> In any case, I would love to talk to you all more off list about ANT
> (which I have only come to recently) and the supernatural. There are so
> many fascinating questions. Does the supernatural agent only become an
> agent via its physical manifestations? In other words, does the immaterial
> need to somehow be translated into materiality, and if so, is our use of
> ANT just one more form of psychical research? What of the psychological
> impact on human subjects? If a supernatural being is "taken seriously" by
> a human subject, is that enough to endow it with real agency - or does it
> depend on who the human subject is?
And to recommend another interesting book: Dipesh Chakrabarty's
"Provincializing Europe - Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference"
(Princeton U Press, 2000). Chakrabarty was part of the very interesting
school of post-colonial historians that grew up around the journal
"Subaltern Studies." His chapter two that rereads Marx to incorporate
vitalist ideas into his materialism, is rather neat, and chapters three and
four deal with incorporating the Gods into history as actors. I recommend
the epilogue as well.
Michael Taussig's "The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America" U
North Carolina Press, 1984) with his exploration of a Satanic cult of
Bolivian tin miners, plus some of his other work, is worth looking at, too.
Cool stuff.
Sam Wagar
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