A singularity: where actor network theory breaks down an actor network becomes visible

Abstract

In this article I propose we rethink the nature of the individual human subject in a landscape where cognition has been distributed (Hutchins, Clark), individuality has been transformed into associations between heterogeneous actors, and human and non-human agency has been reconceived as a product of attribution (Actor Network Theory). Reengaging with the material developed in my book Hawking Incorporated, where I did an ethnographic study of Stephen Hawking, the man and the persona, I will extend my original analysis to extract and map the processes through which the individual human subject is constituted. Turning upside down all the notions of which the “subject” is supposed to be made by exteriorizing, materializing, collectivizing, and distributing, mind, body, and identity, I will make visible the ramifications that constitute the subject through processes of distribution and singularization. To the powerful myth of the “disincorporated brain,” I propose an antidote—the concept of the distributed-centered subject.