Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

ANT and the phenomenologist

Michal Lipták

Tuesday 13 September 2022

15:30 - 16:15

Palazzo del Capitanio-Aula Film

Actor-network theory’s (ANT) primary mission is to give voice to actor’s themselves, whenever, whomever, and even whatever they may be. This effort on part of ANT resembles phenomenology’s striving to approach and describe the phenomena from first-person experience. Indeed, Latour in Reassembling the Social acknowledges the rich descriptive capabilities of phenomenology, but invites it, in order to properly align with ANT, to abandon its focus on intentionality, and to extend its approach to “‘non-intentional’ entities”, too. In my paper, I will politely decline Latour’s invitation and provide reasons for doing so. In particular, I will show that phenomenology’s transcendentalist ambitions, mainly an ambition to find truth in contingency, force it to focus on the intentionality and prevent it from settling on mere description. I will disclose how these transcendentalist aspirations differentiate phenomenology from ANT, and ultimately I will argue that phenomenology shall not give up these transcendentalist ambitions, yet.