,
Berger and Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge concerns itself with the social
construction of social reality. But what exactly is social reality?
The book itself gives us very few concrete clues, but it does talk a lot about
“everyday life,” which of course perfectly fits the vernacular notion of the “man-
in-the-street.” In other texts, Luckmann has referred to the concept of “life world”
which was seminal to the work of Alfred Schütz (see Schütz and Luckmann
1975). It originally stems from Edmund Husserl (1954) and has been refined
through the introduction of the so called “pragmatic motive.” Thus, life world
does not only refer to reality as it is experienced by a single subject, but it also
designates the alterations of reality fulfilled by the acting human. Here, matter
comes into play insofar as the alterations of reality are material, too. However,
this notion of materiality is restricted to “sociomateriality” or what we call social-
ized matter.
It is often neglected that Husserl’s idea of life world was also further developed
by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In contrast to social constructivism, Merleau-Ponty
does not conceive it as tied to subjective consciousness. In the “Phenomenology
of perception” (Merleau-Ponty 2012) he follows Husserl’s motto of “turning to
things”, on the one hand, and refuses his turn to the individual mind, on the other
hand. What counts for Merleau-Ponty’s notion of life world is how things present
themselves in the lived fusion of “me”, “like me”’ and “the world.” Merleau-Ponty
draws upon Husserl’s quote of Saint Augustine, but transforms it into: “Truth does
not merely ‘dwell’ in the ‘inner man’; or rather there is no ‘inner man,’ man is
in and toward the world, and that is in the world that he knows himself. When I
return myself from the dogmatism of common sense or science, I do not find a
source of intrinsic truth, but rather a subject destined to the world” (ibid.: XXIV).
He conceptualizes a “me” that is in and toward the world. In French, Merleau-
Ponty uses the notion of “être au monde” in order to convey that the subject is
merged with the world. Matter becomes accessible through fleshly behavior and
not through the mind. In the above mentioned Schützean pragmatic motive, sub-
jective consciousness always is the center point of life world. Alterations of things
are solely conceived from that perspective. In contrast to this, Merleau-Ponty’s
idea of life world does not have a single center point. A variety of fleshly “me”
and “like me” equally are “in and toward the world.”
The “everyday” of “everyday life” suggests recurrence, repetition, frequency,
rhythm. Be referring to the realm everyday life or life worlds, social constructiv-
ists are thus enabled to ignore deploying the extraordinary, the spectacular, the
controversial, and above all the explicated as building blocks of their theoreti-
cal framework (of course they could still serve as objects of analysis). That is to
say, even if a sociologist working in the tradition of Berger, Luckmann or Schütz
would be dealing with an extraordinary event (e.g., disorder), the tools of analysis
would all be drawn from a sociology of generic ordinariness (order). The social
is common, ordinary and orderly. Social explanations of the social are thus con-
cerned with the ordinariness of (dis)order. As opposed to social constructivism,
Merleau-Ponty did enable a sociological conceptualization of life world that can
explain situations of order as well as disorder, respectively. The idea of “être au
monde” does not rely on recurrence and repetition. The latter notions each draw
upon activity of the human mind whereas Merleau-Ponty’s fleshly “being in and
toward the world” is characterized by passivity. Sensing does not become insti-
tutionalized as “stock of knowledge” through regular and frequent occurrence.
Instead, fleshly sensing is pre-reflexive and spontaneous. Merleau-Ponty’s theo-
retical framework is not drawn from generic ordinariness and, therefore, better
equipped to explain the controversial.
There is of course a huge pragmatic advantage to focusing on developing
social explanations of the implicit, the unremarkable and the taken-for-granted:
Such analyses are immune to falsification, which might also explain their endur-
ing popularity. If you focus on the unremarkable, you are touching upon some-
thing that by its very definition evades our attention; even if someone might
object to being “socially explained,” he or she would simply be stuck in first-

order social constructions. For example: A believer might reject a social expla-
nation of his religious belief as the deployment of rituals that were interactively
established centuries ago and innocuously habitualized over the generations
through socialization, by insisting he has direct experiences of divine interven-
tion, he would have no leg to stand on as social constructionists “know” that God
is a social construction. The same could be said of a “criminal” rejecting the
social constructionist definition of her being situated life world in which alterna-
tive norms have been established, by stating that she is a unique individual who
only follows her own principles.
The social constructionist “knows” that such first-order constructions of – for
example – divine experience or individuality are “in fact” nothing but ordinary
and regularly occurring forms of reasoning, that have been deployed by many
others and thus have a social rather than an individual origin. What Durkheim
referred to as “culture” are the “associations-of-meaning” or “stocks of knowl-
edge” of social constructionism, “norms” have been translated into “expecta-
tions” and “value” has become “relevance.” That social constructionists have
adopted the very same notion of institution as Durkheim’s furthermore testifies
to the fact that the groundstrokes of Berger and Luckmann’s sociology of knowl-
edge are the same as those of Durkheim’s sociology of the social and this is why
the concept of life world is the same as Durkheim’s society. The ordinary orderli-
ness of society is the socially constructed social reality.
Hence, the slippage from reality into social reality and from social reality into
everyday life world is not innocent or careless; it is a deliberate attempt to col-
onize a domain at the exclusive disposal for sociological analysis that has been
disabled to speak against it. Disputes are always disputes between different life
worlds, different interpretations, different beliefs, but stem from the fact that peo-
ple are unable to go beyond first-order social constructions.
Returning to the kitchen rather than the street as a paradigmatic place of eve-
ryday life, we are perhaps better able to understand how a social constructionist
might ascertain the actual (that is second-order) meaning of cooking. The first-
order meaning is that which adheres to the lay, or participant perspective. Immedi-
ately we can see a huge range of different situations. A parent cooking a meal for
the family constitutes a very different social construction from the bachelor trying
to impress a woman he has invited over for a meal, and again this is very different
from a student cooking for his roommates, or a daughter trying to show her mother
in law that she is up to the job, or participants in a cooking contest trying to win a
prize. The social constructionist (rightly) states that all these practices constitute
different social realities. Yet, simultaneously, they are all grouped together under
the label of cooking as a paradigmatic phenomenon representing everyday life.
Imagine in all these situations, that one part of the meal being cooked con-
cerns rice and – to be more precise – it concerns exactly the same type of rice.
Can it be expected, that – on the basis of what we know regarding the social situ-
ations – the rice does not matter? Of course it matters. The rice requires to have
a certain texture to be edible; if undercooked it is not. The rice requires a cer-
tain texture to be recognized as rice rather than as rice pudding; if overcooked
it is not. In all those situations, the rice makes certain demands, which need not
be exactly the same, but they still need to be taken into account when cooking a
meal. Would those adhering to the social constructionism of Berger and Luck-
mann boil their rice irrespective of these demands? Not if they are preparing a
meal. To put it differently, the rice is not “mere matter,” it makes certain demands
or – in a language more familiar to social constructionists – it has affordances.
Those criticizing new materialism as a reversal of Descartes would make us
believe that this example shows that those claiming that matter-as-such matters
(which is not what we, Barad or Latour are claiming) confuse vernacular expres-
sions such as “the rice demands” with analytical ones. The rice is not demanding
anything; it cannot prevent being overcooked or undercooked; it are those doing
the cooking that decide how long the rice is to boil and thus how hard or soft it is
going to be. However, even such defenders of the primacy of social cannot deny
that the changing nature of the texture of rice is not the product of a social con-
struction, but simply the effect of the duration of it being boiled. Learning how
to cook well means that one learns from the rice; the rice tells us when and how
its texture changes and when we are to stop boiling it. This is not some trans-
fer of human language onto a physical process, but – in the words of Whitehead
(1978) – a prehension. Hence it makes perfect sense – in a non-metaphorical way
– to state that the rice demands. Being able to understand the demands of rice is
referred to as “cooking experience.”
Our considerations can be summarized as follows:
1. The claim that “matter matters” was merely borne out of the realization that
the significance of physis has been by and large neglected during the first
100 years after the birth of what Foucault referred to as “the human sciences.”
2. The claim that matter matters can be understood in two different ways:
Either as a devaluation of the relevance of the non-material (either under-
stood as “ideas,” “representations” or “the social”) or as a critique of the
dualism underlying the platonic/cartesian dualism of eidos/physis or res cog-
itans/res extensa.
3. The first is labelled a turn to ontology which is then also a turn away from
other branches of philosophy such as epistemology and ethics.
4. Those advocating their critique in terms of an alleged turn away from ethics
criticize new materialism for its allegedly a-political and often pragmatic sci-
entism, for its complicity in the destruction of ecology and humanity and its
impotence in developing a critique of injustice.
5. Those advocating their critique in terms of an alleged turn away from episte-
mology criticize new materialism for its alleged lack of concern for subjec-
tivity, perception and interpretation.
6. Both forms of critique of the turn to ontology require a dualist metaphysics
that separates issues related to being from those related to meaning/sense.
7. This usually manifests itself in a defence of the exceptional status of the
human being as it is only the human being that can escape the necessity of
being and engage with the contingency/possibility of sense-making. Thus,
only humans are granted the privilege of the capacity of subjectivity as only
the subjective can generate alternative possibilities of sense in relation to a
singular ontological force.
8. New materialism understood as a critique of a dualist metaphysics cannot be
referred to as a turn to ontology because it addresses its very core in terms of
its constitutive elements ontos and logos.
9. It can only do so by taking apart the necessity for the question of being as
embedded in logos, that is, being as derived from an a priori set of rules and
principles that are themselves beyond history as for example professed by
Comte, Feuerbach and Durkheim.
10. Instead of a focus on being or reality, such forms of new materialism advocate a
focus on impact or practice that could perhaps be best conceptualized as “having.”
11. A focus on “having” rather than “being” turns the tables on the traditional
sociological conception of the adjective “social” as intersubjective. Those
adhering to the Weberian notion of the social as that which emerges between
(exclusively) human beings do have an implicit ontological understanding of
the social as being an (exclusively) human substance. The notion of “socio-
materiality” is then nothing but “human substance.”
12. What does sociomateriality achieve that materiality does not achieve? The
prefix “socio” suggests that there are different substances of materiality
(human versus nonhuman). A feminist critique of the turn to ontology can-
not find solace in appropriating a concept of sociomateriality because the lat-
ter masks the constitutive impact of gender as common ground. Any concept
of sociality as (exclusively) human entails a problematic notion of gender as
secondary to the ontological difference between human and nonhuman. The
hierarchy of difference enables the naturalization of human as masculine; the
feminine is then derivative of the masculine. Hence, invoking the notion of
sociomateriality negates the historical unfolding of patriarchy.
References
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the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Random.
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the Introduction to Being and Time, translated by David Farrell Krell. London: Routledge.
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Part II
Postphenomenology and
Actor-Network-Theory
What Makes Sensation of a Sentient
Thing Possible: The Concept of Time
in the Work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
1 Introduction
Time is conceived in the sociology of, for example, Max Weber as a linear course
of events. Within this framework, the present becomes the past and the future
turns into the present. The linear structure of time was long considered as a pre-
condition for action and causality. However, in the current discussion of “new
materialism” this concept of time is questioned by authors such as, for exam-
ple, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1997), Bruno Latour (e.g. 2005, 2008) or
Karen Barad (2007). The former authors each draw upon the sociology of Gabriel
Tarde in order to develop a concept of nonlinear time. In this perspective, time is
understood as imitation and differing repetition. In particular, Tarde’s approach
gave rise to the conceptualization of agency within Actor-Network Theory that
emphasizes the trajectories or networks of organisms “which define what they
have been and what they might become if they manage to persist by exploring
enough differences” (Latour 2008, p. 17). This example shows that the con-
cepts of time and agency are intrinsically linked to each other. In this contribu-
tion, I will analyze under what circumstances Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept
of fleshly temporality offers the theoretical ground to equate humans and non-
humans from a methodological point of view. Drawing upon “the immemorial”
as “impossible past” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, p. 123), I will show that the notion
of originary pastness constitutes a concept of fleshly agency that can explain how
“we experience the sensation of a sentient thing, the volition of a conating thing
U. T. Kissmann (*) 
University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany
E-Mail: ulrike.kissmann@uni-kassel.de
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_2
22 U. T. Kissmann
and the belief in a believing thing” (Tarde quoted in Latour 2008, p. 19). Despite
differences to Actor-Network Theory and its generalized principle of symmetry,
it provides an insightful complement to the recent discussion of new materialism
(see also, Callon 1986; Latour 2005).
In his late writings, Merleau-Ponty rejected Husserl’s flow of time conscious-
ness and formed a concept of nonlinear time (see, e.g., Barbaras 2004; Carbone
2004). My paper aims at studying his idea of bodily intentionality and how it
evolved from the “Phenomenology of Perception” to “The Visible and the Invis-
ible” through the re-conceptualization of time. As Alia Al-Saji (2007) has pointed
out, Merleau-Ponty’s late concept of time reflects Henri Bergson’s idea of origi-
nary pastness or pure memory. Drawing upon her analysis, I will demonstrate that
the temporality of flesh is a prerequisite for the emergence of self, other and the
world – or rather, as Merleau-Ponty puts it, the emergence of sentient, sensed and
the rest. Together with Martina Ferrari’s (2016) recent study on the immemorial
time of gender, I will show that Merleau-Ponty’s late concept of time provides an
understanding of bodily habituality that goes beyond the Schutzean sedimentation
of habits (see, e.g., Berger and Luckmann 1996). It is the precondition to locate
the origin of conduct in a pure memory and not necessarily in the consciousness
or the present. Finally, I will present the advantages of video hermeneutics as
developed in Kissmann (2014a) and describe how it can be used to study fleshly
meaning by way of an example.
2 The Concept of Linear Time in Merleau-Ponty’s

Early Work
In the “Phenomenology of Perception,” Merleau-Ponty puts the emphasis on a

notion of body that is entirely anchored in the present. He characterizes bodily
intentionality through the attitude of “I can” (2012, p. 139). As the body inhabits
space, it exists now and “can never become past” (ibid.: 141). Present capacities
and sensations are built up through habit: “The present perception consists in tak-
ing up the series of previous positions that envelop each other by relying upon
the current position” (ibid.). Merleau-Ponty does not go into more detail on how
habits are formed. He only describes the acquisition of a habit “as the grasping of
a signification” and “the motor grasping of a motor significance” (ibid.: 144). In
his early work, the author neither develops an idea of bodily learning nor of bod-
ily memory. He leaves open how sense-making is realized as such. This omission
has already been criticized in the German response to Merleau-Ponty’s work (see,
e.g., Bongaerts 2003; Kissmann 2016a; Coenen 1985). But it was not associated
with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of bodily temporality. Since intentionality is located
What Makes Sensation of a Sentient Thing Possible: The … 23
in motility, the structure of time that shapes the lived body and its movements
has to be taken into account. As Alia Al-Saji (2007) has demonstrated, Merleau-
Ponty’s idea of intentionality is connected to his idea of temporality of life. She
describes the different senses of life that are attributed to the body and the flesh,
respectively. The conception of lived activity relies in each case on a different
notion of time. In the following chapter, I will read the “Phenomenology of Per-
ception” through her lens and ask whether the underlying idea of time offers an
explanation of sense-making as a matter of principle. I will provide evidence that
Merleau-Ponty’s early notion of time does not only lack a past, but also a genera-
tive principle that can grasp the idea of emergence of meaning.
Merleau-Ponty draws a distinction between present action and future, or as he
puts it, virtual action. The field of future action is opened up according to the
capacities of the present moment. The author defines “virtual movement” as a
kinaesthesis that is felt in the body and that “appears through a strange tension,
and as a certain power for action within the frame of the anatomical apparatus”
(ibid.: 111). The future as “virtual action” is projected from the presence and
mirrors it. Thus it is a deferred presence. Time is conceived as a linear structure
because present kinaestheses or tensions prefigure future action. The notion of
“virtual action” in the “Phenomenology of Perception” does not share Deleuze’s
nor Latour’s meaning of the virtual as generative, productive, and always self-dif-
ferentiating power. Merleau-Ponty’s sense of the virtual is very close to the pos-
sible. In contrast to the former concept of time as differing repetition, it is entirely
embedded in the classical rectilinear structure of time.
In this perspective, sense-making is closely linked to Merleau-Ponty’s idea of
causality and goal-orientation. The author describes the body as a “center of vir-
tual action” that is directed towards an object or goal: “Each motor or tactile event
gives rise in consciousness to an abundance of intentions that run from the body as
a center of virtual action either toward the body itself or toward an object” (ibid.:
111). Here, sense-making starts from the subject-body and proceeds towards the
object. The body operates according to “intentional arcs” (ibid.: 137 f.). Merleau-
Ponty characterizes them as bodily consciousness, as “an activity of projection,
which deposits objects around itself like traces of its own acts” (ibid.: 138). Signifi-
cantly, as Iris Marion Young has pointed out, Merleau-Ponty identifies action with
the object at which it aims (2005, p. 36 f.).1 In the “Phenomenology of Perception,”
1Young questioned the goal-orientation in Merleau-Ponty’s early work on intentionality. If

action is identified with the object at which it is aimed, Merleau-Ponty neglects the situ-
ations where no goal is at play. For this reason, Young added the notion of “I cannot” to
Merleau-Ponty’s “I can” (ibid.).
24 U. T. Kissmann
action tends to be based on instrumental intentionality. Although sense-making is

located in body movements, the underlying concept draws upon the classical idea
of purpose-orientation because “to move one’s body is to aim at the things through
it” (ibid.: 140).
The acquisition and application of sense is scarcely spelled out because the
body is only understood in terms of what it does or is capable of doing. The
emphasis on the present, together with the suppression of memory, obscures
the process of sense-making. In how far do they belong to the same concept of
time? What is missing in Merleau-Ponty’s early idea of intentionality? The author
describes “the temporal structure of our body” as “gaps of memory” because “we
cannot preserve the living memory of the illness when we are healthy, nor the liv-
ing memory of our body as a child when we have become an adult” (ibid.: 141).
This specific bodily temporality is an expression of linearity of time. The “gaps of
memory” are part of a linear course of events because they do not move back and
forth in time. They are not conceived as reversible. Thus, bodily memory is not
only suppressed, but the suppression itself belongs to Merleau-Ponty’s concept
of serial time. Forgetting follows the linear succession of past – present – future.
Within this framework, the emergence of sense cannot be explained because the
ideas of learning and remembering are both subordinated to the present.
The emphasis on the present in Merleau-Ponty’s early writing is owed to Hus-
serl’s flow of time consciousness in his work “On the Phenomenology of the
Consciousness of Internal Time” (Husserl 1991). Merleau-Ponty draws upon the
Husserlian “field of presence” in order to describe how “I make contact with time
and learn to recognize its flow in my “field of presence’” (Merleau-Ponty 2012,
p. 438). The field of presence is conceived as a field of perceptual conscious-
ness because “every consciousness is, to some extent, perceptual conscious-
ness” (ibid.: 416). The Husserlian intentionalities, the so called “protentions” and
“retentions,” emerge from the field of presence. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, they
“do not emanate from a central I, but somehow from my perceptual field itself,
which drags along behind itself its horizon of retentions and eats into the future
through its protentions” (ibid.: 439).2 The Husserlian flow of time conscious-
ness has shaped Merleau-Ponty’s early conceptualization of bodily temporality
because past and future are subordinated to the present. Protentions and reten-
tions have their starting-point as well as their point of reference in the present
2When the present moment becomes past, it is considered as retention. In contrast, when
the present moment is projected into the future, Merleau-Ponty describes it as protention
(ibid.: 439 f.).
moment. Hence, the explanation of sense-making is left to a seemingly omnipo-

tent present.
Insightfully, as Herman Coenen has highlighted, the construction of sense has
to be conceptualized within an idea of bodily temporality that it is contingent as
well as variable (1985, p. 214). Firstly, he views the formation of present conduct
through past experiences as contingent because the result of the formation can-
not be fixed in advance. Secondly, sense-making has to be conceived as a vari-
able process because in each actual situation another meaning emerges from the
past in accordance with the actual situation.3 Here, Coenen accords the past a cer-
tain productivity and, through this, finds an explanation for bodily sense-making.
However, he does not develop an idea of originary pastness, a generative and self-
differentiating principle. The productivity entirely rests upon bodily memory and
the actualization of present perceptions through the past. Neither Coenen nor the
early Merleau-Ponty reframe the Husserlian idea of sense-making as “Sinnge-
bung,” of “noesis” that focuses more on the intentional act of ascription of sense
and less on the notion of “noema,” the content which is ascribed. In Merleau-Pon-
ty’s later works, especially “The Visible and the Invisible” (Merleau-Ponty 1968),
intentionality “is no longer that from a Sinngebung to a Sinngebung that moti-
vates (original emphasis) it but from a ‘noema’ to a ‘noema’” (ibid.: 244). The
author shifts to an understanding of sense-making as “noema” and questions Hus-
serl’s concept of rectilinear time that is based on consciousness. The late Mer-
leau-Ponty criticizes the Husserlian flow of time consciousness when he writes,
“it is indeed the past that adheres to the present and not the consciousness of the
past that adheres to the consciousness (original emphasis) of the present” (ibid.).
In the end, Merleau-Ponty’s solution to the problem of sense-making is more rad-
ical than Coenen’s answer. The latter finds it in a bodily memory, whereas the for-
mer institutes a pure memory and altogether transforms the classical succession
of past, present, and future.
3Coenen criticized the Schutzean “typification” because, firstly, sense-making is character-
ized as mental process. And secondly, his critique drew upon typification as objectifying
and generalizing activity. Using the work of Merleau-Ponty, he developed a new concept of
bodily typification.
26 U. T. Kissmann
3 The Re-Conceptualization of Time in Merleau-

Ponty’s Late Work
3.1 Chiasmic Structure of Time
Merleau-Ponty’s notion of chiasm usually is described as a chiasm of percep-

tion where seeing and seen, touching and touched are conceived as reversible
(see, e.g., Spiegelberg 1982). It is a commonplace that through the medium of
the impersonal and anonymous body, subject and object are always experienced
as both, as a unity and as two different poles. Moreover, Glen Mazis (1992) has
demonstrated that the reversibility of perception is achieved within a chiasmic
structure of time. Drawing upon a Margaret Atwood novel, Mazis illustrates how
the past can suddenly burst into the present and transform the present vision of
a landscape. Similarly, Merleau-Ponty re-conceptualizes his early idea of serial
time when he writes “past and present are Ineinander (original emphasis), each
enveloping-enveloped” (1968, p. 268). In “The Visible and the Invisible,” past and
future no longer take up a subordinate role because the author perceives “time as
chiasm” (ibid.: 267). In the following chapter, I will show that the reversibility
of past, present, and future offers the possibility to reframe bodily intentionality
and to move towards an intentionality of the flesh. The new concept of time goes
beyond the simple reversibility of subject and object because it does not presup-
pose the subject-object divide anymore. Mazis has not drawn his thinking to a
close. He only argues that the chiasmic structure of perception is realized within a
chiasmic structure of time. Instead, Merleau-Ponty’s late concept of time explains
the emergence of subject, object, and the world without presuming them as given.
In addition to reversibility of past, present and future, Merleau-Ponty’s notion
of time also is characterized by irreversibility. It comprises an idea of temporal
asymmetry. Significantly, as Alia Al-Saji (2007, p. 182 f.) has pointed out, past
and present are different in kind. There is an asymmetry between past and present
because Merleau-Ponty’s new concept of time reflects Henri Bergson’s idea of
“past in general” in “Matter and Memory” (Bergson 2004). The body has a more
complex relation with the past than with the present (or the future). Additionally
to bodily memory that shapes habits, Bergson has developed an idea of origi-
nary pastness. As Al-Saji puts it, the latter is irreducible to any representational
memory-image or present perception. The Bergsonian “past in general” consti-
tutes an unconscious, a pure memory. This concept can be found in Merleau-
Ponty’s thinking of the immemorial as “original past, a past that has never been
present” (2012, p. 252), as “impossible past” (1968, p. 123), and as “time before
time” (ibid.: 243). The immemorial establishes a temporal asymmetry because
it describes a past as preexisting the present. Its past is not formed after having
been present. It comes into existence as always already past. Thus, the immemo-
rial is conceived as the invisible of the visible, the unconscious and forgotten that
shapes the emergence of the visible.
Merleau-Ponty’s idea of originary pastness is not reducible to memory-images
of former or actual perception. It cannot be derived from consciousness in the
present. However, the temporal asymmetry does not establish a fracture that is
impermeable. In contrast to Freudian unconscious, the subject still can experi-
ence the asymmetry. The immemorial is characterized as “écart” (ibid.: 124), as
an abyss that structures the passage of the present. It enables the emergence of
the present. The temporal asymmetry of the immemorial is the condition of pos-
sibility of self-differentiation. It permits the sensation of the entities “me,” “like
me,” and the rest. It does not presuppose the self-other divide. Rather, it makes it
possible. On the one hand, temporality is characterized by reversibility, by “piling
up, by proliferation, by encroachment, by promiscuity” (ibid.: 115). The visible
and the invisible are as intertwined as perception and unconscious, or present and
past. On the other hand, reversibility “is not an actual identity (original empha-
sis) of the touching and the touched. It is their identity by principle” (ibid.: 272).
In this phrasing, we also find irreversibility, a non-coincidence of touching and
touched. Hence, the temporal asymmetry is the condition of possibility of identity
as well as difference. It constitutes a generative and self-differentiating principle
that makes the emergence of self, other, and the world possible, or as we shall
see, the emergence of sentient, sensed, and the rest.
3.2 Immemorial “écart” of the Flesh
Al-Saji’s (2007) account of the Bergsonian influence to Merleau-Ponty’s late

work is used by Martina Ferrari (2016) to analyze the immemorial “écart” of the
flesh. Originally, Merleau-Ponty introduced the “écart” as a “deflection with-
out which the experience of the thing or of the past would fall to zero” and as
“openness upon the thing itself, to the past itself” (1968, p. 124). Ferrari describes
the écart as an “in-between” that makes the self-other relation possible. But she
does not go to such lengths that the construction of self, other, and the world is
enabled by temporal asymmetry. Drawing upon Bergson’s “past in general,” she
insightfully characterizes the écart as “fecund negativity” because it is neither
lack nor negation of being (2016, p. 262 f.). As such, it has both a spatial as well
as temporal meaning. As Ferrari puts it, the immemorial écart is the prerequisite
for “differing” (spatial), as well as “deferring” (ibid.) (temporal). These two sig-
nifications of fecund negativity support Merleau-Ponty’s above phrasing, where
28 U. T. Kissmann
he states that the écart makes the experience of the thing possible as well as the
experience of the past; that it is both an openness upon the thing itself and to the
past itself.
Importantly, Ferrari argues that the immemorial institutes a temporality that is
generative of meaning. As she puts it, the écart can be characterized as an open-
ended process, a deflection or disarticulation, a decentering and recentering, a
zigzag, an ambiguous passage that enables both, differing and deferring. How-
ever, Ferrari still presupposes the classical phenomenological triad of self, other,
and the world. The immemorial écart is not only an “in-between” that makes the
self-other relation possible. Temporal asymmetry enables the “in-between” and
the reversibility of subject and object. It is the precondition for the emergence of
the subject-object divide itself. With this, Merleau-Ponty goes beyond classical
phenomenology because flesh generates subject and object.
Significantly, Ferrari introduces Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “institution” or
“Stiftung” (Merleau-Ponty 2010) to describe the double character of time. She
conceives it as “Stiftung” and as such it is fundamentally ambiguous, always at
once instituted and instituting. The author draws upon the concept of institu-
tion in order to explain the production of gender as “ceaseless differing” (2016,
p. 265). Gender is instituting and instituted at the same time. Present gendered
expressions are instituting new values and meanings through which we experi-
ence differently. Gender is also instituted in so far as the passage of gendered
expressions creates a “Stiftung” or sedimentation.
The unique feature of Ferrari’s approach consists in unbinding habits from
consciousness. Gendered expressions are not forgotten and remain as pre-reflex-
ive to consciousness. Instead, the “Stiftung” or sedimentation bears the double
character of time. Past and present are intertwined, but the past is also different in
kind. From this temporal asymmetry it follows that gendered habits are different
in kind after sedimentation. This means that pre-reflexive habits are not reducible
to consciousness anymore. Ferrari’s analysis of gender reveals that the immemo-
rial, like the unconscious or the invisible, is the structural condition that makes
possible all gender sedimentation, institution, and its inherent instability. The
generative power of the immemorial furnishes an understanding of the fluid and
fecund character of gender. Through this, it makes obvious that gender cannot be
described by a finite number of categories.
4 Agency from the Perspective of Ontology of the

Invisible
Merleau-Ponty’s ontology promotes an idea of agency that emphasizes “the syn-

ergy […] among different organisms.” This is possible “as soon as we no longer
make belongingness to one same ‘consciousness,’ the primordial definition of
sensibility, and as soon as we rather understand it as return of the visible upon
itself, a carnal adherence of the sentient to the sensed and of the sensed to the
sentient” (1968, p. 142). The author focuses less on the intentional act of sense-
making, the Husserlian “noesis.” He rather draws upon the content which is
ascribed, the “noema.” The ontology of flesh accounts for the sensation itself,
the return of the visible upon itself. As anonymous and impersonal tissue, flesh is
generative of meaning. It creates subject and object while ascribing a sensation to
a sentient and to a sensed entity. Hence, fleshly agency no longer belongs to one
same consciousness. Merleau-Ponty replaces the Husserlian intentionality with a
“fungierende” or “latent intentionality” (ibid.: 244). As “fungierend” is meant in
the context of functioning, such intentionality does not foster a self that is primar-
ily interested in how it can understand the other. Instead, it is interested in the
task or function that the entity has to fulfill within the world. Thus, fleshly agency
is based on the interaction between a network of sentient and sensed entities, and
not between two separate minds.
However, Merleau-Ponty conceives flesh as different from matter: “The flesh
we are speaking of is not matter” (ibid.: 146). They can reach the same status or
rank as, for example, “when my right hand touches my left hand while it is pal-
pitating the things, where the ‘touching subject’ passes over to the rank of the
touched, descends into the things, such that the touch is formed in the midst of the
world and as it were in the things” (ibid.: 134). Here, the sentient and the sensed
can be equated from a methodological perspective because activity is performed
in the midst of the world. But can things also act in their own right? Are things
conceived as actors? Latour argues that “any thing that does modify a state of
affairs by making a difference is an actor – or, if it has no figuration yet, an actant”
(2005, p. 71). Under what circumstances do the sentient and the sensed reach the
same rank or status? What is the precondition of Merleau-Ponty’s idea of agency?
As Al-Saji (2007, p. 184) argues, Merleau-Ponty “inscribes the immemo-
rial past as invisibility in the structure of the flesh”; sense-making, and agency
become possible through self-differentiation of flesh. Flesh is “the coiling over
of the visible upon the seeing body, of the tangible upon the touching body,
which is attested in particular when the body sees itself, touches itself seeing and
30 U. T. Kissmann
touching the things” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 146). Here, the generative power
of flesh is described as “coiling over,” as self-differentiation when the body sees
and touches itself which is at once seeing and touching the things. Self-differ-
entiation of flesh makes fleshly agency possible. The former is characterized as
identity and difference at the same time. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, “simultane-
ously, as tangible it descends among them [the things], as touching it dominates
them all and draws this relationship and even this double relationship from itself,
by dehiscence or fission of its own mass” (ibid.). Flesh literally opens into two
and, through this, allows the emergence of sentient, sensed, and the rest. Carnal
self-divergence enables the experience of matter as a process of coincidence and
non-coincidence with things. Flesh and matter can only be equated from a meth-
odological point of view in so far as they can reach the same rank. But they are
not conceived as entirely symmetrical because we do not know whether the gen-
erative power also lies within matter. If Merleau-Ponty had been discussing new
materialism, he would have said that only flesh is endowed with invisibility and
not matter. In summation, I agree with Latour’s phrasing that “we experience the
sensation of a sentient thing, the volition of a conating thing, and the belief in a
believing thing” (Tarde quoted in Latour 2008, p. 19). It puts the emphasis on our
experience with matter. Hence, it makes clear that intentionality is based on flesh
and it leaves open whether cats or wood comprise the generative power of flesh.
Within this premise, sentient and sensed, subject and object, become interchange-
able and we can experience the sensation of a sentient thing.
There is another important consequence that follows from Merleau-Ponty’s
ontology of the invisible. The formation of habits and their relation to conscious-
ness can be reevaluated within his late concept of time. When bodily experiences,
such as feelings or other forms of sensations go by, they undergo a transforma-
tion. They subsist in the flesh as “Stiftung” beyond the realm of consciousness.
They are both instituting and instituted. They are instituted or memorized into the
flesh, on the one hand, and they are instituting or generating new bodily expres-
sions, on the other hand. With this, Merleau-Ponty conceives fleshly habituality in
contrast to the idea of habitualization originally developed by Alfred Schütz and
refined by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1996, p. 56 ff.). The latter define
habitualization as regular repetition of body movements that sink from the con-
sciousness into the preconscious after a while. This is, for example, the case when
a beginning driver learns to change gear. He or she acquires enough skill as soon
as the necessary body movements sink into the pre-reflexive or preconscious.
Then, changing gear becomes a habit and is performed automatically. Berger and
Luckmann describe this process as sedimentation of habits. In this conceptualiza-
tion, body expressions are translated one-to-one into bodily memory. Reversely,
they also can be retrieved one-to-one because habits are always connected to
consciousness. By contrast, as the immemorial institutes a generative and self-
differentiating power, fleshly habituality is an endless becoming. This means
that, besides the acquisition of body expressions on a conscious level, these can
already emerge at a pre-reflexive and nonverbal level. The latter meaning is not
reducible to consciousness. Hence, habituality is visibly imprinted in the flesh
through the means of the generative power of the invisible.
5 The Case for Video Hermeneutics
How can we study flesh? Video hermeneutics traditionally draws upon the inter-
pretative paradigm by Alfred Schütz, which is based on the linear concept of
time. Hence, sense-making is primarily explained on grounds of the mental life
of actors. In addition to Schütz, I developed a new approach to intentionality
within video hermeneutics (see, e.g., Kissmann 2014a, 2016b). Using Merleau-
Ponty’s concept of “intercorporeity” (1968, p. 141) as a triadic relation of sen-
tient, sensed, and the rest, the analysis of video data puts an emphasis on fleshly
meaning. Intercorporeity constitutes a primordial form of sociality that draws
upon pre-reflexive and implicit knowledge. It enables the understanding of fleshly
meaning such as gestures and facial expressions. It stands in contrast to the sec-
ond, more common form of sociality that is entirely mediated through language
and refers to reflexive or conscious knowledge. In the “Phenomenology of Per-
ception,” Merleau-Ponty also uses the terms “gestural signification,” on the one
hand, and “conceptual signification” (2012, p. 184), on the other hand. Everyday
understanding is always made up of these two significations. Although they are
interconnected in natural settings, the presented approach to video hermeneutics
separates them during analysis. As a result, the meaning of conduct can be ana-
lyzed with respect to its underlying habituality.
Flesh expresses itself through intercorporeity and can already emerge at a
pre-reflexive and nonverbal level. It can be found in habituality as, for example,
in basal body movements and expressions such as the way someone walks, sits
down or moves their arms. Fleshly meaning is conveyed during interaction, but
usually passes unnoticed because understanding primarily focuses on conceptual
meaning. Video hermeneutics aims at uncovering fleshly habituality and at ana-
lyzing its contribution to the overall interaction. The predominance of notional
meaning becomes evident, for example, throughout the controversy of the
“quenelle-gesture” performed by the French football player Nicolas Anelka in
2013 (see Fig. 1).
32 U. T. Kissmann
Fig. 1  The “quenelle salute” – Nicolas Anelka on December 28, 2013 after his second
goal against West Ham United. (Copyright: Matthew Ashton/Corbis Sport/Getty Images)
The gesture was originally introduced by French comedian Dieudonné Mbala

Mbala, who is known for his anti-Semitic beliefs. Several times, he was fined
for his provocations against Jews. Anelka’s quenelle salute triggered a debate in
France on whether the gesture is a mere sign of disdain, or whether it is openly
anti-Semitic. It was discussed as a “reversed Nazi salute” (Zeit Online 2013). The
media discourse drew upon the conceptual meaning of the salute and not upon
its gestural meaning. Anelka’s underlying fleshly expression did not matter to the
discussion because the gesture was solely discussed as an intended sign. How-
ever, the same body movement can be executed differently. Taking Anelka’s inter-
corporeity seriously, would have meant reconstructing his underlying habituality,
i.e., the way he performed the quenelle salute. This does not mean that he can-
not be held responsible for the salute irrespective of whether he intended it as a
Nazi salute or not. As the gesture stems from an anti-Semitic context, it has to
be interpreted within this frame. Ignorance is no excuse. The important point is
that the media restricted the debate to Anelka’s intention or the notional mean-
ing behind the quenelle salute. His individual contextualization was the matter
of discussion. A significant point was, for example, whether the salute was only
intended as Anelka’s personal dedication to Dieudonné Mbala Mbala. However,

the anti-Semitic signification of the gesture is not negotiable. Here, one has to
take into account the public context of the quenelle salute and not just individual
contextualization. Moreover, it is misleading to assume that Anelka’s intention or
notional sense-making is the only cause for the body movement. Instead, it was
also motivated by intercorporeity. It is very likely that it was triggered by the
fleshly expression of joy and pride after Anelka’s goal against West Ham United.
Accordingly, why and how football is so susceptible to the use of anti-Semitic
gestures should be included in the media debate. What is at stake in a football
match? What sense of “me” allows the connection of joy and pride to disdain and
open devaluation? The analysis of Anelka’s fleshly habituality would demonstrate
whether there is such a connection. It also would ask whether joy and pride are
signs of play associated with the game, or whether Anelka’s flesh comprises hints
of earnestness. Signs of play are appropriate for a football game, whereas earnest-
ness can be a pointer for another framing that goes beyond the actual situation.
The presented approach has been utilized for the analysis of doctor-patient
consultations and the study of the operating room (see, e.g., Kissmann 2009a,
2009b, 2014b). Documents, instruments, and other sentient entities were taken
into account. During the OR research project, the dynamics of gender practices
were analyzed among the four occupational groups, namely the surgical and anes-
thesiological personnel, and the surgical and anesthesiological nursing services,
as well as how these practices evolved during computerization. The main feature
of video hermeneutics consists in the fine-grained sequential analysis of video-
recorded interaction. In relation to the specific research question, sequences of
one to two minutes are selected from a data corpus of up to 400 h and undergo a
fine-grained analysis. For that purpose, the chosen sequence is divided into seg-
ments of 5 s. Through thought experiment, choices of action are developed in
each segment that could possibly occur in the next segment. In doing so, interpre-
tation possibilities in each new segment can be eliminated until one single inter-
pretation remains.
Video hermeneutics works with a multimodal approach such as, for example,
Mondada (2003, 2007) or Bohnsack (2009). This means that nonverbal interac-
tion, transcribed talk, and verbal interaction are analyzed separately. Gestural and
notional meanings are only studied independently within the analysis of nonver-
bal interaction. Through this, it is possible to reconstruct how fleshly expressions
shape intended signs, on the one hand, and how intention modifies fleshly mean-
ing, on the other hand. Hence, this makes visible in which way intercorporeity
is intertwined with the more common form of sociality that is mediated through
34 U. T. Kissmann
language. Other methods of video interaction analysis such as, for example, Tuma
et al. (2013) or Heath et al. (2010) also emphasize bodily conduct, but they do not
ground their analysis on a concept of fleshly sociality, nor do they develop a fine-
grained tool for the reconstruction of fleshly meaning.
6 Conclusion
In the “Phenomenology of Perception,” bodily intentionality is entirely anchored

in the present. Sense-making is explained by an omnipotent present. I have shown
that the underlying concept of time draws upon the linear succession of past –
present – future. Though the past is not conceptualized by Merleau-Ponty, a
notion of pastness still is traceable in his early work. It lies in the idea of forget-
ting and, as such, it follows the linear structure of time. I have demonstrated that
the future is characterized as the virtual or the possible. It stands in contrast to
Latour’s or Deleuze’s meaning of the virtual as self-differentiating and generative
power. Though Merleau-Ponty goes beyond classical intentionality in the “Phe-
nomenology of Perception,” he does not find an adequate concept for sense-mak-
ing. The emergence of meaning is exclusively tied to the present. Such a concept
only can be identified in his late work, where he conceives a generative principle
within flesh. In “The Visible and the Invisible,” Merleau-Ponty revises his notion
of serial time and develops the idea of time as chiasm. In this new conceptualiza-
tion, past, present, and future are intertwined and can move back and forth. Addi-
tionally, as demonstrated by Al-Saji (2007), there is also a temporal asymmetry
between past and present. Merleau-Ponty institutes the concept of immemorial
past that reflects Bergson’s “past in general.” As such, it is a pure memory, an
invisible that structures the passage to the present. Hence, Merleau-Ponty’s idea
of originary pastness secures reversibility and irreversibility simultaneously.
Drawing upon Ferrari’s work (2016), I have demonstrated that the immemorial
past constitutes a generative and self-differentiating principle. It is inscribed into
the structure of the flesh as invisible or abyss. As “dehiscence or fission of its own
mass” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 146), flesh is never identical to itself. It literally
opens into two and, through this, enables the emergence of self, other, and the
world – or rather, the emergence of sentient, sensed, and the rest. Self-divergence
of flesh is the prerequisite for the experience of things. In that conceptualization
of agency, sentient and sensed are principally reversible. Hence, flesh and mat-
ter can be treated as equal from a methodological point of view. Using Latour’s
phrasing, I have reached the conclusion that “we experience the sensation of a
sentient thing, the volition of a conating thing and the belief in a believing thing”
(Tarde quoted in Latour 2008, p. 19). As it focuses on our experience with things
and not on the experience of things with things, it adequately describes Merleau-
Ponty’s ontology of the invisible. In the latter, only flesh is endowed with the
invisible, not matter.
Furthermore, the reader was introduced to video hermeneutics as developed
in Kissmann (2014a). This draws upon Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of flesh and,
within this theoretical framework, utilizes his concept of intercorporeity. Using
the example of the “quenelle gesture,” I have shown what is meant by concep-
tional and gestural meaning. The media debate primarily employed the concep-
tional signification of the salute. Here, meaning is mediated through language.
In contrast to this, gestural meaning refers to intercorporeity, a primordial form
of sociality that draws upon pre-reflexive and preconscious understanding. The
latter was not included in the media debate. How the “quenelle gesture” was
performed was not discussed. However, the idea of intercorporeity makes the
analysis of fleshly habituality possible. Using Ferrari’s approach (2016), it was
demonstrated that the formation of habituality can be explained through the gen-
erative principle of the invisible. In contrast to Berger and Luckmann (1996),
habits also can already emerge at a pre-reflexive level beyond the realm of con-
sciousness.
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Historical Materialism and 
Actor-Network-Theory
Joost van Loon
1 Introduction
Rather than engaging with the question whether there is anything “new” about
new materialism, or whether the “turn to ontology” should really be called a
“return to ontology,” this chapter will focus on the so-called “epistemological
break” (Althusser 1969) with Kantian idealism. I will show that this break is not
a one-off historical event (such as the publication of Das Kapital as Althusser had
claimed), but a series of interventions that have become necessary in dealing with
particular pitfalls of idealist thought. In this contribution, I will focus more spe-
cifically on two interventions: 1) Historical materialism as a break from Feuer-
bach’s spectatorial materialism and 2) Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) as a break
from Social Constructionism.
Those who invoke the term new materialism mainly do so because they want to
distinguish it from materialism-as-we-know-it, or better, from materialism-as-we-
thought-we-knew-it. This materialism usually goes by the name of Marxism. How-
ever, I prefer to use historical materialism as this is the term that Marx and Engels
themselves used to describe their approach. By contrast, ANT is often treated as
being “the” example par-excellence of new materialism. However, as ANT is itself
working within an already established tradition whose roots go back via Deleuze
(1994) and Whitehead (1978) to Tarde (2009), Nietzsche (1992), Leibniz (2004)
and Spinoza (2004), I am implying a wider philosophical trajectory than those
J. van Loon (*) 
E-Mail: joost.vanloon@ku.de
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_3
40 J. van Loon
usually invoked by sociologists when dealing with ANT (also see Latour (2002)
for an account of how ANT relates to Tarde’s Monadology).
The philosophical groundings of historical materialism are very similar to that
of practice theory, but with a more sustained focus on practices of abstraction.
Historical materialism stresses that all practices are material, including those of
religion, for example, as they have historical consequences that cannot be altered
by the sheer power of private imagination or fantasy. Practices are associations, or
prehensions, of actual occasions, that bind different entities together into assem-
blages. It is therefore that history is material. Hence, practices of abstraction – for
which Marx and Engels (1969) primarily deployed the term “capital” – are also
material. This focus helps us understand both the invocation and obliteration of
articulations of particular interests to explain why “men make history but not
under conditions of their own choosing” (Marx 1852, p. 1) and thus enable us to
develop a toolkit for analysing interests in terms of power. The question “What
are the consequences of stating that materiality matters?” is thus partly answered
by historical materialism with recourse to practices of abstraction that invoke and
hide particular interests (e.g., capital in terms of relations of production). This
double act is only sustainable because of the materiality of interests.
Interests also play an important role in ANT. However, here practices of
abstraction are to be understood in terms of practices of translation between –
or as prehensions of – different entities. Already from its early beginnings as a
critique of Cartesian dualism, the monistic tradition which has inspired ANT
incorporates a critique of idealism, but one that is less concerned with explaining
the resilience of particular asymmetrical power-relations (i.e., ideology-critique),
but with explaining how particular truth-laims become sustainable. I will show
that this strongly relies on an understanding of materiality as tied to the ability
of entities to resist manipulations. This too has methodological consequences, as
we need to be aware of the constitutive role of all entities and not just the ones
abstracted into “human beings.”
These two approaches will be subsequently contrasted in an attempt to syn-
thesize them. Using the example of signing an official document it will be shown
that the notion that matter matters can be understood more easily, if we consider
the role of the particular media involved in this particular practice. Signed docu-
ments are often at the centre of controversies over authenticity and this can be
traced in the practices of their composition.
The final section offers some reflections on the methodological consequences
of “taking matter seriously” and highlights that for example forensics and experi-
ments have from the outset been conceived to do just that.
Historical Materialism and Actor-Network-Theory 41
2 Historical Materialism
Virtually no sociologist would claim today, that materiality does not matter. The
example most often invoked is that of the body. The body matters; it makes a
difference, for example in terms of race, gender or disability. A second example
often referred to is that of communications media, which – often with the help
of concepts such as affordance – are justifiably understood as amplifiers and ena-
blers. Social constructionists, for example, are happy to invoke bodies and media
as social constructions that none-the-less have started to have effects of their own
in terms of reification. Of course, they are seen as social or communicative con-
structions and their relevance is thus completely enveloped by human intentions,
motivations and interests (cf. Keller et al. 2013).
This, however, is exactly what historical materialism would criticize: Reifica-
tion is not some trick of the mind, but the consequence of practices of abstrac-
tion. In the capitalist mode of production, capital is the most powerful modality
of abstraction. Of course, capital is intimately tied to interests and practices of
abstraction are always interested, but the relations between intentions, moti-
vations and interests are not entirely subservient to some kind of autonomous
agency of human being.
Historical materialism is usually described as the antithesis to Hegel’s Dialecti-
cal Idealism, in that it posits that the starting point for each analysis has to be the
physical actuality of being, instead of a concept, an idea or a Zeitgeist. However,
this is exactly the position represented by Ludwig Feuerbach and endlessly ridi-
culed by Marx and Engels (1969) in The German Ideology.1 Marx and Engels were
adamant that Feuerbach’s mere reversal of the relationship between matter and
ideas was merely an expression of the bourgeois privilege of being able to occupy
the place of the “time out,” essential for the creation of a timeless judgement on
“matters of fact” without having to bear either the responsibility or the account-
ability for the consequences. To put it more simply: bourgeois philosophers such
as Feuerbach could only occupy the privileged position of transcendental observer
because they could afford a time off from work, without having to pay any price.
Der Hauptmangel alles bisherigen Materialismus – den Feuerbachschen mit ein-

gerechnet – ist, dass der Gegenstand, die Wirklichkeit, Sinnlichkeit, nur unter der
Form des Objekts oder der Anschauung gefasst wird; nicht aber als menschliche
sinnliche Tätigkeit, Praxis, nicht subjektiv. Daher geschah es, dass die tätige Seite,
1Marx–Engels Werke, Band 3, Dietz Verlag Berlin, 1969.

42 J. van Loon
im Gegensatz zum Materialismus, vom Idealismus entwickelt wurde – aber nur

abstrakt, da der Idealismus natürlich die wirkliche, sinnliche Tätigkeit als solche
nicht kennt. Feuerbach will sinnliche, von den Gedankenobjekten wirklich unter-
schiedene Objekte; aber er fasst die menschliche Tätigkeit selbst nicht als gegen-
ständliche Tätigkeit. Er betrachtet daher im ‘Wesen des Christenthums’ nur das
theoretische Verhalten als das echt menschliche, während die Praxis nur in ihrer
schmutzig-jüdischen Erscheinungsform gefasst und fixiert wird. Er begreift daher
nicht die Bedeutung der ‘revolutionären’, der praktisch-kritischen Tätigkeit.2
What Marx and Engels criticized most emphatically was that Feuerbach failed to
think dialectically that is, historically. He failed to think “thinking” as a practice
grounded in the actual hustle and bustle of everyday life. He failed to consider
that what people think is not some kind of transfer process of ideas from one kind
of domain (e.g., the bible) to another (personal religious belief), but the conse-
quence of thinking as practice, as work-in-progress. They rightly criticized Feuer-
bach for being a sheep in wolves’ clothes: he is preaching dialectical materialism
but his work is neither dialectical nor materialist: Instead, it is linear and highly
idealist, similar to the heroic subject in Plato’s allegory of the cave.
Hence, dialectics is not to be understood as some lofty, meditative clash of
“points of view,” but as a historical and material practice of abstraction. The shap-
ing of the conditions under which “history” is being made – which Nietzsche called
“the Will to Power” – is not a matter of choice, but the consequence of struggle,
conflict, i.e., mutually exclusive interests. This means that the non-dialectical mate-
rialism as developed by Feuerbach is also part of this dialectical unfolding, namely
as a bourgeois privilege of abnegating any responsibility for one’s own practices of
abstraction; making truth-claims without paying the due price, enabling the mask-
ing of the actual interests that are served by these practices of abstraction.
21st Thesis on Feuerbach, in Marx-Engels Werke, Vol.3, p. 533 ff. Dietz Verlag Berlin, 1969.
“The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that
the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contempla-
tion, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradis-
tinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of
course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects,
really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as
objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical atti-
tude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in
its dirtyjudaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolution-
ary,” of “practical-critical,” activity.” Translation: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/
works/1845/theses/theses.htm.
160 years after Marx and Engels’ abandonment of the writing of the German
Ideology, Bruno Latour (2005, p. 25) also wrote about certain scholars refusing to
pay the price:
In the world ANT is trying to travel through, no displacement seems possible with-
out costly and painful translations. Sociologists of the social seem to glide like
angels, transporting power and connections almost immaterially, while the ANT-
scholar has to trudge like an ant, carrying the heavy gear in order to generate even
the tiniest connection.
This critique concerns the Feuerbachs of today such as those “critical sociolo-
gists” who happily ignore experienced-based actualities in favour of more sig-
nificant “social explanations,” including those that read the logic of a particular
practice as completely derived from invisible, structural conditions, in need of
“exposure.” The price-not-paid manifests itself in the leaps and bounces of asser-
tions that enable one to shift from one account of reality to another, without need-
ing to explore the steps in between. For Feuerbach and critical sociologists alike,
there are only two entities to consider: concepts and empirical manifestations and
these two are not related. Following closely in the footsteps of Plato and explor-
ing his allegory of the cave, such a critical sociology tells us that what people
think to be real, are mere projections of actual manipulations performed behind
their backs by forces that themselves remain invisible, but can be revealed by the
critical sociologist, because he is able to free himself from the shackles the rest of
us are forced to adhere to.
The price that Plato (2008) refused to pay was to explain to us, what ena-
bled Socrates to free himself from the shackles that kept him chained to the
wall? Admittedly, he does tell us something about it: “Now imagine someone
being able to free himself ….” Apparently, all we need to do is imagine and we
are already rubbing our eyes that are hurting because we are blinded by the light
of the fire. It is clear and nobody refutes this: Plato was an idealist and ideal-
ists imagine things; however, it does not take too long for the political realism to
return, explaining why Socrates failed to convert the other prisoners to accept his
version of reality. Even Plato’s own allegory testifies to the logical impossibil-
ity of idealism: you cannot get others to follow you, you cannot build a collec-
tive, you cannot even solve disputes, if you cannot make clear to others how your
thought unfolded in relation to events they themselves could experience. Plato,
like Feuerbach, would like people to follow him and believe him, because of him,
because he is the philosopher-king, because he has seen the light, because he has
been called to free us of our prejudices and misconceptions.
44 J. van Loon
Is this not also the case with Marx and Engels and Latour then? Do they not
want us to follow? Yes they are teachers and their work is to make us follow
them. The difference, however, is that they tell us exactly how. Marx and Engels
did so by pointing out that thinking, reflecting and believing are part of philo-
sophical (and religious) practices performed in ordinary, everyday lives. They are
productive activities: they generate actual consequences. Upon this basis, Marx
and Engels systematically destroyed Feuerbach’s ridiculing of Christianity in
eleven theses. Each thesis building upon the previous one.
Das gesellschaftliche Leben ist wesentlich praktisch. Alle Mysterien, welche die
Theorie zum Mystizismus verleiten, finden ihre rationelle Lösung in der menschli-
chen Praxis und im Begreifen dieser Praxis.3
Das Höchste, wozu der anschauende Materialismus es bringt, d. h. der Materialis-
mus, der die Sinnlichkeit nicht als praktische Tätigkeit begreift, ist die Anschauung
der einzelnen Individuen in der ‘bürgerlichen Gesellschaft.’4
Although not very often mentioned in this context, Marx and Engels could be
seen as having made one of the earliest sociological contributions to the devel-
opment of praxis theory. It is not for nothing that, in order to avoid raising sus-
picions amongst the prison guards, Antonio Gramsci (1971) referred to historical
materialism as “the philosophy of praxis.” Evidently, Marx and Engels understood
practice as inherently material. Even supposedly mental activities such as thinking
and believing were for them inherently material practices, which enabled them to
distinguish themselves from the spectatorial materialism (“anschauendem Materi-
alismus”) of Feuerbach and those calling themselves the “Young Hegelians”.5
38th Thesis on Feuerbach, in Marx-Engels Werke, Vol. 3, p. 533 ff. Dietz Verlag Berlin,
1969. “All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism
find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.”
Translation: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm.
49th Thesis on Feuerbach, in Marx-Engels Werke, Vol. 3, p. 533 ff. Dietz Verlag Berlin,
1969. “The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which
does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is contemplation of single individ-
uals and of civil society.” Translation: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/
theses/theses.htm.
5The so called “Turn to Ontology” that has been mistaken as the equivalent of new materi-
alism would also fall foul of the critique on Feuerbach, because the materiality it allegedly
invokes (as opposed to “representation”) is devoid of any sense of practice.
The argument, that practices of abstraction are historical-material in their

consequences, should not be equated with the famous Thomas’ theorem “if man
define a situation as real, it becomes real in its consequences,” unless we under-
stand “defining” as a concrete practice of abstraction (rather than stating a point
of view). Indeed, even to declare a situation as fictional makes that declaration
real. For historical materialism, to define is to realize. Therefore, although his-
torical materialism insists that “men make history …,” this is always to be fol-
lowed by “… but not under conditions of their own making” (Marx 1852, p. 1).
The conditions of the praxes of “making history” are always before us as we
are thrown into “the midst of things.” In contrast to Feuerbach’s non-dialectical
materialism, which presupposes a point of view outside of the historical-material
conditions of practices of abstraction, “defining situations as real” is not a mat-
ter of declaration but of praxis. This distinguishes historical materialism from,
for example, social constructionism, as for the latter “defining,” “declaring” and
“perceiving” all take place from a particular “point of view” that coincides with
an individual consciousness (ego).6
This is what annoyed Marx and Engels so much when confronted with Feuer-
bach and co: their materialism was simply a sheep in wolves’ clothing: pretending
to be radical, but thereby even more confined to the pitfalls of bourgeois ideol-
ogy and its privileging of an egological spectatorial non-commitment.7 Historical
materialism commits itself to objectification because this refers to the conditions
that are not of the human’s own making in a way that social constructionism can-
not do. That is why social constructionism cannot claim to have taken materiality
6To claim that social constructionists such as Berger and Luckmann (1966) have already
adequately “dealt with” materiality, because their theory of objectification explains how
social constructions incorporate objects, tells us nothing about the objects, because it is
unable to tell us what interests objects might have in this process of objectification. For
Berger and Luckmann, objects are nothing but tabula rasa, onto which a multitude of cog-
itos project “their” res cogitans, by communicating freely with each other, because their
subjective nature is not bound by a material world. Objectification then is arbitrary and its
binding sustainability only stems from the subjective will to objectify.
7This critique would also apply to Husserl’s phenomenology. Although Alfred Schütz
(2009) is often credited to have overcome the critique of egology, by positing a social sub-
ject as the basis of Ego, it remains questionable whether adding a “you” to the “I” is an
adequate strategy to prevent spectatorial non-commitment. This will be a problem as long
as the association between perception and cognition remains framed as subjective.
46 J. van Loon
seriously, as objects are not doing anything; they are not partaking in social con-
structions, because the social is the exclusive domain of individual cogitos.
Taking matter seriously forces us to accept that the conditions under which “men
make history” are not of their own choosing and cannot be manipulated at will
because of their materiality. To phrase it differently: Objectivity is a consequence
of material practices of objectification. Objects resist because of their material-
ity, institutions regulate because of their materiality, situations become real in their
consequences only if defining them as real is a material practice. This is the philo-
sophical core of historical materialism. Hence, whereas the first part of the argument –
practices of abstraction are historical and therefore material – can be understood as
an endorsement of constructionism, the second part of the argument – practices of
abstraction involve objectifications that cannot be reduced to points of view (or defi-
nitions) – entails a rejection of all forms of social constructionism.
A particular strength of historical materialism as a basis for sociological praxis
theory lies in its focus on abstraction as a historical-material practice. This is the
lesson from Das Kapital: The abstraction of relations of production in terms of
(human) capital entails a transformation of reality (Wirklichkeit). The ability to
“generate” exchange value independently from use-value is a real consequence of
this practice of abstraction. However, unlike liberal economics, historical mate-
rialism understands this practice of abstraction to be politically motivated by the
articulation of particular interests at the expense of others, rather than a “natural
outcome” of competing individual interests.8
Practices of abstraction thus involve materiality not as some tabula rasa onto
which meanings have been inscribed as a process of objectification, but as con-
stitutive in the making of history that engenders the conditions that are not of our
own choosing. They are meaningful not so much in terms of an arbitrary herme-
neutics, but in their double act of articulating and eradicating the particularity of
the interests that they serve.
8It is clear that this reading of historical materialism does not embrace the popularized-
Marxist view that one needs to understand history as determined by particular transhis-
torical laws with predictable outcomes. The notion of “final analysis” was developed by
Engels in response to questions about why capitalism was proving to be quite resilient. For
me historical materialism cannot embrace a transcendental analysis for that would negate
its dialectical roots and become much more akin to Feuerbach’s spectatorial materialism.
3 Actor-Network-Theory (ANT)
It may be a little stretch of the imagination to link the historical-materialist notion

of practices of abstraction directly to the phrase “material semiotics” which
has been coined by particular authors associated with ANT, in particular Bruno
Latour (2005, 2016) and John Law (2004). For Latour and Law, material semi-
otics is a heuristic label that highlights that every practice, every “effect” so to
speak, can be understood and analysed as a compound of “matter” and “mean-
ing.” Matter is here understood as that which resists, that which takes a stance,
makes a difference, and has a limiting character; whereas meaning is associ-
ated with “significance or relevance” and has a selective character. Elsewhere
(Van Loon 2012), I have deployed the terms objectivation and subjectivation to
stress that both are processes performed on the same matter of concern and not in
relation to two different realities: such as the objective and the subjective or res
extensa and res cogitans.
Historical materialism had been developed as an antithesis to the unholy trin-
ity of Descartes, Kant and Hegel and it therefore shares the same antagonisms as
ANT. However, the metaphysical premises of historical materialism and ANT are
very different. Historical materialism evolved as immanent critique with/against
Hegelian dialectics, whereas ANT is inspired through encounters with the work
of Deleuze and Guattari (1988) and thereby bears the signatures of Whitehead,
Bergson, Tarde, Nietzsche, Leibniz and Spinoza. Whilst for the former, there is
no problem in separating words and things as entities of two different universes,
this is explicitly problematized by those who adhere to the second trajectory. Fol-
lowing the monistic tradition of Parmenides and Spinoza, Deleuze (1994) for
example saw no advantages in having to invest such a high stake in the claim
that there is a priori split in the universe between modes of thought and modes
of extension, as they are both logically tied to the same substance. What would
a mode of thought be if it is not tied to the same substance as that which the
thought refers to? What would a metaphor be, if it had nothing to do whatsoever
with that which it has been derived from?
Such a monistic approach, however, does not require one to drop dyadic think-
ing but allocates the burden of justification to the act of splitting something into
two. For example, if social constructionists want to argue that the truth claims
developed by scientists are the result of discursive processes of negotiation, this
does not absolve them of the responsibility to identify which entities (actors?)
have been taking part on these processes of negotiation? Which discursive prac-
tices have performed the truth claims in question? What do the truth claims refer
48 J. van Loon
to? How does a particular truth claim obtain more followers than the others? Sim-
ply separating the truth claim from what the truth claim refers to is the opposite
of science.
The problem here is that without doing this work, the invocation of entities
as either “material” or “semiotic” entails practices of abstraction without any
process of abstraction apparently having taken place. One thus obscures the jus-
tification why one entity is called upon to be “constructed” and the other to be
“constructing.” To assume as a starting point that the material and the semiotic
are not related, reduces all truth claims to mere assertions, because those con-
structing seem to be able to construct whatever they feel like.
That this is clearly nonsensical has been argued by, for example, Ian Hacking
(1999) in his Social Construction of “What?” does the “what” matter? If it does
not, then all that remains are political interests as the adjective “social” serves
the purpose of justifying that the human mind (cogito) has to be capable of gen-
erating “asocial” abstractions without any basis in experience. In other words,
when Berger and Luckmann (1966) were referring to “The Social Construction
of Reality,” Ian Hacking’s “what” becomes an abstraction called “reality.” Berger
and Luckmann made it clear that they were not referring to the whole of real-
ity; they did not want to engage in an ontological argument about the natural
world for example, because that would have made them vulnerable to a critique
of solipsism. Instead, they limited their “reality” to mere social reality and further
explained that social reality is identical to “everyday life.”9
For Berger and Luckmann, social reality is experienced, or perhaps better:
social reality is (ordinary, everyday) an abstraction of experiences, which they
refer to as “knowledge.” The work of abstraction is interaction or communication.
For many contemporary followers of Berger and Luckmann (e.g., Keller et al.
2013), communication is a more precise term and it makes more sense than inter-
action because it serves the purpose of highlighting the semiotic element involved
in the work of socially constructing. However, if one retraces the term interaction
to its original use within sociology, namely as a translation of Simmel’s (1908)
concept of Wechselwirkungen (Wechsel meaning iterant and Wirkung meaning
working in terms of both action and effect), then the emphasis is clearly both
semiotic and material. Wechselwirkung does not prioritize let alone isolate the
9Berger and Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge concerns itself with social constructions
of social reality and social reality emerges from the concrete interactions between human
beings, who negotiate agreements related to the translation of concrete experiences into
language or discourse. Discourse thereby becomes the same as social reality.
semiotic. To simplify the argument, for Berger and Luckmann “what” is being
socially constructed are experiences. These are abstracted into “knowledge” and
form the ordinary, everyday life world of “social reality”. The practice of abstrac-
tion is communicative and primarily semiotic; the material component is being
“lost in translation.”
Against this, one might assume a contra-position as one in which matter over-
rules semiosis. Robert Schmidt (in this volume) has referred to this point of
view as the “turn to ontology” and has mistakenly attributed this to Karen Barad
(2012). The turn to ontology does appear from time to time in the form of “popu-
larized science,” which assumes that reality reveals itself in its materiality if we
look carefully enough (with the trained eye of a scientist); but this perspective
has been widely condemned as “naïve empiricism.” By contrast, Barad’s critique
on the semiotic turn has not been, that it needs to be replaced with an equally
dogmatic “material turn,” but instead advocates an “agential realism” in which
machines or apparatuses “are not merely instruments of observation but limiting
practices, specific material (re–) configurations of the world, that materialize and
obtain relevance” (Barad 2012, p. 21). Indeed, this would be completely compat-
ible with the monistic ethos of ANT as it forces one to think of the associations
between the workings of matter and their articulations (or “semiosis”) as emerg-
ing from the same, singular event. In sharp contrast to those who see the “turn
to ontology” as a turn away from “representation,” ANT cannot afford to simply
replace “semiosis” with “matter” in some kind of feuerbachian reversal. Instead,
it needs to take on the blind spot of social constructionism and take it seriously:
What happens when “matter” gets lost in translation?
It is not accidental that both Barad and ANT have primarily focused on the
workings of natural sciences as these are most emphatically concerned with the
“what” that is to be (re–) constructed. Whereas social constructionism has evaded
the issue by focusing on “social reality,” the natural sciences have continued to
concern themselves with “matter” in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Moreover, they
have stood their ground against social constructionism and forced it into retreat.
By accepting its concerns to be limited to the “social construction of social real-
ity,” social constructionism has been reduced to fooling around with a tautology
to the point of being pointless.
However, a sociology of science would not be as easily dismissed if it accepts
three propositions: 1) abandon any substantive notion of “social” as somehow
made of its own (invisible) substance (as distinct from “mere” matter); 2) aban-
don the unnecessary opposition between the material (as meaningless, dumb
matter) and the semiotic (as created out of the blue, by the sheer power of imagi-
nation); and 3) accept that constructions (workings) need to be traced as practices
50 J. van Loon
of abstraction and translation. In the previous section concerning historical mate-

rialism, I have focused on practices of abstraction; it is the work of in particular
ANT that helps us consider practices of translation.
For ANT (Latour 1987, 2016), and unlike Berger and Luckmann, discourse is
not the same as (social) reality. Even if ANT would not need to object in prin-
ciple to the notion of social reality in the sense of an “assembled sociality,” it
would not accept that social reality exists in a different universe from non-social
or actual reality. There is no gap between actual and social realities (here under-
stood as accounts of “reality”). Social realities will have to adhere to non-social
realities in order to have any sustainability. For example, the discourse of climate
change denial also refers to scientific findings, religious dogma and concrete
experiences. These are all non-social realities in so far as that they involve more
than exclusively human actors: science, religion and personal experience all refer
to “something” otherwise than human. Climate change denial mobilizes matter
but not in the same way as climate change science; this is why 95% of scientists
with expertise in climate-change related research argue that there is ample scien-
tific evidence to suggest that climate change exists and is caused by humans. The
scientific translation of climate change matters clearly supports these conclusions
rather than their denial. It is for that reason that climate change denial tends to
mobilize completely different modes of translation such as religious or political
ones (e.g., conspiracy theories).
Experiences are always encounters (prehensions) of matter. In the social sci-
ences, we tend to focus on those experiences that involve at least one human
being.10. However, human being is also matter, otherwise it would not matter.
Being matter, human beings are engaged in prehensions of matter that we also
refer to as “sensing.” Phenomenologists tend to prioritize “perception,” system
theorists prefer to talk about “observation,” hermeneuticians prioritize “interpreta-
tion,” but in all instances and similar to all those engaged in material-semiotics,
they are engaging questions related to sensing and sense-making. ANT simply
adds to this the principle that sensing and sense – making are not separate activi-
ties but iterant workings.
A consistent focus on translation enables us to understand that sense-making
only works if every reference, every invocation, every trace is accounted for.
Sense always refers to something other than itself: Sensing is a practice of
10For that reason, social sciences are better be referred to as “human sciences”.
p rehending.11 Prehending is the most basic form of translation; it takes place

when one entity impacts on another. The fundamental mistake Phenomenology
(for example) has made is to assume that one entity (a subject) perceiving an
other entity (an object) has no impact on that other; whereas empirically speak-
ing a difference is being made: the act of perceiving entails a double impact of
subjectivation and objectivation: it is the creation of a subject and an object. Per-
ception makes a difference: it differentiates between a subject and an object by
means of a double act of subjectification and objectification.
Prehension does not involve equality: one entity does not prehend another
in exactly the same way is it is being prehended (Whitehead 1978). However, it
does involve a chain of prehensions: as one prehends the other, the other is also
prehending the one but differently. For example, a person signing a document
prehends the pen, the pen also prehends the hand of the person, for example, by
resisting being completely squashed and thereby keeping its shape, enabling a
firm grip by the hand for more control. The paper of the document prehends the
pen, but in a different way than the pen prehends the paper. Still, the prehension
of the pen by the document enables the pen to do its work. It allows ink to enter
the fibres of the paper and form a dot or a line. Those who stop the analysis with
the human hand, and start again with a fully signed document, are still not entitled
to claim that the matters of pen, ink and paper do not matter. Especially when
considering the role of the witness, who stand by to observe the practice of the
signing of a document, these matters matter, because exactly the observing of this
practice of inscription makes all the difference. It cannot be any hand, any pen,
any ink, and any paper: It has to be this exact hand, this exact pen held by the end,
this exact ink that comes from the pen held by the hand and this exact paper that
stored the ink that came from the pen that was held by that hand (and no other).
As banal as this example may sound (even if for a notary, it would be an
insult to call such an act “banal”), it is fundamental to the social reality of “an
agreement” as being invoked by committing it to paper. For ANT this process of
11Compared to the English word sense, which can be both a noun and a verb and therefore
cultivates an affinity with practice, the German word “Sinn” is only a noun and without a
connection to a verb, induces the sense that it exists as such. The English verb “to sense”
can be translated into a range of German verbs, varying from “feeling” to “recognizing,”
covering the full spectrum between affection and cognition. It is perhaps not surprising,
therefore, that the German version of the Sociology of Knowledge, i.e., “Wissenssoziolo-
gie”, has such a much wider appeal among social theorists than its Anglo-Saxon counter-
part, because it has no problems absorbing affects, emotions, feelings etc. under the general
label of “knowing” (cf. Van Loon 2016).
52 J. van Loon
c ommitting oneself to paper is to be understood as a translation. For a media-

theorist, it is the translation of the spoken word to the written word. The latter
consists of an inscribing device: the pen, an inscription medium: the ink, and a
storage medium: the paper. For ANT, translation is a key concept to understand
how actors can be committed to form a particular assembly or network. They cru-
cial sociological concept here is “interest.” Translation involves the binding of
different interests to a shared cause; without this binding, no “social event” can be
assembled (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005).
Translation is thus the concrete operationalization of practices of abstraction.
It is here where we can see abstractions such as the transfer of a property via a
signed agreement “at work.” ANT identifies five different “stages” of translation:
1) problematization; 2) interessement; 3) enrolment; 4) mobilization; and 5) dis-
assembling (Callon, 1986).12 These could be seen as a summary of “methodologi-
cal consequences” of taking matter seriously (Latour 1987).
Problematization is perhaps very similar to what phenomenologists refer to as

“consciousness” (or perhaps better: awareness) – in the sense of being oriented
towards (Gerichtetheit). “Being conscious of” is however not to be understood
as a mental state. It should be understood as “being concerned” or “being moved
by”; that is, should not negate the “agency” of that which the consciousness is
of. In fact, one could argue that this is the more original actor in the entire scene:
the matter of concern is the one setting an event (e.g., a controversy, a problem, a
problematic) into motion.
Interessement is the binding of matters of concern to particular interests. “Hav-

ing a stake in” so to speak reduces indifference; the matter of concern becomes
of more concern to particular participants. Those with similar interests are form-
ing “interested parties.” This is the stage where politics become more visible both
in terms of identifying different interests as well as organizing collective action.
Indeed, this is what Germans call Politisierung (literally: politicization): matters
becoming political (Van Loon 2016).
12Although Callon (1986) referred to these five modalities as stages and deployed them
to structure his narratives of the failed scientific experiment of cultivating clams in the St.
Brieuc Bay, it is hopefully clear, that the more likely scenario for empirical social science
research is one in which one arrives in the middle and needs to reconstruct what kind of
translations have already taken place. Of course, there is a difference between the research
process and the way it is accounted for in written publications (cf. Latour 2005).
Enrollment is what Organizational Sociology and those studying Pubic Admin-

istration might be most interested in: the association between collective interests
and particular functions or roles to be fulfilled. When one considers the allegory
of the formation of society by Berger and Luckmann (1966), one could also refer
to this stage as “institutionalization.” This is when particular practices become
established and transformed into roles (for example, with the help of protocols,
written regulations, laws and contracts). It is only at this stage, that questions of
legitimation become more explicit.
Mobilization is the actual setting-to-work of the enrolment; it is that which is of

greatest interest to those associated with Practice Theory and Ethnomethodol-
ogy. Here the focus is on the ordinary, everyday practices of “doing” an event
or project. It is usually that which social scientists find themselves thrown into,
when starting ethnographic research. Whereas the first three forms of translation
are usually well documented or can be discursively reconstructed by experts or
eyewitnesses, this form of translation can be much more implicit, self-evident and
therefore harder to detect.
Disassembling is the mode of translation when the articulation between matters

of concern, interests and roles are no longer practicable, for example, because one
of the participating parties is no longer interested in taking part in the event or
project. The assembled network needs to be reconfigured or is doomed to dis-
integrate. With what is known as “breaching experiments” (Garfinkel 1967),
ethnomethodologists sometimes try to test the strength of mobilization, by simu-
lating a disassembling of ordinary everyday life situations.
4 Differences that Matter: Thinking Historical

Materialism and ANT Together
ANT is based on three core principles: 1) The Principle of Neutrality; 2) The Prin-
ciple of Generalized Symmetry and 3) The Principle of Free Association. These
are the logical consequences of monistic thinking: 1) all claims have stakes, 2) all
claims need to be accounted for in the same manner and 3) no entity can be a priori
excluded from a scientific inquiry (e.g., Callon 1986; Latour 2005; Van Loon 2016).
At first sight it may seem impossible to reconcile these with historical mate-
rialism because the latter would fall foul of all three core principles. Indeed,
many of those whose thought has been strongly influenced by historical material-
ism (for example the feminist critique of patriarchy) have objected, for example,
54 J. van Loon
to the Principle of Neutrality. If all knowledge has vested interests, no one can
remain neutral. Such a pragmatism is said to ignore asymmetrical power-relations
and is accused of being gender-blind. The Principle of Generalized Symmetry has
been widely criticized for treating humans and nonhumans as equals. In separat-
ing forces and relations of production, historical materialism (especially humanist
Marxism) however acknowledges a fundamental split between human and non-
human participation in the mode of production. Only human labour can generate
surplus-value. Finally, the Principle of Free Association seems to contradict his-
torical materialism’s insistence on the structural laws of historical development.
Not everything that is being associated matters, only those that unfold in accord-
ance with the historically anchored, political-economic, socio-cultural and patri-
archal structures of society need to be taken into account.
However, it is my contention that all three objections suffer from a lack of
understanding ANT and its philosophical roots. First, it is exactly because all
claims have stakes, that we should treat them equally. The philosophy of Feuer-
bach, for example, could only be understood by Marx and Engels as “bourgeois”
because they treated it as a philosophy and not as political propaganda. As those
who have read the history of Marxism know all too well, Marx and Engels’ con-
cept of ideology has been subject to intense debate (Abercrombie et al. 1986;
Althusser, 1971; Thompson, 1984), and has been deployed in a number of incom-
patible ways: e.g., as mere ideas, as false ideas, as the expression of interests
(power) and as the opposite of science. It is the latter definition that is at stake for
the Principle of Neutrality: If we treat some claims as ideological, we forfeit the
chance of engaging them in scientific analysis.13
For example, if we were to treat the signing of a document in order to commit
an agreement to paper as ideological, we would assume that people sign the docu-
ment to serve their own particular interests (which is of course true), but what we
would fail to see is the role of the signature on paper, as inscribing a commitment.
Exactly this is at stake, however, when the authenticity of the document in ques-
tion becomes subject to controversy. Precisely this controversy engages the scien-
tific interest, which has to be treated in a non-ideological way, for the controversy
13This might sound like a very strange interpretation of contrast between Ideology and
Science (Althusser 1969). Althusser (1971, p. 162) defined Ideology as “the imaginary
relationship of human beings to their real conditions of existence.” As the imaginary rela-
tionship of human beings to their real conditions of existence, Ideology cannot be conflated
to Science because whereas the former is geared towards attuning imaginary and real con-
ditions of existence the latter explicitly explores the relationship between imaginary and
real conditions of existence by means of translating actual processes (e.g., experiments)
into symbolic forms (e.g., journal articles).
to be legitimately resolved. A focus on ideology would completely miss the point

about the process of authentification. Against the accusation that ANT is power-
blind because it works on the basis of differentiating between ideological and sci-
entific analysis, we can thus posit the opposite: it is only on this basis, that we can
avoid being power-blind.
In contrast to the Principle of Neutrality, the Principle of Generalized Symme-
try (PGS) has received widespread condemnation for treating humans and non-
humans equally (cf. Wieser 2012). However, the reason for this is not – as has
so often been claimed – that the PGS assumes humans and nonhumans to be the
same, but because it assumes the very opposite: All humans and nonhumans are
different and therefore have to be analysed on and described in equal terms. Many
critics of the PGS seem to assume that all nonhumans, including chimpanzees,
dolphins and robots are more similar to rocks than to humans. The PGS allows
social science to appreciate all differences that might be relevant. It is impossi-
ble to establish differences being made, if the methods of generating data about
impacts do not treat all possible participants in the same way.
In one of her first major works Primatology, Donna Haraway (1989) presented
the case of the use of anthropocentric projections, mostly derived from anthro-
pological and psychological reductionisms, among primatologists, to come to
terms with primate behaviour. Simultaneously, however, primatological findings
are also deployed as the basis for understanding human nature and above all to
supply evidence for establishing what makes humans different from apes. Hara-
way rightly criticizes this thinking by particularly referring to gender differences,
which are considered an issue not only because they are deemed secondary to
human-ape differences, but also because, by denying human beings as gender-
differentiated, one overlooks the fact that human being tends to be standardized
as masculine, the feminine being derived, just as the ape is made derivative of
human being. All of a sudden, the sacrosanct human-nonhuman difference is gen-
erating a gender-blind notion of difference as hierarchy.14
In this sense, the PGS is more attuned to the feminist critique of gender-blindness
because it enables an exclusively empirical awareness of differences that matter.
14Although it would be doing her somewhat of an injustice to refer to Haraway as a his-

torical materialist, her advocacy of socialist feminism is clearly attuned to very similar con-
siderations as Marx and Engels’ socialist critique of Industrial capitalism. Simultaneously,
Donna Haraway’s longstanding affinity with both Poststructuralism and Science and Tech-
nology Studies suggests that her work resonates well with the same philosophical trajectory
that has also informed ANT.
56 J. van Loon
There is no need to work with prefabricated (essentialist) Cartesian res cogitans that
mystify the I/eye of the beholder (Haraway 1988). Indeed, differences that matter
can only be accounted for, if they are experienced. This is what was at stake in the
earlier discussions within feminism about a “feminist epistemology” (e.g., Harding
1990). It was an attempt to engage with “women’s experience” as a valid tool for
generating hitherto neglected controversies and modes of problematization. If there
are hierarchies of difference (and there are good reasons to assume there are), they
are a) open to experience and b) always situated.
The PGS is thus nothing but a device that forces us to continue to think empir-
ically, even if we are concerned with more abstract figurations, such as capital-
ism, patriarchy or authenticity. Because it acknowledges that every entity that
takes part in a process of realization (or “construction”) is capable of making a
difference, it insists that they be treated with the same “methods”15 and accounted
for with the same terminology.
If scratching the surface of the critique of the PGS reveals deep-seated anthro-
pocentric or humanist prejudices, the critique of the Principle of Free Association
is the logical consequence thereof. If human beings are – either by divine decree
or a self-proclaimed creed – more equal than others (just as in Animal Farm some
animals are more equal than others) and thus to be pre-judged as too special, too
unique, too different, to be subjected to the PSG, then there is no need for free
association. What is, and what is not, to be included into an empirical investigation
can be decided beforehand, by means of – for example – theoretical deduction.
This is what “bringing in context” usually means. Historical materialism is
known for its ability to generate highly complex, historical, political-economic,
socio-cultural and philosophical contexts, which are, in turn, condensed into
abstract configuration such as for example “the Capitalist Mode of Production”
or “Ideological State Apparatuses.” By contrast, the Principle of Free Association
(PFA) seems to thrive in a flat-ontology, without any context. However, this too is
a misunderstanding. The PFA is all about contextualizing. Association after all is
the practices of connecting and since we are dealing with the weaving (textere) of
many associations, the PFA is nothing but the imperative to contextualize prop-
erly. That is, not just any text will do, the “con” has to be empirically traced; it
has to be evidenced. As William James (1912/2008) wrote: associations are not
beyond experience, we have just not had the right tools to investigate them.
15Treatment with the same methods of data-generation does not automatically mean that
these have to be identical. They need to enable the entities in question to speak for them-
selves; these might of course imply completely different media.
Context is important but it cannot be defined in advance. Even if historical

materialism accounts for history as a succession of modes of production, these
are to be precisely documented, just like Marx and Engels’ (1969) own account
of Das Kapital. Compare this to, for example, Talcott Parsons’ (1977) account of
the Social System and it becomes clear that the latter has no historical basis what-
soever. Parsons always knew before any concrete empirical investigation, that a
systemic logic (AGIL) had to be accounted for. Instead the PFA insists that con-
texts have to be accounted for not in terms of their assumed logic, but in terms of
empirically experienced associations. Context always has a concrete entity that
provides the link.
Because the three core principles of ANT do not contradict the praxeological-
instincts of historical materialism, there are good reasons to continue exploring
possible synergies between them, at least in terms of inspiring modes of prob-
lematization, interessement, enrolment, and mobilization as well as understand-
ing the finitude of particular assemblages. Historical materialism inspires creative
abstraction and speculative associations. As it insists on highlighting controversy,
conflicts of interest, struggles over scarce resources, differences-becoming-hier-
archies (e.g., gender, race), and the construction of “matters of fact,” historical
materialism is able to amplify what might otherwise become quite stale, isolated
analyses of constructions, that easily regress into becoming “social constructions.”
Historical materialism and ANT provide a healthy antidote to those who insist
on explaining the social exclusively through the social, including those who seek
to provide social explanations. Both take matter seriously and both enable us to
understand this in terms of consequences for how one should conduct social-sci-
entific research.
5 Synergy: Signing a Contract as a Practice

of Mediation
Marx explained much more concretely than the other “founding fathers of sociol-
ogy,” how practices of abstraction work. What is missing from classical sociologi-
cal accounts of the Division of Labour (Durkheim 1984) or the Protestant Ethic
(Weber 1985) is the matter of what matters. For example, when we treat media
such as pen and paper solely as the vehicles for transmitting ideas, we become
completely oblivious to their particular properties and the differences these could
make. For example, the externalization of trust to the state by means of contract
law was only possible through the delegation of a concrete promise to an actual
written and signed document, i.e., the contract. The medium matters. This is not
58 J. van Loon
“just” a matter of practicalities,16 but above all of making a difference between

the virtual (e.g., a claim) and the actual (the claiming). This difference is of huge
importance for establishing a legally binding trace between a promise and an
obligation.
The medium of the signed document, the assemblage of hands, pens, ink,
paper, seal, eye-witnesses, can only work to validate the agreement of all aspects
are connected. When one has been taken out of the assemblage, the entire process
is likely to collapse when facing a trial of strength (e.g., in this case: a verifica-
tion of its authenticity). This cannot be replaced with social explanations of why
people seek to commit their promises to paper or question the authenticity of a
document. The verification of signatures, for example, is by no means the closure
of an arbitrary decision by means of convention or procedure. The procedure can-
not be allowed to be arbitrary. It is for that reason that there is an assemblage of
paper, a pen, ink, witnesses and personal signatures.
Paper is a storage medium; its function is to store. It stores lines of ink,
inscribed by a pen. The particular quality of paper is that it can absorb the ink
very quickly and so that it is bound to its particular fibres. To assert that it is
“merely a medium” is to raise the question: why and how exactly this type of
medium had evolved? Answering this question (e.g., Innis 1950) will lead to a
paper trail that goes back thousands of years leading to places such as China and
Egypt. It will teach us why in both highly advanced empires, paper was preferred
to for example bamboo sticks or clay tablets. It will also teach us about inscrip-
tions and signatures, ink and inscription devices. Speed, efficiency, duration and
authenticity were important factures in the development of written paper docu-
ments. Anyone interested in the question how particular societies have been con-
structed in a more sustainable manner, should pay attention to the deployment of
these particular media.
Returning to the practice of signing a contract, we can now understand what
is at stake: interests in duration, authenticity, speed, efficiency, comfort have been
gathered into this particular assemblage to enable an agreement to be settled and
institutionalized. The written and signed document assembles these interests and
enables them to be transferred from the “purely” social occasion (of a face to face
16One should seriously question whether anything is ever “just” a matter of practicalities
as if these do not really matter. As operative actions of practices, practicalities are hugely
important in the process of selection in terms of know-how. Learning how to do things,
how to act, is the attuning of practicalities. In this attuning, the smallest differences may
become highly significant.
oral agreement and handshake)17 to a legally embedded actual occasion. This

transferring is also a translation: the signed agreement is not the same as the spo-
ken promise plus handshake; the medium makes a difference: it matters.
Using this extremely banal and usually non-controversial example shows us
that purely social explanations of – for example processes of institutionalization –
are hopelessly inadequate because they fail to account for the matters, especially
when considering practices of abstraction and translation, that make a difference.
However, one might be justified in asking “so what?” The signed contract enables
an agreement to become institutionalized and legally embedded and this is after
all what the Weberians for example usually find most important when considering
social processes: legitimacy. Legitimacy being derived from a medium, i.e., as a
practice of translation, however, is not what the Weberians have in mind. They
want to point to the institutional embedding of legitimacy in – for example – legal
and administrative procedures (bureaucracy), that is, as an abstraction without
translation. This “context” however can only be traced by following the docu-
ment. As storage medium, it needs to be stored, catalogued and archived in order
to be found. The document is the primary actor we need to follow when we want
to understand the process of legitimation.
Historical materialism, however, can perhaps tell us a bit more about the other
interests that have been put into play by the signing of this document, for exam-
ple: a contract involving the sale of a house. Here we can see the role of the writ-
ten contract in securing property rights. Alongside the monopolization of taxation
by the emergent absolutist state, the legal anchoring of the right to (private) prop-
erty has been one of the major prerequisites for the development of the capitalist
mode of production (Polanyi 1944). In Europe, it played a crucial role in the ter-
mination of feudalism at the end of the Middle Ages. It is still crucial today; even
in the current blatantly kleptocratic form of late capitalism, most of the filthy
rich still need a legal anchoring of their organized practices of tax evasion in the
name of entitlements to private property. To put it differently, analysing practices
of translation without considering them as also practices of abstraction limits the
scope of possibly interesting associations.
Historical materialism might also be able to trace the documents involved in
the buying and selling of real estate to “follow” the financial flows (as practices of
17Itis by no means clear, whether the oral agreement supported by a handshake was ever
purely social, as it involves the non-social physiological aspects of the human body. In fact,
one should question whether speaking is purely social, as it involves non-social entities
such as the vocal cords and ears, but also of air particles forming sound waves.
60 J. van Loon
translation) involved in the building up of the so-called “credit crunch” (as a prac-
tice of abstraction) over the past 40 years. Without the paper trail of contracts,
it will be hard to “follow the money.” That “money” is a crucial actor in real-
estate trade is of course obvious, but social explanations of finance flows that fail
to account for the abstraction “money” are unable to explain anything.
These simple observations have made it clear, that the medium is the matter
and matter matters. Thinking matter is not simply a matter of stating that humans
have bodies and that these bodies are extensions of human intentions, conscious-
ness and cognition, or that humans use technological devices that are extensions
of their bodily functions. Taking matter seriously requires the acceptance of the
Principles of Neutrality, Generalized Symmetry and Free Association, because
only then, the question of what matters, i.e., what makes a difference, may
become a thoroughly empirical one. By deploying these principles, a historical-
materialist practice theory can trace the wild and often speculative connections
that build the current geo-political order of kleptocratic capitalism and planetary
self-destruction. Following the paper trail or following the money are concrete,
empirical investigative practices that replace the need to provide “social explana-
tions” based on manufacturing a context in some abstract universe of ideas.
6 Methodological Consequences
The case to think iteratively between historical materialism’s conception of

historical-material praxis and ANT is certainly defensible when considering
the workings of media technologies (or simply mediation). Historical material-
ism enables social scientific analyses of mediation to include a process-oriented
historicity of events that have come to pass and thus a sensibility towards time
and temporality (or chronograms). ANT allows us to understand media (includ-
ing media-products) as effects of typtein and legein, i.e., of impact and gathering,
through which we can understand how particular events referred to as “social,”
may have become durable. This combination enables us to problematize that
which many sociologists have taken at face value: relations. Whether we talk
about causality or bonds, relations need to be analysed in terms of their materiality
(Van Loon 2016).
Historical materialism and ANT do not preclude which particular methods of
data generation and data gathering are to be invoked. This is exclusively deter-
mined by a) the question one seeks to answer and b) the particular practices and
modalities of abstraction translation with which one expects the participants to be
enabled to be made to speak. For example, if one wants to investigate how sign-
ing a document makes a difference in terms of securing an agreement, it makes
very little sense to engage in quantitative surveys, as this is hardly a matter of

opinion. What might be a better way to test the difference the signature makes
would be a breaching experiment, in which – for example – unsigned docu-
ments are being used to secure particular agreements. These could then be varied
according to different situations. When one wants to understand the impact of dif-
ferent media-matters, one might also experiment with stone, clay tablets, bamboo
or writing in sand.
Such experiments could of course be combined with interviews with partici-
pants (including experts) and they will always require observations, making clear
that good empirical social science generates its methodological strategy in rela-
tion to the research process and not in isolation from it. Exactly here ANT can
show its strength compared to traditional hermeneutic approaches. Whereas rep-
resentatives of the latter understand sense making as an exclusively human activ-
ity set in an environment of meaning governed by language and tradition, ANT
can conceptualize sense making as a process based on prehensions involving
human as well as nonhuman actors. The signing of a document, committing an
agreement to paper, does not only involve human actors who know what they are
doing, it involves paper, pen, ink perhaps even a wax seal and these make a differ-
ence. The difference these nonhuman actors make, however, is not a consequence
of hermeneutic activity, but the actual performativity of prehending the situation
as the commitment of an agreement to paper.
Of course, the situation of the signing of a document never takes place in isola-
tion, the prehension involves the committing of – for example – what sociologists
refer to as “institutions” (e.g., usually the notary and law, but perhaps also institu-
tional forms related to the content of the agreement). Hermeneuticians refer to this as
“contexts of interpretation,” that is, additional texts that are implicitly made present
in the situation and are necessary for the sense-making to achieve a sense of comple-
tion and closure. However, here too ANT’s methodical rigour is superior to herme-
neutics: the “con” of context has to be made present; it cannot be invoked without
concrete traces of it making an impact. References to “rituals” or “traditions” or even
worse “culture” are all non-empirical short cuts performed by lazy sociologizing.
With ANT, no short cuts are allowed; the fee of translation has to be paid in full.
These shortcuts, that are made to avoid having to consequently follow associa-
tions being made, are the hallmark of social constructionism. By systematically
reducing materiality to objectification and objectification to outcomes of human
interactions, social constructionism becomes a mode of thought specialized in
“forgetting.” This is what the social constructionist critique reification is ulti-
mately all about: by asserting that the notion of objectivity derives from reifica-
tion whilst simultaneously subordinating objectification to human consciousness,
62 J. van Loon
its critique of the forgetting of reification becomes itself an act of forgetting. In

this sense, the social constructionist materiality itself becomes a representative of
“forgetting” and serves the same function as rituals and institutions.
Historical materialism, however, enables us to retain a critical sense of this
forgetting: it has a historicity – as practices of abstraction – that is itself imbued
with incompatible interests. Social constructionists that are sensitive to the per-
formativity of particular matter, for example, would be quick to translate the
divergent interests of materiality into a function of sociability. When this is not
convincing – for example because the interests seem to be modulated in relation
to wealth, health, beauty or justice – then these sociologists quickly lose interest
and declare the matter of concern to be of little sociological relevance. This is still
the same old trick performed by Émile Durkheim (1894) when he declared that
the task of sociology is to explain the social exclusively through the social. By
combining a focus on historicity as practices of abstraction with that of associa-
tions as practices of translation, matter cannot but be taken into account as it is
always involved in both.
Forgetting, such as the forgetting of matter, is political and therefore critical.
In relation to forgetting, all matter could be of concern and therefore no matter
should be dismissed or overlooked as a “mere matter of fact.” Methodologically
speaking, a social science that takes matter seriously should take a cue or two
from forensic science. Forensics is nothing but the attempt to establish accounts
of events by means of reconstructing causality in relation to the material traces
left behind. Hence, in trying to establish whether an agreement had taken place,
one might want to investigate the signatures on a contract; but also the date and
place of the said agreement as well as the stamp or wax seal if there is one. This
may all sound self-evident and banal, but in the face of establishing so-called
hard-facts, these media matter.
If matter matters, what difference does it make? This is always an empirical
question, because matter-as-such could be anything. To establish a difference
(not) having been made, one needs good methods, like (breaching) experiments
and forensics. The experimental design is specifically intended to identify the
difference made by the presence or absence of one particular variable. Foren-
sics aims to identify all possible factors that took part in the taking place of a
particular event to establish causality in terms of material associations. In both
cases, we can see that matter is invoked not as some passive, dead substance, but
concretized in practices of prehension. Matter is never mere matter, but always a
setting-into-work (praxis).
Latour’s concept of matters of concern, which for ANT are the most crucial
entities in political, religious or indeed scientific controversies, comes very close
to Small’s (1905) concept of interests, which in turn is not much different from
interests in relation to what in Historical materialism is referred to as “the mode
of production.” That the early historical materialists were perhaps somewhat less
attentive to reproduction as itself an integral part of production, does not make
their insights into the interest-ridden practical configurations of everyday life any
less relevant. Whereas Small was probably right in not reducing all interests to
the interest in wealth, this does not mean that in industrial capitalism, wealth-
related interests have not become all-embracing. Capital is a particular mode of
abstraction that can translate almost anything into interests of wealth. Every mat-
ter of concern, including life itself, has a price and within the domain of the capi-
talist mode of production, this price is expressed in terms of financial value.
Experiments and forensics both allow concrete empirical and pragmatic
engagement with objects that make a difference and are thus matters of concern.
Objectification is not a matter of magically turning some quasi-empirical “social”
substance into “real things” but of enabling an abstraction of concrete material
practices into matters of concern. What both methods have in common is that
they do not require a translation of material difference into social forces in order
to satisfy the creed of explaining the social exclusively through the social. Tak-
ing matter seriously in social science therefore should mean that we focus on the
assembling of matters of concern to explain why people do what they do in par-
ticular situations and under particular circumstances.
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Part III
Cyborg and Agential Realism
The Cyborg, Its Friends and Feminist
Theories of Materiality
Anne-Jorunn Berg
1 Reading Cyborg Nature and Materialities

They [cyborgs] are, rather, imploded entities, dense material semiotic ‘things’ – artic-
ulated string figures of ontologically heterogeneous, historically situated, materially
rich, virally proliferating relatings of particular sorts, not all the time everywhere, but
here, there, and in between, with consequences (Haraway 2016, p. 104).
The1 cyborg is a figure which in the 1980s asked strange new questions about
materiality, gender and technology and as I will argue here, continues to do so.
Contrary to a commonly held idea nature, materiality and biology have always
played crucial roles in feminist theory, though in different ways in different
époques and strands of thought.2 The recent discussions about materiality are
entangled in writings on the posthuman as well as the Anthropocene, stimulat-
ing interest in the role of humans and non-humans in a changing world and all
1This contribution is a thoroughly revised version of “Hva skjedde med kyborgen?” which
was published in Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning in 2014, vol. 38.
2My readings of these debates are located in a setting where translations from other lan-
guages, i.e. mostly Anglo-American concepts and theories, constitute a particular kind of
work. Such work has its advantages as well as creating extra work and challenges. Thus it
is important to consider location when dealing with conceptual understanding and meth-
odology in relation to current debates on materiality. This constitutes a background for my
text, yet, I will not explore further the issue of travelling concepts in the following.
A.-J. Berg (*) 
Nord University, Bodo, Norway
E-Mail: ajb@nord.no
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_4
70 A.-J. Berg
of which from time to time articulate critical doubts on the usefulness of main-
taining the ontological difference between nature and culture (Braidotti 2013;
Haraway 2016; Hird 2004; Latour 2010; Åsberg et al. 2011). In this situation, I
am calling for a more thorough discussion of the cyborg figure, and the work it
can still be made to do for feminist theorizing.
The cyborg lived between fiction and fact in a real and virtual world and even
ignited its own feminist manifesto (Haraway 1991). It asked questions that chal-
lenged regular ways of thinking; that provoked and unsettled our usual expecta-
tions, and not only in feminist circles (Grey 1995). However, it seemed slowly
to disappear along with the normalization of cyberspace. How come? I think the
explanation lies in a lack of attention paid to the cyborg’s ontology. Today we see
a renewed interest in feminist theories of materiality, an interest in examining and
understanding materiality broadly conceived as process, as movement, as always
changing and as literally meaningful. The cyborg anticipated this understanding
of materiality through its unerring insisting on finding a way out of “the maze
of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves”
(Haraway 1991, p. 181). The cyborg opposed strongly the distinction between
nature and culture, the social and the technological or sex and gender. Currently
the ontology of the material turn is high on the feminist (and elsewhere) theoreti-
cal agenda. In this paper, I argue that the material turn can benefit from insights
from Donna Haraway’s early work that are often forgotten, especially on ontol-
ogy and its methodological consequences.
A revival of the cyborg requires both a new reading of the context the cyborg
was written into – in other words the stories that stick to the cyborg and thus to
feminist theories of materiality – as well as a discussion of how to better frame
research questions and what possible answers that can emerge from the renewed
interest in theories of materiality, respectively. Since Karen Barad’s “agential real-
ism” is often highlighted in these contexts, I also discuss her contribution to the
material turn in this paper. Both Barad and Haraway contribute significantly to the
renewed interest in materiality and ontological matters. Their approach to matter
has important similarities. However, I show a number of challenges that stem from
the fact that Barad’s ideas about materiality are inspired by quantum mechanics.
Finally, I draw the conclusion that the cyborg solves these challenges differently,
through the concept of the material-semiotic and its sibling “companion spices.”
The Cyborg, Its Friends and Feminist Theories of Materiality 71
2 In Love and War – Material-Semiotic

Conversations
In the 1990s, the cyborg was cool; a symbol of a possible posthuman technology-
oriented playful future (Scott 2001, p. 375). It is possible that this trendy pres-
entation – where play rather than politics was central – has been a contributing
factor to the ontological aspects of the cyborg not gaining traction among gender
researchers or elsewhere. It was the exciting challenges of cyberspace that drew
attention (Haraway and Goodeve 2000). Postmodern/post-structuralist theory
generally is critiqued for not taking scientific knowledge production, politics and
societal change sufficiently seriously (Smith 1996). The spectacular cyborg might
therefore have appeared to be a symbol of the irresponsible, apolitical play that
these theories were criticized for encouraging. All the same, the Cyborg Mani-
festo, a first version was published in Socialist Review in 1985, focuses on tech-
nological development and contextualizes and politicizes information technology.
The text was a manifesto for the twentieth century, an attempt to sharply focus on
conditions in society that could no longer be described in the terms of the modern
era. Haraway set the cyborg to work out alternative understandings of the present
as well as the future. Hence, it is difficult to see how the cyborg Manifesto can
be read as apolitical or be criticized for encouraging irresponsibility. Moreover
the Manifesto was written in the early 1980s in a North American context, an era
of mutually assured destruction and the Cold War. Ronald Reagan was President
and the USA built a massive military development program to protect the coun-
try against Soviet nuclear missiles. Research and development of electronic data
processing was central to these politics. This was the time when computers still
filled entire rooms and the personal computer was merely a dream. In Norwegian
homes, telephones were found on special telephone tables, and the internet was
mostly a military communication system that was to give the USA an edge in the
Cold War (Abbate 2000). Various forms of electronic “villages” and messaging
systems were under development (the precursors to today’s Facebook, SMS and
email), but few people had heard of them. Haraway places the cyborg within both
a societal and a political context built on a Marxist conceptualization of interna-
tional capitalism. The elegance in the work the Manifesto does is that it shows
how the established dualist division between nature and culture is woven into an
international division of labor, poverty issues and feminist politics.
Neither feminism nor Marxism escape Haraway’s critical gaze: both are cri-
tiqued for maintaining dualisms. The manifesto argues for a decentralization of
the focus on the human by abolishing the division between nature and culture.
72 A.-J. Berg
The cyborg seamlessly combines threads that are usually kept separate as being
essentially different. In the context of the renewed interest in materiality, it is
important to emphasize this aspect of Haraway’s work. The cyborg is a hybrid
creature that tries to change conceptualizations that always present the world in
binary opposites, a world where everything is either black or white, and where the
greys are uninteresting and characterless. The opposition to this either/or thinking
is central. Haraway explores complexity and challenges the division of the world
in two different categories of being: nature as distinct from culture. She argues
that good research cannot start from a premise that these worlds are distinct.
Yet, when the Cyborg Manifesto was published it was the epistemological
aspect in the form of “situated knowledges” as well as new possibilities in what
was called virtual reality that received attention. Haraway’s contributions about
the material-semiotic and her ontological position, received much less attention.
In example after example, she shows how the dualist world-view leads us astray.
Modernity is premised on an either/or mind-set. Admixtures are dirty and unde-
sirable. This prevents us from thinking in terms of entanglement rather than in
separate, mutually exclusive categories. The cyborg is literally an unclean mixture
of this and that. It is a material-semiotic creature. The material-semiotic consti-
tutes the ontology of the cyborg. It challenges us to think in terms of closeness
and admixture rather than in separate units or with difference as the basis for
exploring and changing the world. This also applies to the relationship between
sex and gender, which is one of the cyborg’s main interests and which positions it
in the middle of one of the most central debates in western feminist theory.
3 Reproduction, Sex/Gender and Biological

Determinism
The distinction between “sex” and “gender,” or social and biological sex, occu-
pies a unique position in gender studies.3 It constitutes a central dimension
of feminist theory albeit in different forms. In the 1970s established biologi-
cal explanations of women’s position were sharply criticized by the new wom-
en’s movement. Unequal lives could no longer be explained or legitimized only
by men and women’s different biology, though this was not the same as saying
3The combination of technology and science into “technoscience” is an attempt to express a
similar interwoven relationship between what we usually refer to as two separate categories.
that women and men were biologically identical. There were many controversies
surrounding this insight, in feminist politics, within biology and in research on
women and gender. The cyborg can be found in this landscape.
An interesting direction at the time was a biological determinist version of
reproductive technology emphasizing that women should be completely lib
erated from biology by getting rid of the birthing function. The influential book
The Dialectic of Sex, published in Norwegian in 1973, is exciting reading in
that regard. Here Shulamit Firestone develops an argument using Simone de
Beauvoir and Friedrich Engel’s exposition on the family as starting points to
assert that the biological aspects of motherhood are the main sources of women’s
oppression. Liberation therefore meant demanding reproductive technologies that
would make it possible to have children without carrying them in women’s b odies
and to raise them without an individualized female responsibility for child-rearing.
Interestingly, Firestone calls this “cybernetic socialism” (1973, p. 232). A critical
focus on fertility, reproduction and birth is a consistently recurring thematic in
recent feminist writing, from Simone de Beauvoir’s warnings about motherhood
to Haraway’s outcry “Make kin, not babies!” (2016, p. 102). In time cybernetic
socialism disappeared from the agenda yet the belief that male and female natural
capacities or characteristics could be the starting point for politics of liberation
remained present. Versions of 1980’s eco-feminism are proponent of this line of
thinking. Here women’s biology, and characteristics ascribed to this biology, rep-
resents a starting point for a feminist politics (Corea 1988). This can be identified
in understandings of, for example, women’s empathy as an inherent quality that
makes women especially well-suited for work in the caring professions.
Though they held very different views of what liberation entails, it is worth
noting that both Firestone and the then-ecofeminism relied on a determinist
conceptualization of biology, or in other words belief in biology as an immu-
table power and causal factor. For Firestone, the complete liberation of women
from the birthing function entailed cutting the ties to what was understood as an
immutable biology. The liberation strategy was therefore to remove the cause, to
replace pregnancy and birth by technological solutions. In contrast, ecofeminism
wished to do the opposite. For ecofeminists, motherhood was a central womanly
primal force. Ecofeminism builds on what is considered the essence of women’s
biology, the ability to give birth, but in contrast to Firestone, its liberation strategy
is to turn the immutable biology into something positive for women (and men).
Pregnancy, birth and motherhood constitute the biological core of good feminin-
ity and represent experience-based values that should be granted a higher status
and greater space in society. This comparison of two apparently very different
liberation strategies highlights the fact that regardless of valuation of whether
74 A.-J. Berg
biology is seen as a positive or negative force in relation to women’s liberation,

the strategies are both based on the same determinist conceptualization of biol-
ogy. The material-semiotic cyborg is located in this contradictory landscape. It is
a figure that advances non-determinist conceptualizations of biology. It critiques
precisely positions such as Firestone’s and ecofeminism of the time for being
determinist despite their seemingly significant differences.
Echoes of these debates can also be found in current debates in feminist
research, albeit in other forms. However, none of the above-mentioned positions
look at biology as a complete explanation. The entire human character is not bio-
logically determined. A space for sociality remains – a room where one more
or less does not need to take biological explanations into account. The opposi-
tion between the natural sciences on the one hand and the humanities and social
sciences on the other hand, builds on this distinction widely known as the two
cultures (Snow 1960). Science consists of two different kinds, a soft and a hard.
Feminist theory along with the humanities and social sciences were allocated to
the soft side, and the concept of gender as distinct from sex fitted nicely. Neither
women’s nor men’s lives were singularly determined by forces that could not
be changed; forces that we inherited in bodies that were determined to be either
male or female. The distinction between sex and gender freed women’s lives from
“nature” and biology and thus change or liberation could become a live possibility.
Biological determinism and biologism understood as total explanations live on
today in popular culture, but less so in modern biology as a subject or discipline
(Hessen 2005; Mol 2002; Nordal 2008; Williams et al. 2003). The difference
between sex and gender was previously a relatively uncontroversial distinction
because this dualism coincided with a common western conceptualization of
nature and culture as ontologically different. Today this is changing. This relates
directly to the discussions around materialities and ontology. The issue now under
attack is the idea that biology and nature are immutable; a factor that represents
something constant and given. This critique informs the concept of the material-
semiotic. As a biologist Haraway specifically directs her critique towards the
tendency in which biology or nature is seen as this immutable residual category
and argues that this tendency appears also in the distinction between biological
sex and social gender (Berg 1998; Haraway 1991, 1992; Mol 2002; Prins 1995).
Nature and culture, subjects and objects, are referred to as material-semiotic
actors. Things, bodies, microbes and animals – everything can be understood as
phenomena that are in process and have meaning, at the same time as they are
material forms (Bromseth et al. 2009; Haraway 2003, 2008; Marres 2015). It
is neither possible nor desirable to make a distinction in advance between sub-
ject and object when researching concrete realities, Haraway claims. By felting
together the material and the semiotic, the concept of the material-semiotic ena-
bles an analytic gaze that does not presume a distinction between the material
and meaning. In other words, she argues that materiality and the natural sciences
generally should be given more space in feminist theory. But not unconditionally,
rather reworked into sciences which comprise “companion species” (2008) and
“becoming with” (2016) as methodological ideals.
4 EDP, Technofeminism and Cyborg Conversations
EDP – electronic data processing – is an old-fashioned expression for what we

today as a matter of course call information and communication technology
(ICT). The cyborg cannot be understood outside of its technological context: the
emergence of what is called the information society. Information technology was
not common, and was still something one could be “for or against” (Berg 1997).
By emphasizing the cyborg’s connections to information technology, and espe-
cially to cybernetics, Haraway posed a challenge to contemporary social theory
as well as gender studies on the basis of a technology-oriented conceptualiza-
tion of materiality. The main tendency at the time was still to identify technol-
ogy with capitalist development and patriarchal power and thus with something
suspect (Cockburn and Fürst-Dilic 1994; Wajcman 1991). Within feminist theory,
there were approaches that viewed technology unambiguously as an extension of
men’s patriarchal power over women, in the same way as labor research included
approaches that saw technology as a capitalist tool of power in the hands of the
owners of capital who would use technology to increase their disciplining of the
workers (Braverman 1974; Noble 1984). The material-semiotic cyborg challenges
such forms of technological determinism. This means that it challenges the idea
that technology can have predetermined fixed consequences. Instead, the cyborg
is a material-semiotic figure that allows us to think about our room of maneuver
and for change.
Cybernetics is central to the development of EDP or information technology
and is thus also an important element of the cyborg figure. Cybernetics is about
guidance and regulatory mechanisms in machines, but can also be used about
regulatory mechanisms in living organisms. Information technology, like much
other technology, is developed by the military industry with a goal of military
application. For example, cybernetics is used in the development of missile guid-
ance systems to hit precise targets at long ranges (Mackenzie 1990). Thus, guid-
ance and regulatory techniques are central elements of the cyborg, and through
its cybernetic connections it is infiltrated in various machineries of war. This is
76 A.-J. Berg
where her concept of the material-semiotic is situated. It is not an innocent place.

Rather a contested location entangled in stories of oppression, killing and exploi-
tation. The cyborg is not either good or bad; it is both at the same time.
Haraway linked the cyborg to science fiction – what she calls an “elsewhere” –
a place where technological possibilities are linked to organisms and where crea-
tures of the future are central. A manifesto deals with the dream of a better future.
The cyborg was a new figure, a feminist hybrid with various origins. It was hopeful
at the same time as it was grounded in a global capitalist logic of production and a
brutal machinery of war. It challenged feminist theory and politics both through the
way it presented possibilities of change and through its explicit skepticism towards
the dichotomous ways of understanding the world. The material-semiotic mes-
sage was controversial and uncommon, especially when we consider its ontologi-
cal challenge. The cyborg abolishes the distinction between nature and culture and
signifies an entanglement of several different issues. Materiality comes in different
forms that can be distinctly different from each other in a material-semiotic sense,
but, and Haraway is adamant on this point, materiality and nature are not essen-
tially different from people or the social. It is mixed in different ways. Materiality
is a material-semiotic actor. And this idea entails hope for a better future.
In many ways current disagreements and debates look a lot like the old one;
the one about ontology understood as essential difference between nature and
culture, between humans and nonhumans. To articulate the boundary as unclear,
incorrect or irrelevant remains highly controversial, but it is in this articulation
that we find the renewed interest, feminist and otherwise, in materiality (Alaimo
and Hekman 2008). I would argue that the current material turn would benefit
from drawing more on the Cyborg Manifesto and the way in which it discusses
the relationship between materiality and meaning.
5 Feminism, Niels Bohr and Agential Realism
The cyborg was, and can still be said to be, a prominent feminist figure. How-
ever, it is not alone in its feminist interest in technology, materiality, nature and
technoscientific developments. Within feminist science and technology studies
(STS), the boundary between nature and culture has been examined and to vari-
ous degrees erased as an ontological distinction (Wajcman 2004). When we today
see a revitalization of the interest in materiality in feminist theory in general, it
is often tied to the posthuman (Åsberg et al. 2011). Gender researcher, physi-
cist, and science historian Karen Barad is frequently mentioned as central to this
renewed interest. She has introduced the concept of “agential realism,”a concept
that has won a strong position in feminist circles as an entryway to explorations

of reality in posthuman terms (Barad 2003, 2007). The starting point of “agential
realism” is in quantum mechanics and in the Danish physicist Niels Bohr’s con-
ceptualization of physics. It is a school of thought in physics where, among other
things, theories of the indeterminate and of probability are central phenomena
(Nørretranders 1986). Barad’s “agential realism” challenges us to think in terms
of entanglement rather than difference as the basis for our explorations of the
world. The cyborg does the same but does “agential realism” also do something
other or more?
In order to discuss “agential realism” it is best to first take a look at some of
the contexts this concept is part of: feminist theory, STS, and the merger of these
two: feminist studies of technoscience. The question about feminism’s relation-
ship to nature, to technoscience and materiality was pointedly posed by Sandra
Harding when in 1986 she asked where “the science question in feminism” was,
at about the same time as the cyborg made its tempestuous entrance (Harding
1986; Haraway 1991). Within feminist studies of technoscience, questions about
the relationship between the human and the nonhuman have been a continuing
debate (Suchman 2011). A central voice such as Evelyn Fox Keller’s says that
precisely because some practices in the natural sciences or some conceptualiza-
tions of nature are better than others, reality is also more or other than only sys-
tematic re-presentations of something real or predetermined:
(…) in this sense, good science typically works to bring the material world in closer
conformity with the stories and expectations that a particular ‘we’ bring with us as
scientists embedded in particular cultural, economic, and political frames (…). What
distinguishes it from other successful institutions and practices is precisely its dis-
ciplined interaction with the material constraints and opportunities supplied by that
which, for lack of a better word, I still call ‘nature’ (Keller 1992, p. 5).
For Fox Keller, it is precisely the insightful interaction with materiality, or what
she for lack of a better word calls nature, that characterizes good natural science.
Like Haraway, she focuses on questions related to both the possibilities and the
limitations of materiality, and, not least, she focuses on questions about how
nature can be articulated. Haraway’s concept of the material-semiotic intervenes in
this debate at the intersection of STS and feminist theory as does her more recent
“companion species” (Haraway 2008) and “becoming with” (Haraway 2016).
In STS, there is no agreement about how to analytically relate to the nature/
culture divide or how to do so in terms of theories of science. This is a lively
debate, as could for example be seen in what was called “the epistemological
78 A.-J. Berg
chicken debate,” in which different forms of constructionist conceptualizations

of materiality were facing off and the tone was quite sharp (Pickering 1992).
There is conflict about the status to be ascribed to materiality. Feminist contri-
butions have been important in many of these debates (Mol 2002). Within STS
actor-network theory (ANT) is a central but controversial approach (Law and
Hassard 1999; Latour 1993, 2004). ANT’s term for the nonhuman, an actant,
invites a conceptualization of materiality as active and able, a kin to the cyborg
as it breaks radically with the division between nature and culture. Questions
related to conceptualizations of materiality that refer to materiality as an actor,
often translated as a nonhuman actor, continues to enrage both theorists and
research politics far outside the bounds of science and technology studies. How-
ever, irrespective of the theoretical approach, there is agreement within STS about
the importance of freeing technology and (natural) science from the position as
a deterministic causal explanation and instead turn our gaze towards technology
and (natural) science as objects of study in and of themselves (Bijker and Law
1992). This constitutes a shared framework for questions related to representation
(re˗presentation) of reality, of nature and materiality.
Until recently, mainstream feminist research has not paid much attention to
these questions (Lykke 2008). I have illustrated this by describing how the material-
semiotic concept was overshadowed by other aspects of the cyborg. Despite this
I will argue that materiality represents a steadfast undercurrent in feminist theory
within which Barad’s work is located. What we witness today is a renewed interest
in materiality in more mainstream feminist contexts as well as within cultural the-
ory and various social sciences in general (Hird 2003). In my reading, the current
feminist discussions about materiality are involved in a disorderly conversation with
the STS field and especially with actor-network theory, and perhaps particularly
with Bruno Latour’s work. Haraway’s work represents an important link between
feminist theory and actor-network theory. Though this is true of Karen Barad’s
work, too, Barad’s work does this in a less direct way than Haraway’s. This is sur-
prising, as the issues in Barad’s work have very much in common with precisely the
elements of ANT that in their turn have instigated such great controversies.
Barad kicks off in quantum mechanics. This is where she finds justifications
for her contributions to debates about materiality. She re-reads and re-interprets
quantum mechanics and especially Niels Bohr’s work. In this way, Barad can be
said to create a feminist reinterpretation of quantum mechanics, which is an excit-
ing project in itself. Her work speaks against modernity’s world-view, with its
emphasis on separate categories, causal explanations, and imperatively exact sci-
ences. Her concept of “entanglement,” perhaps translatable into Norwegian as the
felting of wool, is a cyborg-like figuration in which complexity is in focus. In her

influential and very compact book Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum phys-
ics and the entanglement of matter and meaning, she introduced several concepts
that are well-worth discussing. I have chosen to focus on one of them, “agential
realism”.
Barad argues for an understanding of reality as “agential realism” (Barad
2007, p. 33). It is difficult to translate this directly into Norwegian. She explains
the term in this way in a paper abstract:
In this paper, I propose agential realism as an alternative to traditional realism vs.

constructivism, agency vs. structure, idealism vs. materialism debates (…) A central
concern of agential realism is the ‘intra-action’ of humans and nonhumans. Agential
realism proposes the notion of ‘intra-action’ as alternative to deterministic notions of
causality thereby enlarging the possibilities for agency beyond liberal and poststruc-
turalist conceptions (Barad 1999).
“Agential realism” is to do a lot of work, but mainly as an alternative to the often

futile debates about the relationship between realism and (social) constructivism.
Barad maintains that the dualism of realism versus constructivism, and the sub-
sequent controversies, has been created within the modern western science tradi-
tion, and cannot be read from nature itself, as is often claimed. Like Haraway
Barad firmly rejects this dualism, and expresses this rejection precisely in a con-
cept that conveys that reality is real, but at the same time in motion.
I read it as an attempt to articulate a position in which agency is central and
where the opportunities to move or change a phenomenon are contained in the
understanding of phenomena as such. “Agential” is process-oriented and plays
on the contrast to “realism” in a traditional sense, where realism is about some-
thing constant, something that is. In Barad’s world, realism does not mean some-
thing that is unambiguous or not in movement, something already given. She thus
challenges a traditional understanding of realism by combining two apparently
conflicting concepts in the way she does. Nevertheless, this is not necessarily sig-
nificantly different from concepts such as the nonhuman or the material-semiotic.
Barad is part of the same tradition but represents a new voice with clear roots in
physics, which contributes to the increased attention to theories of materiality.
In the context of “agential realism,” Barad also discusses causality. When the
distinction between the human and the nonhuman is erased, she conceptualizes
the entanglement as intra-action, in contrast to inter-action, where “inter” means
“between” and “intra” means “within.” In other words, intra-action means pro-
cesses that take place within a phenomenon – a phenomenon consists simply
80 A.-J. Berg
of such intra-action – and not a process between separate units.4 In this way,
she attempts to create terms for the process she believes quantum mechanics
expresses and which are useful tools for feminist theory. To again use an expres-
sion from wool processing: entanglement is to signal precisely that we cannot
separate out the individual strands that are felted together in the determination of
the phenomenon. It is the entanglement itself that is the point.
From quantum mechanics, Barad emphasizes that nature is both entangle-
ment (which means that nature is a “doing”) and conflictual. Physical phenomena
are not unambiguous, but rather active. For example, she devotes a lot of time
to a demonstration of what can be called the wave-particle duality. Experiments
can produce light as both particle and wave, depending on how the experiment
is set up and the measuring instruments that are used. The light is literally mani-
fold (Nørretranders 1986). Barad’s quantum-mechanics inspired point is in other
words that the same object or physical condition can turn out to have different
characteristics depending on how the measurement is made: light as phenome-
non (wave or particle) is an intra-action between light, measuring instrument and
the person making the decisions. In Barad’s re-reading of Bohr, this is how the
physical phenomena of quantum mechanics resemble that which normally char-
acterizes the human or the cultural in the nature/culture dualism. Consequently,
materiality contains agency. Neither nature nor culture is unchangeable or self-
explanatory, and the network including meaning, measuring instruments and
method of the experiment, will contribute to the determination of what reality is.
Thus, in principle there is no ontological difference between nature and culture.
And humans have neither pre-eminence nor status as the only carrier of agency.
6 Process Ontology and Methodological

Sensitivity – Having an Ear for the Phenomenon
It is important to address the question of what the material-semiotic or agential

realism means for concrete research, the “how to do” of everyday research prac-
tices. How can we draw together ontological controversies in our rather mundane
4Barad has an intriguing understanding of the concept “phenomenon.” In Barad’s under-
standing, a phenomenon includes the person who “sees” (the researcher), what is being
“seen” (the object) and the measuring instrument (the method, technique or machine) by
which it is “seen.” In other words, intra-action includes these three elements and the way/
process through which they are entangled.
practices? It is easy to get stuck in the space between relativism and realism, and
just discuss ontological questions. Turning to studies of materialities we see a
myriad of ways of doing this. To investigate and articulate materiality is a core
activity in a number of disciplines like archaeology, ethnology and a vast number
of the natural sciences. We may learn a lot by exploring various disciplinary ways
of doing so. Nevertheless my purpose here is to underline a focus on methodol-
ogy rather than research methods. By methodology I mean the coming together
of ontological reflections and reflections on ways to explore and present material
entanglements. I think of methods as ways of gathering information or collecting
“data,”5 be it from pictures, textual readings, observations, a questionnaire, audio
or other kinds of materials.
What can we learn from erasing the a priori distinction between nature and
culture as a premise for what we are investigating? Haraway’s exploration of
“cyborg writing” is among other things about how to write it in practice; how
entanglement can be expressed (Olson 1996; Winthereik and Verran 2012). This
means to search for practices which will erase the distinctions. To develop a gaze
that helps you see “otherwise.” I will make a plea for a stronger focus on these
kinds of processes, the nitty-gritty ways of becoming familiar with the phenom-
enon under investigation. In terms of ontology I see this as a process to develop
methodological sensitivity or an ear for the materialities you are investigating.
I have heard the expression relative pitch which is “the ability to identify the
pitch of notes relative to other notes you have heard” (https://www.musical-u.
com/learn/topic/perfect-pitch/). This is the kind of sensibility I am driving at,
to develop a “relative pitch” for materials. A relative pitch can be a metaphor to
work with in relation to materialities. It implies to leave time for developing what
Evelyn Fox Keller already in 1983 named “a feeling for the organism” describ-
ing the Nobel Prize winner Barbra McClintock’s intimate relations with her test
plants (Keller 1984). At the time the discussion concentrated on whether this
was a female way of doing research and not particularly sensitive to the specifi-
cities of the intra-actions in the phenomenon. Nevertheless, in the biography on
McClintock’s work Fox Keller explores a way of living with your research mate-
rial, a way I will claim that has many similarities with Haraway’s (2016) “becom-
ing with.” To examine various ways feminist have explored and made sense of
nature and material realities over the years, may provide interesting research in
5I hesitate to use the concept of “data” here as it is often narrowly understood as a particu-
lar type of information but could not find a better word for it.
82 A.-J. Berg
itself as well as serve as both a source of inspiration and critiques of traditional

understandings of materiality and technology.
The field of feminist science studies has provided various attempts to write
materiality and nature in a scientific manner rather than writing about material-
ity and nature (Suchman 2011). To include materiality in research if you have not
done so before may prove to be a painful experience as well as exciting. You have
to learn to develop a methodological sensitivity literally towards new materials and
to see and listen to the materialities you are investigating taking them as part of
the realities under investigation. To change research practices, to train the research
gaze to see something other than previously, are monumentally challenging.
The current renewed interest in materiality can be tied to posthuman projects,
or rather what Nina Lykke suggests calling post-constructionism (Lykke 2008,
2011). I read the cyborg as having carried with it possibilities for exploring how
the human subject could be decentralized in scientific investigations, decentral-
ized in the sense that it is not a priori the only actor and not a priori identified as
the most important actor. The focus is on materiality as process, something move-
able, moving and meaningful – whether it is bodies, ski wax, gender, glaciers,
kitchens, microbes, love or even my sister.
7 Revival of the Cyborg-Materiality and New

Conversations
The Cyborg Manifesto is not a straight-forward text. Haraway can be interpreted

in different ways, and she participates in a playful thinking oriented towards pos-
sibilities related to virtual space and feminist politics, at the same time as the link
to the capitalist machinery of war is heavily present. The latter is important as
the cyborg’s more frivolous existence in cyberspace has become a source of both
criticism and excitement. The Cyborg Manifesto criticizes established under-
standings of materiality, of the relationship between biology and the social which
here means the sex/gender distinction and points to alternative ways of analyzing
gender. Secondly, the cyborg challenged both feminist and cultural radical resist-
ance to entering the technology field. Thirdly, the Manifesto emphasizes oppor-
tunities to develop critical conceptualizations of technological developments
without building on technological determinism. Entanglement is the basis for the
cyborg’s existence. The ontology of entanglement is also the starting point for the
highlighting of opportunities to develop new politics and new conceptualization
of reality that can change the world for the better for many, according to Haraway
(1991, p. 150).
Barad and Haraway have in common that they are both critical of established
theories of materiality. They reject the distinction between nature and culture,
between technology and society, and propose other approaches as a basis for
studying the world. Both are focused on conceptualizations of gender and gender
research. Both write dense texts requiring slow reading, at least on my part. They
are influential North American thinkers within feminist theory and both focus on
technology and science. Barad is a physicist whose field is quantum mechanics
and Haraway is a biologist with primates and other critters as her central object of
study. In other words, they approach materiality from starting points in different
disciplines and with different examples illustrating their arguments.
It may be worth asking what their disciplinary starting points can mean.
Haraway’s world is filled with (in)organic creatures, by bodies in different forms.
She is focused on cooperation and behaviors, on human as well as nonhuman rela-
tionships. Her empirical work comes from everyday life, such as her later work on
her dog as her “companion species” or pigeons as guides to “becoming with.” The
modest witness, another of her figurations, is a scientific producer of knowledge
characterized by many errors and omissions but who contains a modesty that is very
becoming and necessary. Modesty is a virtue for Haraway the moralist, and is closely
connected to her understanding of ethics. Though she writes about cyberspace, there
is something grounded about her knowledge position. She writes poetically and
politically, if not always easily-accessibly.
Biology is an expansive field, but not the most prestigious of the natural sci-
ences. Barad comes from physics, which is often characterized as the most pres-
tigious of all sciences. She emphasizes that physics experiments are central to her
understanding of materiality and aptly and immodestly titles her book as meeting
the universe halfway. And it is precisely the narrative style of physics that con-
tains an aspect of Barad’s work that troubles me. Her presentation of quantum
mechanics and experiments can be read as a presentation of indisputable facts and
unambiguous experiments, as if the experiments are obvious proofs of the way
reality is (also see Pinch 2011). In my reading of Barad, this narrative style con-
trasts with her understanding of agency. “Agency is not an attribute but the ongo-
ing reconfigurings of the world.” (Barad 2007, p.141). Her re-reading of quantum
mechanics contrasts with the STS-field’s shared starting point, which includes
otherwise disparate theoretical approaches, “it could have been otherwise.” The
certainty that it could have been otherwise represents an analytical resource that
I cannot find when Barad accounts for the physics she is building her argument
on. In my reading of Barad, the texts are not open for other possible interpreta-
tions. I, and many others, do not have the skills to read Barad’s interpretations
of Bohr’s work and quantum mechanics critically. And I hurry to underscore that
84 A.-J. Berg
Barad cannot be blamed for my ignorance. Nevertheless it evokes questions about

knowledge and epistemologies in a post-disciplinary field such as STS or gender
studies. Regardless of the field, there will always be specialist knowledge that a
more or less random gender studies scholar (or anyone else) does not have the
skills to critically evaluate. In Barad’s theory of “agential realism,” the experi-
ments play a very central role and the problem is that they are presented as unam-
biguous. What does it do to the feminist reception of “agential realism” if the
theory depends on whether Niels Bohr was right? I would argue that we need
other critical readings here, feminist as well as others.
What is new, we often ask when a debate flares up. The challenge, as I see it,
is to make this simultaneously new and old cyborg insight productive for current
(gender) research. I have shown that the cyborg is entangled in both biological
and information technology issues. At the same time, I have underlined that it is a
political figure, a figure that can be part of the creation of new politics for a better
world. The point is that the cyborg, even if she is a bit tired, still has much to give,
especially as an insightful critic of the nature/culture and technology/society distinc-
tions. To me, who identifies with the somewhat messy field of feminist STS, there
has not been enough interest in the ontology parts of the Cyborg Manifesto and the
concept of the material-semiotic, yet, this is slowly changing. Still, I miss more
theoretical and political technology and science studies in mainstream (gender)
research.
I am old enough to remember how infinitely liberating it was in the 1970s to
be able to say that gender was changeable (and could be researched) precisely by
referring to the sex/gender distinction. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a
woman”: I loved Simone de Beauvoir for pointing this out. It provided wonderful
energy and strength to do something in and about the world. In the deterministic
reality of the time, there was finally someone who said that gender was something
we could do something about. Today, this is something “everyone” knows. The
new thing now is that we no longer need to take biology and nature as givens. We
can research it. The world is yet again shaken, isn’t it?
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“Cutting Together/Apart” – Impulses
from Karen Barad’s Feminist
Materialism for a Relational Sociology
Susanne Völker
1 Introduction
“New1 materialism” is the term currently used to label a number of rather different
considerations. Several of these approaches have in common, that they destabilize
established concepts of knowledge and agency insofar, as that they question pre-
cisely those demarcations, which are preconditions for these concepts themselves:
demarcations between nature/culture, between matter/meaning, subject/object,
human/non-human. In the heterogeneous strand of feminist oriented approaches of
the debate (cf. Alaimo and Hekman 2008; Coole and Frost 2010; Dolphijn and van
der Tuin 2012), questions of epistemology, agency, relationality and the produc-
tion of relations are scrutinized, too. Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin (2012, p.
93–114) speak of the “transversality” of new materialism, which transgresses the
present traditional borders of the discipline. In this contribution, I concentrate on
the works of the physicist and science theorist Karen Barad and her methodology
of an “agential realism” (cf. Barad 2007, p. 132–185). I am concerned with the
implications of her approach for sociological questions of how the world, how rela
tions and thereby the social, is constructed in practice. Barad’s commitment to
situate the perception practices of classical mechanistic physics and prerequisites for
1I would like to thank Natascha Rohde for her translation of this contribution from German.
She also transferred the quotes from German-speaking texts into English. Thanks to
Stephan Trinkaus for inspirational discussions and suggestions for this text.
S. Völker (*) 
University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
E-Mail: Susanne.voelker@uni-koeln.de
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_5
88 S. Völker
meaning, culturally and socially on the one hand (cf. Barad 1996) and her use of
the thoughts of the physicist Niels Bohr to describe more complex, more “realistic”
recognition practices on the other hand, undermine the boundary between natural,
cultural and sociological disciplines. Thereby, I start off with a sociological con-
cept of practice, which I want to take up with Barad in a diffractive way: according
to Barad, practice is “social” in a sense that goes beyond the division of the human
and the non-human. The social cannot be thought of as exclusively human and
what we call “nature” cannot be thought beyond power and domination: “There-
fore, the understanding that a science as a social practice is conceptually, methodo-
logically, and epistemologically allied along particular axes of power can indeed
be reconciled with the fact that scientific knowledge is empirically adequate, that
it provides effective interventions which may be used towards either regressive or
liberatory processes” (Barad 1996, p. 186). Therefore, “nature” is – in contrast to
cultural science based, representational approaches – not a blank page for cultural
meanings to be inscribed, not a passive resource for the shaping social element. It
is something in its own right, which develops in non/human social processes and,
one could say, it is this processuality, which Barad calls materiality. Hence, what
matters to Barad here is a “relational materialism” (Lemke 2017, p. 562), which
tries to capture matter as an agential relation (not a thing entity).
The question pursued here is, which impulses and shifts of perspective
take place, when Barad’s “materialism” is brought to the practice theoretical
approaches in sociology?
In the following, an attempt is made, to investigate praxeological approaches
and performativity theory-oriented precarity research with Barad in regards to
her understanding of practice and materiality, their production of difference, their
relationalization of textual-meaningful-social elements. I will discuss in how far
terms, methods and perspectives, which Barad has developed, inter alia, against
the traditional (mechanistic) understanding of reality of Newtonian Physics, are
also relevant for a more “social constructivist” oriented theory of practice like
Bourdieu’s. Firstly, the focus is on the entanglement of sociological practice and
precarity theories with Barad’s considerations. Pierre Bourdieu’s praxeology
is adduced, which, on the one hand, includes materialities with an emphasis on
physical spaces (Bourdieu 1999a, p. 123–129) or bodily knowledge (Bourdieu
2000, p. 128–163) into the analysis and explains bodies, practices, spaces as
something social from the social element (as a system of human cohabitation),
on the other hand, (for example through creatively incorporating social structures
into habitus). Which kind of extensions does Bourdieu’s social analysis with its
“sociologistic” orientation undergo through Barad’s decentering of the social
space as generator of meaning and her diffracting of human exceptionalism?
“Cutting Together/Apart” – Impulses from Karen Barad’s … 89
The queer theoretical works of Judith Butler are also very important for prac-
tice theoretical and identity critical theories. For the volume at hand, her consid-
erations regarding the precariousness of (human) life and the related questions of
“being ethical” are relevant. This is where a number of resonances with Barad’s
theory project of an ethico-onto-epistemo-logy arise: Both authors deal with ques-
tions of the socio-ontological relationality of the world/of being (precariousness
in the case of Butler, intra-action in Barad’s case). For both authors the enabling
of difference and the question of responsibility is substantial for confronting the
present-day challenges adequately.
From the reading of Bourdieu’s and Butler’s practice and precarity theoretical
considerations and with Barad, two points of crystallization for conceptual shift
occur: 1) the decentering of influential concepts: of the (human) agent and the
social and 2) the irreducibility of the ethical element and the response-ability as
the ability to respond, as Barad says (2014, p. 172).
I debate this in two steps:
In the first part of my contribution (1. Resonances of an agential realism:
practice, relationality and in/determinacy), I will mainly consider the shifts and
problematizations, that Barad’s approach can contribute to Bourdieu’s praxeo
logy. In the second part (2. Ethico-onto-epistemo-logy: the ethical dimension of
the precarious and post-humanistic queer performativity) performativity theory
concepts of precariousness/precarity and the mutual interdependencies between
Butler’s and Barad’s terms, take center stage. Finally, (3. Cutting together/apart –
Impulses for an agential-realistic sociology) methodological reference points are
brought up, which aim at incorporating Barad’s impulses: Not to think of agency
as exclusively human and/or subject centered, to be methodologically open for
the heterogeneity and indeterminacy of social relationality and to understand eth-
ics as their immanent dimension.
2 Resonances of an Agential Realism: Practice,

Relationality and In/Determinacy
Challenging dualistic conceptions, specifically the separation of mind and world,

Karen Barad claims a more realistic view of our being of the world. She reflects
on the knowledge generating practices of natural sciences as neither a neutral
measuring of an objective, given world, nor as constructions of a human mind,
separated from the materiality of the world. In the context of measuring and
“observing,” following Niels Bohr, Barad talks about apparatuses which are cha
racterized by measuring phenomena, which they (co)-generate in the first place.
90 S. Völker
2.1
Agential Cuts, Praxeological Realization and Post-
Humanistic Responsibility
Barad calls the non-dualistic practices of differentiation, in contrast to the Car-

tesian cut between mind and body/world, which establishes the autonomous,
exceptional agency of the humanist subject, as agential cuts (Barad 2007, p.
140). Humans partake in the occurring of the world, but they do not control it
from an outside position. “Observation” always takes part in the creation of these
phenomena it claims to observe. “Consequently, since observations involve an
indeterminable discontinuous interaction, as a matter of principle, there is no
unambiguous way to differentiate between the ‘object’ and the agencies of obser-
vation – no inherent/naturally occurring/fixed/universal/Cartesian cut exists.
Hence, observations do not refer to objects of an independent reality” (Barad
1996, p. 170 original emphasis).
Barad touches upon questions here, which have been widely discussed epis-
temologically. In the same way sociology has problematized the privileged treat-
ment of consciousness in Descartes. Pierre Bourdieu’s praxeology stands for a
mediating‚ practical way of perception, which begins to decenter the perceiving
(human) subject, which has the world at its disposal, precisely because it is not
part of it, by analyzing it more strongly as an in praxi figured and participating
protagonist. Starting point for Bourdieu’s praxeological theory strategy is, as is
known, the double breach of common, diametrically opposed views of the linkage
of subject and world (cf. Bourdieu 1990, p. 30–52):
1. the epistemological break with an abbreviating subjectivism (as alleged conti-

nuity between everyday actions and theoretical perception), which assumes a
transparency of the world for the perceiving subject which is capable of acting
and theorizing.
2. the praxeological break with the assumption of an equally abbreviating objec-
tivism as rough, hierarchical discontinuity between scientific and practical
realization. In this case, it is assumed, that the world is external to the indi-
viduals and situates them from the outside – without their involvement.
In contrast to that, Bourdieu argues for a re-involvement of practical, “subjective”

primary experiences on the “objective level.” In his methodological-methodical
essay “Understanding” he calls this a methodology of “participant objectification
in which the researcher assists the respondents in a simultaneously painful and
gratifying effort to disclose those aspects of the social determinants of their opin-
ions and their practices which they may find it most difficult openly to declare
and assume” (Bourdieu 1999b, p. 616). When attempting to understand societal/

social processes, one has to reconstruct the specific logic of the practice of the
involved participant, as their actions keep “objective” structures alive, change
them, ignore them and/or question them. This practical logic should be objecti-
fied with the help of scientific categories and instruments. Bourdieu adheres to
social sciences as necessary self-reflecting, educational and privileged practice of
knowledge (Bourdieu 2000, p. 205). The relationship of the human subject to the
world is one of a (de-centered) thing among things, but a special thing, which
objectifies their involvement, their “entanglement”– in Barad’s words – exactly in
this involvement (Bourdieu 2000, p. 130).
The matter of practice, of being-(in/of-the-)world, of the connection between
materiality, meaning, acting, happening, is followed up by Barad from a post-
humanist perspective and thereby carries out a crucial shift in the understanding
and addressing of agency. “Post-humanist” is less concerned with proving spe-
cific capabilities of non-human participants to act, even though agency of mate-
rialities/things plays an important role in neo-materialistic approaches. Rather,
Barad uses the term “post-humanist” to describe the assumption of the fundamen-
tal relationality of matter, in which the world takes place, and re– and deconstruc-
tion of assemblages and apparatuses, in short: those cuts, which first produce the
differences human/non-human, alive/dead, meaning/matter, spirit/body, subject/
object in the first place and thereby enable a “we” of those recognized as subjects
and those recognized as human (cf. Barad 2012, p. 27).
For Barad this is not linked to a refraining from human responsibility, but very
much a shift from the responsibility of an autonomous human subject towards a
necessary response of the human to its relational entanglement with the eventful-
ness of the world. In Barad’s words one could say: their own non-humanity. “[T]he
‘post-humanist’ point is not to blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman,
not to cross out all distinctions and differences, and not to simply invert human-
ism, but rather to understand the materializing effects of particular ways of draw-
ing boundaries between ‘humans’ and ‘nonhumans’” (Barad 2012, p. 31).
Barad thus is concerned, on the one hand, with understanding the processes
of the power permeated in no way “innocent” (Barad 1996, p. 185 f.) and, on the
other hand, with establishing of differences as agential cuts, which emerge from
diverse relationings and are not directed by a “human subject.” This is also the
reason why it is not enough to understand establishing differences as a human
practice, whose “logic of practice” (Bourdieu) would be uncovered in a process
of scientific objectification. In addition to that, cuts are performative, have materi-
alizing effects, which produce entanglements/relations/relationships through and
in establishing differences: “cutting together/apart.”
92 S. Völker
2.2 Decentering: Practice as Intra-Action and the

Ongoing Redefinition of the “Social”
Barad’s argumentation for a “post-humanist performativity” and against a con-

structivist or culturalist(ic) reduction of mattering shifts the question of agency
towards a conception of the continuous intra-acting of the world itself. Agency
thereby turns into a “post-humanist performative account of material bodies (both
human and nonhuman)” (Barad 2007, p. 139) or “a relationality between specific
material re-configurings of the world through which boundaries, properties, and
meanings are differentially enacted (…) and specific material phenomena (…)”
(Barad 2007, p. 139, original emphasis).
Her term of intra-activity aims at describing the production of the world as a
dynamic process of relationing, which is not preceded by individual, characteriza-
ble relata. While the verb “inter-acting” implies discrete entities and their specific
practices, which enter into an exchange with one another, the term “intra-acting”
aims at a thinking of all (human and non-human, organic and inorganic) actors as
momenta of processes of becoming of the world, which are intertwined with each
other (cf. Barad 2007, p. 89, p. 139 ff.). In Barad’s concept, the “primary onto-
logical unit” (Barad 2007, p. 139) does not consist of independent objects, even
subjects, in a homogenous social space, which determines the characteristics and
qualities of the actors, but of an entanglement of different, heterogeneous pro-
cesses of worlding: “phenomena are the ontological inseparability/entanglement
of intraacting ‘agencies’” (Barad 2007, p. 139, original emphasis).
Different materialities/actors form complex relational fabrics, which create
specific rules, borders, characteristics in the indeterminacy of their occurring in
the first place: “It is through specific agential intra-actions that boundaries and
properties of components of phenomena become determinate and that particular
concepts (that is, particular material articulations of the world) become meaning-
ful” (Barad 2007, p. 139).
The agential cut (from a scientific perspective this could be the epistemological
access, the experimental design or the measuring tool) marks an involved decision
within the intra-acting assemblage, an integrated apparatus, which participates
on certain meanings without ever completely separating itself from the ontologi-
cal indeterminacy of matter: “The agential cut enacts a resolution within the phe-
nomenon of the inherent ontological (and semantic) indeterminacy” (Barad 2007,
p. 140, original emphasis). Firstly, Barad proposes to vacate the anthropocentric
position of the superior subject, which determines the course of the world and has
command over it and itself, for the benefit of a stance of relational dependency and
reliance – like Bourdieu does, too. Secondly, Barad is concerned with questioning
the given fact of space, its characteristics and regulations and the constitution of
the “social” itself. The heterogeneity of the “differential becoming of the world,”
which Barad mentions continuously, cannot be tackled with reflection, which
promises the possibility of a “participating objectification” but with – as Barad
says following Haraway – diffraction (cf. Trinkaus 2013): “Making a difference
and not repeating the same” (Haraway 1997, p. 273).
2.3 In/Determinacy: Spacetimemattering and Cutting

Together/Apart
For the questions of what constitutes “practice,” who participates in which way,
whether there is a subject of practice at all, are taken up by Bourdieu and Barad
in related, still differently accentuated concepts. Both argumentations agree that
practice is relational. In Bourdieu’s sociological perspective, practices are spe-
cific, situated, singular in their occurring, but precisely not individual. Practice
means a doing, a feeling, a thinking, a speaking which at the same time depends
on individual actors and yet points beyond their individuality. Practices are deter-
mined in relation to others and these relations feed concrete and different phe-
nomena of “practice.” This is how Bourdieu differentiates between scientific and
practical logic and thus articulates two concerns.
1. Looking at scientific logic, at the field of production of scientific practices, is a

means to make out its specific instruments of cognition and the corresponding
characteristics of scientific practice of – following Barad, one could say “epis-
tem-ontological” – boundaries, the object of analysis. The scientific practice
is – according to Bourdieu – linked to a specific view onto the world. From the
privileged position of observation, released from the burden of everyday need
for action, of the necessity for situational association, it aims at the discrim-
inatory power of terms, clear classifications and demarcation, at “producing
truth” and a thereby authorized way of speaking.
2. By addressing the idiosyncrasy of practical logic as logic of the everyday
practices Bourdieu aims at a – using Barad’s words – “more realistic” view
of bringing forth the social/societal. His reference to the specific temporality
of the practical logic are “radicalized” by Barad and taken beyond the deter-
mination of Bourdieu’s concept of space and field: its urgency and dynamic,
its temporal and spatial implementation and its openness for the eventful-
ness of the world, but also its entanglement of the past and the future through
acquired, habitualized routines and determining the present through the
anticipated future (following Husserl’s phenomenology, cf. Bourdieu 1990,
94 S. Völker
p. 53) – as well as the intertwining of the bodily/somatic/material and social/

semiotic – when Bourdieu speaks of acting physically, of being tuned-in with
and being involved in the world, of “bodily knowledge,” which ensures a prac-
tical conception of the world (cf. Bourdieu 2000, p. 135 f). Barad’s central
concept of spacetimemattering is not only concerned with the question of
how far agential cuts bring forth space-times, but also with its determinations
being entangled with relational indeterminacy as well as with the alterity of
other space-times: “Each scene diffracts various temporalities, iteratively dif-
ferentiating and entangling, within and across, the field of spacetimematte
ring. Scenes never rest but are reconfigured within and are dispersed across
and threaded through one another” (Barad 2010, p. 244 f.). In her later more
experimental texts Barad tries to establish those complicated space-time-
entanglements and carry social processuality out of the causality of Bourdieu’s
constellations of Euclidean space.
The question of who and what actually “practices,” is connected to further ques-
tions: the question of how, in what way practices are “connectable” and successful.
Here Pierre Bourdieu’s praxeology marks the transition from an actor centered to
a relational perspective (cf. Trinkaus 2015, p. 245). For Bourdieu the special capa
city of the practice of producing social integration in its idiosyncratic blurred logic,
its uncertainty and polysemy, the connecting of differentness, which Bourdieu
calls “relations of practical substitutability” (Bourdieu 1990, p. 94). Through the
mechanism of analogy building in the approximate, through the blurriness of terms,
classifications and concepts of everyday life, the practical actions gain conclusive-
ness, plausibility and connectivity. The practical logic of uncertainty enables con-
nections of very different socio-cultural positioning and therefore the creation of
interdependencies. They also collect and integrate deviants under the roof of a
“legitimate” symbolic order, which clarifies and dominates classificatory uncer-
tainty. Insofar, uncertainty, according to Bourdieu, has a binding power as well
as a power to reproduce domination, but it also enables shifts and creative practi-
cal reinterpretations. This is, to an extent, the opposite of Barad’s “intra-vention”:
In contrast to the concept of uncertainty, which Barad following Heisenberg (cf.
Barad 2010, p. 245 ff.) understands as the epistemological effect of an irrevocable
disruption of measurability, she conceptualizes determination as a dis/continuity2
of the ontological indeterminacy, the basal openness of “matter.”
2Using the oblique stroke in/determinacy deals with marking precisely dis/continuity (cf.
Barad 2010), the production of intertwining, of cutting together/apart, which is ever mov-
ing and never fixed once and for all.
3
Ethico-onto-Epistemo-Logy: The Ethical
Dimension of Precariousness and Post-Humanist
Queer Performativity
In the following, Barad’s theory project of an ethico-onto-epistemo-logy will

be discussed with regards to its interactions and extensions of sociological and
performativity theoretical precarity research. Butler’s and Barad’s conceptions
share the reference to ethical dimensions of being, following Lévinas. But in But-
ler’s approach, the entanglement of and differentiation between the ethical and
the political is presented more broadly in so far as the concept of “plural and
embodied performativity” (Butler 2015a, p. 18), the analysis of forms of concrete
political interventions, the possibilities of extending the intelligible, the exertion
of freedom (following Arendt) and the utilization of withheld rights, (cf. Butler
2015a, p. 49) take center stage. Barad’s term of “queer performativity,” rather
aims at the fundamental entanglement of socio-ontology and ethics as relational
materiality or inhuman alterity.
3.1 Sociological Problematization: In/Determinacy

and Precarization
Through the thematization of processes of precarization, dynamics of in/deter-

minacy have increasingly been adapted in sociological, societal-analytical and
time-diagnostic discourse. In the debate focused on social change and societal
transformations precarization and precarity have accentuated mainly two aspects:
Precarity stands for specific types of politics e.g. the political de- and re-regu-
lation, which produces more or less precarious groups by socializing individu-
als through uncertainty (cf. Bourdieu 2000, p. 234; Lorey 2011; Marchart 2013;
Völker 2015). Politics of unlocking social involvement and privatizing social
risk therefore represent a specific mode of political restructuring and intertwin-
ing of social inequalities. Precarization as a process term, describes the process
of more or less contingent exhaustion of social institutions as becoming fragile,
erosion or decentering from formerly central concepts and societal agreements.3
3This includes, for example, the slow dying out of the gender arrangements, influenced by the
Fordian social and economic system of the 20th century, with the “male” standard employ-
ment contract and breadwinner and the “female” family preserver and supplementary earner
(cf. in detail Völker 2008, p. 284–286).
96 S. Völker
With the expansion of social insecurity and the extension of institutional unlock-
ing, the determinations of what society “is” turn out to be unstable, dynamic, in
short: “indeterminate.” Around the turn of the century, Pierre Bourdieu already
spoke of an increase of “zones of uncertainty” in an allegedly fully structured
social space (Bourdieu 2000, p. 157). And Oliver Marchart (2013) emphasized
with his “post-fundamentalist” term of “society as an impossible object” its con-
tingency, openness and virtuality.
The growth of uncertainty was taken up by discussions about politics of social
hedging, of protection, of support and securing a stable infrastructure (Butler
2015a, p. 21) in order to enable a life worth living as well as by political theoreti-
cal considerations, which problematize this security politics of shielding. Isabell
Lorey (2012) has described this as a form of societal immunization against pre-
carious groups and Judith Butler (2009) uses an example of US American poli-
tics after the events of 9/11 to unfold her criticism of politics safeguarding “one’s
own” by the exclusion of “those others,” whose non-grievable precarious lives are
not considered and thereby not safeguarded and supported at all.
The point to be made here is, that Barad’s conceptualization of onto-social in/
determinacy does not suggest that there is a separable level of the social, where
precarization takes place as a loss of security and an increase of indeterminacy.
Rather, the complex material-semiotic phenomena in their relationality are itself
in/determent. And precisely this relationality refers to an ethical dimension of the
precarious, with which the question of what kind of protection, of difference and
alterity is negotiated respectively can be taken into account analytically.
3.2 The Ethical Dimension of Precarity
Judith Butler brought about the queer theoretical turn of the precarization debate,
with the socio-ontological term of precariousness (Butler 2009, p. 2 ff., p. 13–15,
p. 25), which accentuates the fundamental relationality of (human) life, its depen
dency on other/s, its vulnerability and power to injure. This onto-social dimension
is connected and entangled with questions of politically induced precarity: “Pre-
cariousness and precarity are intersecting concepts” (Butler 2009, p. 25). Precari-
ousness emphasizes that “our” lives are precarious, because we are exposed as
vulnerable, mortal bodies, subjected to the world and referred to other/s. But the
perception of life as a life, which has to be protected against injury, is a political
question (precarity). It matters, if erasing and destroying life can be experienced as
a painful, grievable loss or not and whether the grievability of life is able to trans-
gress the boundaries and politics of similarity, of the identifiable “we.” What con-
nects us is, following Butler, not our autonomy and identity, but our exposedness
and vulnerability: The presence of relationality, the connectivity of my life with

others, the fact that life is “beside oneself” is only possible as an interruption of the
identifiable, enacting “we.” In dealing with worldwide circumstances of war and
terror and the very diverging perception and grievability of injured and destroyed
life, Butler writes three days after the terrorist attacks in Paris on 13th of November
2015: “The reason I am not free to destroy another – and indeed, why nations are
not finally free to destroy one another – is not only because it will lead to further
destructive consequences. That is doubtless true. But what may be finally more true
is that the subject that I am is bound to the subject I am not, that we each have the
power to destroy and to be destroyed, and that we are bound to one another in this
power and this precariousness. In this sense, we are all precarious lives” (Butler
2015b).
While the precariousness of life does not exist beyond the realms of the politi-
cal, the emphasis on fundamental onto-social dependency stands for an opening
up to the precarious/unsecured/vulnerable in the sense of an ineluctable sociality
and the inherently ethical dimensions of being. Butler develops these ethics of
reciprocal dependency, a never-ending, not chosen and inevitable alterity in criti-
cal examination of Emanuel Lévinas – with Lévinas against Lévinas (cf. 2012, p.
54–57, p. 61).4
“After all, for Levinas” – she writes in Parting Ways. Jewishness and the Cri-
tique of Zionism (2012) – “the subject is constituted by the other, and though he
sometimes means the ‘infinite’ other, he is also clear that that infinity only makes
itself known through the face, the face of another person that bears within it an
infinite demand. The other person, one might say, is ‘over there’ and ‘not me’ and,
thus, an ‘alterity’ in a clearly locatable sense. But at the same time – and these
thoughts must somehow be thought together – that other also constitutes me, and I
am, from within, riven by this ethical demand that is at once and indissolubly ‘over
there’ and ‘in here’ as a constitutive condition of myself” (Butler 2012, p. 38).
What has to be brought together, according to Butler, is, firstly, the relationship
of the self to the other as an ethical relationship, which precedes the self, the indi-
viduation, (cf. Butler 2015a, p. 110), a form of alterity, which takes p recedence
over “me.” This alterity is “inassimilably” different, not identical, and not similar.
4Butler argues in her reading for a diasporic understanding of Lévinas (2012, p. 51), which
challenges and decenters its one focus on Zionism, which is connected to a nationalist
ethos (2012, p. 50). She criticizes clearly, that Lévinas, rejects the encounter with the
Palestinians, their potential as the face of the other, and his ethically privileging Judaism
and Christianity over the “countless masses of Asiatic peoples” (Lévinas cit. after Butler
2012, p. 46), a formulation, which refers to the, not explicitly mentioned, Islam.
98 S. Völker
It is the face of an other, who I have not chosen myself, who I possibly don’t
know, who is not close to me. And yet, the other is condition for, connected with
and preceding to “my existence.” This would imply a responsibility, which does
not only refer to one’s own decisions and their impacts, but a responsibility for the
suffering of others, even if “I” have not caused it (cf. Butler 2012, p. 43).
Secondly (and simultaneously) this fundamental alterity is not an external one,
it is the heterogeneity of “my” being, which does not belong to me, but rather
is the reference to alterity that defines me (Butler 2012, p. 41) and “decenters”
(Butler 2012, p. 38) the so called subject: “The Levinasian position assumes the
asymmetry of the relation between the subject and the Other; it also assumes that
this other is already me, not assimilated as a ‘part’ of me, but inassimilable as that
which interrupts my own continuity and makes impossible an ‘autonomous’ self
at some distance from an ‘autonomous’ other” (Butler 2012, p. 38).
In her latest publication Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly
(2015a) Butler emphasizes two additional possibilities/capabilities, which are part
of the fundamental reference to alterity: Firstly, the capability to dissolve the “I” as
a closed entity – “there is a very specific mode of being dispossessed that makes
ethical relationality possible” (Butler 2015a, p. 110). This being-dispossessed,
being de/composed to the core by the other, means the capability of being recep-
tive to what is inassimilable. Secondly, Butler argues, that from the ethical claims
concerning the responsibility for (vulnerable, exposed, bodily) lives of the others
grows a form of attention, an obligation to the non-human, which is connected to
the life of the other. And this is where the reference between the ethical dimensions
of precariousness and the political dimension of prevention and combating by
means of care for and protection of holding (non-human) infrastructures, connect.
“If we try to understand in concrete terms what it means to commit ourselves to
preserving the life of the other, we are invariably confronted with the bodily condi-
tions of life and so to a commitment not only to the other’s corporeal persistence
but to all those environmental conditions that make life livable” (2015a, p. 118).
While Lévinas’ aspiration references beyond the human points to the realms of
the divine, Butler connects the bodily self to the profane, by all means everyday
non-human, which has (co-) constructed it.
The main ethical dimensions for Karen Barad’s relational epistem-ontology,
which thereby, as she claims, turns into an ethico-epistem-ontology, also refers
to Lévinas. “[T]he very node of the subjective is knotted in ethics understood as
responsibility” (Lévinas cit. after Barad 2010, p. 268, FN 10). So the “subjec-
tive” is brought forth in a fundamentally relational modus of ethical response-
ability: It cannot be a matter of saving oneself from the otherness of the other,
that is impossible, but to respond to the precedence of the other to any form of
consciousness. Hence, Barad takes a parallel perspective to the reading of Butler
and shifts it in a significant way: the ethical relation is the fundamental, preced-
ing one, not limited to “human” – it is simply non-human, equipromordial to the
ontological and epistemological dimension of the relation itself: “… ethico-onto-
epistem-ology – an appreciation of the intertwining of ethics, knowing, and
being – since each intra-action matters, since the possibilities for what the world
may become call out in the pause that precedes each breath before a moment
comes into being and the world is remade again, because the becoming of the
world is a deeply ethical matter” (Barad 2007, p. 185).
As “humans” we cannot make a decision for or against responsibility: we are
part of the world, constituted by the alterity of non-human relations to which we
must respond.
3.3 Infrastructure or Differential Becoming of the World:

Performative Practices
The impulse, which surmises the dependency of the human on the non-human,
the inseparability of the non/human and the ethical dimensions of this endless,
inseparable alterity, is different in Butler’s and Barad’s thinking. In more recent
texts, Butler makes the concept of infrastructure for the intertwining of non/
human, more relevant and connects it with the ethical and the political. Butler
argues, “that the ‘life’ one has to lead is always a social life, implicating us in
a larger social, economic, and infrastructural world that exceeds our perspective
and the situated, first-person modality of ethical questioning. For this reason, I
argue that ethical questions are invariably implicated in social and economic
ones, although they are not extinguished by those concerns” (Butler 2015a, p.
23). Thus, the difference and intertwining of politics and ethics, of precarious-
ness und precarity is at the center of attention. With reference to Donna Haraway,
Butler follows, parallel to Barad, the argument, that the inhuman is inherent in the
human, that the dichotomy of human/inhuman cannot be upheld: “[I]f the human
cannot be the human without the inhuman, then the inhuman is not only essen-
tial to the human, but is installed as the essence of the human” (Butler 2015a, p.
42). But this shift of perspective towards the non-identical and the “fundamental”
alterity of the self, as well as the intertwining of non/human, in/organic, alive/
dead, oriented towards its protection and its infrastructural care. This frames the
picking up of the ineligible ethical relationships and aligns it politically. “It is not
just that the human who is dependent cannot survive on toxic soil, but that the
human who toxifies the soil undermines the prospects for his or her own livability
in a common world, where ‘one’s own’ prospects for living are invariably linked
with everyone else’s” (Butler 2015a, p. 44).
100 S. Völker
Barad’s project of ethico-onto-epistemo-logy means a decentered opening up

towards and devoting oneself to the differential becoming of the world – without
denying the responsibility for establishing differences and agential cuts. But the
focal point is not the “human,” not even the one who is conscious of its funda-
mental entanglements with the inhuman. The “world,” its ongoing differentiation
occurs – even without human intent and “our” willing contribution, but we do
not occur without being part of its differential becoming. Insofar, the concern is
less the complex negotiating of the never fixed “human” (as in Butler’s work) but
the point is the diverse practices of relationing, of occurring, of becoming defined
and appearing, which the world produces in its relations of alterity. Ethics is not a
voluntary human practice, but a mode of spacetimemattering.
Crucially, there is no getting away from ethics on this account of mattering. Ethics
is an integral part of the diffraction (ongoing differentiating) patterns of worlding,
not a superimposing of human values onto the ontology of the world (as if ‘fact’ and
‘value’ were radically other). […] The very nature of matter entails an exposure to the
Other. […] Responsibility is not an obligation that the subject chooses but rather an
incarnate relation that precedes the intentionality of consciousness (Barad 2010, 265).
According to their parallel considerations about ethics and their different theo-
retical strategies concerning the decentering of the human, allegedly autonomous
subject or the production of the world respectively, Butler and Barad emphasize
different aspects regarding the question of embracing alterity. What Barad cap-
tures as “capability to respond,” as response-ability, Butler picks up with the
affect theoretically inspired term of “responsiveness” as (human/bodily) rela
tedness and responding to others (cf. Butler and Athanasiou 2013, p. 104–124)
(responsiveness as responsibility). The concept of “performativity” is for both
considerations of relevance insofar as the materialization of norms, the relevance
of determinacies and their reconsideration through occurring/appearing/“acting”
are conceptually considered. Performativity as “embodied relation to the norm
exercises a transformative potential” – Butler argues in Undoing Gender (2004, p.
28). While Butler’s concept of performativity5 in earlier texts initially focuses on
5InitiallyButler uses the term performativity (1997) as quoting the repetition of discourse
and its efficacy for the demarcation of the intelligible, especially the speech act. The
dependency of the discourse on its enactment, alas on the speaking, the acting, the practice
equally carries a stabilization as well as the possibility of shifts and transgressions. The
repetition, the updated, present, living citation of the discourse in the practice of speech,
is never identical to the (non-existent) “original.” There are shifts and entanglements,
because the occurring is contingent, because its complex, diverse relationing, the effects of
language and discourse theoretical practices, her more recent texts are concerned
with bodily-material potentials of performative shifts.
Indeed, we have to rethink the speech act in order to understand what is made and
what is done by certain kinds of bodily enactments: The bodies assembled ‘say’ we
are not disposable, even if they stand silently. This expressive possibility is part of
plural and embodied performativity that we have to understand as marked by inde-
pendency and resistance (Butler 2015a, p. 18).
With this “performative theory of assembly” emphasizing the “inadvertent

agency” of the public body (Butler 2015a, p. 32), the focus is on materiality, the
appearing of bodies, which are dependent on their infrastructural stabilization and
at the same time performatively effective through their present material relationa
lity. The bodies, their assemblies produce another world. Even though Butler
“substantially” widens her concept of performativity with this, Barad’s criticism
is still valid:
Performativity has been essential to queer theory. […] And yet, performativity has
been figured (almost exclusively) as a human affair; humans are its subject matter,
its sole matters of concern. […] But human exceptionalism is an odd scaffoldings on
which to build a theory that is specifically intended to account for matters of abjec-
tion and the differential construction of the human, especially when gradations of
humanness, including inhumanness, are often constituted in relation to nonhumans
(Barad 2012, p. 30).
For Barad the concept of performativity is concerned with two things: Performa-
tivity deals with the fundamental in/determinacy of material relations. Matter in
its immanent alterity, its indeterminacy and its potential is not fixed and thus not
– permanently – normatively determined, but process related. In the sense of this
socio-ontological undermining of clarity and determinacy matter is queer per-
formativity (Barad 2012, 2014, p. 170). But – this is the second point – Barad
again and again is not only concerned with the “nonhuman performativity per se
but the materializing practices of differentiating” (Barad 2012, p. 32). And these
materializing, performative practices of differentiating, which bring forth the
resonance and dissonance cannot be anticipated, limited and controlled. While the acts of
performative citation can restructure and stabilize the arrangement of discourse, they can
also– in Butler’s discourse theoretical words – provoke “resignifications,” which bear the
chance of irritations, frictions and can therefore contain (not necessarily intentional, but
mainly processual) challenges to power constellations.
102 S. Völker
agential cuts of human/non-human, subject/object, active/passive and so on, can-

not be appropriately, “realistically” re– and de–constructed by human performa-
tivity alone.
In her later text Berühren – das Nicht-Menschliche, das ich also bin Barad
elaborates on the ethical moment related to this and asks the provoking and dis-
turbing question: “How would we feel if it is by way of the inhuman that we
come to feel, to care, to respond?” (2014, p. 173).6 It is not the Relata, which
interact with one another, which form a relationship, but it is the intra-acting of
the material relationality itself, that Barad’s ethics of alterity revolves around.
What precedes the human subject, indeed precedes their physicality, is the inhu-
man alterity, which un/folds itself within their phenomenality. This goes far
beyond Butler’s concept of inhuman infrastructure, which ensures and carries
human life. In that sense, according to Barad, the human always acts as part of
a relationality that cannot be captured in concepts of the human. What we touch,
when we touch ourselves, is not the identity of a determinable body, but this
non-human relationality and in this touch the intra-activity of the world comes
about. It is the inhuman, its materiality as relation, which brings forth the human
and the capability of the world to respond – response-ability. Matter is relation
as the (self-)touching of its alterity. It is relationality, reciprocity and proximity
and thereby eminently political and ethical, because it thwarts acts of closure, of
segregation, of identity, of separation between human and inhuman, living and
dead continuously: “In an important sense, in a breathtakingly intimate sense,
touching, sensing, is what matter does, or rather, what matter is: Matter is con-
densations of response-ability. Touching is a matter of response. Each of ‘us’ is
constituted in response-ability. Each of ‘us’ is constituted as responsible for the
other, as being in touch with the other.”7
6“Wie würden wir uns fühlen, wenn es das Nicht-Menschliche wäre, mittels dessen wir
fühlen, uns sorgen, antworten können?” (Barad 2014, p. 173). The English translation is
taken from an older, unauthorized version of the text.
7“In einem wichtigen Sinne, in einem atemberaubend intimen Sinne, ist Berühren und
Empfinden das, was die Materie tut, oder besser gesagt, was die Materie ist: Materie ist
eine Verdichtung der Fähigkeit zu reagieren, zu antworten (response-ability). Berühren ist
eine Sache (matter) der Erwiderung. Jeder und jede von ‘uns’ ist durch die Fähigkeit zu
antworten konstituiert. Jeder und jede von ‘uns’ ist als für den Anderen verantwortlich kon-
stituiert, als mit dem Anderen in Berührung stehend.” (Barad 2014, p. 172). The English
translation is taken from an older, unauthorized version of the text.
4
Cutting Together/Apart – Impulses for an
Agential-Realistic Methodology
The fundamental questions in sociology of how social conditions are constructed,

what kind of relations are producing “society,” which transformatory dynamics
show up, how humans share (the) world, how this constellates from the complex
intertwining and conditions of the non-human, receives a different “delineation”
with Barad. Her project of agential realism points beyond sociology and involves
it in more complex material relations of what is called “the social.” I have tried to
develop this by the example of Bourdieu’s sociology and Butler’s reflections on a
theory of precariousness.
Barad’s approach very fundamentally thwarts a kind of thinking and a research
methodology, which relies on binaries, figures of the center, the subject (in this
in opposition to the object), clarity and determinacy. Thereby, she facilitates
a decentering of the theory of the social, which also resonates with Bourdieu’s
thinking. But while Bourdieu tries to add the logic of different practices to social
processes and their embodiment and thereby, opening up more space for rela-
tions, materialities and uncertainties/ambiguities, Barad is concerned with taking
up dynamics and relations of determinacy, precisely from a diffractive, not solely
social and cultural perspectives and generating validity for ontological and space-
time openness and indeterminacy of material-semiotic condensations.
There are also resonances with Butler’s thinking: the question of ethics and
the concept of performativity are essential for both, Butler and Barad. But the
orientations of both concepts differ in terms of the relationality of the human/
inhuman and the conceptualization of materiality. While Butler is concerned with
the possibility of performative politics as a means of containment of politically
induced precarity, Barad elaborates on “queer performativity” – and this means
fundamental indeterminacy and immanent alterity – in her ethical and, in a sense,
non-normative capability as post-humanistic performativity of materiality. Butler
regards responsibility, also in relation to the continuously newly negotiable “inhu-
man,” as an involuntary constitutive condition of the human. According to Barad,
response-ability, as an ethical and not specifically human sharing of/partaking
in the world, goes hand in hand with processes of becoming precarious, of not-
being-identical and recognizing of unavailability. Response-ability shows itself in
the occurring of ontological in/determinacy, alterity – and precisely as intertwin-
ing of ethics, cognition and being.
104 S. Völker
Three impulses/shifts have to be considered for an agential-(more)-realistic

methodology:
1. Indeterminacy as socio-ontological key assumption

The assumption of a fundamental indeterminacy, which is connected to the
process of differential becoming of the world, the processuality of cutting
together/apart turns the analytical certainty of what is into a question of per-
manent participation and the permanent “how” of participation in worlding.
With this, every apparatus, every research method has material effects, which
the researcher cannot command, cannot control. The question of how “I” par-
ticipate in the relations of worlding and which researching “I” is brought forth
by this, is not one, in which the difference between the subject conducting the
research and the object of the research, is already fixed in their inherent logic.
Barad’s approach rather deals with a “post-humanist materialization” of ethno-
graphically oriented procedures: If the object of research only manifests itself
in the process of research, then the coordinates of what we are used to call
“object adequacy” shifts. The research process does, by no means, become
arbitrary, but the relationship between what it produces and what precedes it,
changes completely. Research should account for this relationship, both, in its
event-like nature, as well as in its agentiality, its power to enable something
specific. For a researcher, this would mean, on the one hand, to adapt to the
rhythms, the movements, the logics of the field of research and, on the other
hand, to re– and de–construct which relata, which objects, which researchers,
can be differentiated in the relations “I” am participating in. The question of
“objectification” would then no longer be a theory of generating the detach-
ment from the “field of research” but one, which is capable of responding to
its indeterminacy and its potential of being (the) other/becoming otherwise.
2. Ethics as a mode of bringing forth the (social) world
Ethics are not something, by which means, the “observed object” is cultivated
with the help of human expectation, but an occurring of fundamental, irreduc-
ible alterity of the inhuman materiality of the world. With this, the construc-
tion of an allegedly “neutral” perception of a more or less passive world on
one side and the separate, ethical conclusion, refined by human reason, on the
other side, is made visible as a colonizing phantasm, which seeks to impose
specifically human, hence male, white standards, onto the phenomena. This
gives up the separation between being and ethics – the alterity of the world, its
permanent granting of connected, dependent differences, its cutting together/
apart is always an ethical process, too, which does not only need to consider
its consequences, but also has to do justice to what it responds to, what pre-
cedes it. The relation would then be the “core” of the social, of the sociologi-
cal research, not the alleged givenness of certain structures, institutions and
spaces, which, at the same time, play an important role.
3. Practice as non/human practice
If matter is substantially touching and in/determinacy, if it is “condensation of
response-ability” (Barad 2014, p. 172), then human practices, too, are less an
expression of a self-enabling subject, nor of a “thing amongst things,” but a
moment of relational dynamic, which cannot be reduced to any center of action
anymore. Agency emerges in contexts, in touch with (the) other/s. Insofar it is
necessary to systemically focus on the decentering dynamics of these relations,
these diffractions and understand them in their non/social, non/human “practic-
ing.” Practice‚ “human” practice, too, is, in this sense, “more-than-human”:
not an implementation of subjective intentionality, but response-ability to/for
the otherness/alterity of the world.
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Indiana University Press.
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continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come. Derrida Today 3.2: p. 240–268.
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Part IV
Praxeology and Communicative
Constructivism
Rethinking Bodies and Objects
in Social Interaction: A Multimodal
and Multisensorial Approach to Tasting
Lorenza Mondada
1 Introduction
1.1 A Material and Embodied Turn
Several contemporary theories invite us to reconsider materiality and embodiment,

within non-representationalistic, non-logocentric, and non-mentalistic frameworks.
These two aspects are often treated separately: on the one hand, a range of propos-
als invoke a “carnal” (Kearney and Treanor 2015), “corporeal” (Sheets-Johnstone
2009), “intercorporeal” (Csordas 2008; Meyer et al. 2017), or “embodied” turn
in cognitive sciences (Clark 2008; Shapiro 2011), as well as in interactional stud-
ies (Nevile 2015). On the other hand, other proposals focus rather on a “material”
(Folkers 2013) and “ontological” turn (Mol 2003), highlighting the importance of
“interobjectivity” (Latour 1996), recognizing agentivity and participatory status
(Hirschauer 2004) to objects. Both lines of thought – which are neither always
treated together nor fully integrated – have developed a sharp criticism of the
“linguistic” turn, considered as promoting various forms of logocentrism, and as
neglecting the role of objects and bodies in social as well as cultural practices; they
also sharply criticize representationalism (Thrift 2007; Vannini 2015), attacking
forms of constructivism that are uniquely focused on the discursive construction
of social reality, as well as idealistic conceptions of intersubjectivity, and of things
and bodies as symbolically represented entities, implicitly reproducing the divide
between subject and object, nature and culture.
L. Mondada (*) 
University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
E-Mail: Lorenza.mondada@unibas.ch
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_6
110 L. Mondada
Within this framework, new materialism (Folkers 2013) constitutes an attempt

to propose an alternative re-connection between objects and bodies, radically fos-
tering a vision of “object agentivity” (Bennett 2010) and of bio-power (Coole and
Frost 2010), which repositions humans into various assemblages of humans and
non-humans, as well as integrates biological and social dimensions in novel ways.
In this paper, I elaborate on another attempt, represented by ethnomethodology
(EM) and multimodal conversation analysis (CA), to conceptualize together not
only bodies and objects, but also language, within a vision that is critical of logo-
centrism without excluding language, recasting language within a multimodal
approach. Both attempts have highlighted the central role of practice, action, and
performativity (Reckwitz 2002; Schatzki 1996; Turner 1994; Garfinkel 1967) as a
possible nexus to articulate body and objects.
In this paper, I show that the praxeological approach inspired by ethnometh-
odology and conversation analysis, can indeed articulate materiality and embodi-
ment. I also propose a new step farther in this field, expanding multimodality by
including multisensoriality, that is, opening up the approach of embodied inter-
actions to sensory practices, which have been largely neglected by studies that
often limit embodiment to visual cues. Thus, multisensoriality represents a further
attempt to more radically link the materiality of bodies and objects. In order to
explore these issues and make explicit their methodological challenges, I focus on
an empirical case, a video-recorded beer tasting session. Tasting is an exemplary
setting for investigating bodies and objects in multisensorial interactions, since
it involves not only the embodied physiological access to material objects being
tasted, but also cultural artifacts that support and enhance embodied perception,
such as tasting sheets, aroma wheels, and color measurement tools. By focusing
on a diversity of ways in which access to aroma and taste is organized by the par-
ticipants in a tasting session, I discuss how body, objects, and artifacts, as well as
language, can be conceived together, as mobilized in an interactive and intersub-
jective way.
1.2 A Praxeological Multimodal Approach to Social

Interaction
In this paper I discuss a conceptual horizon that contributes to the debates intro-
duced by new materialism, by offering a praxeological view focused on social prac-
tices in which bodies interact together and engage with objects, artifacts, tools, and
technologies in situated ways. Among existing theories of practice, the one devel-
oped by ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967), multimodal conversation analysis
Rethinking Bodies and Objects in Social Interaction … 111
(Goodwin 2000; Mondada 2014a, 2016), and workplace studies (Heath and Luff
2000) have proposed abundant studies of how language, body, and objects intersect
in situated social activities and feature in the detail of their organization within their
local ecology. These approaches are characterized by a focus on situated action as
the primordial locus for understanding the organization of sociability and culture in
their material and social ecologies, and by their subsequent attention to what con-
fers to action its accountability, that is, its publicly intelligible character. Bodies,
language, and objects make sense in this respect, within the way they are meaning-
fully assembled in the production of actions as well as in their interpretation. Mean-
ing is not conferred by some discourse about action, but is a feature of action as
it emerges in situ, within the arrangements of bodies, objects, places, and environ-
ments, along silent or talkative practices. In these configurations, language does not
have any a priori primacy; it is in principle, a multimodal resource among others,
which can be given a more or less prominent role, depending on the type of activity
and the local orientations of the participants (Mondada 2014a).
Methodologically, this approach has been made possible by what can be called
the “video turn,” the systematic use of video (Heath et al. 2010; Mondada 2006a)
as a “microscope” for observing social life (Buscher 2004). Video recordings
allow researchers to observe in repeated and systematic ways, for yet “another
first time” (Garfinkel 1967, p. 9), the detailed organization of human action in its
social and material context, as it is achieved through the mobilization of coordi-
nated embodied and linguistic resources. Video offers a view on human action
that supports its conceptualization as an emergent and temporal phenomenon, sit-
uated in its material environment. It also invites the viewer to overcome a vision
of social interaction that would be exclusively based on talk, without denying the
role of language: “multimodality” specifically refers to the interplay of different
resources together, in a holistic way (Mondada 2014a).
The video methodology enables an equivalent handling of embodied, linguistic,
and material resources. It has made it possible to study the systematic use of spe-
cific embodied resources (such as gesture Schegloff 1984; Kendon 2004; Mondada
2007 or gaze, Goodwin 1981; Rossano 2012) as well as the order of body arrange-
ments mobilizing various resources together (such as gaze, body postures, and
body manipulations in doctor-patient consultations Heath 1986, body movements,
objects, and artifacts, Goodwin 2000, with or without any talk Mondada 2018a,
also considering the positioning and assembling of bodies in space Mondada 2009;
Haddington et al. 2013). Video has also made possible a new vision of how objects
feature in social interaction (Nevile et al. 2015), including artifacts, tools, technol-
ogies, and documents – approached not as such, but as they are mobilized moment
by moment in relevant and timed ways within a course of action. In particular,
112 L. Mondada
objects have been analyzed as resources for the organization of social interaction
(Day and Wagner 2015; Mondada 2006b, 2007; Robinson and Stivers 2001), as
crucial tools for achieving specific activities (such as the hook in surgery Mondada
2011, and the Munsell chart in archeology Goodwin 1994), as well as the very
focus of the activity itself (like objects within museum visits Heath and vom Lehn
2004 or supermarket products within shopping De Stefani 2015).
This corpus of research has shown how deeply bodies and objects are inter-
twined in situated activities; this has opened new ways of considering practice,
its local orderliness, its temporality, and the way it articulates language, body, and
materiality. The analytical focus of multimodal sequential temporal approaches
to social interaction concerns how these activities are publicly assembled and
made intelligible by and for the participants. Methodologically, video has enabled
researchers to study in detail the audio-visual accountability of interacting bodies
and mobilized objects, as resources used by the participants (and thus as observ-
able for the analysts): participants organize the accountability of their actions
through the audible and visible display of bodies and objects and by orienting
toward the responsive talking, gazing, glancing, looking, staring conducts of the
co-participants.
However, the focus on accountability as being primarily related to audible
and visible displays has promoted a view of human action that favors the senses
of hearing (language) and seeing, and their classical primacy within the Western
tradition (Mondada 2016). Other senses, like touching, tasting, and smelling, have
been largely neglected. This is paradoxical, since these senses constitute a funda-
mental articulation of the materiality of bodies and objects in human action and
interaction. This invites a new expansion of multimodal studies toward multisenso-
rial studies, with important conceptual and methodological consequences.
1.3 From Multimodality to Multisensoriality
A multimodal approach to multisensoriality addresses the multiple sensorial

engagements of the participants interacting in the material world. It suggests
that the approach of multimodality in conversation analysis – as the study of lan-
guage, gesture, gaze, body postures, and movements considered as interactional
resources – can be expanded toward an approach of multisensoriality. Partici-
pants do not only gesture, arrange their bodies, and move in visible intelligible
ways for communicating together, but also use their bodies to feel the environ-
ment and use multimodal resources to express, manifest, and display their sensory
access to the world. Visual and aural practices have been largely foregrounded
in multimodal approaches, treating, for example, talk, as audible or not (see the
large literature on repair Jefferson 2017) and gesture as visual cues. Interestingly,
this does not mean that practices of seeing, looking and gazing have been equally
developed (but see Goodwin 1981 on gaze; Sudnow 1972 on different types of
glances; Kidwell 2005 on the normativity of gaze among children; Mondada
2014b on showing and looking at objects) as well as practices of hearing, which
are often presupposed but not topicalized as such (but see Egbert and Deppermann
2012 on hearing loss). More importantly the emphasis on talk and visual cues has
neglected sensory practices of tasting, touching, and smelling. This corresponds
to a general indifference for the “lower” senses in the Western tradition (Classen
1993), but also to the fact that these sensory practices are often considered as
involving individual physiologies and as constituting private sensations, rather
than intersubjectively and intercorporally organized accountable practices.
The aim of this chapter is to explore the publicly intelligible and intersubjec-
tive achievement of these practices as they happen moment by moment and as
they sequentially unfold in situated activities made accountable by multimodal
resources. The body is here considered both as a sensor and as an interactional
resource; moreover, in social interaction, sensing itself is organized not as a mere
individual practice but as a publicly witnessable one, as well as a practice that
can be coordinated with similar practices of the co-participants. Sensing practices
crucially involve materials to be sensed. They might also involve other kinds of
objects, used as tools and artifacts for enhancing sensing. For example, the Mun-
sell chart, exemplarily studied by Goodwin (1994, 1999, 2000) and Mondada
(2018b), is a powerful device to identify color. Goodwin describes the practice
of archeologists digging the soil as involving talk, pointing gesture, gaze scru-
tinizing the dirt, the use of the Munsell chart for matching colors, and the writ-
ing of color measures and other observations on apposite files. Seeing the visual
qualities of the soil is a complex achievement, by various persons practicing nov-
ice and expert forms of professional vision (Goodwin 1994), crucially relying on
social interaction, multiple forms of sensory access to the world, supporting tools
as well as linguistic expressions. This does not concern vision alone. Although
neglected in the ethnomethodological and conversation analytic tradition (for
exceptions see studies of tasting by Fele 2016, Liberman 2013, and Mondada
2018b), other sensorial practices like tasting, smelling, and touching can be mul-
timodally and interactionally described as involving the sensing body, as being
achieved in an intersubjective and coordinated way with others, and as mediated
by other tools.
In this chapter, I elaborate on this multimodal interactional approach of multi-
sensoriality, on the basis of an empirical case, a video-recorded beer tasting session.
114 L. Mondada
The event was organized and animated by a beer expert initiating novices to the taste
of beer. A dozen participants, sitting at four tables, were successively presented ten
different beers; they engaged in scoring the color, the aroma, the taste, before giving
a general assessment. The analyses of this chapter focus on one of these tables in
particular, including three participants. Several parallel cameras video-recorded the
event, with the informed and written consent of all the participants; tasting sheets
and other artifacts used in situ were collected, too.
2 Sounds and Cries: Forms of Immediate Sensorial

Access in Tasting
Tasting involves a variety of body and material arrangements, depending on how

the participants organize their sensorial access to the tasted object and how they
produce the accountability of their tasting practice. The following empirical analy-
ses focus on two environments for tasting: the first concerns practices in which
the participants engage their tasting body with the sensed object, either in a rather
unilateral way (extract 1) or in a more collective way (extract 2). The second
shows how participants use artifacts for tasting, mobilizing various documents as
tools for enhancing tasting, either individually (extract 3) or collectively (extract
4). Finally, these different practices can combine together within a group – as
explored in the last excerpt (5).
These analyses rely on a methodology involving video recordings and their
transcripts. Transcripts are a kind of visualization that enable the researcher to
track and represent, in a detailed way, the temporality of the participants’ move-
ments (Mondada 2018a). Temporal precision gives access to how situated prac-
tices of tasting are formatted in detail, how they orderly mobilize different parts
of the body and address the objects to taste, and how they are coordinated with
others in a finely tuned way. Small differences in the modalities and temporalities
of tasting build the order and accountability of this practice as claiming auton-
omy vs. as relying on others, as based on sensorial access or as enhanced (and
warranted) by mediating tools. These differences are produced and oriented to by
the participants; they configure specific repertoires of practices, their sequential
organization, and their consequences for the local achievement of the intelligibil-
ity and intersubjectivity of tasting.
We join the first excerpt as the participants around the table are silently
engaged in tasting a beer sample. Firstly, they engage in smelling, a practice they
implement and make accountable in different ways (1, Fig. 1): Jana is smell-
ing in a publicly audible way (transcribed with “.hff”) whereas Nathalia does it
silently. Jana looks at Nathalia while sniffing (Fig. 1). This shapes her smelling
as a publicly shared practice – inviting the coordinated response of others. In con-
trast, Diana accountably orchestrates her smelling as an individual practice: she is
silent, she does not look at the others, and the others do not monitor her.
1. (T2_1-11-45 pétillant)
Secondly, as Nathalie self-selects to make a comment about the aroma (2), she
addresses Jana, looking at her. This configures her turn as an action that Jana
could respond to. But at that moment Jana is looking down, ignoring Nathalie.
She gazes at her empty tasting sheet (“ts,” 3), and grasps a pen, ready to write,
projecting the outcome of her sipping (3). She also shakes her head, before to
produce a “response cry” (“ouh,” 3), followed by a descriptive category (“c’est
pétillant”/“it’s sparkling,” 3). This is repeated several times, with increasing speed
and decreasing loudness, expressing urgency – while Jana quickly takes her pen
116 L. Mondada
and jots down a note on her tasting sheet. Here Jana mobilizes different resources
for the expression of her sensorial experience: a vocalization, a lexical category,
and a written word.
In this case, two participants, Jana and Nathalie, initiate smelling at the same
time, mutually monitoring each other – whereas the third participant, Diana, does
the same but without paying attention to them and without being gazed at by
them. But their mutual attention is dissolved as Jana projects the production of
the sensorial description of her sipping, urgently oriented toward its notation –
and maybe its fugacity. The verbal format of the turn (first the response cry, sec-
ond the lexical descriptor) and its accelerated temporality, build the account-
ability of Jana’s action as being the direct outcome of her sensory access to the
tasted liquid. Although manifested and announced aloud, these actions are not
responded to by the other participants, who treat her public manifestations as an
outcry rather than as a proposal intersubjectively submitted to the group.
In other cases, the finding of a lexical category, announced aloud, is not only
audible for, and addressed to others, but also responded to by them, as in the next
fragment, where they display an agreement with it:
2. (T2_1-10-36 litchi)
The three participants engage at different moments in the smelling of the aroma
of a new beer. Jana is the first to begin: as soon as she has smelled the aroma, she
produces a “gustatory mmh” (Wiggins 2002) followed by the descriptor “litchi”
(treated as a category they already used before) (2). Her turn is addressed to Nath-
alia, as displayed by her gaze. Toward turn completion, Jana stops gazing at Nathalia
and turns to her tasting sheet; she then jots down her finding (6).
Nathalia begins to smell the content of the glass a bit later (3). At this point,
she has already heard Jana’s turn. Very soon after having smelled the beer,
she also produces a response cry, in the form of a “WAOUh,” while she gazes
at Jana (4). Then she produces the particle “>oui.<”/“yes” which displays an
agreement with Jana’s finding. But she also adds her own description, using the
same lexical item (correcting the grammatical gender), as well as the adverb
“vraiment”/“truly” which displays her autonomously reaching the same conclu-
sion. By multimodally formatting her action in this way, Nathalia manages both
to agree with Jana (gaze and “>oui.<”/“yes”), and display her independent access
(lexical category and embodied orientation to the sheet).
Finally, Diana is the last to smell the content of her glass (5). As soon as she
has accessed the aroma, she produces another response cry, “OUW” (6), also
followed by “oui,” as well as an out breath/small laughter. Like the others, she
immediately writes on her tasting sheet.
Successively, all participants smell the aroma, and produce a similar outcome
of their smelling: soon after having brought the glass to their nose, they proffer
a vocalization, which demonstrates an immediate relation between their sensory
access and its output, displaying the evidence of the outcome. Given that Jana is
the first, Nathalie and Diana are confronted with the problem of going second:
their turns display both a form of immediate response and an alignment with the
previous outcome, although manifesting that this is not a mere repetition of the
previous, but the result of a personal access to the aroma. In this way, they man-
age both autonomy and agreement.
The fact that all participants immediately write down the result of their smell-
ing – without any further exchange with others – also displays the evidence of
what has been sensed. Interestingly, although they verbally agree on the litchi,
they all write different notes. Jana is the only one writing “litchi,” Diana writes
“amer”/“bitter,” and Nathalia “fruits tropicaux”/“tropical fruits.” The latter is in
line with a previous discussion (hinted at by “de nouveau”/“again” 2) in which
she opposed Jana’s litchi with “fruits tropicaux.” Writing is here configured as a
locus for individual expression, which remains private and is not publicly acces-
sible. In written notes, divergences are possible, and they do not have to be dis-
closed, whereas spoken responses rather favor pro-social displays of agreement.
These excerpts show how participants accountably build various types of sen-
sory access to the materials at hand and manifestations of their sensorial expe-
rience. They use a diversity of audible-visible resources, precisely sequentially
arranged (in a successive order: sniffs, vocalizations, spoken and written cat-
egories). They multimodally and temporally orchestrate their public vs. private
posture, seeking for intersubjective responses or not. In this way, they make
118 L. Mondada
accountable both the type of access they have to the object (e.g. a direct access,
expressed with sounds as outbursts of sensoriality vs. a more reflexive access,
expressed with words, as lexical elaborations of sensoriality) and the type of
coordination they seek/expect from others (or not). This builds the autonomy and
veracity of the sensorial experience, as well as its intersubjective character.
3 Using Artifacts to Support Sensing and Naming
The material ecology of a tasting session is very rich and does not only involve
the objects to be tasted. Participants can be seen as mobilizing various documents
disposed on the table in order to enhance their ability to discriminate and name
aromas and flavors. In this case, they orient to sensorial outburst as not sufficient,
and search for more elaborate sensorial outputs. In this section, I show how the
use of artifacts – like the aroma wheel or the tasting sheet, offering various pos-
sible categories to choose from – is integrated in the sensorial experience.
Artifacts are a pervasive dimension of the ecology of tasting. They constitute
not only an inscription tool for writing the results; they accompany and shape
the entire process of tasting. Artifacts like the aroma wheel, which disposes on
a circle the relevant categories of tasting, the tasting sheet, which offers a tax-
onomy of possible categories to choose from, as well as an ordered procedure to
follow (first the color, then the aroma, finally the flavor), and the SRM (Stand-
ard Reference Method), similar to a Munsell chart, which gives a continuum of
numbered color and lexical correlates to choose from, are essential for both pro-
fessional and amateur tasting. These artifacts both support and constrain tasting:
their categories are used to (retrospectively) express but also to (prospectively)
shape sensory perceptions. They work as a “documentary method of interpreta-
tion” (Garfinkel 1967): the aroma wheel is used to treat a particular sensation
as the actual instance of a pre-identified underlying pattern. The association
of a sensation and a category (pattern) of the aroma wheel gives the former its
legitimacy; in turn, the recognition of a category confirms its pre-existence and
relevance. So, tasting experience and pre-given categories reflexively reinforce
each other – and ultimately produce the legitimate, relevant, and even “objec-
tive” accountability of the tasting activity (Fele 2016; Liberman 2013). In order
to reflect upon the temporal, sequential, and praxeological way in which the doc-
umentary method of interpretation works, the following analysis pays particular
attention to how participants mobilize various artifacts while engaging in tasting.
On the table, each participant has a series of documents: 1. an aroma wheel, 2.

an exemplary tasting sheet in English (abbreviated as Ets in the transcript) and 3.
another one in French (Fts) (both of which give a taxonomic repertoire of catego-
ries in each language), 4. a colored line extracted from the SRM (Standard Refer-
ence Method, representing a continuum of color measures), which is printed on
top of the English tasting sheet, and 5. a tasting sheet (ts) which offers an empty
grid structuring the tasting, but obliging the tasters to write words in the catego-
ries that they are free to use.
The next analyses discuss the use of these tools and their consecutive out-
come, the production of a descriptive category: extract 3 shows how a participant
uses the tasting sheet to produce a category in a rather individual manner, mini-
mally responded to by others; whereas in extract 4, others collaborate and align
with the category proposed.
We join the group as they are silently assessing the beer flavor, which they
have already begun to taste before the beginning of the excerpt:
3. (T2_55-31 gingembre)
120 L. Mondada
During the silence, Jana takes a sip (Fig. 2) and looks into the distance (Fig. 3),
concentrated on her tasting (1). The other participants are busy with their own
tasting sheets.
At some point, Jana utters a statement about the ineffability of taste (2):
she still looks in front of her, in the void, and her turn begins almost as a self-
addressed speaking aloud. Her turn is promptly responded to by Nathalie (3). We
notice that even if the object that is difficult to name is expressed pronominally
(“le”/“it” 2), Nathalie aligns with it unproblematically – both participants display
a common focus.
Jana’s statement prefaces an inquiry about taste, beginning in the next turn,
but then it is left unfinished (5). Contrary to the previous one (2), this turn
is addressed to the co-participants: Jana looks first at Nathalie (5, Fig. 4), who
answers, gazes back and nods, and then at Diana (5), who also gazes back
(Fig. 5). The inquiry is pursued (8), as both Nathalie and Diana look back at their
documents, but Jana’s turn is again left unfinished. A word search is going on,
which is neither self-completed, nor helped by the others. Interestingly, as Jana
is having trouble completing her turn (8), she moves her right hand, first toward
the glass (Fig. 6), then, just before reaching it, toward the documents (Fig. 7). The
way this movement is corrected shows two possible next actions for solving the
difficulty. The first consists in turning back to the sensorial source, the glass, and
having a new sip; the second in turning toward the documentation providing for a
list of categories. Jana seems to envisage the first, but finally chooses the second.
Her skimming through the documents is audibly accompanied by a sound of the
mouth (10) – which is a kind of smack similar to the one sometimes done while
tasting, although here Jana is precisely not tasting anymore. Finally, the search
is completed: she utters a possible descriptor (12), while taking the glass, before
drinking from it. This is minimally responded to by Diana (13), but not by Nath-
alie; it is not pursued by Jana herself (later on, she rejects the category as not
relevant).
So, this case of a rather unilateral use of the tasting sheet and production of
a possible taste descriptor shows how the artifact is mobilized and consequently
shapes the action trajectory. The tasting difficulty – the ineffability of taste –
generates an embodied search that can be implemented either in turning back
to the tasted object, or in turning to the tasting sheet, offering a pre-existing
sensory vocabulary: here both material objects are treated as equally available
alternatives.
Whereas in the previous fragment, the use of the artifact occurred in the
course of a rather individual search, artifacts at hand can be mobilized in a more
collective way, as in the next fragment. The participants have smelled and sipped
the beer and the descriptor “smoky” has been uttered by one of them. Now they
122 L. Mondada
are expanding their search for a more precise description. Jana begins in a very
vague way (1), and Nathalie engages with her in the search for a descriptor, in a
turn left unfinished (3). They utter some assessments, in the form of either sounds
or lexical items (5, 7) still not finding the right word. This will emerge only later
on (10), as Jana looks at her documents, and focuses on the aroma wheel for beer:
4. (Tasting Guinness – 1.41.34/0.55 – aroma wheel – T2)

124 L. Mondada
The beginning of the fragment shows how Jana and Nathalie engage in the
search for an adequate descriptor, with some troubles, as shown by the vagueness
(1), the unfinished turn (3) and the shift from descriptors to assessments (6, 8).
Although collaborating, Nathalie and Jana engage differently in the search:
Nathalie looks up/away, swallowing, concentrating on what remains out of the
previous sip (3). Like Nathalie (3-5), Jana continues to swallow (6), but instead
of concentrating on her bodily sensations, she turns her gaze to the table full of
documents – Nathalie does the same just afterwards, also searching among her
papers. Turning to the documents represents an alternative form of search. Both
participants study their documents for a long time (7). They again produce a posi-
tive assessment (Nathalie first, 8; aligned with by Jana, 10), joined by Diane (11).
When Jana announces “.h y a aussi un peu de tobacco.” (12), she simultane-
ously points to the aroma wheel, to the brown area where “tobacco” is written
(Fig. 8). She utters the English word “tobacco” (instead of the French “tabac”),
reading it from the wheel, before translating it (14). She also looks at Nathalie
(12), addressing her as recipient of her finding. So, although nothing else explic-
itly refers to the visual document in Jana’s turn, the very use of an English word
displays that her turn is not a personal description of the beer, but that she is mak-
ing use of another source.
Nathalia responds by turning toward her, then looking at the aroma wheel (14,
Figs. 9a/b/c). She utters a change-of-state token with interrogative prosody (“ah?”
16), while Diane, who was writing until then, also produces an interrogative
token (“hein?”/“uh?” 17). Nathalia does not only look at Jana’s picture, but turns
back to her own documents, and her own wheel (16). In this way, she takes the
image seriously, consulting it directly. As Jana confirms the interrogative turns of
her co-participants (18), Diane grasps her glass and smells it. Jana does the same
(18, 20) (Fig. 10) – while Nathalia still studies the aroma wheel. On the basis of
her renewed access to her glass, Diane confirms the finding (21).
So, here, a description that was found by using the aroma wheel generates two
types of responses among the co-participants: consulting the aroma wheel too vs.
going back to the sensed object. In the latter case, the category generated by the
aroma wheel serves as guide for perception, and in turn is confirmed by going
back to the sensorial source.
4 Navigating Between Sensory Bodies, Sensed

Objects, and Tools
The previous excerpts have shown how participants can make use of various
objects in organizing their sensory practices, by relying on the sensed object and/
or on artifacts documenting it, in a rather individual vs. collective way. The final
excerpt shows how these options can combine in a fascinating assembling of co-
present practices, involving objects, tools, language, and bodies.
We join the action as one of the event organizers (org) brings a new beer to
the table and places a glass before each participant. Each of them engages in the
evaluation of the color, although they use different embodied methods and mate-
rial resources to do so.
126 L. Mondada
5. (T2_1-09-43 rousse ou brune)

128 L. Mondada
The new beer is not yet served (1–6), as the participants already orient to it: Jana
looks at the glass from some distance (Fig. 11 up), and Diana grasps the exem-
plary tasting sheet in English (Ets) containing an SRM for measuring color
(Fig. 11 left), holding it, ready to use it. These two postures show how partici-
pants immediately adopt different practices for apprehending the item to be eval-
uated – the color of the beer. The first is an immediate gaze at the object (Jana);
the second is a tool mediating between the body and the object (Diana). These
two practices rely on different relations, distances, and postures of the body
regarding the object.
This is visible in the next steps: while Jana looks at her tasting sheet (and will
engage a little bit later with the beer), Nathalia grasps and raises her glass (7), in
order to see its color against the light – then lowers it. In the meanwhile, Diana
looks at the beer with the SRM (7), approaching and folding the sheet on which
the SRM line is printed, in order to juxtapose the continuum of colors and the
beer (Fig. 12).
The next actions of both participants are also contrasted: Diana withdraws the
SRM from the beer but continues to read it, while Nathalie turns from the beer to
her documents and begins to read the French tasting sheet (Fts) (Fig. 13). After a
quick lateral gaze at the beer (8), she grasps the English tasting sheet (Ets) from
her pile of documents (8–9) and reads it. So both Diana and Nathalia are using
the English tasting sheet, but in different ways: Diana has used it for measuring
the color of the beer (see Fig. 15) (and will use it again, see 12), while Nathalia
merely reads it (see Figs. 14–15).
Nathalia’s reading is a comparative use of Ets, following the reading of Fts. As
a matter of fact, her reading of Fts generates a puzzle, formulated line 9: Nathalia
hesitates between two colors – actually, between two categories that are proposed
in Fts (“rousse”/“russet” vs. “brune”/“brown”). While she reads Fts, she addresses
the co-participants with an interrogative turn. However, she does not wait for their
answers, but engages in the search for a solution, grasping the other tasting sheet,
Ets. So, Nathalia does not search for a solution by looking at the beer, but by com-
paring two tasting sheets.
Her method contrasts with Diana’s practice, where she – hearing the ques-
tion – looks again at the glass with the SRM (12), and with Jana’s practice, where
she has begun to look intensively at the beer, leaning laterally over the table
(Fig. 15). This posture is very different than the one adopted by the other partici-
pants: she repositions her body in order to draw a visual perspective between her
and the glass – whereas Nathalie grasped the glass in her hand and raised it. The
first time, Diana brought the SRM to the glass, but the second time she moves
the glass to the SRM (Fig. 15). Every participant finds a specific way to align the
sensing body and the sensed object, inclusive the tool used to sense it, drawing in
this way a complex bodily-material arrangement, in which sensoriality is distrib-
uted: materials are incorporated in the bodies and bodies are adjusted to the envi-
roning objects, in a way that goes beyond the classical divide between subjects
and objects.
Moreover, the posture of the participants is sensitive to the ongoing interac-
tion. Jana responds to Nathalie’s query by leaning over the glass (with an inter-
rogative “mhm?” 11), and Diana by doing her measure again (12). Whereas
Diana is silent, Jana offers a category for describing the color: “rouille”/“rust”
(13). This category is produced as the result of her visual perception. By say-
ing “c’est un peu couleur de rouille” (13), she uses a hedge (“un peu”/“a bit”)
and instead of the name of a color (like “couleur rouille”/“rust color”) she uses a
descriptive expression (“couleur de rouille”/“color of rust”). This exhibits her turn
as the product of a personal engagement with the object, rather than the selection
of a pre-existing category. In response, Nathalie points at the Ets and mentions
the “catégorie copper” (15) quoting an English lexical item read on the tasting
sheet. Whereas Jana was using the color to describe the beer, Nathalie is merely
mentioning the category found in the document (“ici il y a”/“here there is” 15),
without any reference to the beer itself (“ici” refers rather to the tasting sheet).
Likewise, she points at the document, rather than at the glass. Figure 16 nicely
shows this contrast between these two practices and their visible accountability.
When both of them reorient toward their own tasting sheet to be filled in, they
write different but related descriptions: Jana writes “copper/rouille,” integrat-
ing both Nathalie’s and her own suggestions; Nathalia writes “copper/reuse,” an
orthographic variant of “rousse,” which she mentioned by reading the Fts. These
inscriptions show how the participants achieve – even in the private gesture of
130 L. Mondada
writing – their mutual convergence. Interestingly, Diana’s inscription is very dif-

ferent (“couleur 7–8”): the quantified description corresponds to her use of the
SRM to measure the color. Moreover, it is a way of not establishing a correspond-
ence between the measure and the lexical description: in the Ets, “copper” corre-
sponds to a measure of 10–12 (and not of 7–8). Vice versa, Nathalie does not use
the measure corresponding to “copper” to check its adequacy for the beer in her
glass: she uniquely relies on the word “copper” (and possibly its correspondence
with the word “rousse” found in Fts, although the word “cuivrée” is mentioned in
Fts, too, which would be the translation of “copper”). It has to be noticed that the
discrepancy is not made explicit by Diana, who remains silent – as a way of pre-
serving the (verbal) agreement between the participants.
5 Conclusion
The sensoriality of tasting constitutes an exemplary field for rethinking the con-
nection between bodies and objects within situated practices – and more broadly
for rethinking multimodal resources in social interaction. Ultimately, it contrib-
utes to revisiting the interactional and intersubjective dimensions of materiality
in human action – within the analysis of practices generally considered as private
rather than social.
Tasting is a perspicuous activity for the analysis of multimodality and mul-
tisensoriality. First, it concerns the multimodally organized conduct of par-
ticipants’ bodies in two ways, as sensing bodies, and as interacting bodies – the
latter providing for the public accountability of the former. Second, it regards
multiple forms of sensoriality (vision, olfaction, taste, as well as touch, see Mon-
dada 2016). Third, it involves embodied sensory activities within a rich material
ecology, including different types of objects and artifacts, within a diversity of
embodied and material arrangements. Fourth, it includes practices that document
the achievement of autonomous subjectivities, intersubjective agreements and
practices of objectivation and standardization.
The analyses have shown the importance of considering the details of embod-
ied and material practices for understanding sensorial activities. Participants can
orient to and actually grasp and manipulate different types of objects that define
very different trajectories of sensorial practices: they can turn to the object to be
tasted and directly engage their body with it; alternatively, they can turn to arti-
facts for tasting and use them to support their expression of taste. The way these
trajectories are temporally and orderly formatted is consequential for the senso-
rial practices they build; they are also consequential for the way they are made
accountable and responded to. Temporal orders are crucial for differentiating var-
ious material and bodily arrangements, publicly defining the access to the tasting
object as direct vs. as mediated – for example a participant can have a look at
the repertoire of categories of the tasting sheet either before or after tasting. In
the former case, tasting is informed by pre-existing categories, in the latter it is
checked with them – producing different kinds of reflexive achievements, similar
to Garfinkel’s documentary method of interpretation (1967). Likewise, being the
first person to taste and to utter a description is very different than going second,
the latter being temporally and sequentially designed as instructed and guided by
the first, and responding to it. The logic of time and sequentiality is fundamen-
tal for the organization of autonomy, mediation, instruction, responsiveness, and
intersubjectivity.
A closer look at social interaction shows different materialities at play – and
how they are praxeologically shaped. First, the accountable materiality of the
bodies is not only shaped in intelligible ways when they interact together, achiev-
ing the visibility and audibility of their practices, but it is also shaped in wit-
nessable ways when they sense the world, for themselves but also while being
intersubjectively connected to others. Second, the way material objects are ori-
ented to, looked at, and used in the ongoing action shows how they are treated, as
materials to sense and feel, as documents to read, as tools to manipulate: the same
object can be mobilized in different ways, for different purposes, within different
sensorialities, and with different outcomes. Taking into account not only the mul-
timodality of interactional exchanges (in which embodied and linguistic resources
secure a form of intersubjectivity based on the mutual understanding of the par-
ticipants), but also the multisensoriality of many situated activities (in which the
bodies access, feel, and experience the world) invites thinking about a different
form of intersubjectivity, in which bodies sense other bodies sensing, bodies align
with other materialities within various spatial configurations, adjusting, coordi-
nating, agreeing, or disagreeing with them.
6 Conventions
Talk is transcribed with the conventions developed by Gail Jefferson (see 2017).
Embodied actions are transcribed according to the conventions developed by
Lorenza Mondada (see 2018a).
132 L. Mondada
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Materiality, Meaning, Social Practices:
Remarks on New Materialism
Robert Schmidt
1 Introduction
The title “new materialism” brings together various approaches that regroup,
emphasise and radicalise concepts and theses from Science and Technology Stud-
ies (STS), feminist theory, the philosophy of natural sciences, and Actor Network
Theory (ANT). They reject the conceptual dominance of language, discourse and
culture, and criticise the exclusive status in Western thought of human conscious-
ness, agency and capacity to act. With its demand to take matter seriously (cf.
Barad 2012), new materialism surpasses all those conceptual suggestions for ana-
lysing sociomateriality that view matter as a passive, amorphous substance wait-
ing to be given form by humans (Folkerts 2013). Rather, new materialism confers
on matter vitality as well as independent active assets, the ability to articulate, and
eventful potentialities (Stengers 2008).
In what follows, I would like to ask what consequences derive from new mate-
rialism – which (in contrast to ANT) has not yet entered the field of sociology and
social theory – for analytical conceptualisations of sociality. First, I will sketch the
most important theses of new materialism (1). I will then trace the turn to ontol-
ogy that new materialism has expedited (2). The third section will confront the
speculative philosophical concept of the agency of matter with the question of
how exactly “matter” as a participant in social processes and practices can be con-
ceptualised, and what (practice-) specific, world-generating and reality-creating
qualities it is assigned (3). I will employ several terms from practice theory that
R. Schmidt (*) 
E-Mail: RSchmidt@ku.de
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_7
136 R. Schmidt
are important for analysing sociomateriality, and justify why sociologically deci-
sive questions about sociomateriality can only be asked and decrypted with regard
to these concepts. The questions are: how exactly do materialities, things, artefacts
and non-humans contribute to social processes and to the formation of situated
orders? How exactly are they solicited and significant in these respective ongoing
accomplishments; how are they made relevant or irrelevant? What connections do
they establish; how are they implicated in these connections; and what situated
forms of existence are they thus assigned? The decisive step in addressing these
questions – as my final section explains (4) – is to assume a methodological sym-
metry, which guides us towards taking into account the human and non-human
elements of social practices alike. However, the aim of this methodological per-
spective is not to put one’s own ontological reasoning against others’ on the object
level. On the contrary, it views the emergence of and the preoccupation with spe-
cifically ontological controversies critically.
2 Matter as Eventful Potentiality
New materialism takes a critical stance on the linguistic turn and the correspond-
ing textualistic vocabularies within the cultural and social sciences. These vocab-
ularies would only admit materiality as the materiality of signs, i.e. as a substance
passively carrying sense and significance, but marginalise and dismiss all its other
dimensions. In the face of global threats and ecological crises (such as climate
change), however, new materialism believes this to be untenable. Materiality, it
claims, increasingly makes itself felt in these crises and threats as an unpredicta-
ble source of disruption; it thus has a distinct and independent capacity to provide
often surprising articulations of these crises.1
In the context of such crisis experiences, new materialism aims to rethink
materiality; to question its ontological, epistemological and political status, which
is seen as self-evident by existing approaches and vocabularies; and to develop
a new ontology of materiality that does justice to the agency and self-organising
potentialities of matter. This turn to ontology is characterised by three fundamen-
tal postulates:
1Examples are the articulation of rising global warming by extreme weather phenomena,
or the material agency of plastic rubbish, which is concentrating in the Pacific and forming
distinct constructs with the ocean currents (see Bennett 2012).
Materiality, Meaning, Social Practices: Remarks … 137
1. New materialism formulates a radical critique of representationalism and social

constructivism. These are understood as approaches that centre on the cultural
and symbolic construction of reality and assert that the only possible access
to the material world and inanimate nature is mediated by representations
and symbols, i.e. cultural. These approaches are criticised for not taking into
account the distinct qualities of materialities, things, objects and artefacts. This
anti-realism, critics say, is characteristic of a Kantian sociology into which lan-
guage, discourse and culture have found their way as successors to the spirit.2
2. In new materialism, nature and culture are not viewed as given independent
entities; rather it examines – from a genealogical perspective – the drawing of
boundaries and constitutive exclusions which continuously construct, differen-
tiate and separate “nature” from “culture,” “humans” from “non-humans.”
3. Matter is not construed as a passive and fixed substance, but as active, produc-
tive and internally plural. The central notions here are “agential intra-action”
and “material performativity,” the latter being a concept which – according
to Karen Barad (2012, p. 40) – overcomes the anthropocentric limitations of
Judith Butler’s theory of performativity: material phenomena – including
human bodies – are only generated through a continuing and dynamic process
of intra-action and materialisation. Matter is discursive in the same way that
discourse practices are always already material. According to the perspective
of “agential realism” (Barad 2003, p. 810), discourse practices are not activities
propped up by humans, but specific material (re-) configurations of the world,
each of which enacts boundaries, properties and significance in a different way.
In other words, new materialism formulates a new speculative ontology of mate-

riality: matter is characterised by an eventful potentiality, it functions as a source
of constant irritation, and is manifested as inaccessible, wondrous, obstinate and
self-organising, the “becoming-for-itself” and the “alive-for-itself.” As Jane Ben-
nett states in her book with the very pertinent title Vibrant Matter, “Everything is,
in a sense, alive” (2010, p. 177). Here, matter in its energetic vitality also takes
2New materialism – and Actor-Network Theory before it – appears especially in the con-
text of science studies as a counter-project to representationalism and social constructiv-
ism. Critics point out that the “hard” facts of the natural sciences cannot be explained using
social constructivism, i.e. the “soft” facts of the social sciences. They claim that the one-
sided focus on mutually shared meanings, conventions, agreements, or cultural rules inter-
cepts the distinct share and agency of things, materials, substances, objects and devices in
constructing natural-science facts (on this controversy, see Kneer 2010).
138 R. Schmidt
on sensibilities that should no longer be deemed exclusively human capabilities:

“Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers,” as Karen Barad
explained in an interview (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012, p. 16).
Here, new materialism reveals itself as a new vitalism, spiritualism and ani-
mism, deriving ethical implications and demands from a speculative metaphysics
and ontology of materialities: “We need something like an ethico-onto-epistemo-
logy – which takes the intertwining of ethics, knowledge and being seriously –
since every intra-action is important, since the possibilities for what the world
might become are announced in the pause that precedes each breath, before a
moment comes into being, and the world is made anew, because the becoming
of the world is something profoundly ethical” (ibid., p. 100 f.). The shift onto the
level of ontology complicates the issue of how relevant the theses of new mate-
rialism are for the analytical conceptualisation of sociality, since the analytical
perspectives of the social sciences do not address the issue of the reality of the
social in its relationship to other possible realities (of matter, the world, etc.), but
to social reality and its continuous, conflictual realisation in the creation of orders
and regularities.
3 The Analysis of Sociomateriality and the Turn

to Ontology
Theories and analyses of sociality must be able to conceptualise and describe the
ongoing creation of social order and – as its decisive feature – the realisation of
regularities. The focus in social theory’s attempts at conceptualisation is there-
fore on such issues as: what rules govern the social; what is the status of, and
compliance with, these rules in the ongoing accomplishment and processuality of
sociality; and, not least, what are the carriers, bearers, and agencies and where
are the loci of these rules? Questions about the materiality of the social are asked
primarily from this perspective: are social rules embodied by human actors? Are
they also inscribed in things or artefacts? In new materialism, these questions can
now potentially be formulated more broadly: what is the relationship between the
sociomateriality of artefacts and bodies on the one hand, and the material config-
urations of the world or the self-organisation and vitality of matter on the other?
Can the ontological speculations produced by new materialism relate to the con-
ceptualisation of sociality at all? And if so, how? To resolve these issues, I think
it helpful in the first instance to draw out the similarities and differences between
new materialist conceptions and Actor Network Theory, which not only is one of
its most important predecessors but also – in contrast to new materialism – has
substantially contributed to the analytical conceptualisation of sociality.
3.1 ANT: Symmetry Postulate and Actant Thesis
Famously, one of the most controversial emphases of ANT’s conception of mate-

rialism is its actant thesis, which posits that things and artefacts have the capacity
to act socially. In the social sciences, ANT’s principle of generalized symmetry
and actant thesis are often read as a mirror-image counter-discourse to the con-
ventional sociological theory of action. ANT refuses to operate an a priori differ-
entiation between humans who are able to act and non-humans (things, artefacts,
etc.) that are not considered to have that capacity. Instead, from a symmetrical
perspective, it describes artefacts, things and material entities as also “doing
something” (Latour 2005, p. 52).
Critiques of ANT frequently understand this doing of non-human entities within
social processes and accomplishments as the realisation of blueprints for action
inscribed in artefacts, and they consequently point out the latent intentionalism of
such a conception (see Hirschauer 2004; Schmidt 2012, p. 68 ff.). For its critics,
the symmetry postulate does not subvert the dichotomy of subject and object, but
merely provocatively inverts it – here, even material objects can be acting subjects –
reaffirming the problems of intentionalist conceptions of social action.
Intentionalist conceptions connect actions back to plans and blueprints, which
are made based on preferences, motives or intentions. They can occur as material
inscriptions or as cognitive scripts. These inscriptions and scripts are conceived
in ANT, just as in the theory of action, as preceding the actual, situated, social,
ongoing accomplishment of the action. Sociality then asserts itself as the context
or actor network, in which the blueprints, inscriptions and scripts are realised and,
as the case may be, relativized.3 This not only disregards the social genesis of the
3Latour underlines the continuous mediation between the various human and non-human ele-
ments and their activities in successive events in actor-networks. His conception is potentially
intentionalistic since he points out that, in these mediations, programmes for action inscribed
in the participating artefacts at an earlier point in time always realise themselves. His illustra-
tion of the interobjectivity of the interaction at a post-office counter can be read as an example
of this latent intentionalism: “If we let our attention slide from the interaction that is provision-
ally holding us together, the post-office worker and I, across to the walls, the speaking grill,
the rules and formulae then we need to go elsewhere. We do not suddenly land in ‘society’ or
in the ‘administration.’ We circulate smoothly from the offices of the post office’s architect,
where the counter model was sketched and the flux of users modeled. My interaction with the
worker was anticipated there, statistically, years before – and the way in which I leaned on the
counter, sprayed saliva, filled in forms, was anticipated by ergonomists and inscribed in the
agencyof the post office” (1996, p. 238, my emphases). The situated dynamic of the interac-
tion between the author and the woman behind the counter (and possibly other customers)
recedes in the face of the blueprints for action and scripts inscribed in the framing artefacts.
140 R. Schmidt
blueprints, inscriptions and scripts, but it also neglects the actual, situated, ongo-
ing accomplishment and processuality of the social (to which the artefacts con-
tribute and in which they are solicited in specific ways), treating it as subordinate
and secondary.
Closely linked to this latent intentionalism is a quasi-mechanistic fundamental
feature (see Lynch 1996). Social agency is ascribed, from a symmetrical perspec-
tive, both to “socialized nonhumans” (Latour 1994, p. 793) and to human actors.
With this symmetrical understanding of agency, ANT takes seriously and liter-
ally that both persons and artefacts “can do things”: not only school children “can
calculate,” but so can computers. ANT sees agency as a self-identical capacity to
act that can be inscribed in humans and non-humans; is the object of exchange
“between human and non-human actants” (Latour 1996, p. 240); and remains
constant. This interpretation tends to naturalise agency and stylise it into an entity
that circulates beyond actual social practices and, like a fluid, saturates and invig-
orates the most varied objects and things.
This perspective traps ANT in the metaphorics of everyday language (see
Lynch 1996, p. 250): simply because we refer to both computers and persons
as being able to calculate, print, strike or “know something,” those doings and
knowings are not identical once removed from practice. Each specific capacity to
act can only ever be deciphered in the concrete interaction of material, human and
non-human participants within the accomplishment of social practices, each as a
practice-specific mode of agency that never conforms to itself.
The intentionalistic and mechanistic connotations that I have outlined have led
to a stubbornly resilient, ontologising interpretation of the actant thesis. Accord-
ing to this view, ANT defends the thesis that things and artefacts have agency as
a sort of provocatively flirtatious sociological animism and an ontological attitude
that no longer reserves agency solely for humans.4
4We can definitely also view this widespread ontologising (mis)interpretation of the actant
thesis and the principle of generalised symmetry postulated by ANT (cf. also Callon 1986)
as an unintended discourse effect of the specific critical model with which ANT success-
fully attracted attention in its elaboration phase: by criticising conventional sociologies for
their a priori differentiations between natural and social events, and thus for their implicit
and dubious fundamental ontological assumptions, it shifted the general debate onto the
ontological plane and decisively co-initiated the turn to ontology.
3.2 Intra-Action and Non-Intentional Vitality
The development or else radicalisation of ANT by new materialism involve

replacing the ontologising thesis of non-human agency with a postulate of even-
tuality, potentiality and vitality of matter. What is key here is an expanded con-
cept of agency. Karen Barad writes, “Ageny is a matter of intra-acting; it is an
enactment, not something that someone or something has. Agency cannot be des-
ignated as an attribute of “subjects” or “objects” (as they do not preexist as such).
Agency is not an attribute whatsoever – it is “doing”/“being” in its intra-activity”
(2003, p. 826 f.). Agency is therefore not limited to human action, and cannot
easily be extended to non-humans or understood as distributed agency between
humans and non-humans. Rather, it consists of processes that always encompass
the “ongoing reconfiguring” (ibid., p. 822) of humans, non-humans and hybrids:
an intra-active, non-targeted and non-intentional vitality and potentiality of an
active matter that is “becoming-for-itself,” that processes and causes, enables and
restricts sociality processes, that irritates, threatens and destabilises.
In other words, new materialism accelerates the turn to ontology initiated by
ANT, and subverts the latter’s latent sociological intentionalism and mechanism
(as outlined above) with a new, speculative and even more radical ontology of
matter. In place of the agency of non-humans, it posits the intra-activity of matter.
This shift, however, does not elucidate how materiality and sociality are entan-
gled. The question of how exactly materiality partakes of and participates in
sociality, and how it helps to articulate social processes, is difficult to elaborate
using the turn to ontology executed by new materialism. Michael Lynch has sug-
gested “deflating ontology” (2013) so that ontological speculations, hypotheses
and preliminary decisions do not stand in the way of empirical conceptualisations
of things, artefacts and material objects in the analysis of social processes and
practices. He calls for “the air to be let out” of philosophical debates on a new
ontology in the interest of empirical case studies on sociomateriality and, in a
change of perspective, he also advocates no longer treating ontological issues as
a resource but as a “topic,”5 i.e. enquiring how exactly ontological questions and
controversies arise and are dealt with in concrete empirical contexts.
5On this differentiation, see Garfinkel and Sacks 1970.

142 R. Schmidt
4 “Matter” as Participant in Social Processes

and Practices
Regarding the issue of how exactly “matter” can be conceptualised as a partici-

pant in social practices and processes, I would now like to outline three concep-
tual propositions that are fundamental for a praxeological materialism.
4.1 Affordances
Verbs such as “act” carry intentionalistic connotations and ascribe to the thing-
like and material elements of social practices and processes the status of actors
in the sense employed by sociological theories of action. By contrast, the desig-
nations common in ethnographic and ethnomethodological research traditions –
“to participate” and “participant” – offer a different and less ambiguous emphasis
by displacing the perspective onto ongoing accomplishments of social practices.
This means that it is within social practices, in the practical accomplishing of
occasions and events, that the characteristics, ramifications and effects of the vari-
ous participants articulate themselves reciprocally, and each in a specific manner.
Following Heidegger’s famous argument the characteristics of a hammer cannot
be deciphered by ascribing it the capacity to act, nor by reflexions on its material
ontology, but only by analysing its readiness-to-hand as a participant in the practice
of hammering (1967, p. 69 f.). The use of the verb “participate” and the descriptive
noun “participant” to refer to all elements and entities of social practices is inter-
twined with the idea that nothing can be said about the operative role of the partici-
pating materialities, and about the logics according to which they cooperate with,
and are differentiated from, other participants, unless we take as our starting-point
the processuality and ongoing accomplishment of social practices.6
6In other words, whether material entities have passive, sluggish or active and vital quali-
ties can only be determined in reference to the respective ongoing accomplishments of
social practices. The outlined perspective and the designation “participant” are therefore
closely linked to a practice ontology (Schatzki 2017), which assumes that social practices
constitute the foundational elements of sociality. In contrast to Latour, who claims that
“there is no social dimension of any sort, no ‘social context’, no distinct domain of reality
to which the label ‘social’ or ‘society’ could be attributed” (2005, p. 4), practice ontology
finds a specifics of the social in the assumption that the social is composed of bundles of
practices.
The issue of the nature of matter, things, stones, humans, devices, etc. is
replaced by the question of what exactly their respective operative (i.e. active)
role is in specific social practices. How are they recruited and enacted in prac-
tices; how are they “played” here; and how do they “join in the playing”? What
are their practical relationships to each other? How exactly are they “handled,”
activated and implemented by other (human and non-human) participants?
The concept of affordances (Gibson 1979) has proved particularly helpful
for decoding this practice-specific participation and collaboration by the various
material elements and entities. Affordances are those qualities of things that are
realised through the practical accomplishments in which they participate. Exam-
ples are the walkability of a paved square or the accessibility to vehicles of a
tarred road – characteristics that only exist in relation to the practices of walking,
driving, etc. Affordances are thus at once material and practical. They only ever
exist in relation to certain practical accomplishments of taking a walk or driving
a car, and thus only ever in relation to the cooperation of all other participants in
these practices. In other words, affordances designate the practical social func-
tioning of materiality.7
4.2 Materiality as Part of Public and Meaningful

Ongoing Accomplishments
Institutionalised, organisational and ritual social accomplishments – such as wed-

dings, seminars, board of directors meetings, or football matches – are always
also characteristic gatherings of material elements, which not only co-produce
these accomplishments, but simultaneously also denote, signify and (publicly and
perceptibly for others) co-articulate. Thus, the ranks of spectators, pitch bounda-
ries and goals are not only part of the necessary material equipment for a football
match, but they are also in a practical public context of use and significance, and
they collaborate in the meaningful public structuration of a gathering as a football
match in the sense of an intelligible cultural-material matter of fact.
Social and cultural practices therefore need to be conceptualised not only as
network-like contexts of event, relationship and effect, but also as public contexts
7Latour, who likewise points out the usefulness of the concept of affordances, elucidates
that the manner in which material things are involved in practical ongoing accomplish-
ments and make offers can be described as “authorize, allow, afford, encourage, permit,
suggest, influence, block, render possible, forbid, and so on” (2005, p. 72).
144 R. Schmidt
of meaning. The human and non-human participants in social practices are always
also carriers of practice-specific patterns of knowledge and sense. In other words,
the practical effectiveness of things and artefacts invariably also consists of enact-
ing certain shared meanings.
For instance, a speed bump intended to slow down vehicles (the so-called
“sleeping policeman”) on a university campus is more than a sign or carrier of
meaning. As Bruno Latour has shown (1999, p. 186), it functions differently from
a warning sign, for example, because it displaces the driver’s objective: “The
driver’s goal is translated, by means of the speed bump, from ‘slow down so as
not to endanger students’ into ‘slow down and protect your car’s suspension’”
(ibid.). The speed bump articulates its meaning through its material nature. How-
ever, it can only do this – and here we need to go beyond Latour – because it is
(and inasfar as it is) a component of and a participant in the public and meaning-
ful practical context of driving a car. In decoding the meaningful functioning of
materiality, the concept of public practical contexts of meaning is therefore key.
An important reference point for such a concept is Wittgenstein’s thoughts on
rule-following (1967, §§ 139–242). Sociologically, following rules can be under-
stood as a process of continuous formation and meaningful accomplishment of
social order (Puhl 2002). In his late philosophy, Wittgenstein critically dissoci-
ates himself from the conventional understanding of the relationship between
rules and rule-following. The conventional understanding sees rules as abstract
or mental entities that can determine unequivocally and independently of their
practical application what behaviour correctly complies with them. Wittgenstein
conversely shows that the expression of a rule can never determine by itself what
conduct conforms to it. Rather, social practices play a decisive role in constituting
what exactly a rule demands.
We can make this reflection plausible by returning to the example of the speed
bump. A speed bump is an expression in sand and cement of the social rule, “On
traffic-calmed roads we drive slowly!” This material or materialised expression of
a rule cannot determine in and of itself, or in the shape of a mechanistic causality,
what behaviour – i.e. what manner of driving and what speed – can be consid-
ered to comply with the rule formulated materially by the speed bump, namely to
“Drive slowly.” It can determine this only in relation to the social practice of driv-
ing a car, its implicit knowing (inter alia, about the fragility of car suspensions),
its moral and normative implications, and its public context of meaning. Follow-
ing Wittgenstein a Gepflogenheit (i.e. a social custom) and practice of driving a
car must already exist so that the social rule articulated by the speed bump can be
understood practically and have an effect on behaviour.
According to Wittgenstein, rules (and their linguistic or material explications)

are developed after the fact out of the expressive, intelligible, publicly meaning-
ful, practical social behaviour that is then retroactively posited as “following the
rule” and codified as conforming to the rule. Public practical contexts of expe-
rience and meaning are retrospectively put into a signifying order, expressed
as an independent law or hardened – as in the case of the speed bump – into a
symbolic-material rule requirement. These retroactive practical processes of con-
stitution create the illusion of autonomous rules (or rather of independently act-
ing, autonomous speed bumps). However, by themselves – i.e. beyond or outside
of public practical contexts of meaning – such materialised expressions of rules
would neither be intelligible nor have an effect on social behaviour.
Since it is only ever possible to determine whether or not a rule has been
complied with in the context of shared public customs, i.e. “Gepflogenheiten
(Gebräuche, Institutionen)” (Wittgenstein 1967, § 199) and criteria, there can be
no private solitary compliance with rules.8 As a practical doing orientated towards
Gepflogenheiten, compliance with rules is overwhelmingly accomplished as a
“distributed activity” (Preda 2000, p. 278). It is limited neither to humans nor to
artefacts, and occurs in practical networks and relational contexts between per-
sons, technical devices, graphic representations, theoretical concepts, practical
knowing how, the affordances of material things and artefacts, etc.
4.3 Formulations as Member’s Methods of Rule-

Following
Social practices of rule-following are characterised by the formulations of the rule

that is being followed, should be followed or has just been followed – as well as
by the collaboration and signifying of material things and artefacts. As Garfinkel
and Sacks (1970) demonstrate, such formulations are methodical accounts that are
essential for creating situated orders through which the participants render account-
able “what this is all about.” Formulations are the decisive reference points not only
for shared behavioural orientations, but also for ongoing changes in behaviour.
8Shared meaningful behavioural orientations presuppose a conception of the “publicness”

of meaning (Schmidt 2017; Schmidt and Volbers 2011). Praxeology differs from social-
constructivist approaches with regard to this concept and to its critique of intellectualist
conceptions of meaning, mentalistic constructions and representations; it can be character-
ised as a post-constructivist analytical vocabulary.
146 R. Schmidt
Such formulations occur in daily conversations when “a member may treat

some part of the conversation as an occasion to describe that conversation, to
explain it, or characterize it, or explicate, or translate, or summarize, or furnish the
gist of it, or take note of its accordance with rules, or remark on its departure from
rules” (ibid., p. 350). What is being formulated are not just rules, but often also the
objectives, the requisite forms of behaviour, performances, or the circumstances of
a conversation. However, formulating is a component not only of conversations,
but also of all possible practical activities. Formulating can be carried out linguis-
tically or using gestural or mimic forms of expressive, deictic bodily behaviour.
Formulations occur routinely in practical activities and attempt to remedy
indexicality, for instance by representing an activity situatedly as complying with a
rule and making it accountable. The purpose of formulating is therefore a methodi-
cal “putting-in-order,” a situated and provisional establishing of objectivity for the
practical purpose of the ongoing activities. In this sense, formulations are practi-
cal, local and retroactive formulations of rules that instantiate rules situatedly and
practically, and ensure rule-following and compliance. The point of formulations
is therefore “to make out what the rules are” (Preda 2000, p. 228). To this end, a
statement just made or an activity often still being carried out are appraised for
the rule that they comply with. This situated finding-out-and-formulating-what-
the-rule-is-that-applies is an analytical member’s method, which is endogenous to
practical acitivities and is at the same time a characteristic sequence within these
activities. Formulations contribute decisively to stabilising rule-following and thus
to the development of a situated social order and regularity.
A further characteristic of the putting-in-order called formulation by Garfield
and Sacks which is pertinent to our argument is that this method of participation
continuously generates asymmetries between the human and non-human partici-
pants in practices. Human participants engaged in formulating assume that only
they and their co-participants are in a position to use their shared practical knowing
as material to remedy indexicality and to formulate, with a quasi-provisional objec-
tivity that is workable for the moment, “what this is all about.”9 This establishment
9Preda (2000, p. 288 f.) illustrates the connection between the formulating remedy for
indexicality and the establishment of an ontological asymmetry between humans and non-
humans by using an ethnographic case that describes an attempt to introduce a speech-rec-
ognition system onto the trading floor at a stock exchange. The attempt fails because the
system is not able to decide whether a conversation seals a deal or is merely chitchat. For-
mulating “what this is all about” (deal or chitchat), i.e. the practical establishing of objectiv-
ity for the moment of the interactive situation, is intrinsic to practices of rule-following – i.e.
here the trading practices at the stock exchange. Participants take these remedying activities
for an ability which only humans are capable of.
of asymmetry is a crucial aspect of rule-following and creating social order. “The

critical point is: formulations are asymmetric. It is only human actors who use the
materials provided by their doings and sayings, as well as by the knowledge incor-
porated in artifacts in order to make out what the rules are. Moreover, it is always
human actors who claim that they are able to remedy situations in this way” (Preda
2000, p. 288).
The crucial point is that it is only possible to decode how human participants
in social practices generate asymmetry in relation to non-humans, so as to remedy
indexicality and stabilise the practical compliance with rules, from a methodolog-
ically symmetrical perspective that takes into account all (human and non-human)
elements of social practices. A methodologically symmetrical perspective makes
it possible to clarify the practical logic of generating ontological differences as
part of rule-following.
5 Conclusion: Methodological Principle

of Symmetry and Ontological Reasoning
The empirical issue of which entities (human and non-human) are ascribed modes
of activity such as doing, connecting, separating, causing, triggering, signifying,
formulating, showing, representing, clarifying, rendering intelligible, understand-
ing, etc. in the context of practices is fundamental to a non-anthropocentric analysis
of social practices and processes. In this methodologically symmetrical perspective,
sociality is “a type of connection” (Latour 2005, p. 5). The key research question
for a non-reductionist inventory of all interconnected elements is as follows: in
what units and entities does the relevant social phenomenon assemble?
Nevertheless, the theoretical ontological presuppositions and speculations
characteristic of new materialism do not keep this empirical perspective in mind.
Instead, they aim to participate in ontological controversies being carried out on
the object level, or to initiate such controversies. These ontological speculations
and presuppositions should be replaced with the analytically much more reveal-
ing question of whether, and how, ontological controversies are argued out on the
object level. To what extent is the ontology of elements and units of the examined
practices debated or contented? From this perspective, ontological assumptions
function not as a resource for discourse on the ontological status of matter, but as
a topic of “ontographic investigations” (Lynch 2013, p. 455).
As we have seen, the “formulations” outlined above often also generate onto-
logical asymmetries and quite neatly construe ontologies of non-humans, i.e. they
postulate what non-humans are inherently not capable of. These formulations
148 R. Schmidt
constitute an important guiding principle for the “ontographic” descriptions of

issues and controversies concerning the “actual reality” of non-humans, which are
carried out somewhat virulently on the object level.
The praxeological perspective I have outlined aims to correct the marginalisa-
tion of matter by the meaningful, without dismissing the meaningful structura-
tion of the social. As I have hereby demonstrated, things and non-humans appear
as participants: each collaborates in its specific materiality and is involved in its
practice-specific manner; they are not merely passive “carriers of meaning.” Nev-
ertheless, a conception of social meaning as public in nature remains crucial for
the praxeological perspective.
Since meaning is produced and processed in social practices, their public
nature is their defining characteristic: meaning can only function under these pub-
lic conditions. We can view this publicness as a shared plural attentiveness, which
is constituted not only in local encounters but also via artefacts, media, gestures
and symbols across space and time. Practice-specific publicness is a scene of con-
tinuous confrontations. Each turn or move, each realisation and staging re-inter-
prets and re-articulates “what is at stake.” The public nature of practices implies
an openness in which the various formulations and performances are mutually
attentive and sensitive to each other’s reactions. This is the normativity of prac-
tices (Rouse 2007), not the least of whose effects is to render deviations and
underminings greatly significant. It is these practical, public and normative con-
texts of meaning which continuously redesignate things, artefacts and “matter”
and make them relevant. The question of “how matter comes to matter” (Barad
2003, p. 801) cannot be decoded without reference to these practical and public
social contexts of meaning.
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New Materialism? A View
from Sociology of Knowledge
Reiner Keller
Foucault évite avec génie toute thèse métaphysique alors

que Deleuze produit une métaphysique neuve. (David-
Ménard 2008, p. 43)
If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must
ask a stone to record its autobiography. (Whitehead 1978,
p. 15)
1 Introduction
Over1 recent decades, new materialism has established itself as a challenge to

epistemological and ontological grounds of theory and research in the humanities
and in the social sciences. Its core claim is that there is an ongoing neglect and
false conception of materiality which has to be replaced by an ontology of relatio-
nal becoming. The work of Gilles Deleuze (and Felix Guattari) is often referred
to as presenting the principal philosophical ground. Concepts like “intra-actions”
(Barad 2007) or “vibrant matters” (Bennett 2009) from new materialism, and
others like the “posthuman” (Braidotti 2013), “assemblages” (DeLanda 2006),
or “affects” (Massumi 2002) from linked turns successfully address a range of
researchers across disciplines who look for new concepts, ideas, research funding
1I would like to thank the editors and Adele E. Clarke for very helpful comments.
R. Keller () 
Universität Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
E-Mail: reiner.keller@phil.uni-augsburg.de
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_8
152 R. Keller
and political projects to follow. With mostly philosophical (speculative realism)

and arts-based backgrounds, the new materialism(s) tend to have rather general
ideas about the state of disciplines and social research which do not account for
the complexities and diversity of the fields they critically address. This is in part
due to their coming into existence “beyond disciplines,” which certainly presents
some advantages in opening up narrow perspectives, but which also runs the risk
of ignoring what is actually done in such disciplines, thereby missing possible
anchor points and affinities in established work. In the following I first sum up
a few core critical arguments against an all too naive reception of new materia-
lism and related turns in sociology. In a second step I will argue how questions of
materiality can be (and have been) dealt with in interpretive sociologies. A third
step considers how materiality comes into play in sociology of knowledge-based
discourse studies.
2 Is There Something Wrong with New

Materialisms?
“New materialism,” sometimes used in the plural as “new materialisms” (Coole

and Frost 2010), refers to a movement in philosophy, feminist thinking and
arts-based theories, which argues for a new taking into account of the material
in intellectual thinking and cultural research. It has close relations to some other
current pleas for turns, like the affective turn or the posthumanist turn. Given the
heterogeneity of the main protagonists of those turns, it is hard to address them
with a few general arguments. But it does seem that all of them have in com-
mon a far reaching ignorance vis-à-vis sociology in general, and its particular
traditions (like interpretive sociology) and specialties (e.g., medical sociology,
sociology of the body, and sciences and technology studies). Authors of new
materialism and linked turns like to present generalized arguments about all the
failures and voids of empirical social research, e.g., when addressing harsh criti-
ques to “social constructivism” as a “representational mode of thinking” without
giving concrete references to statements or texts (cf. Barad 2003, p. 802). Never-
theless, the reception of their philosophical arguments in sociological research
gains more and more ground. This happens despite a set of severe critiques which
have been addressed to the new materialists and related turns. As I have summari-
zed main points of critique elsewhere (Keller 2017), I would like to recall only a
few of the most important in the following:
New Materialism? A View from Sociology of Knowledge 153
1. The problem of founding gestures

An early major critique has been formulated by feminist scholar Sara Ahmed,
against the “Founding gestures of the ‘new materialism’” (Ahmed 2008).
Discussing the recent genealogy of new materialism in feminist theory and
research she writes:
In this position paper, I want to consider what it means for it to be routine to point
to feminism as being routinely anti-biological, or habitually ‘social constructionist.’
I examine how this gesture has itself been taken for granted, and how these gesture
both offers a false and reductive history of feminist engagement with biology, sci-
ence and materialism, and shapes the contours of the field that has been called ‘the
new materialism’. (Ahmed 2008, p. 24)
As she explains, the main accomplishment of such a gesture is to install a

“minority position […], that must be freed” (ibid., p. 32). Therefore the work
of an author like Judith Butler, for example, is reduced to a shorthand ver-
sion of social constructivism and is then subject to heavy critique: “Feminism
it seems has forgotten how matter matters. […] Barad is offering a caricature
of ‘the turns’ in recent theory, although no examples are provided to illustrate
the argument. We have not idea of who she is actually referring to […]” (ibid.,
p. 33–34). Thus Ahmed demonstrates how new materialism establishes itself
as the new heroic “must do” in theoretically advanced thinking and empirical
research for the humanities and social sciences through establishing a highly
distorted image of past work.
2. A new scientism?
A second critique refers to the role science (and neuroscience for the affec-
tive turn) plays in the work of some protagonists of the materialist turn. Trevor
Pinch (2011) convincingly showed how leading iconic author Karen Barad, in
her major book establishing “agential realism,” either completely ignores or
misinterprets social studies of science and technology in order to construct her
counter-position. He relates his surprise when Barad referred to Niels Bohr’s
interpretation of quantum mechanics in order to make her core arguments:
I asked her whether she thought it not more than a little odd that a metaphysical
position in science studies should depend upon the outcome of experiments in phy-
sics. Supposing the experiments had come out differently? Would we then have to
kiss goodbye agential realism? Her answer was even more surprising. She told me
that she was happy for her work in science studies to stand or fall alongside the best
work in physics. Ouch! (Pinch 2011, p. 432)
154 R. Keller
Barad indeed presents her quantum-physics based ontological and epistemolo-

gical arguments for a different vision of materiality in the social sciences and
humanities without discussing the latter’s established and differentiated epis-
temologies. As a recent review of current developments in quantum physics
states, it seems very likely that Bohr’s theory is wrong (Albert 2018). What
consequences for agential realism?
3. A new spiritualism?
For several decades now actor-network-theory has established arguments for
a symmetrical approach in science and technology studies, and sociology
in general (Latour 2007). Some authors in new materialism, inspired by the
legacy of Deleuze, add to his arguments more spiritual elements. Jane Ben-
nett, for example, pleads for an “enchanted materialism” and the recognition
of “vibrant matters.” According to Thomas Lemke (2018, p. 9) and his close
examination of Bennet’s case studies on omega-3 and the power blackout in
the US from 2003, “Bennet confronts us with a romanticized and one-sided
picture of the ‘vitality of things,’” and with some kind of metaphysics which
is full of “conceptual ambiguities” and “analytic shortcomings” and creates
major problems for political prospects.
Karen Barad, too, promotes a vitalist conception of matter. In her words, “mat-
ter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers” (Interview with
Karen Barad in Dolphijn and Van der Tuin 2012, p. 48). Such a vitalism seems
not to be just metaphoric (and thereby a humanist projection onto matter) but
rather expands qualities of life to everything real, with humans being just one
manifestation. Such a stance has been established mainly for political rea-
sons, according to Gilles Deleuze’s vitalism and theory of immanence, itself
based on Spinoza’s animism (e.g., Marks 1998), amongst others. As in Bruno
Latour’s work, pointing to symmetry and the “vitalism of the material” should
actually provide the grounds for a sound and emancipatory political ecology
and politics of care toward all vibrant matters and things vital. But as Puig
della Bellacasa (2011, p. 90; Keller 2017a) argued against Latour, such a sym-
metrical politics of care runs the risk of losing basic criteria for preference
building and decision making in situations of conflict. She therefore asks the
crucial question: In case of conflict, what vitality would matter more? The one
of a SUV going to some village in the night, or the one of a few frogs crossing
a street that same night? How to compare and evaluate? Consequently, Katha-
rina Hoppe and Thomas Lemke (2015) argue in a contribution which gives
much credit to Barad, that agential realism presents an overdrawn and naive
understanding of the ethics of care for matter which completely obstructs the
conditions for establishing a solid conception of politics. There are no ethi-
cal criteria given to evaluate different intra-actions according to their ethical

value, and for dealing with humans in a post-human ethics. Hoppe and Lemke
thus point to a missing conception of the political and of power in Barad, and
complain of a reduction of politics to ethics. In sum here, it seems that the
ethical stance of new materialism, its animism or implicit spiritualism will
make a future politics of generalized care even more difficult than it is already
now. What if it is the presage of a new spiritualist turn (Keller 2017b)? Will
the humanities and social sciences enter a new era not of scientific wars but of
religious wars?
4. Deleuze goes research?
In her critical discussion of Brian Massumi’s affect theory, discourse analyst
Margaret Wetherell writes:
Translating this [the philosophy of Deleuze] into the registers of social research
requires care. Formulating a philosophy of force, becoming, potential, encounter and
difference is a different enterprise from working out the most useful approaches for
investigating specific affective phenomena and their consequences […]. (Wetherell
2012, p. 3)
Wetherell here refers to the rich conceptual and empirical work on affects
and emotions established in the humanities and social sciences for quite some
time, but largely ignored by the protagonists of affect theory. Indeed, here
again we encounter a problem of discipline and tradition, and an absence of
historical mindedness. Someone arguing “from the outside” might well not
know what has already been done “inside” the disciplines, without some
research. This creates particular trouble when people from “inside” take the
argument at face value and use it as an internal critique, also without checking
it seriously. This argument is made by Sara Ahmed (2008) quoted above vis-
à-vis feminist research, and by Elizabeth St. Pierre (2015) and Thomas Lemke
(2015) against Barad’s critique of Foucault. St. Pierre (2015, p. 77) states it as
follows: “But I argue that poststructural theorists, including Derrida, Foucault
[…] very clearly addressed ontological issues and the material half a century
ago.”
New materialism itself oscillates between an attitude of being “beyond disci-
pline” and its own “becoming disciplined.” The first position is expressed by
Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin (2012, p. 93–114) who broadly discuss
the “transversality of new materialism.” In a close move, Elisabeth St. Pierre
(2015) complains about a common “bad” usage of new materialism and the
vocabulary of Gilles Deleuze in current textual production (cf. Hein 2016).
156 R. Keller
She especially addresses research based on the “new materialist” interview for
its privileging of “the authentic voice of the unique individual” and the “spea-
king subject” (St. Pierre 2015, p. 79):
[…] in reviewing manuscripts submitted to journals in which authors claim to be

doing new empirical, new material, posthuman, and post qualitative work, I find
myself hard-pressed to see what’s ‘new’ about much of it. […] For example, they
might include in the theoretical sections of their papers a smart discussion of Deleu-
zoGuattarian concepts they say informed their research, but then they proceed to
describe their projects as conventional humanist qualitative studies using the onto-
logical assumptions, language, and practices of that methodology. In effect, they
simply drop one or two Deleuzian concepts into a qualitative study and, of course,
the ontologies are incommesurable. (St. Pierre 2015, p. 82–85)
At the same time, according to St. Pierre, writing a textbook on “how to do”
new empiricist, new materialist, post qualitative research in the legacy of
Deleuze would just be a contradiction in itself, because it would standardize a
process which is defined per se by its splitting up of disciplined ways of prac-
tice: “If such a book were written, it would be the contrary to the very image
of thought Deleuze and Guattari created” (St. Pierre 2015, p. 78).
Nevertheless, this is exactly what happens. Consider, for example, the new manual
about “Sociology and the New Materialism: Theory, Research, Action” (Fox and
Alldred 2016). This work presents blueprints for new materialist research centered
around the works of Barad, Braidotti, Latour and others, and focusing the so called
“Deleuzian” concept “assemblage,” which in itself is a transforming translation of
the original French “agencement” (which is closer in English to “arrangement” or
to the Foucauldian “dispositif”).2 In Fox and Alldred (2016, p. 40–41), the intro-
duction of “assemblage” as core concept is combined with a complete rejection
of all kinds of established common usage sociological vocabularies referring to
“fixed” entities (like “bodies,” “plants,” “animals,” “economic and political sys-
tems,” “consumers,” “governments,” “beliefs,” “values,” “institutions,” “political
movements,” “discourses,” “systems,” “structures,” “mechanisms”).
The arguments presented so far might account for the impression that “new
materialist” empirical work done recently in sociology and close disciplines,
seems to be, in its observations and results, much closer to common interpre-
tive and qualitative research than it claims to be by referring to the “new turns.”
2The translation produces a different connotation and a different relation to other concepts
in Deleuzian philosophy as well as a different symbolic horizon for empirical research (see
Wetherell 2012, p. 15; Philipps 2006, p. 108–109).
Such “new materialist” work accounts for situational context-driven shifting

meanings attributed by human beings to things, objects, artefacts and processes
they encounter in different crucial periods and situations of their lives (Schwe-
nesen and Koch 2009; Schadler 2013; Höppner 2015). Interpretive approaches
such as those used in symbolic interactionism or ethnomethodology and the
sociology of knowledge would have ended up with very similar results. Thus it
might well be the case that, according to St. Pierre, this work does not yet fulfill
the “new” promise of new materialism and Deleuzian thinking. This remains
to be seen. Nevertheless, it leads me to my next point: How can we deal with
questions of the material in sociology in a more explicit and reflexive way?
What concepts can we draw upon for such a purpose? Having discussed some
of the external and internal critiques of new materialism, I also want to strongly
emphasize that new materialism importantly points to some neglected issues in
social thinking and research, and thereby can rightly make our research agenda
more complex. But, as I will argue in the next section, such a turn does not set
aside the core arguments of the older interpretive turn and its insistence upon
moves of “interpretation” that we must make as part of doing research. Indeed
I agree with Alfred North Whitehead’s old statement: “If we desire a record
of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.
Every scientific memoir in its record of the ‘facts’ is shot, through and through,
with interpretation” (Whitehead 1978, p. 15).
3 Interpretation as Entanglement and Interrelation
Sociology, since its origins in the 19th century, can be considered the science cen-
tered on the decentered subject. Diverse strands and sub-paradigms always inclu-
ded research about objects, artefacts and “nature” as well. Consider for example
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel’s analysis of relations of production and the way
they historically transform, or Georg Simmel’s sociology of things which addres-
ses the work that clocks (disciplining, rationalizing), doors (separating) and
bridges (linking) do (e.g., Simmel 1994). Such a list could go on and on. It might
well also be associated with Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s (1966) reflec-
tions upon the processes of social objectification which establish social objects
(such as language, heteronormativity and other institutions) as “hardened facts”
that humans must confront. With close affinities to Whitehead’s argument about
interpretation quoted above, Herbert Blumer pointed to the core role of mea-
ning attribution in the relation between human beings and their objects social,
158 R. Keller
a rtefacts, or “natural.” In his work on the “methodological position of symbolic

interactionism” and its premises, he writes:
The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings
that the things have for them. Such things include everything that the human being
may note in his world – physical objects, such as trees or chairs; other human beings
such as a mother or a store clerk, […] institutions, as a school or a government […].
The second premise is that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out
of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows. (Blumer 1969, p. 2)
Meaning, in the first premise, does not refer to the particular importance of an
object or artefact, such as in “This is my favorite car.” At least this is only one
possible reading of it. In more general terms, it points to the basic capacity of
human beings to define the situations they confront, to interpret what is going on,
and what the elements of that situation are. There is no “beyond interpretation.”
I suppose that new materialists would object to this position mainly because of
the second premise which points to social interaction as the basis of such an inter-
pretation. But in fact it is an argument about relationality in meaning making, the
role of conventions (such as language) and our embeddedness in social worlds.
Meaning making is not an individual, but a social act. So what then is the role
of objects in this setting? Let us consider Blumer’s third premise, which goes as
follows: “The third premise is that these meanings are handled in, and modified
through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things
he encounters” (Blumer 1969, p. 2). This premise introduces the object itself as
an agency that the person must deal with in situations. Here Blumer refers back
to pragmatist philosophy of thought and action which begins from the assumption
that we can consider human activity (as well as activities of other living beings) as
particular ways of dealing with the world, the real, and the problems it presents for
some embodied existences in their singular and collective existences. “Meaning”
is not some inherent quality of objects and situations, but the outcome of situated
and structured performances, that is of processes of interpretation (ibid., p. 5):
Human group life on the level of symbolic interaction is a vast process in which
people are forming, sustaining and transforming the objects of their world as they
come to give meaning to objects. Objects have no fixed status except as their mea-
ning is sustained through indications and definitions that people make of the objects.
(ibid., p. 12)3
3The origin of Susan Leigh Star’s concept of “boundary objects” can be discerned in this quote.
In their lines of action and interaction, humans are continuously involved in defi-
ning situations and the meanings of objects, adjusting, evaluating and elaborating
such definitions according to the obstacles and successes they confront in doing
so across diverse situations. Here what Andrew Pickering calls the “mangle of
practice” comes into play, as a ground of challenges, impositions, resistances and
corrections to such action and purposes presented by diverse objects and their
social and physical materialities and qualities. We might call this the “agency”
of objects or things. Blumer indeed does not say much about the way such an
agency works in real situations. He loosely refers to the pragmatist philosophers
of the early 20th century, especially to George Herbert Mead. Nevertheless
much work in interpretive sociology (and beyond) deals with individual or col-
lective problems of action and interaction “caused” by some physical situation
(like damages produced by a flood, or climate change and environmental issues),
some object or artefact (like a drug, a building, a technical infrastructure, a car
or a photograph), some other beings (like bees, horses or dogs), or some situa-
tion of “affectedness” (like fundamentalism, mass behavior, love, etc.). My main
question here is what does it mean then to include “the agency of objects and
non-humans” in our analyses? My first thesis is that, according to Blumer and
Whitehead for example, we cannot escape interpretation. The materiality and
agency of things and affects can only be approached via either the interpretation
produced by the human actors involved in some situation (as accounts of first
order interpretations), and/or via interpretations of a situation produced by
observers (second order observation), be it sociologists or other kinds of experts,
and in more or less elaborated procedures of an epistemological break. If a new
materialist account claims to see what some materiality does with a human, it
tacitly ignores the fact that it is not more than an interpretation from a less invol-
ved observer, and there may well be others. In principle, there is nothing wrong
with this, as long as the account does not claim to be a pure and true account of
intra-action or agency between objects and humans or other beings, uncontamina-
ted by involvement, interpretation, and even affect.
My second thesis here therefore is that we can have a more precise under
standing of the interpretation of such an agency when we refer to the position of
social phenomenology as elaborated by the Austrian thinker Alfred Schütz (1967,
1973; Schütz and Luckmann 1989). The main argument for this lies in the role
that the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and the ideas of Henri Bergson and
160 R. Keller
pragmatist philosophy play in the work of both Gilles Deleuze and Alfred Schütz
(see Depraz 2011; Rölli 2012; Deleuze 1994; Deleuze 1990).4
Edmund Husserl tried to bring philosophy “back to the things themselves”
(Husserl 2001, p. 168). “Phenomenology,” according to Husserl, is “the study
of things as they appear” (Smith no date, p. 4) to human beings. That is, pheno-
menology starts with a relation between an object (some physical or symbolic/
social object) and the way it appears or “is given” in a human consciousness. The
important point here is that there is no pure existence of an object in itself, but
only the intentionality of a particular human consciousness. This does not imply
a one-way directedness, but means “precisely” the basic condition of relatedness,
entanglement and inter-relation – being aware of “something.” So the appearance
is not a purely active mode of relation, but also a way of being affected by a sen-
sory experience (from the outside or from within the embodied being). When
George Herbert Mead talks about the “objective reality of perspectives,” that is
the plurality of worlds according to the plurality of entanglements constituting
phenomena as phenomena for some being, he is referring to such a relation (or
plurality of relations).
Alfred Schütz, in his discussion of the works of both Henri Bergson and
Edmund Husserl, takes an important step forwards here. In full accord with the
role of temporality and the questions of the actual given which much later lead
Gilles Deleuze to a discussion of the relation between actual events, difference
and repetition, Schütz discusses the way a human being’s consciousness cons-
titutes order out of its being affected by the worldly given through its sensual
experiences, “not a world of being, but a world that is at every moment one of
becoming and passing away – or better, an emerging world” (Schütz 1967, p. 36).
Schütz and Luckman (1989) further insist on the embodied conditions of per-
ception, and on the complexity of passive as well as active elements present in
human definitions of a situation:
[E]xperiences are constituted as thematic kernels within the syntheses of consci-

ousness; in the constitution of experiences, interconnected thematic, interpretative,
and motival relevances work together systematically. […] The lived experience of a
visual object of perception includes, for example, not just the view of the front side,
given impressionally and currently in direct evidence, but also its hind side, which
4We can add Schütz’s reading of Whitehead, Mead, James and many more here. The argu-
ments presented in the following are certainly in need of elaboration. For a close argument
against new materialism see Lynch (2014).
is appresented simultaneously – though not in original evidence. […] Even before

overlaying by objectivations (mainly semantic classifications) which are socially
mediated and deposited linguistically in the subjective stock of knowledge, a sche-
matic context of tactile, olfactory, and utilitarian qualities is (in our example of a
seen object) fused through passive syntheses with the actually grasped visual form.
All these syntheses, including the appresentations of the type subjectively relevant
in each case, produce the unity of everyday objects, qualities, and events taken
for granted in the natural attitude. They cause the apparently simple occurrence of
these objects, qualities, and events in the course of lived experience. (Schütz and
Luckmann 1989, p. 2)
All this is far from being just an idealistic analysis. On the contrary, the human
others as well as other living beings, objects, physical processes and conditions,
and so on, and last but not least our bodies and their given, changing materiality
are each and all very basic conditions of processes of apperception (Schütz and
Luckmann 1989, p. 17). It is important to note here that this “happens to” the
individual in and via his/her embodied sensual experience rather than being pro-
duced by him or her by an act of will. Thus “being affected by X” can be consi-
dered a basic situated relation between a human being and its present situation.
Schütz, in a very precise way, discusses how the complexity and multiplicity of
sensatory events mostly occur below the level of conscious recognition and con-
ceptual representation. Nevertheless, they are deeply interwoven with intentional
considerations and relevance structures which we use to develop actions in situa-
tions. Here again, following Schütz and Luckmann (1989, p. 182–228), we can
distinguish between “imposed” relevances produced by some kind of “outside”
(like rain, or a bad smell) or “inside” materiality (like a pain) affecting our per-
ception, experience and action, and those “chosen ones” guiding our plans for
action until further correction is needed. To give an example of explicit rele-
vances: you may look at this text rather differently as a sociologist interested in
its arguments or an editor looking for minor or major faults of type-setting, or
someone just looking for a piece of paper for writing some notes. Nevertheless,
the shape of black and white, the texture, the smell, the letters might affect you in
ways beyond your current interest and even direct you to very different purposes.
Schütz’s example is that of entering a bedroom somewhere in a country where it
might be important to know if there is a rope under your bed, or a snake. The pre-
sence of an unclear, not yet defined object might be an important action problem
you have to deal with.
162 R. Keller
Consider the following famous quote by Marcel Proust, which nicely illust-
rates the different and complex elements which produce the situation of “being
affected” by some materiality5:
And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depres-
sing tomorrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a mor-
sel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my
palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing
that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something
isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. […] Whence could it have come
to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea
and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of
the same nature. Where did it come from? What did it mean? How could I seize and
apprehend it? […] Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being
must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, is trying to
follow it into my conscious mind. […] And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The
taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray
(because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good
morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in
her own cup of tea or tisane. (Proust 1981, p. 57–59)
First there is the description of a particular setting; then some event occurs.
A present artefact affects the author and he is trying to figure out what happens.
So a more or less systematic procedure of inquiry starts, and he ends up by identi-
fying the grounds for his being so affected by an embodied memory of his youth.
Do we see here an account of how some materiality (the Madeleine bakery,
a physical act) performs an agency towards a human being? Yes – and no. Yes,
because the actual presence of the new object introduces a quality of meaning
attribution into the situation which was not present before. No, because all we
have is the interpretation given by the observing and speaking author. As we
know from false memories, we cannot judge from his telling here and now about
some past presence of a similar object and its effects. We would need to ask other
people to confirm that past situation. All we have access to is the interpretation
of the given elements by the author – or, if we do not trust his interpretation, by
some outside observer (like myself, a sociologist). The very same situation can
therefore be addressed through a broad range of interpretive vocabularies which
each and all would offer a different account of what is actually going on. If an
5Ichoose this quote because Deleuze refers to it several times (see, for example, Deleuze
2000).
observer just states that this or that object has this or that agency in a given situ-
ation, he or she is performing interpretation, too, and not merely a naturalistic,
self-evident description. Who is the “self” in “self-evident,” after all?
Returning to Schütz, one major point has to be added here. Schütz talks
about the constitution of meaning in the human consciousness, about the ways
Blumer’s “interpretation” or Thomas and Thomas’s “definition of the situation”
actually happens. Into the processes described above of how human conscious-
ness is affected by its relations to an outside world (including its body and former
thoughts as “outside world”) Schütz introduces the idea of “types” or “inter-
pretive schemes” as elements of conscious reflection, indicating the presence
of some phenomenon in the embodied mind. Such a state of mind is, according
to Schütz, a particular state, as most of our actions and interactions happen just
below the level of conscious reflection, as ongoing performative accomplishments
produced by our body and its sensatory apparatus. Consider the situation of a
classroom lecture: your body performs sitting upright, distinguishing a situational
context with light, walls, people, some kind of desk or writing platform, sounds,
smells etc., while you try to concentrate upon what some speaker says (or on
what you need to buy later for your planned dinner party with friends). Such an
ongoing definition of situations is stabilized by common interaction. It would be
difficult for you to continue with your idea of a classroom situation if all the other
human beings present refer to it as a birthday party. And it is performed with all
the physical, social and ideational present stuff which then “affects” your proces-
ses of apperception. A “classroom situation” is itself what Schütz would call a
“type” or an “interpretive scheme.” Here is how the social enters in:
We shall call the process of ordering lived experience under schemes by means
of synthetic recognition ‘the interpretation of the lived experience,’ and we shall
include under this term the connection of a sign with that which it signifies. Inter-
pretation, then, is the referral of the unknown to the known, of that which is appre-
hended in the glance of attention to the schemes of experience. These schemes,
therefore, have a special function in the process of interpreting one’s own lived
experiences. They are the completed meaning-configurations that are present at hand
each time in the form of ‘what one knows’ or ‘what one already knew.’ They consist
of material that has already been organized under categories. To these schemes the
lived experiences are referred for interpretation as they occur. In this sense, schemes
of experience are interpretive schemes, and from now on let us call them such. The
interpretation of a sign through reference to a sign system is only a special case of
what we have in mind […]. (Schütz 1967, p. 84)
Such schemes of experience are historically produced, established and transfor-

med by human collectivities in their historically situated common actions towards
164 R. Keller
the world. They are parts of collective stocks of knowledge, which are stabilized
and transformed in encounters with problems of both individual and collective
action (cf. Schütz and Luckmann 1989). This not only includes types (signs)
full of connotations such as “table,” “chair,” “god,” “love,” “flood,” “mother”
and their related phenomena. It also includes what C. Wright Mills (1940) called
“vocabularies of motives” and Schütz labels “plans for action.” The social stocks
of knowledge deeply shape the way human beings perceive, that is, interpret the
situations they encounter – and the relevances imposed to them by some external
“agencies”:
It is clear that for certain problems a person’s stock of knowledge is more than
adequate and that for other situations he must improvise and extrapolate, but even
improvisation proceeds along typically possible lines and is restricted to the indi-
vidual’s imaginative possibilities. Those possibilities, in turn, are grounded in the
stock of knowledge at hand. Finally, the typifications which comprise the stock of
knowledge are generated out of a social structure. Here as everywhere, knowledge is
socially rooted, socially distributed, and socially informed. (Schütz 1973, p. XXVII)
For Schütz, the individual’s articulation of the definition of a situation through an

interpretive scheme is based upon different kinds of signs – signs given and signs
given off. He therefore elaborates a complex theory of signs, distinguishing bet-
ween marks, indications, signs in the proper sense (like letters/words, oral/writ-
ten language, iconic signs) and symbols. The realized presence of some material
object and its qualities in the human mind is based on a process of apperception
which itself is affected by the signs “given off” or emitted by some phenomenon,
such as a color (red), a certain form (ball-like), size and texture. Our eyes only
perceive a front, but our embodied mind envisions the full presence of a complete
object. Let’s call it an apple. Such an object is not an isolated entity:
Each object is an object within a field; each experience carries along its horizon;
both belong to an order of a particular style. The physical object, for example, is
interconnected with all the other objects of Nature, present, past, and future, by spa-
tial, temporal, and causal relations, whose sum-total constitutes the order of physical
Nature. (Schütz 1973, p. 298–299)
The interpretive schemes we use to transform our embodied experiences of mate-

rial, social and ideational “objects” into conscious reflection, and the way we
use such schemes to act and to communicate, are elements of “universes of dis-
course” (Schütz 1973, p. 110) such as a scientific discipline which establishes, for
example, a particular “order of things” (Michel Foucault). Such universes of dis-
course profoundly shape our usages of signs and our ways of (inter)acting.
4 Beyond New Materialism? Materiality

in Sociology of Knowledge Based Discourse
Research
In his first successful major book, “The order of things,” Michel Foucault
(1966/2001) analysed historical discursive formations of scientific knowledge. In
many other books he followed discursive practices and objects (including archi-
tecture, torture, prisons, medical instruments) through historical settings and was
interested in their interwovenness. The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to
Discourse (SKAD) follows Foucault in this regard, and also adds important ele-
ments from the interpretive paradigm. It considers the presence to us of the mate-
rial as being the result of the historical interplay between its “pure” presence, and
the social relations of knowledge and politics of knowledge, power/knowledge-
regimes which provide us with interpretations of such imposed, performed or
produced conditions of existence in the worlds humans must deal with. A large
number of discourse studies deal with how discourses shape physical materiality
and are themselves shaped by such materiality, like garbage, shale gas, nuclear
energy, floods, bodies and so on (cf. contributions in Keller et al. 2018).
Consider the case of household waste examined in Keller (2009). The visual
and olfactory presence of household waste in the 1960s, resulting from a then
new post-war level of wealth and new patterns of production and consumption
in both France and Germany, became catalytic events for the re-emergence of
discursive conflicts about goods, consumption, waste disposal, incineration,
plastics and the like. New laws and regulations were made; new technologies of
waste treatment were researched and realized. Health risks from incineration and
disposal sites became discursively acknowledged from the bottom up, and were
then transformed again into new technologies, including new containers for waste
separation, markers on products, waste transportation across oceans, and so on.
Thus a discourse study about household waste is a study about the interwoven-
ness of materiality and symbolic orderings or discursive constructions of reality.
The very same argument holds true for ongoing studies on shale gas and
hydraulic fracturing, or energy transition. Materiality comes intensely into play
here, for example in the promise of shale gas exploitation. But again, as noted
earlier, it is not some un-interpreted materiality accessible by itself. We always
deal with interpreted materiality. Thus a promise of large shale gas reserves
might be proven wrong when actors seek for more evidence. Discursive meaning-
making is not outside or beyond the material. It is how the material becomes pre-
sent for us, either imposing its presence (as in a catastrophe) or being produced
in its presence (as in the development of a new technology). Discourse research
does not need a particular “new” ontonlogy and epistemology. Instead, it can
166 R. Keller
make use of the toolbox of interpretive research and discourse studies. Materiality
already comes into play here in several ways:
• As physical processes which become discursive events, that is as contested

stakes in struggles for the definition of a collective situation (like in a reactor
catastrophe);
• as the referred-to objects of discursive structuring and discursive construction
of reality (as in epistemic cultures);
• as resources or infrastructures of discourse production, including practices,
bodies (people), physical resources (like computers, paper, email, conference
rooms, inscription or measuring devices, experimental designs); and
• as artefacts and means of intervention of discourses into the world, produced
in order to perform an effect upon some situation of intervention.
Discourses can be understood as material social processes of creation, stabiliza-

tion and change of social realities, knowledge stocks and knowledge policies. As
forms and processes of sign-based statement production, they require a material
infrastructure: speaking or writing bodies, sound waves, motion executions, opti-
cal phenomena, paper and the materials necessary for the infrastructures of text
production and distribution, or framework conditions for the execution of com-
munications. In this sense, every discursive practice of performing statements is
dependent on material carriers for its realization. Discursive processes themsel-
ves also generate phenomena, such as arrangements, laws, measurement proce-
dures and measuring instruments, reports, objects of diverse kinds, through which
discourses or their carriers intervene in worldly events. In the first case we can
speak of discourse production dispositives (or infrastructures); in the second case
of discursive world intervention dispositives (or infrastructures) (cf. Keller 2010;
Keller 2019). Discourse is in itself a thoroughly serial, symbolic and material
event that produces meaning.
Discourses also refer in another way to the materiality of the real. For dis-
courses process whole worlds (or specific excerpts from worlds) in their execut-
ion. Discourses are discourses about or of something. They deal with problems of
interpretation and action in the form of the production, objectification and de-ob-
jectification of knowledge (in the broad sense of the sociological understanding
of knowledge). Discourses “about” nature classify, represent, order and connect
material units through their references (such as the emphasis on similarities, clas-
sification in evolutionary genealogies, etc.), which they produce for us through
their organization of specific entities from the otherwise senseless chaos of the
world. Discourses can also fail because of the resistance and intervention of the
real, as history tells us again and again – resistances and interventions which have
to be interpreted to become elements of defined situations.
Discourses are amongst the main processes of mediation between materialities
and social collectives in contemporary societies – whether it is about diesel vehic-
les, air pollution, climate change or migration movements. Discursive processes
create the realities of societies – along the corridors of interpretation – which
bring different kinds of materialities into these processes.
In sum, I agree with Kalthoff, Cress and Röhl (2016), that materiality is a
challenge to contemporary social and cultural sciences. And as in my reading of
their argument, I believe sociology, among other disciplinces, should focus more
on how different kinds of materiality shape situations and social processes. New
materialism is correct in pointing to neglects in the past. But sociology does
not need a completely new metaphysics, ontology and epistemology in order to
address materialities in their relations to the social. It can make use of its rich
toolbox of theories, concepts and methods to address the questions discussed to
date. And it may also need some new concepts and methods. But creating a new
Deleuzian science would be something completely different – if it is possible at
all. While some might be tempted by such an adventure, others might patiently
and with passion invest in investigations into the “social life of things” (Appadu-
rai 1986) without the need to get rid of the discipline’s rich stocks of knowledge.
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Part V
Algorithmic Culture and Doing Science
From Hardware to Software to Runtime:
The Politics of (at Least) Three Digital
Materialities
Jan-Hendrik Passoth
1 Material Turns and the Test Case of Digital

Transformations
It1 does seem a bit strange: conceptually, we occupy ourselves with the return of
things, with nature/culture, with materiality; in practice, however, things receive
digital upgrades that let us doubt the immediate materiality of things. Electronic
folders carry the reference to their paper version in name only or in the visual imi-
tation of index cards; the quality control, maintenance and monitoring of security
of production facilities of the “factory of the future” are only oriented towards
machinery made of steel and silicon in the extreme cases of failure and shut down.
In most other cases, they are focused on sensor data, measured values and simu-
lated scenarios of potential states of their machinery. The selection and curation
of playlists for on air as well as for online radios hardly has anything to do with
sound, atmosphere or mood, but rather with the automatic analysis of instrumen-
tation, sound spectrum and density of the rhythm profile of digitized recordings.
The return of things (Balke 2011), the “material turn” (Mukerji 2015) and the new
materialisms (Bennett 2010; Bryant et al. 2011; Coole and Frost 2010; van der
Tuin and Dolphijn 2012) entail, sometimes subliminally, sometimes explicitly, the
1This contribution is a translated, revised and updated version of “Hardware, Software,

Runtime. Das Politische der (zumindest) dreifachen Materialität des Digitalen,” Behemoth.
A Journal on Civilisation 10 (1): 57–73.
J.-H. Passoth () 
Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany
E-Mail: jan.passoth@tum.de
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_9
174 J.-H. Passoth
hope to finally detach the dematerialized heuristics, methods and theories in dif-
ferent humanities and social sciences from their one-sided focus on discourses,
signs, meaning, and sense. Instead, they are to be oriented more concretely, practi-
cally, technically, more physically and thus more materially. In the case of digital
phenomena, however, this appears to be a kind of Lacanian quest for the real, for
that “which absolutely resists symbolization” (Lacan 1978, p. 89) and “which one
can impossibly speak” (Lacan 1977, p. 14, cited in Fink 2013, p. 120).
A contribution taking this observation as a starting point could focus on
searching for this hope in the diverse variations of new materialisms and to test
it with respect to its plausibility and connectivity to heuristics, methodological
approaches and concepts for empirical research. But compared to the history of
qualitative, understanding, reconstructing and interpreting methods and even
more so the social and cultural theoretical repertoires of their justification and
legitimation, this would not only be an unfair exhibition fight between sociology
and new materialisms: It would rather lead to describing a situation in which new
materialisms simply cannot keep pace or to having to give credit heuristically and
to systematically search for a connection to old methodological debates. Both
would not be a particularly exciting endeavor. I will therefore start this paper by
assuming that the materiality of digital transformations only seems to be a contra-
diction: on the contrary, it is the increasing obviousness of digitally modified situ-
ations – synthetic situations, to frame it in Knorr Cetina’s (2009) terms – which
reminds us of the urgent need to develop a theoretical, heuristic and methodologi-
cal repertoire that makes the practice of modifying things and the material modifi-
cation of practice accessible to social and cultural research. Precisely the test case
“digital transformations,” thus my thesis, is well suited to at least test such a rep-
ertoire. This is so because here the focus on the network, the content of monitors
and interfaces is replaced by a focus on the practice of wiring and of the mainte-
nance of hardware, programming and installation of software as well as compila-
tion, translation and overdrawing of data types and code-fragments. This focus
on the diverse materialities of the digital enables empirical opportunities but also
requires the modification of conceptions and methodological approaches.
For this purpose, I will sketch out three of these modifications in this paper.
The three nouns forming the title of this contribution illustrate the three modi-
fications: a theoretical, heuristic and methodological repertoire for describing
digital phenomena requires first a focus on the obvious materiality of hardware,
realized in server rooms and silicon chips as well as in the history of rare earths
that accompanies the course of semiconductor technology; second, a focus on
the concrete materiality of software which is realized in the specific form of
From Hardware to Software to Runtime … 175
lines of codes and XML formats; third, however, it needs a focus on the diversity
and variability of runtime-materiality: simulated situations that are based on the
extreme variation of conditions as well as flexible and not always clearly iden-
tifiable changes of framework conditions of physical models, which Manovich
(2002) has worked out using the case of digital images and which no longer
belong to the basic ingredients of video games only. In these three cases, the
materiality of digital transformations does not refer to its complex and distributed
“as such” and its ineluctable authenticity. The (at least) threefold materiality of
digital transformations is the effect of a number of strategies and policies of its
materialization, of ontological politics of installation, maintenance and disman-
tling of digital infrastructures of hardware, software and practice.
The addition of the words “at least” in brackets in the title should be consid-
ered as a methodological precautionary measure as well as an indication that the
suggested heuristic cannot be generalized theoretically. It merely represents a pos-
sibility of constructing an empirical and political analytics. It makes use of a dif-
ferentiation (between hard and software) that is initially derived from the case of
digital transformations and applied in categories of engineering sciences which
is not uncommon in media theory discourse. The addition of an operative-per-
formative third item (runtime) entails an intervention in this discourse as well as
a departure from categories of engineering sciences to categories of engineering
practice. The “at least” and the resulting trinity of the materiality of the digital
is thus not a conceptual suggestion of a classification but the result of a meth-
odological approach that is interested in the multiple ontological politics of digi-
tal transformations. It is in itself an attempt to politically use new materialisms
in order to overcome (in the long term) both the predominance of the theoretical
paradigm of interpretive sociology that has prevailed since Kittler, and the media-
materialistic paradigm of (German) media studies. This then serves the purpose of
finding indications and points of entry for political participation of the social and
cultural sciences in the design of the future present. In the following, I will there-
fore first sketch out these (at least) three (re-) discoveries of the materiality of the
digital for a social science and media studies vocabulary. Based on observations
made in an ethnographic project,2 in which we accompanied work in mechanical
2The observations described here are not oriented towards the ethnographic detail of the
work in and with engineering sciences but towards the interesting and practically solvable
questions regarding the installation of such a project, where, in work meetings of the EU
H2020 project IMPROVE (http://www.improve-vfof.eu), digitization discourse, engineer-
ing sciences modelling and industrial practice met.
176 J.-H. Passoth
engineering and industry automation on data–based maintenance and alarm sys-

tems and fitting interfaces, I will then point out some empirical steps that can be
used with the heuristic to render concrete materializations of the digital accessible
for research. Up to then, concepts of materiality will only be mentioned indirectly.
I will therefore turn to selected theoretical and heuristic variations of new materi-
alisms in order to establish how they can contribute to a better understanding of
the political in precisely this ontological politics. In this context, I will differenti-
ate between the political materialism of Latour and the new materialism of Barad.
While they share a number of common assumptions and conceptual sources, their
positions and perspectives with respect to issues of research and political inter-
vention in the state of the present could not be further apart. In a final step I will
return to the test case and ask about opportunities and limitations regarding the
politicization of the materialities of digital transformations.
2 Three (Re-) Discoveries of the Materiality

of Digital Transformations
The materiality of digital transformations is currently receiving more and more

attention not only from studies in the closer context of science and technology
studies (on information and communication technologies and on knowledge and
science infrastructures). It is no coincidence that the first issue of the journal Dig-
ital Culture and Society (2015) – which originated from an initiative in German
media theory to strengthen the international and interdisciplinary character of a
“digital media studies” field – was dedicated to “Digital Material/ism.” Accord-
ing to the editors, there are two reasons for the recent (re-) discovery of problems
of materiality by media studies: on the one hand, the works of Latour, Stengers
and their new “ancestors” (Tarde, Whitehead, Deleuze, Simondon, to name a few)
provide opportunities to finally eradicate the long treasured but also long attacked
myth of the virtual from the repertoire of describing and interpreting the digital
(Hayles 1999, 2012); on the other hand, it also has to do with the fact that the
long productive as well as hindering self-referentiality of media studies “after
Kittler” (Ikoniadou and Wilson 2015) has developed into an internationally acces-
sible direction of research in media analysis open to irritation (Geoghegan 2013;
Kittler and Gumbrecht 2013; Sale et al. 2015).
Aside from the theoretical references – especially the studies on Deleuze by
Delanda (2006) or Braidotti (1994, 2013) play a role here – particularly the look
“‘behind the screen’ and to dynamics which happen before and after media’s rep-
resentative societal function” (Reichert and Richterlich 2015, p. 8) is suitable for
a research perspective on integrated circuits following Kittler as well as for an

analysis of media and data production, distribution, logistics and processing that
is explicitly not oriented toward media content, organizational forms and sym-
bolic representations. The latter, for example, can be traced back to Matthew Full-
er’s media ecological perspective (Fuller 2005) which unfolded in the analysis of
a London Pirate Radio Initiative and which mapped “technologies such as trans-
mitters, studio sites, records, dub plates and participants’ modes of operation”
(Reichert and Richterlich 2015, p. 9) in their operationality and interdependence.
It has its particular point of culmination in Parikka’s works (Machines, noise, and
some media archaeology – the subtitle of his website is an appropriate summary)
whose suggestion for a “new materialism as media theory” (Parrika 2012, p. 98)
has found its special expression in A Geology of Media (Parrika 2015). Parikka
suggests to focus the empirical and conceptual analysis of (digital) media on the
interaction of their material elements – hardware, in the sense of Kittler’s “there
is no software” (“Es gibt keine Software”) (1993, p. 225–242) – “before and after
they are used as functional, representative objects” (Reichert and Richterlich
2015, p. 10). Media theory and history then becomes a history of rare earths,
a mapping of the interventions in the rocks, rivers and oceans as well as a pro-
cessing of electronic waste and political ecology of recycling and accumulat-
ing circuit boards, plastic items and precious metals. The first (re-) discovery of
the materialities of the digital – exemplified by the hardware in the title of this
article – consists of focusing on the substantial conditions for realizing digital
phenomena: cables, switches, screens, circuits, transistors, broken solder joints,
silicon and germanium. Without these things there would be nothing digital, and
the reasons for the concrete design/development that digital phenomena can have
and do have for us are to be found in the composition and configuration of dif-
ferent hardware. The digital collapses if we, in the sense of those final words
we ascribe to Kittler following the obituary of the London Review of Books,3
“switch off all apparatuses.”
The focus on hardware, however, has been vehemently criticized in the past
10 years and disputed in particular for the current as well as digital transforma-
tions of the 1970s and 1980s. For example, Manovich’s use of Kittler’s “There
is no software” as “There is only software” in his critique regarding the debate
about the newness of “new media” (which ironically does not deal with Kittler’s
argument at all) is based on the assumption that “while we are indeed ‘being
3http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/11/09/tom-mccarthy/kittler-and-the-sirens/.
178 J.-H. Passoth
digital,’ the actual forms of this ‘being’ come from software” (Manovich 2013,
p. 149). Since Fuller’s attempt to establish Manovich’s idea of “software studies”
as a field by means of a lexicon (Fuller 2008), the different levels of software –
e.g., programs, formats, platforms, data and algorithms – have each been trans-
ferred into a respective individual form of “studies” so that today, we not only
speak of “software studies” but also of “critical code studies” (Berry 2011; Lessig
1999), “platform studies” (Bogost 2012; Montfort and Bogost 2009) or “data
studies” (Beer and Burrows 2013) as belonging to the repertoire of digital mate-
rialisms. Wendy Chun’s “Programmed Visions” (Chun 2011) is certainly one of
the most interesting works in this context. It is based on an in-depth and precise
analysis of the design of languages such as FORTRAN or C++ and systems like
UNIX, that takes the materiality of “Sourcery and Source Code” (thus the title of
the first chapter) as a starting point for a detailed examination of software-spe-
cific visibilities and invisibilities. Her analysis precisely constitutes the digital’s
effect of immateriality as a result of these digital materialities. “Code is a fetish”
(Chun 2011, p. 50): it is, at the same time, the expression of a kind of magical
view toward immateriality and the unreal effect of software “that we ‘primitive
folk’ worship” (Chun 2011, p. 50). Its effectiveness and performativity, however,
lies in the materiality of the “social and machinic rituals” (ibid.). The second (re-)
discovery of the materiality of the digital, exemplified by software, consists of
emphasizing that, especially in the context of digital phenomena, their apparent
immateriality, symbolic dimension, and meaning depend on the concrete materi-
ality of their construction, programming and operability. With the next update, the
next version, the digital is a different one but still remains the same (Chun 2016).
Finally, and in view of the growth of available and disposed data and the
newly won ability to even calculate with heterogeneous, unclean, incomplete,
imprecise data – thus in the course of those developments that are negoti-
ated in the technological-political discourse under the magical term “Big Data”
(Boellstorff 2013; Kitchin 2014; Reichert 2014) – I find a third (re-) discovery
of the materiality of the digital to be appropriate. I called it “runtime” in the
title, although that may be a strong abbreviation, and use that notion to focus
on the modeling and parametrizable use of materiality within software. It con-
tains models of swarm behavior or particle movements that are being used for
the simulation of (not coincidental but) complex connected factors in e.g., finan-
cial mathematics and search algorithms. Moreover, it extends up to the modeling
of muscular movements, gravitation or strength of materials that makes orien-
tation in video games seem so real. That these are not representations of, so to
say, “material materiality” becomes already apparent if one looks at the existing
literature on the epistemic practice of modeling (Morgan 2009; Petersen 2000;
Sismondo 1999). In his analysis of filter- and level architecture in image editing
programs like Photoshop, Manovich pointed out that, even though a wave-filter is
basically designed according to physical models of wavelike movements, its para-
metrized application leads to computed impossibilities (Manovich 2013, p. 124–
146): Overlaps between multiple wavelike movements that can never occur in
water or sand, for example. A particularly impressive case, which clearly shows
the artificiality of this manipulable materiality, is the transformation of the game
principle of so-called ego-shooters to augmented reality games such as those on
Facebook’s oculus rift or on Google’s cardboard. While the visual modifications
of the camera recorded surrounding show similarities to the calculated worlds of
the well-known games, it soon becomes apparent that a player with an organic
body and wearing data glasses cannot run as fast, squat as low or jump as far as
her avatars in worlds like Halflife or Counterstrike.
3 Empirical Incisions Through the Materialities

of the Digital
Hardware, software, runtime – of course, these are categories that blur empiri-
cally, especially if we look at Embedded Systems or Cyber-Physical Systems. At
least the range and openness of the categories change, if chips in passports and
industrial presses belong to hardware, if program routines are solidly soldered in
systems, if the conditions of runtime depend on local conditions due to the mobil-
ity and combinability of hardware and software. The argument I try to unfold
here is then strengthened rather than limited. The threefold (re-) discovery of the
materialization of the digital shows that the new turn(s) to the materiality of the
digital enables three different ways of empirical research and requires the modifi-
cation of conceptions and methodological approaches.
In the case of hardware (as the first (re-) discovery of the materiality of the
digital), the practice of selection, set up, configuration, as well as maintenance
of existing equipment can be traced empirically. However, it is also possible, in
the sense of a post-Kittlerian “technological analysis,” to take a closer look at the
creation, modification and application of the construction plans, the mathematical
basics, electro-technological models and the conceptual papers and hypotheses.
If we, for example, focus on the materialities of the digital in a case of “industry
4.0” (Hirsch-Kreinsen 2010, 2014) strongly promoted by economic and science
policy, then the first empirical incision could be made on the level of modification
of the facilities of automated production technology. The basic idea that a produc-
tion line can be easily supplemented by sensors and measuring technology (so that
180 J.-H. Passoth
information about the respective conditions of the line can be used for issues con-
cerning future quality assurance or maintenance) may seem simple. Such a step,
however, would mean that existing lines would have to be upgraded with storage
technologies or interfaces, solely to check the mathematical models of the produc-
tion process on which potential simulations could later build. Or even more simple:
an analysis of an error memory of a facility with an elaborated Machine Learning
approach can already fail because of the fact that it has been operated since the
1990s and the used Flash storage devices can only record few minutes of log data.
In the case of software (the second (re-) discovery of the materiality of the
digital), the empirical focus is on the practice of programming, the installation
and configuration of software packages, the adaptation of existing systems, for-
mats and approaches such as documenting, collection and evaluating data as well
as on program code, data formats and descriptions of algorithms in so-called
pseudo-codes, which are used for reasons of orientation by those involved. The
often lauded blending of information technology and production technology,
which drives the current “industry 4.0” hype, also has to do with the fact that
in the case of a digital upgrade of industrial facilities, the familiar direction of
developing program codes is practically turned around: in the past decade, in soft-
ware development, the linear sequential design of the so-called waterfall model,
from conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing, deployment
and maintenance, has been transformed into an iterative approach that is oriented
along operating prototypes. Industrial facilities, however, cannot be developed
nor operated in this way. A partly operable prototype for software can be tested in
Alpha or Beta tests for errors and can be iteratively developed further until offi-
cial release. In the case of a production facility however, already one minute of
erroneous production can cause vast amounts of scrap. Thus, if the error memory
does not suffice to provide a statistically significant amount of error patterns with
which the mathematical models for an adaptive quality control can be generated,
the development technologies can only orient themselves along the concrete pos-
sibilities of the company and the modification of production technology – one can
hardly speak of a fusion here.
In the case of runtime as the third (re-) discovery of the materiality of the
digital, the focus needs to be on software and hardware in the context of appli-
cation – in the development of prototypes, cases of application or situations
of testing and evaluating. The “factory of the future” already exists, especially
beyond the visions of the future, the agenda of technology policy and horror sce-
narios of the automation of work which have now been debated for a couple of
years. It already exists in the framework of demonstrators and prototypes that are
provided by academic and non-academic projects in research and development.
It already exists at those interfaces that are installed at facilities of “Industry 3.0”
for the development of automation and intelligent systems for alarm-monitoring,
for the simulation of plant conditions and for the development of interfaces that
enable visual access to the results of evaluations of runtime on different levels.
They also exist in prototypes for platforms of decentralized steering and linking
within and between production locations which are currently being tested and
gradually extended. They can be used to empirically analyze which role the prac-
tical application and systematic parametrization of different types of models –
physical models, models of material characteristics, models of process technol-
ogy – play for operability and runtime of the facilities and which test corridors
and options are realized for their adjustment. In this context, the empirical focus
is always on different concrete materialities of the digital, which, to generalize
Wendy Chun’s argument, as a result of their interaction are responsible for the
emergence and effectiveness of the immateriality of the digital – the surfaces,
symbols, images, the virtual reality.
4 Materialisms, Ontologies, and Modes

of Existence
In her introduction of the term, Braidotti summarized the genealogy of the

“new materialism” as “Descartes’ nightmare, Spinoza’s hope, Nietzsche’s com-
plaint, Freud’s obsession, Lacan’s favorite fantasy” (Braidotti 2000, p. 159). Her
approach and that of DeLanda and Barad toward “new materialisms” is thus in
line with Althusser, Foucault and Deleuze. This line of argument, in which Braid-
otti places the version of new materialistic positions (of which Barad has become
a figurehead), is a gradual departure from classic materialistic argumentations.
The latter, thus the assumption, had derived their critical and obviously political
implications from a social science perspective inspired by Marx’ differentiation
between base and superstructure. Even though one would not do justice to these
works, one could then argue that, with reference to the line from old to new mate-
rialisms, the first step from Marx to Althusser was about reconceptualizing the dif-
ferentiation between materiality and practice, on the one hand, and ideology and
discourse, on the other. This grants the ideological as well as epistemic practice
via Lacan a place on the preferred side of the differentiation. It is this differentia-
tion between ideology and science (in addition to politics and economics) as prac-
tice that collapses in Foucault’s analysis of power/knowledge and in discourse.
Deleuze’s “differential ontology” (2003, p. 23) (or: presence and immanence)
is therefore the bridge for new materialisms, such as those of Delanda and Barad,
182 J.-H. Passoth
to find a way “from Foucault after Foucault” (Massumi 2009, p. 158): “After
so much emphasis on the linguistic and the cultural, an ontology of presence
replaces textual or other deconstruction” (Braidotti 2012, p. 171). For Barad,
even the later works of Foucault are located too much in a “traditional humanist
orbit” (Barad 2007, p. 235) in order to develop an adequate position with respect
to materiality of power. This apparent deficit is attributed especially to Foucault’s
orientation to life, for example, in the writings on biopolitics, orientation toward
the human as in the archeology of knowledge and toward the body as in the anal-
ysis of technologies of the self. The result is, according to Barad, that an alterna-
tive to western modern epistemology and ontology, which with the separation of
culture and nature does not necessarily entail a separation of active and passive
and of capable of acting and not capable of acting, is not being provided. If there
is anything that unites the different approaches to new materialisms aside from
the common reference to the line of ancestors from Althusser to Deleuze, it is the
orientation toward this task of creating an alternative foundation of western epis-
temology and ontology. It is first of all an academic and ethical but not a political
project which considers itself as much more than a conceptual intervention.
As much as Barad (2003, 2007) fights to free materiality from its role as pas-
sive, silent and subservient to insight that was imposed on it by the powerful epis-
temologies of Kant and Descartes up to Heisenberg and Hacking, the resulting
“ethico-onto-epistemology – an appreciation of the intertwining of ethics, know-
ing, and being” (Barad 2007, p. 185) is hardly diagnostic, analytical or critical. Or,
put more mildly: the focus on “intra-action” (instead of interaction, which requires
the connected and interacting elements instead of determining them), on “phenom-
ena” (instead of entities, actors or artefacts) or on toppling the modern conceptual
preference of a special materiality (namely, that of the human body, which can still
be found even in theories of practice that are based on Heidegger or Wittgenstein),
helps to get rid of a number of problematic assumptions, but it does not help in
creating an alternative political analytics. Reading a work by Niels Bohr focus-
ing on ontology, one reaches a fascinating position in which the approach to, the
production of and the insight into the world cannot be separated but have always
been the effect of the configuration of an “apparatus.” The resulting insight into
the diverse “entanglements” may even be turned into an ethics of responsibility
for the material connectedness between us and the things, but it does not help us
to “pass from one situation to another” (Latour 2013b, p. 338). Instead of work on
a new, adequate and fundamental ontology, epistemology or ethics, rather an onto-
logical modesty, epistemological pragmatism and sensibility for the different and
efficacious politics that restructure our world is necessary in this context.
“Something has happened to materialism” (Latour 2007, p. 138) Latour stated

in a short discussion paper in 2007. Even if the question that is also the title of the
paper – “Can we get our materialism back, please?” – is primarily aimed at sci-
ence and technology studies, it also contains a larger hope: the confusions of the
endless debates about “materiality” and its role with reference to insight, spirit,
language and the diverse dualistic counter terms as such that have emerged in the
history of philosophy since Descartes could turn out to be mock fights, surface
effects and defense reactions of the “constitution of modernity” (Latour 1993).
The line of the ancestors, which leads from old to new materialisms, can also be
constructed differently than from Marx to Althusser and from there to Foucault
and Deleuze. An alternative line crosses this one from Descartes and Hume to
Whitehead and Deleuze and from there across and beyond the different incarna-
tions of the actor-network theory (ANT). Combined with the anthropology of
Augé, Deleuze is the starting point for ANTs way into the laboratory at the end of
the 1970s (cf. Latour 2013a) and from there to the cosmopolitical ecology.
The idea of a material world – the “res extensa” of Descartes – was invented
by the moderns to at the same time make it impossible – it, too, always was a
political project. Under the rubric of “material” we conflated two different things:
the ways in which we organize our knowledge about things and the ways in
which the things continue in their existence. This political program has enabled
us, the moderns to exclude things, nature, the world, and to understand everything
that is important to us – law, science, politics – as domains of mere talk. This,
however, leaves us ill prepared for the ecological, political, and scientific chal-
lenges that lie ahead. If we want to change this, we then finally do not need a way
to take up the “res extensa” in our understanding of law, science, and politics.
What we need is a political materialism that allows us to “start over and extend/
suspend or reduce the circle” (Latour 2013b, p. 487). Who or what is involved
why, who or what has to stay outside and which procedures, fights and detours
are intended or have to be fought for and established?
The political of this political materialism then does not lie in the area of what
Bröckling and Feustel called a “territorial determination of the political” (“ter-
ritoriale Bestimmung des Politischen”) (2010, p. 10): state, administration,
authority, border control, military and their role for the state of the present as
it is. Neither is the political to be found in a specific form of behavior that was
characterized by Max Weber as the “strong and slow boring of hard boards,”
taking “both passion and perspective” (“starkes langsames Bohren von harten
Brettern mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß” (1994, p. 88, translated by Gerth and
Mills 1946)). The political in the sense of a political materialism consists of the
184 J.-H. Passoth
e nabling and unfolding of a controversy, a discussion about what one can under-
stand with R ancière (2008, p. 13) as the “constitution of a specific space of
experience in which certain objects are determined as being communal and cer-
tain subjects are considered capable to define these objects and to argue about
them” (“die Verfassung eines spezifischen Erfahrungsraums, in dem bestimmte
Objekte als gemeinsam gesetzt sind und bestimmte Subjekte als fähig angesehen
werden, diese Objekte zu bestimmen und über sie zu argumentieren,” own trans-
lation). With Rancière, the political is always present in its effects but a rarity as
an event: “There are indeed two ways to count the parts of the community. The
first only knows real parts, the actual groups that are determined by differences in
descent, function and locations that constitute the social body. The second moreo-
ver names an accounting of the unaccounted (or a part of those of no account)
that disturbs the usual calculation in its entirety. I suggest calling the first police,
and the second politics” (“Tatsächlich gibt es zwei Arten, die Teile der Gemein-
schaft zu zählen. Die erste kennt nur reale Teile, die tatsächlichen Gruppen, die
von den Unterschieden der Herkunft, der Funktionen und der Plätze bestimmt
werden, die den Sozialkörper konstituieren. Die zweite benennt darüber hinaus
ein Aufrechnen der Unberechneten (oder einen Teil der Anteillosen), das/der die
gängige Berechnung in ihrer Gesamtheit stört. Ich schlage vor, die erste Polizei,
die zweite Politik zu nennen.” (Rancière 2000, p. 106), own translation).
In the territorial, action-oriented and consensual determinations of the political
it is always the ensemble of discovered solutions and the operable, ordering appa-
ratus of inclusion and exclusion – it is always only police. In contrast, it is poli-
tics in the rare moments where the order breaks up, in the controversies and fights
in which facts become objects of dispute (Latour 2004) and in which it becomes
unclear who should be on whose side for what reason. The political is the unusual
condition in which the arrangement of the already acknowledged participants is
shaken up and rearranged and where also those people enter the discourse whose
contributions have otherwise been labeled as unfitting, loud, annoying noise – or
as irrelevant talk that ought to be silenced.
In the sense of a political materialism, and to put it with Latour’s determi-
nation of the mode of existence POL: “start over and extend/suspend or reduce
the Circle” (Latour 2013b, p. 487). According to Latour, “one has to pass from
one situation to another, and then come back and start everything, everything, all
over again in a different form” (Latour 2013b, p. 338). Already the “Parliament
of things” and “Pandora’s hope” were expressions of such a search for a politi-
cal materialism in this sense. There are legitimate criticisms that the suggested
approaches of determining and re-determining our collectives in the sense of a
kind of parliamentary solution or in the sense of an agora in which researchers,
administrators, moralizers and others appear as advocates of the “there-being

of a share of those who hold no share” (“Dasein dieses Anteils der Anteillosen”
(Rancière 2002, p. 22), own translation) are in fact elitist, expertocratic and tech-
nocratic machineries. In her work on the early expressions of a quest for a politi-
cal materialism, Gesa Lindemann (2011) asked what such an analysis would say
about those people that flee via Africa and the Balkans to Europe and which part
of the composition of the collectives would be attributed to the Mediterranean and
the Atlantic. The so-called “summer of migration” has shown that the camps at
the borders of Europe have not only become “waiting rooms in which proposi-
tions pass the time until they are readmitted to the procedure” (Lindemann 2011,
p. 107) but a “Migration Machine” (Dijstelbloom et al. 2011) of selecting and
sorting and bureaucratic and technical processing of fear, suffering and flight. It
is therefore the focus of such analyses that support the establishment of police in
order to make politics possible.
Since the “modes of existence” (Latour 2013b) at the latest, it has become
apparent that a further development of the Actor–Network–Theory particularly in
its materialism calls for an engaged and empirical focus on multiple, practically
relevant ontologies and their political orientation. In the sense of Latour, the rea-
sons for this lie especially in the ecological crises and cosmopolitical catastro-
phes towards which we are headed without such a focus: climate, global warming,
Anthropocene are effects of ontological politics that require material as well as
political responses. But this empirical and engaged perspective towards political
materialism can be abstracted and thus scaled up or down with reference to other
controversies. Research in the social and cultural sciences in this sense can and
needs to empirically deal with the different, intertwined materialities that are newly
realized again and again and search for possibilities of their re-politicization.
5 Politics of the Materialization of the Digital
The materialities of hardware, software and runtime are not, but are being pro-
duced, installed, configured, defended, fought against, redesigned and recycled:
the heuristics of the at least threefold materiality of the digital is oriented not
towards essence but towards existence – towards how something emerges, stands
out, exists (“existere”), not towards how something is (“essentia”). Such an orien-
tation, that is the consequence of the above described understanding of the politi-
cal, is neither interested in the mere description of an existing condition nor in
the replacement of that condition by another, more desired, and more legitimate
condition. Politicization does not consist of knowing better as to how the different
186 J.-H. Passoth
materialities of the digital should be. Admittedly, with regard to the exploitation
of resources for the production of entertainment electronics or the exploitation
of global inequalities in outsourcing unwanted jobs to the slums of Southeast
Asia, this is difficult. But the trick must be to remain concrete, both in the analy-
sis as well as in the attempts of (political) intervention. Concrete is derived from
“contretus,” perfect passive participle of “concrescere” (grow together, become
denser). It is no accident that this is also a word used in English for the construc-
tion material we all know. This is more than just a pun. As anyone who has mixed
concrete before knows, for the components – sand, cement, water – to stick and
hold depends on the mixing itself, not on calculation. It does not suffice to merely
throw everything together. Concrete is product and process; it is of no use if it is
hastily mixed and clotted up. It is only useful if it is concrete.
A concrete understanding of the materiality of the digital is one that real-
izes it as diverse, connected and in different ways being in conflicts and antag-
onisms. A concrete understanding of the materiality of the digital is therefore a
political understanding. It does not only refer to the traditional territory of poli-
tics (or police, as in the sense of Rancière), thus not only to state, administration,
bureaucracy, military, war. Because even if a large part of our digital technologies
can historically be traced back to such a territory of the political, the presence
of the political of the digital’s materiality depends on other controversies and on
other contexts. A political understanding of the materiality of the digital is also
not oriented towards certain forms of behavior and certain political fields such
as internet policy, data protection movements and surveillance practice. These
are important issues to which socio-technical answers have yet to be found, but
the political of the digital’s materiality is much more common and much more
uncommon at the same time.
A concrete understanding of the materiality of the digital starts with empiri-
cal cases of the role of hardware, software and runtime and the practice of their
development, configuration and application. It develops its analytical and politi-
cal potential from there. If we speak of digital transformations, we are dealing
with precisely these changes from one situation to another and the question how
and in what concrete way already installed, materially configured conditions can
be reconfigured, dismantled or protected from threatening reconfiguration. We
are not dealing with problems where the digital suddenly restructures phenom-
ena that have not already been concretely and materially configured – quite the
contrary. We are dealing with – on different levels, at different speeds and on at
times conflicting and contradicting pathways – construction work at conditions
that have always been materially, concretely configured in a complex way. What
and whom will we find there? Rare earths? Dumpsites for electronic waste in the
slums of the global mega cities? Gigantic server farms in the countryside with
immense power consumption? Intellectual property and proprietary program
code? Confusing and shielded algorithms or accountable and testable software?
The conceptual modifications that produce the at least threefold materiality of the
digital do not consist of finally reaching the material, but of developing a theo-
retical, heuristic and methodological repertoire, of understanding the practice of
the modification of the material and the material modification of the practice as
political and to find an appropriate vocabulary. As heirs of a “careful Prometheus”
(Latour 2008), those of us working in the social, cultural and media sciences can
participate in the redesigning of our (digital) present instead of merely standing
by and commenting on it. In this context, a political materialism as the one out-
lined here can be a starting point.
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Of Rabbits and Men, or: How to Study
Innovation in Nanomedicine
Wiebke Schär
1 Introduction
This paper is concerned with very tiny things – things that are so small they can-
not be seen by the naked eye. These things are called nanoparticles. “Nano” is
Greek and means dwarf. “Nano” characterizes the scale of particles and structures
with dimensions on the order of a few nanometers or less, where one nanometer
(1 nm) is equal to a billionth of a meter (10−9 m). Since the 90s, terms such as
nano-technology or nano-sciences became popular for describing a whole range
of techno-scientific innovations. The purpose of this new development is to define,
characterize, deploy and manipulate matter with at least one dimension sized from
1 to 100 nm. The Section of Experimental Oncology and Nanomedicine in Erlan-
gen uses such particles for a new kind of cancer-therapy which is based on the
concept of magnetic drug targeting. Magnetic nanoparticles consisting of iron
oxide and a biocompatible cover layer suspended in an aqueous solution (fer-
rofluid) serve as carriers for chemotherapeutics. The nano-particle suspension
is applied intra-arterial and enriched by an external magnetic field in the desired
body compartments (i.e., tumor). With this method, the dose of antineoplastic
agents in the tumor area could be increased, whereas at the same time negative
side effects could be reduced (compared to a systemic application of chemothera-
peutics for example). The Section of Experimental Oncology and Nanomedicine
in Erlangen is developing a therapy like this on the basis of animal testing.
W. Schär () 
sine – Süddeutsches Institut für empirische Sozialforschung e. V., Munich, Germany
E-Mail: wiebke.schaer@sine-institut.de
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_10
192 W. Schär
This paper presents parts of my dissertation project, which is based on a lab-

oratory ethnography I conducted in the Section of Experimental Oncology and
Nanomedicine in Erlangen in 2011.1 In my analysis, I am especially interested
in the objects of nano-medical research, that is: the matters of concern of those
involved in this particular project.2 The laboratory ethnography allows us to
obtain differentiated insights into nano-medical research and development prac-
tices on the basis of concrete research situations within a research laboratory as a
location where science “takes place.”
Innovation research is a field of investigation in which the “orders in question”
(also known as controversies) are just emerging. Orders can be observed only in
the sense of practiced order, or orders in the making, and they always operate in
relation to some or other controversy. Hence, to start the analysis with a priori
categories would be inappropriate. Therefore, deploying the method of Actor-
Network Theory, my investigation conceives of nano-medical innovations without
assuming the need to impose traditional socio-scientific boundaries and demarca-
tions, such as nature/culture, human/non-human, and social/technical.
One sociological perspective that retains such distinctions is Social-Construc-
tivism. It conceptualizes scientific innovation and the genesis of technology as a
social development process in which technology is produced and shaped through
social (understood here as equivalent to human-to-human) negotiation processes.
The basis of a Social-Constructivist analysis are then exclusively social categories
that are derived not from the objects and objectives of the scientific research prac-
tices, but from human concerns, interests and motivations.
The problem with deploying a priori boundaries is that once put to use, they can-
not be undone and ethnographic research is then no longer able to establish their
relevance. Forced to repeat its findings in terms of it’s a priori categories, Social-
Constructivism is doomed to conclude that “reality is but a social construct (and
constructing is a mere matter of discourse),” something that has been publicly ridi-
culed at length during the so-called “Science Wars” (e.g., Sokal and Bricmont 1998).
Therefore it may be better instead to study the interpretation and ordering prac-
tices of all the actors themselves without prejudging differences between human,
non-human, social, non-social, natural, and cultural actors. The empirical basis of
1For the full ethnography see Pohler-Schär 2017.

2Iam therefore not seeking to introduce objects into my analysis that are not of concern to
the practitioners involved in the project and thus also abstaining from sociological expla-
nations that seek to replace the matters of concern of the practitioners with “social stuff”
(Latour 2005).
Of Rabbits and Men, or: How to Study Innovation in Nanomedicine 193
my argumentation is the description of animal testing I observed in Erlangen. I

will start with that description before discussing some conceptual-methodological
question concerning the material practice of experimentation.
2 The Animal Testing Procedure
Experiments with animals are one of the main foci of nano-medical research in
Erlangen. The experiments exercise all procedures which should be used later in
the treatment of human patients. In this sense, the experiments can be character-
ized as a simulation of a treatment in a clinical situation. It is perhaps therefore,
that the experimenters also wear green operation clothes, hair and mouth protec-
tion as well as sterile gloves, in the same way as they would do for an operation
in the clinic. In addition, everything necessary for the procedure – syringes with
Ringer’s solution, syringes with anesthetics, surgical instruments, swabs, etc. –
is prepared. The rabbits that are used in animal testing in Erlangen are White
New Zealand rabbits. The reason why rabbits are used as experimental animals
is because they are easy to handle because of their size. This aspect is also impor-
tant with regard to transportation of the animals. They have to be transported a
few times, for instance from the facility they are housed to the building of the
research group or when help and equipment of other research groups are needed
for certain purposes of measuring. Due to their size, it is easy and convenient to
carry them in appropriate transport boxes. You can even transport several animals
at the same time. The animal to be treated stands in an animal box on the ground.
It is taken out of the box and injected with anesthetic. To fall asleep, it is placed
back in the animal box. The tumor that will be treated was inoculated to the rab-
bit some time before. When the rabbit has fallen asleep, first blood is taken by a
puncture in an artery on the ear. I observed taking blood worked out differently.
Sometimes the blood flows so heavily that it drips partially to the ground and has
to be wiped off with paper towels. Sometimes it is hard to collect enough blood
in a tube. Next, the fur on the leg where the tumor has grown is shaved off with
a razor. The tumor is clearly visible. It forms an approximately nut-sized lump
under the skin. Now the rabbit is placed on the bench of the computer tomogra-
phy scanner (ct-scanner) for operation. The bench is covered with surgical drapes.
On the other ear of the rabbit, where no blood was taken, an intravenous line is
put. This line is used for the application of contrast medium for angiography as
well as further anesthesia is needed. For this purpose, a cannula is placed into the
vein of the ear and carefully fixed. The first dose of anesthesia is injected. The
first step of the treatment is to take angiographic images. They should provide
194 W. Schär
information about the vascular structure of the rabbit. Due to radiation protection
guidelines, all those who are not directly involved in the treatment of the animal
must now leave the room. The two research group members who are going to
do the operation put on protective clothes and safety glasses. First, the bench of
the ct-scanner is adjusted. It is positioned so that the movable x-ray arm of the
ct-scanner can pivot 360° around the bench with the rabbit. After the application
of contrast medium, the x-ray arm is set into motion. A computer, part of the ct-
scanner system, transforms the information of the x-ray arm into 2D and 3D pic-
tures. These pictures are shown on several screens.
The images are discussed and the part of the vessel identified, which is going
to be surgically uncovered in order to inject the therapeutical nano-particles intra-
arterially. The skin on the leg of the rabbit is cut with a scalpel. It’s bleeding a
bit. The artery is recognizable by a purple color. Also, white strands can be seen,
which are nerves. The challenge of the operation at this part is not to sever such
nerves as this could cause difficulties of moving the leg after surgery. The artery
is uncovered step by step by tearing pieces of flesh that covers the artery with
tweezers. Overall, to uncover the artery takes about 15–20 min. During this time,
it is checked repeatedly, whether the anesthetic is still effective. To do this, one of
the experimenters touches the eye of the rabbit with the finger very softly. As long
as the rabbit does not blink, the animal is still anesthetized sufficiently. Under the
exposed artery, a white, sterile thread is drawn to raise the artery a bit. It should
make the insertion of the cannula for the application of the drug-loaded particles
easier. Then the cannula is inserted. This must be done very carefully, because the
artery is quite thin and should not be perforated with the cannula.
To control the position of the cannula further ct-images are taken. If the posi-
tion is fine a catheter is fixed at the cannula. The catheter is needed for the injec-
tion of the therapeutic nano-particles. The nano-particles have been prepared by
the medical-laboratory assistant right before the operation. If needed more anes-
thesia is given intravenously via the ear of the rabbit. Then the suspension with
nano-particles is applied to a syringe. The syringe is fixed on the catheter. Next
the operating bench and a magnet are adjusted, so that the magnet is focused
directly to the tumor. The magnet is turned on. The magnet serves to pull the
magnetizable particles into the tumor. Then the injection of the particles begins.
A certain volume of particles is injected within specified time intervals. It should
help that the particles can be pulled more evenly with the magnet into the tumor
and prevent agglomeration. During the application, the rabbit repeatedly urinates.
This is caused by the contrast media which is excreted via the kidneys and the
bladder. On the leg of the rabbit, one can see through the skin the darken of the
vessels through the black particle suspension. One can also see how these v essels
lead to the tumor. After the application of the particles has been completed, the
cannula is gently pulled out of the artery. A finger is pushed on the perforation
point of the needle until no more blood flows. After the application of an anti-
inflammatory drug the wound is sutured. This happens in two steps. Once the
open site at the artery is sutured, then the skin over the wound is closed. Two
different types of threads are used for that, one for closing the skin at the artery,
one for closing the wound. A piece of thread is inserted with tweezers. Then the
ends are knotted together and the thread is cut off. So, the wound is sutured bit by
bit. Then a last imaging is done. This serves to check whether the vessels are still
well supplied by the application of therapeutic nano-particles and helps to prevent
vascular occlusions. Finally, blood is taken and the rabbit is placed back in the
animal box.
3 The Human-Rabbit Relation
Talking of things and objects within science one central philosophical problem
comes to mind: the subject-object distinction. Usually (e.g., in classical phenom-
enology), the subject-object relation is characterized by a certain definition: there
is a fundamental distinction between the recognizing subject and an object that is
to be recognized. One can see, animal testing is concerned with a certain object –
living animals. In the following, I want to discuss the subject-object definition on
the basis of my observation of animal testing in Erlangen.
3.1 Becoming a Laboratory Animal, Becoming an

Experimenter
The relationship between humans and animals can be manifold (see Birke et al.
2007). To have a pet is a quite common way to relate to an animal; however, ani-
mals can also be livestock or inhabitants of a zoo. These few examples already
show that there is not just one way how animals and humans can relate to each
other. These examples transcribe different situations and different conditions of
human-animal relationships; they are associated with specific practices. In this
sense, I want to analyze the human-animal relationship as an empirical problem
(see Law and Lien 2012). I want to observe what makes a laboratory animal out
of an animal and what characterizes a human as experimenter? First, I would like
to point out that it is not enough to regard only the situation of experimentation to
get to know something about animal testing. There are more things needed to do
experiments on animals. These include study protocols that must be submitted and
196 W. Schär
approved in accordance with animal testing regulations that permit and control the
use of animals for scientific experimentations. The rabbits used in Erlangen come
from a special breed of laboratory animals. Also required are special facilities
(animal barns) where the animals are kept when they are not in a research group
for experimentational purposes.
Indeed, the actual practice of experimentation can be characterized as socio-
material assemblage. All the materials, instruments and devices deployed in the
experiments (including protection clothes, catheder, scalpels, contrast medium,
ct-scanners, protocols and experimentational conventions and so on) are further
entities that expand this socio-material assemblage. In this regard, the human-
animal relationship within experimentational practice cannot be conceptualized
only as a relation of two predefined counterparts. Neither the identity of a human
as “experimenter” nor the identity of an animal as “laboratory animal” is prede-
termined by certain characteristics or qualities. Their qualities and capacities are
not substantial but produced within a socio-material assemblage that enables and
determines certain practices at the same time. These practices turn a human into
an experimenter and an animal into a laboratory animal. The human-animal rela-
tion within animal testing is a performative relation and its identity a matter of
“becoming” (Deleuze and Guattari 2002). This becoming needs to be observed
by looking at concrete, situational practices of production. Following this idea of
“becoming through practice,” I want to discuss next the subject-object distinction,
especially in relation to its a priori definition.
3.2 Objectification – Subjectification
A common characterization of scientific practice involves the distinction between

a research object and a research subject. The terms subject and object are usually
deployed as a pair of opposites. It is a convention to make this distinction, as it is the
dominant epistemological axiom in western thinking.3 The subject is the observer,
3It has its roots in Plato’s theory of two worlds. The two-world view continues with
Descartes distinction between a conscious being of immaterial nature (“res cogitas”) and an
extended being of material nature (“res existensa”). For Descartes certainty only exists with
regard to one’s own existence as a thinking being. Finally, within the philosophy of Imma-
nuel Kant, reality and experience lose the ability to be the basis of our knowledge about the
world at all. He argues that our knowledge and our understanding of the empirical world
can only arise within the structures of our perceptual and cognitive powers. From now on,
all questions of how we conceive the world turned out to be epistemological questions.
the object is the observed. Hence, with the separation of subject and object there is
a certain attribution of competence: the subject acts and the object is acted upon and
passive. The object is thus the product and the manipulation of a powerful actor. In
the following I want to question this distinction, at least using this distinction as a
starting point. In doing so I want to refer to the animal testing I observed in Erlangen.
As I described above, the operation starts with angiographic images of the leg
of a rabbit. These images are needed in order to be able to applicate the nano-
particle suspension with chemotherapeutics in an arteria close to the tumor. This
is a precondition for a successful therapy. According to Actor-Network Theory, I
will call the use of the angiography for a certain benefit “delegation” (see Latour
1996). Delegation means angiography is used to takes on a specific task – in the
case of animal testing angiography informs the experimenter about the vascu-
lar structures as well as the exact position of the tumor. Angiography takes on
an active role, it gives access to certain kinds of information. Angiography is a
“mediator” (Latour 2007, p. 66 ff.). It transforms a certain situation so that fur-
ther action is possible. The next step is to uncover the artery. And there again,
the experimenter is not the only one who is active, as instruments like scalpels
and tweezers are needed to do the job. The artery is uncovered step by step as the
operator has to take care of the body of the rabbit (for not damaging too much tis-
sue or too many vessels). One can say, the scalpel of the experimenter is guided
by the physiology of the rabbit.
Once the artery has been prepared and control images have been taken, nano-
particles with therapeutics are applied. There is a further delegation, as the nano-
particles are expected to minimize the tumor; they do the work. To position the
particles for that task in the desired body compartment the experimenter needs
the assistance of a magnetic field. All the actions described show they are not ade-
quately characterized by an exclusive control of an experimenter over his object.
The experiment does not just follow the knowledge and decisions of an experi-
menter and is not just manipulated by him or her. For setting up and maintain-
ing the process of operation, the experimenter depends on the help of many other
actors and their input. The procedure of operation would not be possible as well
as comprehensible without a series of reciprocally distributed actions of media-
tion – subjective and objective ones (see Latour 1996). Within these reciprocally
relations, there is an exchange of skills and competences. Within the process of
experiment heterogeneous actors determine each other – they depend on each
other. Observing experimentational practice, the relationship between subject and
object must be characterized as an open and negotiable relationship. One can gen-
eralize, the intertwining of subjective and objective agencies is constitutive for
an experiment. But the question who is subject and who is object is no longer a
philosophical, but a practical and empirical one (see Stengers 2000, p. 133). The
198 W. Schär
respective identities – i.e., the abilities and characteristics that each determine
the subject or the object – are not fixed in advance. They are the result and an
effect of a mutual process of exchange. So, if we consider subjects and objects
no longer by given and fixed identities we need to characterize the subject-object
relation in another way. Isabelle Stengers argues the distinction between subject
and object should not be eliminated completely. Although, she points out that
the classical distinction is “the product of a polemical division” (Stengers 2000,
p. 133), which defines the balance of power in the laboratory in a certain way.
However, the distinction of subject and object gives a certain meaning to experi-
mental practice as it expresses the ways of “putting to the test” (ibid., p. 206).
“Putting to the test” decentralizes the subject and redefines the object: the
subject is no longer attributed with the right to know the object, but the object
is endowed with the capacity to put the subject to the test. So, the object is no
longer irreducible to a subjective opinion. This definition gives also another
meaning to the concept of “objectivity.” It means no longer the pure and neutral
observation of the scientist, as free of subjective assumptions and prejudices.
Instead, objectivity refer to objects. What counts as a “fact” is considered to be
“true,” because it was produced within an experimental practice, in relation with
objects which have the ability to resist. Stengers writes:
If the connections to reality that are produced by the scientists have been secured
and if we can say retrospectively that they are ‘objective,’ then it is precisely because
they are the result of controversies. They are ‘objective’ because they apply criteria
for judgement whose role is to question the evidence and to search for the means to
unsettle them with all their strength. (Stengers 1998, p. 54, translated by WS)
In this understanding, scientific statements gain their legitimacy in relation to the

things and objects that they have made. For example, the research group in Erlan-
gen tries to show with their animal experiments that therapeutic nano-particles
possess the ability to cure cancer. In order to do so, they have to be tested rigor-
ously to attain the status of “objectivity.”
In order to maintain the subject-object division as a constitutive one for exper-
imental practices but also to take the criticism of the classical definition into
account, one can follow a suggestion by Joost van Loon. He also criticizes the
original definition when he writes:
The a-piori – that is a non-empirical – separation between subjects and objects as essen-
tially two different substances makes two mistakes at once: (a) it assumes subjectivity
and objectivity are caused by something that belongs to the ‘being’ of an entity and (b)
it assumes that this ‘essence’ is an absolute modality of being: one is either active or
passive. (van Loon 2012, p. 195)
In other words, van Loon criticizes the use of the subject-object distinctions as
far as it is concerned with ostensive definitions of what a subject is and what an
object is. Consequently, he proposes another terminology and prefers to speak of
objectification and subjectification instead:
Objectification is the creation (or invention) of objects, entities that resist and there-
fore become real; subjectification is the enablement of action, of inaugurating pos-
sibilities and thereby, for example but not exclusively, the need for decision. (van
Loon 2012, p. 199)
Especially for observing experimental practices, the concepts of objectification

and subjectivation are very instructive as they allow to think and describe the
subject-object relation in a process-oriented way as experimentation is process of
reciprocal determination and characterization, the terms objectification and sub-
jectivation reflect these ongoing processes of negotiation.
3.3 Do Animals Act?
The “material practice” of animal experimentation can be characterized as a spe-

cial one, since it does not refer to “dead” matter but to “living” beings. As liv-
ing beings, certain physiological behavior and reactions of the rabbits could be
observed during experimentation: they fought back when being injected; their
muscles twitched or their eyes blinked as anesthesia subsides; they were bleed-
ing when being cut with a scalpel; they even could make noises when they were
frightened or harmed. In this respect, animals are not “passive objects” but show
signs of (re-) activity. However, they are non-humans. For sociological theorizing
the question remains: Do non-human beings act?
I would like to discuss this question in relation to an argumentation of Harry
Collins as a proponent of Social-Constructivism (see Collins 1998). He argues
there is a boundary between entities that “have sociality” and entities that do not.
He associates socialness with certain abilities such as forms of “tacit knowledge”
and “collective consciousness,” or in short: “entities that can follow a form of
life” (ibid., p. 495). Because animals do not follow rules, but do only “behave,”
Collins excludes them as actors in his sociological analysis.
This well know and oft-rehearsed position, however, can be contrasted with
an argument proposed by Vinciane Despret through her concept of “anthropzoo-
genetic practice” (Despret 2004). Instead of a clear distinction between humans
and animals, she speaks of an indefinite distribution of agencies between humans
200 W. Schär
and animals. “Anthropzoogenetic practice” means a practice “[…] that constructs

animal and human” (ibid., p. 122). Despret illustrate what that means by picking
up the story of “Clever Hans.” Clever Hans was a horse. Its owner was the teacher
and mathematician Wilhelm von Osten. Hans had the ability to respond to ques-
tions with hoofbeats. This ability caused a big controversy about the question,
whether the horse actually had those skills, or whether it was just a trick. A sci-
entific committee was called to test the animal. So, Hans was asked mathematical
problems and Hans answered these problems correctly. What is the solution to
this riddle? The horse had no knowledge of mathematics in terms of the concep-
tion of Social-Constructivism, but it was particularly sensitive and receptive to the
smallest signs and movements in the facial expressions and gestures of its coun-
terpart. These signs were made by the respective questioner involuntary whenever
the horse made the decisive right last hoofbeat. For Vinciane Despret, the story of
clever Hans impressively shows how action is generated in an almost inextricable
network of bodies, consciousness and emotions. These relationships are produced
in the interaction between humans and horses, they articulate themselves in the
interaction and thus become visible. Despret writes: “Hans embodied the chance
to explore other ways by which human and non-human bodies become more sen-
sitive to each other” (ibid., p. 114). In this network of bodies, consciousness and
affects, one can no longer determine unequivocally who influences whom, but
both horse and man are the cause and effect of mutual physical exchange.
In this respect, the burden of proof that only humans can act has to be placed
on Social-Constructivism instead. This is because the suspicion, that it has
invoked a tautology to argue its case, looms large: Only humans can act because
only humans possess the ability to know rules (and con statute life forms) as
knowing rules is derived from sociality and only humans have sociality. It might
or might not be right that animals may not consciously follow rules, but they
respond to their environment and these reactions can in turn influence human
actions, who then react in a way more akin to animals than to the social construc-
tivist notion of human being.
In the relationship between the research group members in Erlangen and the
rabbits such moments of reciprocal influence (Wechselwirkung)4 are quite com-
mon: One research group member stroke a rabbit’s eyes when the final dose of
4It is telling that in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of sociology, Simmel’s concept of Wech-
selwirkungen has been translated as interactions. Although Wirkung could be understood as
action, the translation of action into German is “Handlung,” which – unlike Wirkung – pre-
supposes a conscious being.
anesthetic was applicated that was supposed to kill the rabbit. Another member
told me about a sleepless night because she was worried about a rabbit that had
problems with the treatment the day before. There was a discussion between two
colleagues about the thickness of a needle and if it is necessary to use such a large
needle for the injection (she must know of herself how unpleasant such a large
needle is). An experiment was cancelled right at the beginning as by the attempt,
to get an intravenous access, the ear of a rabbit had already been punctured so
much that no further attempt should be made. During my stay with the research
group, there were repeated discussions about the fact that they were causing suf-
fering to the animals. From this a responsibility for the animals was derived.
This responsibility manifested itself in sacrificing holidays and weekends, when
it was necessary to look after the welfare of the animals. This responsibility also
included to kill an animal for not exposing it to “unnecessary suffering” as there
was no chance of recovery. I want to characterize these actions and reactions
between the research group members and the rabbits as affectual-emotional rela-
tions. These relations are articulated and realized through vulnerable and sensitive
bodies. In this respect I want to argue, that animal experimentation is described
inappropriately by referring to an animal as devoid of agency and at the mercy of
the will of a person that controls everything. Animals are “actors” (Latour 2007)
as they are able to influence and shape human actions and have the power to resist.
4 Contingency and Openness in Experiments
In general, experimental testing could be characterize as the most important

method of scientific work. Experiments deploy tools to manipulate entities
in a special way to study principles and mechanisms which help to understand
a certain phenomenon (see Hacking 1983). “Natural” things are studied in the
enclosed but verifiable space of a laboratory. In this sense scientific products can-
not be described as “natural facts.” They are results of a process of fabrication
and depend on the conditions of their production (Knorr-Cetina 2002). These
conditions refer to laboratory constructions which are contextually specific as
well as situational contingent. For Matthias Groß contingency marks the element
of an experiment that leads to knowledge production:
Indeed, surprising effects of experimentations can be seen as the motor force for
producing new knowledge since surprise help the scientists become aware of their
ignorance. (Groß 2010, p. 5)
202 W. Schär
Following this argumentation, contingency and openness of experiments can be

regarded as the key to new knowledge. At the same time, the process of experi-
mentation needs ongoing work to become stable and continuous. The study of
animal testing in Erlangen made that clear.
Usually the rabbits that were involved in the testing were fully-grown rab-
bits with a body weight of 3–4 kg. The rabbits were provided by a supplier spe-
cialized in breeding laboratory animals. There is a specific authorized study
protocol, which describes the particular objectives of the animal testing as well
as a time schedule. There might be circumstances which challenge the compli-
ance of the time schedule (broken measuring instruments for example). In order
to get the permission for further animal testing, the objectives of the actual plan
should be achieved. This could mean that compromises have to be found. There
was a period where full grown rabbits were not available. So, the research group
in Erlangen decided to continue their animal testing with younger rabbits with a
body weight of 2 kg. But these younger and smaller animals challenged the test-
ing setting. It makes a difference for anesthesia, as younger animals need more
anesthesia than older ones. The small animals also had a lower tolerability for the
application of contrast medium for angiography as the older ones. The amounts of
liquid that were applicated leaded to edemas in the lung and heart insufficiency.
One animal died of cardiac failure during operation. To adapt these negative
effects, additional procedures and interventions were implemented in the testing
setting, medication for dehydration for example. However, these procedures and
medications could have effects of their own, which could lead again to more med-
ication. The question how these new substances and materials interact with the
ones that were usually used for operation and therapy was an open one. So, one
can see, problems that occurred during an animal experiment could be resolved by
including new elements in the setting of the experiment. But these new elements
can produce new problems as well include new forms of uncertainty.
Following Harry Collins contingency and openness are typical to experimenta-
tions rather than the exception (Collins 1985). There are always differences by
repeating a test, because of the specificity of a local laboratory setting, because
of the people with different skills doing the experiments, because of the complex-
ity of certain instruments and so on. Collins states, an exact replication is a very
rare event in science (ibid., p. 40). Collins discusses this problem of replication
and reproduction because he is interested in the conditions of change of knowl-
edge in science. In this discussion Collins introduces his argument, which is
known as “experimenter’s regress.” The experimenter’s regress refers to a loop of
dependence between theory and evidence. The argument is: The functioning of an
experimental arrangement, with regard to the question if it produces valid results,
is judged on the basis of the theory underlying this experimental arrangement.

However, it is this theory which should be tested by the experiment. So, there is
a loop, which cannot be broken from inside. Collins refers then to social forces
that establish the stability and validity of experimental practice such as credibil-
ity, status or power. Collins sees scientific outcomes as negotiable and socially
constructed. The acceptance of a claim is the result of a successful persuasion of
other members of the (scientific) community.
The case of the rabbits also shows the difficulties in repeating an experiment.
In contrast to Collins, however, I will not argue that facts and the world of things
are too weak to convince anyone. Collins (correct) finding that exact replications
of experiments are rare have led him to the (incorrect) conclusion that therefore,
the objectivity constructed by findings (a “fact”) makes no difference and thus
that because things are weak, it must be the social that is strong. Collins divides
reality into a world of weak things (nature) and a world of strong (social) humans
(culture). There is a gap in his argumentation – he jumps from one pole with a
corresponding explanatory repertoire (facts and nature) to another (humans and
the social) and asserts that is only in the second world that stability can be found.
I have used Collins’ argument here as merely one example for Social-Con-
structivism. Social-Constructivism can be described as a perspective that abstracts
from technical-material aspects by explaining innovation, knowledge production
and technological development as exclusively social achievements. The starting
point of Social-Constructivism is thus the “social.” Scientific innovations and
the genesis of technology are interpreted as processes of development in society,
which means, technology and innovation are produced and shaped through social
processes of negotiation (Degele 2002, p. 102).
The basic premise of Social-Constructivism and the Social Study of Science
is the so-called “principle of symmetry.” It states that “true” knowledge should
be investigated in the same way as “false” knowledge (like error, superstition,
para-science) (Bloor 1976).5 True knowledge should no longer be explained by
5This principle, developed in the so-called “strong program,” has his roots in Karl
annheims sociology of knowledge, which claims that the discovery of truth is socially
M
and historically conditioned. Mannheim called this the “Seinsverbundenheit” (existential
connectedness) (Mannheim 1931, p. 227). Mannheim, however, excluded knowledge of the
natural sciences from his sociology of knowledge. He defined knowledge of the natural sci-
ences as a special kind of knowledge and he focused his own studies on common knowl-
edge, political theories or art. Bloor, however, expanded the sociology of knowledge to the
(natural) sciences.
204 W. Schär
p rinciples of scientific rationality, or the correspondence of a scientific fact with a

state of nature, because this would create a fundamental difference to an explana-
tion of false knowledge, as the explanation of false knowledge is based on social
categories such as interests and power or different epistemic cultures. The social
study of Science developed a symmetric explanation as it explains both by the
“social” (see Pinch and Bijker 1984, p. 401).
By contrast, Actor-Network Theory explains contingency and openness in
experiments by means of an approach which is also symmetrical but avoids the
division between nature and culture. It refers to this as the principle of “general-
ized symmetry.” This principle is based on the premise that neither nature nor the
social should be the starting point of interpretations. Callon and Latour write:
Our general symmetry principle is thus not to alternate between natural realism and
social realism but to obtain nature and society as twin result of another activity, one
that is more interesting for us. We call it network building or collective things or
quasi-objects, or trial of forces. (Callon and Latour 1992, p. 345)
The Actor-Network Theory concept that seeks to think about experimentation and
to describe reality beyond the divide between nature and culture as “heterogeneity”
(Law 2006). If experimental practice is conceived as a practice of heterogeneous
elements, there is no need to change from one analytical vocabulary (natural forces)
to another (social forces) (Law 2006, p. 217).
We do not have to start from a fixed repertoire of agencies but from the very act of
distributing and dispatching agencies. (Callon and Latour 1992, p. 350)
The questions of who acts and which entities have to be taken into account, are no
longer an analytical but empirical: They are to be decided in practice. In my case
study, it turned out that quite different forces, mechanisms and strategies are con-
tributing to a relative stability of findings, be it experimental conventions, physi-
ological properties, pharmacological conditions, organizational aspects, etc. These
elements get observable by the traces they leave in a process: the effect of liq-
uids becomes visible in certain physiological reaction, the agency of medication is
reflected in certain side effects, legal aspects manifest in protocols and so on.
The fragility of experiments can then be characterized like this: Experiments
form networks of heterogeneous elements, whereby some elements maintain their
relationship to each other while others strive to dissolve them. As long as such
a network is still unstable and proves to be fragile, on the one hand, it is not yet
clearly defined which actors belong to this network and are part of the network,
nor are the tasks and roles of the individual actors in the network codified. All this
still needs to be negotiated.
And if you study experimental practice empirically as heterogeneous practice
by considering all elements involved, one can also see who is dissolving: bodies,
hearts, lungs, active ingredients, liquids. Resistance is caused by the “stubborn-
ness and obstinacy of matter” (see Stengers 2008). So epistemological categories
and terminology like “surprising effects” (see Groß 2010) or “non-knowledge”
or “not-knowing-yet” (see Wehling 2001), that try to prescribe these phenom-
ena such as “unforeseeability” or “surprise,” are becoming obsolete, as you can
observe and “re-assemble” (Latour 2007) the respective actors.6 In experiments,
they are observable by their material effects, such as those involving nano-parti-
cles in chemotherapeutic treatments.
5 Nano-particles as Associations
The research group in Erlangen works with nano-particles in the form of ferroflu-
ids, which are magnetic particles in aqueous solution. Ferrofluids generally refer to
liquids that can be influenced by magnetic fields. It is this effect that is used for
targeting purposes. Ferrofluids consist of nanosized particles. The research group
in Erlangen uses iron, a material commonly used in the production of ferrofluids.
These iron particles are suspended in a carrier liquid as colloids, which means they
are distributed in droplets or in particles in the carrier liquid. The research in Erlan-
gen is thus not concerned with tiny invisible particles, but with visible black liquids.
The research group uses these liquids for drug targeting. In order to use nano-
particles for this application, they must meet certain requirements: they must be
biocompatible particles with a therapeutic benefit.7 The particles are produced
in different steps, using different methods and multiple materials. The produc-
tion consists of three basic processes: the production of raw particles, the coating
(to stabilize the particles and to ensure the compatibility of the particles) and the
binding with a chemotherapeutic agent. For the production of the raw particles
6One common critique of Actor-Network Theory is, that it falls back into metaphysic by
arguing that things or objects can be actors. Of course, Actor-Network Theory does not
claim, that things act on their own as nothing acts on its own. Instead, it claims that dif-
ferent actors only obtain agency by networking. This refers to things, animals as well as
human beings. Agency is distributed (Callon 1986).
7Biocompatible means that they must be compatible with the human and animal organism.
206 W. Schär
alone, there are very different methods. The research group began in 2004 with
the synthesis the particle. Within the next two years the procedure established that
was used in the period of my research stays, even if now and then other proce-
dures or modifications of the procedure were tried. The established process for
the preparation of the raw particles is the approach of Khalafalla and Reimers,
which can be described as follows:
8 g (30 mmol) FeCl3.6H2O and 4 g (20 mmol) FeCl2.4H2O are dissolved in
33 ml H2O in a 100 ml beaker. This corresponds to a Fe3+ / Fe2+ starting molar
ratio of 3/2. Within about 5 min, 16.7 ml (224 mmol) of a 25% NH3 solution are
added dropwise with vigorous stirring and then the batch is stirred for 5 min. The
magnetic particles settle for two minutes standing on a ring magnet at the bot-
tom of the beaker. The supernatant is decanted. The residue is washed free of
chloride with 1.3% NH3 solution or 10−4 mol/l NaOH, depending on the further
use. For this purpose, 50 ml of washing liquid are added to the residue and the
mixture is stirred for 2 min. Then set the mixture for 2 min on a ring magnet.
At this the magnetic particles settle. Then the supernatant is decanted. This pro-
cess is repeated six or seven times until chloride can no longer be detected in
the supernatant. After 50 ml of washing liquid is added, the mixture is stirred for
2 min, the precipitate is covered with parafilm and stored for further use (cited
after Hodenius 2002, translated by WS).
In this description, nano-particles become visible in the form of various ele-
ments (water, iron chlorides, ammonia), lab methods (dissolving, stirring, dropping
and decanting) and lab utensils (beakers, magnets). But even more elements are
associated. At this time, you have only produced raw particles that are not yet to use
for an application. Over time, these raw particles would simply agglomerate (clump
and flocculate in the carrier liquid). To give the particles stability and to make them
more compatible for an application, they need to be coated. For the coating, in turn,
there are various possibilities in terms of materials and methods, e.g., a coating with
boric acid, a coating with lauric acid or a coating with starch.8 Further elements are
added to the previous ones. The coating with an acid for instance is made by heat-
ing the particle suspension and adding the acid dropwise with constant stirring.
One can see the unifying term “nano-particles” contains very different elements –
different materials, different instruments and different methods. These materials
and methods attribute the particles with certain properties. So, the p articles are the
result of different processes of construction – they are an association and assembly
8To develop an experimental method for coating was an important aspect of the innovation
of the research group. It took 2 years of research.
of heterogeneous elements. It is an invalid description to speak of “nano-particles”

as substances that have certain characteristics and attributes. This is in effect another
critique on Social-Constructivism. Social-Constructivism is related to unquestioned
assumptions about things and materiality. It assumes that things are passive matter,
whose relevance solely depends on the shaping hand of humans, either epistemolog-
ically in form of cognitive and rational categories or constructivist as human practice
(see Folkers 2014, p. 23). It presupposes an ostensive definition of things and materi-
ality as it is “substantially different” from everything that is “social.” The example of
nano-particles shows, that this definition, that homogenizes materiality and reduces
it to a fixed substance term, is – regarded empirically – implausible. The heterogene-
ity of objects like nano-particles contradicts the idea of discrete and homogeneous
objects.9 Objects are better described as the result of a process of associating het-
erogeneous elements. For the nano-therapy in Erlangen this process is still an open
one. Even when animal experimentation is stabilized in the way that treatments of
rabbits are successful more constantly, nano-particles will be associated with new
elements – for instance when the therapy is transferred in clinical trials. These new
elements would provide nano-particles then again with new characteristics and prop-
erties.
6 Conclusion: The Invention of Nano-sociality
In this contribution, I presented material from my ethnographical study, which

was concerned with nano-medical research and innovation in Erlangen. The
research in Erlangen is focused on the development of a new cancer therapy by
using nanoparticles as carriers for chemotherapeutics. This concept would allow
a cancer therapy that works more effectively in the tumor area. At the same time,
it would generate fewer side effects. The research group in Erlangen is currently
testing the concept of drug targeting with the help of animal experiments.
In analyzing my empirical material, I took a critical stance towards assumptions
of substantive entities and fundamental (a priori) distinctions, especially those associ-
ated with Social-Constructivism. Social-Constructivism requires an a priori separa-
tion of natural and social contexts and thereby invokes an opposition between mind
and matter. It thereby requires assumptions about rationalities, ways and abilities of
agencies and logics of action as well as a preselection of who counts as actor that are
9A concept like “boundary object” (Star and Griesemer 1989) tries to think the manifold-
ness of objects, but it is conceptualized only as “many perspective” on one object.
208 W. Schär
relevant for constructing (a) reality. As these assumptions defy empirical research,
they generate the suspicion of engaging in tautological closure.
On the basis of my material, I emphasized instead the heterogeneity of
experimental practice. Defining and ordering practices are activities of all actors
involved and not outside of the realm of empirical analysis. Rather, I have shown
that the materiality and object-relatedness of practice questions the order that is
supposed to be already-there. Materiality cannot be reduced to fixed and passive
matter; instead, it resists and thereby reveals its objectivity. This becomes visi-
ble through objects that turning out to be heterogeneous and are therefore better
be described in the way of an open and continuing process rather than defined
and categorized by means of homogenous terminology. The openness of mate-
riality refers as it were to the openness of the “social.” The social is not distinct
from the materiality but realized in – or better as – associations with things and
materiality (assemblages). Considering nanomedical research and innovations
in this regard, one can characterize experimentation in Erlangen as the attempt
to invent, construct and realize new associations of humans, animals and things.
It is a new order which is based on “Nano” as the smallest common difference.
And it is related with a new kind of sociality which I propose to call “Nano-Soci-
ality.” With the heuristic method of Actor-Network Theory I have pointed out a
possible sociological approach to study nanomedical innovations beyond the tra-
ditional social and socio-scientific boundaries and demarcations, such as nature/
culture, human/non-human, social/non-social but by focusing on the networking
processes of heterogeneous elements instead. The critical question always raised
at “materialism” concerns the alleged obsoleteness of “human agency.” Scientific
experiments such as the one of the case study, however, shift this question to a
sociologically much more relevant one: how does human agency materialize?
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Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann

Joost van Loon Editors

ISBN 978-3-658-22299-4 ISBN 978-3-658-22300-7 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018967710

This Springer VS imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien

Part II Postphenomenology and Actor-Network-Theory

Part III Cyborg and Agential Realism

Part IV Praxeology and Communicative Constructivism

Part V Algorithmic Culture and Doing Science

Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann is Professor of Sociological Methodology of Qualita-

Jan-Hendrik Passoth is Privatdozent at European University Viadrina in Frank-

Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann and Joost van Loon

Despite attempting to sidestep the philosophical question, what might be con-

that resides beyond individual opinions. This “beyond” of individual opinions is

Comtean than Hegelian in relation to their understanding of the epistemological

Just as Kant had separated experience from “Dinge-an-sich” and proclaimed

object to being “socially explained,” he or she would simply be stuck in first-

Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann

2 The Concept of Linear Time in Merleau-Ponty’s

In the “Phenomenology of Perception,” Merleau-Ponty puts the emphasis on a

1Young questioned the goal-orientation in Merleau-Ponty’s early work on intentionality. If

action tends to be based on instrumental intentionality. Although sense-making is

moment. Hence, the explanation of sense-making is left to a seemingly omnipo-

3Coenen criticized the Schutzean “typification” because, firstly, sense-making is character-

3 The Re-Conceptualization of Time in Merleau-

3.1 Chiasmic Structure of Time

Merleau-Ponty’s notion of chiasm usually is described as a chiasm of percep-

3.2 Immemorial “écart” of the Flesh

Al-Saji’s (2007) account of the Bergsonian influence to Merleau-Ponty’s late

4 Agency from the Perspective of Ontology of the

Merleau-Ponty’s ontology promotes an idea of agency that emphasizes “the syn-

5 The Case for Video Hermeneutics

The gesture was originally introduced by French comedian Dieudonné Mbala

intended as Anelka’s personal dedication to Dieudonné Mbala Mbala. However,

In the “Phenomenology of Perception,” bodily intentionality is entirely anchored

Joost van Loon

Der Hauptmangel alles bisherigen Materialismus – den Feuerbachschen mit ein-

1Marx–Engels Werke, Band 3, Dietz Verlag Berlin, 1969.

im Gegensatz zum Materialismus, vom Idealismus entwickelt wurde – aber nur

The argument, that practices of abstraction are historical-material in their

It may be a little stretch of the imagination to link the historical-materialist notion

of abstraction and translation. In the previous section concerning historical mate-

p­ rehending.11 Prehending is the most basic form of translation; it takes place

c­ ommitting oneself to paper is to be understood as a translation. For a media-

Problematization is perhaps very similar to what phenomenologists refer to as

Interessement is the binding of matters of concern to particular interests. “Hav-

Enrollment is what Organizational Sociology and those studying Pubic Admin-

Mobilization is the actual setting-to-work of the enrolment; it is that which is of

Disassembling is the mode of translation when the articulation between matters

4 Differences that Matter: Thinking Historical

to be legitimately resolved. A focus on ideology would completely miss the point

14Although it would be doing her somewhat of an injustice to refer to Haraway as a his-

Context is important but it cannot be defined in advance. Even if historical

5 Synergy: Signing a Contract as a Practice

“just” a matter of practicalities,16 but above all of making a difference between

oral agreement and handshake)17 to a legally embedded actual occasion. This

The case to think iteratively between historical materialism’s conception of

very little sense to engage in quantitative surveys, as this is hardly a matter of

its critique of the forgetting of reification becomes itself an act of forgetting. In

Spinoza, B. 2004 [1665]. Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order. http://www.early-

1 Reading Cyborg Nature and Materialities

2 In Love and War – Material-Semiotic

3 Reproduction, Sex/Gender and Biological

2 The Concept of Linear Time in Merleau-Ponty’s

3 The Re-Conceptualization of Time in Merleau-

3.1 Chiasmic Structure of Time

3.2 Immemorial “écart” of the Flesh

4 Agency from the Perspective of Ontology of the

5 The Case for Video Hermeneutics

p rehending.11 Prehending is the most basic form of translation; it takes place

c ommitting oneself to paper is to be understood as a translation. For a media-

4 Differences that Matter: Thinking Historical

5 Synergy: Signing a Contract as a Practice

1 Reading Cyborg Nature and Materialities

2 In Love and War – Material-Semiotic

3 Reproduction, Sex/Gender and Biological

4 EDP, Technofeminism and Cyborg Conversations

5 Feminism, Niels Bohr and Agential Realism

6 Process Ontology and Methodological

7 Revival of the Cyborg-Materiality and New

2 Resonances of an Agential Realism: Practice,

2.2 Decentering: Practice as Intra-Action and the

2.3 In/Determinacy: Spacetimemattering and Cutting

3.1 Sociological Problematization: In/Determinacy

3.2 The Ethical Dimension of Precarity

3.3 Infrastructure or Differential Becoming of the World:

1.1 A Material and Embodied Turn

1.2 A Praxeological Multimodal Approach to Social

1.3 From Multimodality to Multisensoriality

2 Sounds and Cries: Forms of Immediate Sensorial

3 Using Artifacts to Support Sensing and Naming

4 Navigating Between Sensory Bodies, Sensed

2 Matter as Eventful Potentiality

3 The Analysis of Sociomateriality and the Turn

3.1 ANT: Symmetry Postulate and Actant Thesis

3.2 Intra-Action and Non-Intentional Vitality

4 “Matter” as Participant in Social Processes

4.2 Materiality as Part of Public and Meaningful