Thinkin on [POL]

1.       “If the moderns have something to be proud of, it is that they have been capable of extracting this contrast against all the evidence supplied by other regimes of truth”

"Modes of Existence" (MOE) and Activity Theory (AT)

I am used to the following distinction. In a situation I can consider a 1st person viewpoint (and dive deep into my intuition and feelings) or I can consider a 3rd person point of view, where I distance myself and perhaps see myself in the dealings of others.

I think that the way of dealing with reality (both inner and external in everyday parlance - a distinction that is not that solid either for the "Modes of Existence" (http://modesofexistence.org/) or for "Activity theory"(http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/pages/chatanddwr/chat/, http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/pages/chatanddwr/activitysystem/) proposed in MOE is a more refined way to deal with the 1st person viewpoint while the way of dealing with reality that is proposed by Activity Theory is a more refined way to deal with the 3rd person point of view. Or perhaps I should say, using an analogy from Physics, that the "1st person- 3rd person" viewpoints is a coordinate system that is now "rotated" or could be exchanged by the coordinate system "MOE- AT"

Why do I say that MOE seems a much more evolved way to deal with the 1st order viewpoint? Because it speaks about values, continually it asks us to "turn inwardly", as I feel it,  to assess what would corespond to common sense, MOE feels like a call for a "perceptual education" (Une education perceptionale - like "L'education sentimentale"), for a different sensibility in how we "take in" reality and actually "are formed by" this reality (which passes through us). When I am called to understand the elements of the Pivot Table (pg 488 in the book), I do not think that I am asked to model reality by sitting outside of a frame, outside a window panel,  and looking to the trajectories (really a necklace made by hiatuses that have been jumped over) that will be whirling like spaggeti in front of my eyes. I feel that I am asked to retake the whole flow of experience, as somebody who is participant, who cannot lift himself outside and this "personal enlightenement" will help me identify with the actors of the situation in a very different way and allow me to describe the whole situation in a different way. So  as far as I understand the empiricism of Latour's anthropology is the lever through which "inner and outer experience" (in everyday parlance ) are put in a better fit. But the heavy lifting seems to me to be going first in what used to be "inner experience".

How can we deal in MOE with learning and development?  There is [MET], but [MET] feels more like a power source. There is [REF] but can a mictrogenetic account of learning and development be put under [REF]? I doubt it. 

Activity theory (as I understand it) is a way to argue, to communicate about how we come to be, It is an effort to come in terms with how consciousness comes forth: real culturally mediated consciousness. It is a way to introduce TIME (real change), without time being the servant of [REF]'s conception of time. 

Activity theory is constantly reminding us that we are thinking and acting in the presence of others and with the help of others, in a community (something that is so absent in the image of the solitary anthropologist in the MOE book, though somehow corrected in the workings of the AIME community)

MOE gives a sense of freedom, the freedom that comes together with the feelings of understanding and been possibly understood in a world that is not "alien". AT is an alternative to a mechanistic point of view when it come to accounting for change, a different way to come in terms with dynamics.

There is another reason that makes me think the AT is a needed balance to MOE. I have the sense that in AIME, in Reset Modernity! (http://modesofexistence.org/field-book/) , even in the recent article (http://mil.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/04/19/0305829816640608.abstract) , learning does not have its proper recognition. As if the activity system nature of the situations themselves (reading and beeing influeced by the MOE book and the AIME community, participating and beeing "politicized" through participation in Reset Modernity!, rethinking Sovereignity) is not recognized, at the expense of the effectiveness of these projects.

One can also try to find some places in the AT triangle where certain modes would fit preferentially. So I made a try. [LAW] is used as a stabilizer. In activity theory the "object" is in a process of transformation through the workings of the activity system. (something similar perhaps to passing a hiatus in MOE) . Moreover the changing object costitutes the motive of the activity. So I've put in the pseudo-oject side modes like [MET] but also modes that express (in my view) motives (feeling a secure ground, listening to a "calling")

Bibliography:

I found useful

For MOE/ AIME, apart from the above mentioned site, I found very helpful in understanding the tone of the whole book this: 

Hämäläinen, N., & Lehtonen, T. K. (2016). Latour's empirical metaphysics.Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 1-18.

A criticsim from an anthropologists point of view:

Berliner, D., Legrain, L., & Port, M. (2013). Bruno Latour and the anthropology of the moderns. Social Anthropology, 21(4), 435-447.

For AT, I found very helpful apart from the above mentioned site the article:

Engeström, Y. (2014). Activity theory and learning at work (pp. 67-96). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.

and the following criticism:

Bakhurst, D. (2009). Reflections on activity theory. Educational Review, 61(2), 197-210.

"Latour's Empirical Metaphysics"

I read this article
Hämäläinen, N., & Lehtonen, T. K. (2016). Latour's empirical metaphysics. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 1-18.

in which I liked a lot the picture it gives of Latour's work. It presents Latour entering in media res, in the turmoil of life. He does not come to model life, to look it from outside, or to provide us with superior knowledge. I think he does not also come to give us "the furniture of reality". Indeed it seems to me  that "the furniture of reality" pushes us towards a very visual metaphore, while Latour's approach gives emphasis in communicating, in relating (in passing through others while both we and them are formed by these passings). Existents articulate themselves through other existents.

So all of us, humans and non humans are there working, going around our buisness, in an agora where the private and the public are not distinct (or at least they are open to various reconstructions) and Latour & Co comes as one more participant, worried about the state of our dealings, of the way we compose this common world and putting forward ways of "emotionally rich talk", of "value rich talk", of performative talk that should mingle with practices, changed by practices and bring forth life.

Finally this is what came to my mind (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+1)

Proverbs 1:20 -

20 Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
    she raises her voice in the public square;
21 on top of the wall[d] she cries out,
    at the city gate she makes her speech:

22 “How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
    How long will mockers delight in mockery
    and fools hate knowledge?
23 Repent at my rebuke!
    Then I will pour out my thoughts to you,
    I will make known to you my teachings.
24 But since you refuse to listen when I call
    and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand,
25 since you disregard all my advice
    and do not accept my rebuke,
26 I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you;
    I will mock when calamity overtakes you—
27 when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
    when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
    when distress and trouble overwhelm you.

28 “Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
    they will look for me but will not find me,
29 since they hated knowledge
    and did not choose to fear the Lord.
30 Since they would not accept my advice
    and spurned my rebuke,
31 they will eat the fruit of their ways
    and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
    and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety
    and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

[POL] or the work of the historian?

Reading the following in [POL] (pg341)

"For, finally, what form of life can bring off the following feat? Start
with a multitude that does not know what it wants but that is suffering
and complaining; obtain, by a series of radical transformations, a unified
representation of that multitude; then, by a dizzying translation/
betrayal, invent a version of its pain and grievances from whole cloth;
make it a unified version that will be repeated by certain voices, which in
turn—the return trip is as least as astonishing as the trip out—will bring it
back to the multitude in the form of requirements imposed, orders given,
laws passed; requirements, orders, and laws that are now exchanged,
translated, transposed, transformed, opposed by the multitude in such
diverse ways that they produce a new commotion: complaints defining
new grievances, reviving and spelling out new indignation, new consent,
new opinions."

I thought: this is the description of the world of the historian or the world of the person who has to make a description.  If the multitude is the multitude of documents and the historian or "descriptor" the medium through which they express themselves in unison and then obey the interpretation that rules the day.
Then new documents come about animated by new concerns and perhpas the cycle starts again.

Thinking on [HAB]

This is what I get out of reading [HAB]