Actor Network Theory and Psychology: What about their Connection?

I would like to raise two correlated questions: first, what is the meaning of the notion of network, such as currently proposed by Bruno Latour? And second, once we have delimited this notion of network, how important is it for psychology, particularly regarding the study of cognition?

Some authors search in the notion of network an alternative for the epistemological discussions in the field of psychology (Moraes, M. 1998; Ferreira, A. 2000) In these papers, the discussions on whether psychology is or is not a science could be restated not in the sense of looking for frontiers between science and non-science, or between psychology and common sense, but rather in the sense of questioning the alliances established between psychology and the other areas of study. What is peculiar to psychology is to keep an always horizontal relationship with other fields of study. Psychology’s object of investigation would be designed from such connections.

In some of his texts written after We have never been modern (Latour 1998; 1999; 2002b), Latour becomes more precise and underlines with this self-criticism the real meaning of the network notion, its extent, its novelty. In one of these works, the author states that there are four points in the actor-network theory that do not work well: ‘the word theory, the word actor, the word network and the hyphen that joins the actor to the network’ (Latour, 1999). The reflections that follow the author’s self-criticism are the most interesting for psychologists.

What is wrong with the word ‘network?’ The digital metaphor has made this term popular in such a way that it can be disastrous. The notion of network, such as made popular by the Internet, implies an idea of information circulation without transformation. The network, like a rhizome, (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980) is marked by transformation. The focus is on the action, on the production and transformation work present in the networks. In the notion of network, what matters is not only the idea of tie but also what these ties produce and which effects result from such alliances. What is an actor? This notion has been mistaken many times for the traditional sociology actors, for the individual as the source and origin of an action. The actor is anything that is acting, i.e., it is defined by the effects of its actions. This implies that an actor is not defined by what it does, but rather by the effects of its actions.

The pair actor-network, including the hyphen, is to Latour (1999) not enough to account for the action that is distributed in the network, for the processes of producing the world. This is because the pair actor-network has many times been taken as the pair individual-society. But that is not what it is about.

Should we then consider the actor-network theory as a frame of reference, as a theory which we can apply to several domains, including psychology? The actor-network theory is not a theory whose principles are given beforehand. It is rather a method, a way to follow the building and production of facts. It is not enough to say: look over there, right there, there are connections and alliances! Then we are talking about a network! Not at all. It is not enough to point out the alliances. The matter is not the use of a frame of reference in which we can insert the facts and their connections (Latour 2002a).

What matters is to follow the production of differences, the effects, the traces left by the actors — interesting production, because it must be considered as a process distributed among all actors. There is no primary, central agent from which the production of the world emanates: (…) “there is no maker, no master, no creator that could be said to dominate materials, or at the very least, a new uncertainty is introduced as to what is to be built as well as to who is responsible for the emergence of the virtualities of the materials at hand” (Latour, 2002b).

But what about psychology? From my point of view we should not only place the contributions of the actor-network theory at the heart of an epistemological debate. It seems that this question must be placed in a different level, a pragmatic one: what do we do with that? There is an important thesis in the actor-network theory: the idea of production. This thesis makes us think about the social not in terms of the relationships among men, but rather in terms of process. This may be an important lesson to psychology: rather than being about ties among individuals, it is about following the ties between human and non-human and, moreover, it is a matter of asking about the effects produced by such ties. The term social here does not denote the matter of which something is made, but the process through which the facts and cognition are built. Thus, a social psychology is not one that deals with man in society, but tracks and follows the process of producing men and objects. The non-humans have an acting; they produce effects on the world, change our actions, redefine our cognition.

What consequences can we extract from the notion of network if we perform a strike of its characteristics on psychological knowledge itself? A Psychology of cognition, taken in this sense, is not about studying the general rules that characterize the functioning of each and every cognition. It is another sense of psychology that is unveiled, a psychology we could call an Aesthetic of Cognition, taking the word aesthetic in a wide sense of building, of production that does not come from valued prejudices, such as good versus bad. We say aesthetic of cognition in the sense of an immanence art which can only be referred to the plan of its practice, so that, from this point, it is possible for us to follow the way such cognition is produced. Cognition is understood from an uncertainty which must not be taken as a weakness, but rather as its creative power, as what it bears of network or rhizome. Psychology as knowledge about cognition would then be a knot of the actors’ network and, as such, produced, negotiated, an effect of the impacts and negotiations between humans and non-humans. It is not anymore, as in the epistemological focus, a matter of evaluating the rationality of psychological knowledge. It is rather a matter of following, in the scope of its practices and studies, the way how a certain rationality, a certain form of intelligibility is produced.

In my own research work I am studying cognition, specially perception, among blind children. My focus isn’t to study cognition as an atribute of a person, but to study cognition in network. Which are the alliances that make possible perception among the blind ones? I’m working with a theatre groupe of blind children, students of a special school for blinded people in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We are observing a theater group of 3 blind and 7 visual handicaps, from 11 to 15 years old. I consider this group as a cognitive field in which perception is engaged. Perception is a result, a consequence of the connections among the children, the characters, the play and everything that is related to the play. I am not interested on general rules that defines perception, but what matters in this work is to follow the way perception is modified and created by the play. So, when we investigate how the blinds perceive the world we want to ask by the alliances that are made at the same time between the world perceived and the subject. At last we try to discuss again the notions of subect and object, body and perception. I think that in this way it is possible to talk about Psychology as non-modern knowledge.

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The author is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Author’s Address: mmoraes@nitnet.com.br