BLAG NINE

I'm interested in Latour's actor-network theory but would like to leave the technology angle to the side for right now. The part I understand regarding how technology comes into it is that due to "the multiplication of digital data" and tools like navigation and screens, individual contributions to the aggregate are more traceable than they used to be (9). That is, one is less likely to credit the aggregate (the internet) for things put forth by individuals (Pretend Footnote: I don't think this is completely true, since just the other day I saw an article that began "And in the days since Donald Trump's election, the internet has given us plenty [of memes] in the form of thoughts between outgoing Vice President Joe Biden . . . " (People); but I also don't want to talk about it.). It seems like Latour is saying more about technology apart from its role in helping battle discontinuity and arriving at the actor-network theory, but I just don't follow where he's taking it.

            Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how far away I can get from the technology aspect because I'm realizing I don't have a clear understanding of its implications. We'll see. But now I want to talk about Marie de France. And maybe the best approach will be for me to see how she and Latour may fit in together, instead of trying to fight him on technology's importance.

            So what I see Latour saying is that back in Ye Olden Dayes, it was tempting to say that society (the aggregate or whole) was bigger and more important than individuals, because it was difficult to trace individual contributions. Marie attributes her stories to "the Bretons" and in-so-doing gives herself authority because she refers to an aggregate. However, the reality is that one person or many individual persons Way Back When made those stories up. And they affected a whole culture! Which affected more cultures through oral transmission, Marie's recording of them, others' translations of Marie's texts, and scholarship on medieval women writers. (But now I'm getting a little lost, so I'll move on and hopefully find my way back.)

            Now, Latour is also saying that in Super Modern Times like Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (forget the 20th century and RISE of technology because we are talking SUPER modern HIGH technology. I think.), we have sophisticated tools of communication that allows us to very visibly see individual contributors and their individual works, but also where those individual contributors got their ideas and inspirations and discourse and stuff. I can see this. The individuals and the aggregate are just one thing, on one level, coexisting.

            What's holding me up and that I want to question (but not really argue against) is if this stuff really was going on for Marie de France and it's just not as obvious because they weren't that into citation and plagiarism wasn't a thing people worried about. Medieval texts are incredibly dependent on each other, and the influence of authors is actually traceable, not as discontinuous as Latour seems to suggest. Now, I'm not saying that these are as easy to track down as when someone cites a web address, but scholars do spend time trying to figure out where Malory and Chaucer and Chretien and Marie's stories come from (even if they disagree...which I guess would argue for discontinuity...but this isn't an argument!), and in some cases there's some confidence in saying Chaucer used an anonymous author's version (hahahahaha this is so not helping me) of the Griselda story instead of Petrarch's or Boccacio's. What makes this even trickier is that, while medieval writing depends on being and is intended to be very shareable, authors like Marie make a point to say in their prologues that they want people to remember who did their work. Perhaps this is just an appearance of Latour's explanation that for a long time "people said that interactions create phenomena superior to the individual social atoms . . . because they had first defined the atoms as self-contained entitites deprived of all the other entities" (13). The dialogic thinking that puts individuals and aggregates on two levels rather than one where individuals are merely part of a collective of other individuals.

            But has scholarship in English not been trying to create one level for a long time? Is the single level really a new, technology-driven thing? Some write dissertations and books and make careers out of time periods and genres and theories, while others focus on individual authors. Is elevating the individual not a way of dissolving two levels into one? How might this relate to distant reading which could perhaps elevate A LOT of individuals into a collective? But then, distant reading, in Moretti's sense, is to my understanding dependent on Super Modern Times technology. (Pretend Footnote: This is becoming a catchall paragraph, sorrynotsorry). How does this challenge other parts:whole thinking structures, such as ends vs. means, refusing to sacrifice the individual (person? dream? talent?) for the good of a group? And maybe this can help us think about metonymy vs. metaphor? And finally, if this can only be done with the help of technology--with a kind of aggregate--is that not saying the work of individuals is not important?