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analyses that account for practices as
fields, i.e., domains of subjectobject/human-non-human
activity, or
descriptions of these fields, in order to
understand the changes of their subjectobject's
practices. He notes that:
Most practice theorist would agree that
activity is embodied and that nexuses of
practices are mediated by artifacts,
hybrids, and natural objects, disagreements
reign about the nature of embodiment,
the pertinence of thematizing it
when analyzing practices, the sorts of
entities that mediate activity, and whether
these entities are relevant to practices
as more than mere intermediaries
among humans. [Schatzki 2001: 2]
For them order is a characteristic(s) of
the field of practices and these practices
are responsible for the production of
these characteristics, while the psychological
basis for action is constituted by
abilities “such as know-how, skills, tacit
understanding, and dispositions”
(Schatzki 2001: 7).
He, most probably, takes the notion of
field from Bourdieu's social theory. The
latter uses the idea of field in order to
describe a social space that is based on
a dynamic structure of difference. The
field nominates both a domain of force,
“whose necessity is imposed on agents
who engage in it”, and a domain of
struggle “within which agents confront
each other, with differentiated means
and ends according to their position in
the structure of the field of forces, thus
contributing to conserving or transforming
its structure” (Bourdieu 1998).
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When one looks at the relation between
the field of art and the field of philosophy,
the link seems to be established
according to positions and dispositions
of individual or class habituses.
Henceforth, conceptual art is a position
within the field of art, embodied in a
habitus, the catalyst for practices of
change or conservation, that has acquired
certain dispositions from within the
field of philosophy.
Although the historical determinants of
this field alignment play an important
role in its explanation, Osborne seems
to give a very narrow account of them,
neglecting what happened in a broader
context. One might link it though with
what some have called post-modernism
(Harvey 1990; Jameson 1991; Lyotard
1984), that is, the failure of knowledge's
grand narratives to legitimately represent
what counts as “real” by means of
epistemological fallacies or political economic
contingencies. Schneider, Wright
et. al. are more detailed in this regards.
They follow the historical origins of the
link between art and anthropology from
post-modernism onwards. It is not the
case here to trace this history. Because
this would mean to take for granted the
descriptions of the relation established
between philosophy or anthropology
and art as fields, either in Bourdieu's
rigorous manner or sometimes in a fashion
more nuanced by post-modernist
theories. What interests me is the possibility
of replacing the idea of a field with
what, for me, seems to be a more adequate
term. But first, I will outline some
problems that make the operationalization
of the field difficult.
As Stephen Turner has noticed (1994),
Bourdieu avoids an explicit account of
the means by which dispositions are
acquired and embodied in habitus, and
how they subsequently influence the
position in the field, by arguing that this
is a psychological object of investigation
that sociologists don't have to deal with,
and that, nevertheless, this will not significantly
change the outcomes of the
actions performed. Thus, one can see in
Osborne's text that the notion of field
doesn't help him to provide a convincing
argument for what he names
inclusive/weak and exclusive/strong
conceptual art. Schatzki (2002: 153)
agrees with Turner about this, saying
that “Bourdieu collapses the organization
of practices into the structure of
habitus”. Furthermore, Schatzki abandons
the notion of field, that according
to him doesn't allow practices to occur in
intertwined bounded realms, for the
concept of social site. This may be the
reason why Osborne speaks about the
alignment and not the overlapping or
entanglement of the fields. But in the
case of Schneider, Wright et. al., they
theorize and analyze the relations between
art and anthropology more in their
dynamic of entanglement than in its
purified realms.
Latour (1993) also calls into question
Bourdieu's “Enlighment” background
that shoves the “Great Divide” into his
theoretical framework. Therefore, for
him, Bourdieu is engaged in a project of
dividing and categorizing entities by
“purifying” them and stabilizing, to a certain
extent, their uncontrollable agency.
He rejects or rather avoids talking about
the hybridization of these entities, emerged
out of translation, delegation, blackboxing,
and composition processes. For
Latour there is no site or field, but a network
that is sewed through the above
mentioned practices which are performed
in an action program that composes
a hybrid entity.
III.
To make sense out of the concepts
deployed by Latour, I will make appeal
to the curatorial statement provided by
Anne Barlow for the 2012 Bucharest
Biennial for Contemporary Art. Taking in
consideration his definition of a program
of action, by which he means, the series
of goals, steps and intentions described
by one agent, I argue that, in this case,
as strange as it may sound, the agent is
not just Anne Barlow, but also the statement
that pertains to the reader, and the
web page where he can find it. The reader
is not interacting with the curator,
but with something she wrote on her virtual
sheet, next agent, at her personal
or office computer, another agent. Anne
Barlow needed the computer, a home or
an office, the fourth agent, the text editing
software, the fifth agent, and the
language skills, another agent, which
she got from the attended schools,
agents again, etc. to compose the statement.
She also might have needed
agents like art theory books, artists,
artworks, exhibitions etc.
The text translates all the actions that
Anne Barlow performed in association
with some of the entities mentioned,
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