Methodologies of Travel: William James and the Ambulatory Pragmatism of Bruno Latour

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues for the methodological resonance shared by Bruno Latour and William James in order to understand Latour's affiliation with pragmatism. Unlike many readers of Latour, I suggest that his relation with pragmatism is primarily methodological rather than primarily ontological. To clarify this, I look to the resonances between James's methodological pragmatism and Latour's actor-network methodology. Latour's pragmatism resonates with James's as it incorporates a methodological focus on practices and objects, and as it furthers underdeveloped themes of motion in James's pragmatism. This methodological alliance, I argue, consists in a modification of the metaphoric of method from one of Cartesian construction to one of movement and travel.