Semiotics for Actor-Network Theory

This chapter aims to show how the relationship between Latour's investigation on meaning and the research perspective on signification developed within the framework of structural semiotics is anything but episodic, marginal or outdated. With the aim of highlighting the reasons behind an uninterrupted dialogue, even if often denied or marginalised in the field of social sciences, this chapter considers the main semiotic concepts at the basis of Latour’s work, highlighting the main affinities and discontinuities that emerge at a theoretical and methodological level, with particular reference to actor-network theory. It is pointed out that the metaphor of semiotics as a toolbox for actor-network theory is overly reductive and does not sufficiently account for the presence of a common non-anthropomorphic theory of agency and an anti-dualist epistemological principle that recognizes the primacy of the relationship over the elements involved in a social phenomenon. To this end, a comparison is made between the notions of actor, actant, enunciation, narrative program originally elaborated within the framework of semiotic theory and their novel reinterpretation introduced by Latour to examine the paradoxes of modernity.