Ontology of Historicism: The Actor-Network Theory and the Elimination of the Subject

Abstract

The article refers to the ontological foundations of the actor-network theory, considered from the perspective of historicism at the present stage of its development. The author offers an original version of the origin of the actor-network theory, placing it in the context of the process of overcoming classical historicism, historical relativism inherent in Postmodernism and searching for a new perspective on the historical process. The article puts forward and argues the thesis that the theoretical demarche under consideration, genetically related to the Structuralism of previous decades, has the potential to bring the problems common with Structuralism to the ontological level. The actor does not have some pre-existence, but is wholly constituted in the event. It does not exist on its own, but along with other actors whose activity creates the space in which they themselves are constituted. The essence of an actor entirely coincides with its existence in the space of events. The author concludes that the actor-network theory, not striving for the revival of trans-historical universals like the subject of history, also refuses to historicize the entities with which it has to deal. The actor has no personal history and is himself fundamentally unhistorical, but exists only within the framework of the ‘stories’ that happen to him. Such a theoretical demarche partially revives the subject of history, and in the ultimate perspective, the forms of thought characteristic of classical historicism. Thus, a specific structure is constituted in the space of the humanities, using the forms of classical historicism with their inherent figures and adapting them to a new context that meets the modern scientific situation.

Keywords:

historicism, humanities, ontology, actor-network theory, structuralism, historical relativism