Ant, spider and DNA: letting mindless generative mechanisms speak

Journal article

In Tim Ingold’s fable from the forest floor (2008), ant and spider put their minds together to ponder some of the most pressing issues in current discourse on the make-up of reality and our understanding of it. They are especially concerned with questions about agency and the character of relations. Where ant sees ‘networks’, spider insists that we deal with ‘meshworks’. While the ant, obviously, is an advocate of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), Ingold casts himself as an experientially orientated SPIDER, propounding the view that Skilled Practice Involves Developmentally Embodied Responsiveness. In the same allegorical genre, this text allows DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) to challenge both theoreticians. ANT and SPIDER share a blindness with respect to invisible beings like itself, DNA argues. Their privileging of spatiotemporal immediacy entails a one-dimensional (flat) ontology that tends to push mindless generative mechanisms out of view. Hence, ANT and SPIDER miss out on central dynamics of ontological constitution. In effect, both thinkers construe mindless being in terms of mind properties, DNA charges, exclaiming Do Not Anthropo-size!

Authors: Bråten, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Anthropological Society
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Volume: 16
• Pages: 51-71
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2024-12-13
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-o1vprj4eb
• EISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: phenomenology; JASO; intransitivity; ontology; DNA; Actor-Network-Theory