Lo J. After the Method: disorder and social science / Transl. from English. edited by S. Gavrilenko, Moscow: Gaidar Institute Publishing House, 2015, 352 p.

Actor-network theory 1 (hereinafter referred to as AST. - I. D.) is rarely used in practice in Russian social science2, and in Philippe Corcuff's well-known short review "New Sociologies" (1995), AST is given a more than modest place 3. However, since the author of the peer-reviewed monograph repeatedly refers to the subject of religion to illustrate his own methodological discoveries (using the example of Quaker ontotheology and Australian Aboriginal ontomythology 4), the philosopher-religious scholar, in our opinion, has the right to ask the question of the applicability of AST in modern religious studies.

John Law (b. 1946) is a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the British Open University, one of the founders of the ACT (along with Bruno Latour and Michel Callon 5), and Poe-

1. It should be borne in mind that there are currently two schools of AST: the Paris School (Bruno Latour and Michel Callon) develops general theoretical questions, and Lancaster's (John Lo, Ann-Marie Mol, etc.) - semiotic and topological ones. (See: Vakhstein V. Sotsiologiya veshov i "povorot k materialnom" v sotsial'noi teorii / / Sotsiologiya veshov. Sb. statei / Ed. by V. Vakhstein. Moscow: Territory of the Future, 2006. Pp. 32-35).

2. International teleconference on the ontology of actor-network theory, held on June 17, 2014 at the Faculty of Philosophy of Lomonosov Moscow State University within the framework of the International Conference "Ontological Research in Russia and Italy - IV" between the staff of the Department of Ontology and Theory of Knowledge of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University and representatives of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Ontological Society (see subr. online resource: http://new.philos.msu.ru/ news/item/telemost_po_aktorno_ setevoi_teorii_2436 / and http:// lomonosov-msu.ru/ras/event/2516/ [accessed 30.09.14]), did not cause any noticeable resonance.

3. Korkuf F. Novye sotsiologii [New Sociologies]. Translated from French under the scientific editorship of N. A. Shmatko, Moscow: Institute of Experiment. Social Sciences; St. Petersburg: Aleteya Publ., 2002, pp. 97-107.

4. J. Lo's statement is significant: "... mystical experience cannot be captured in words. This experience transcends words, and you can only refer to it textually. The ways of life of Quakers and Aboriginal Australians suggest that spiritual experience should also be captured in physical experience, dance, or art." After the Method: disorder and social science / Transl. Translated from English by S. Gavrilenko, A. Pisarev and P. Khanova. S. Gavrilenko, Moscow: IIG, 2015, p. 302).

5. For Bruno Latour, see subr. online resource: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/ [accessed on 30.04.15]. His closest associate, Michel Callon, Professor of Sociology at the Paris School of Mines (b. 1945), is no less a renowned scientist, but his work is highly specialized and highly qualified.-

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investigative supporters of it. Lo positions itself as an AST 6 methodologist. A connoisseur of post-structuralism and postmodernism7, but far from trying to shock the public, Lo openly declares from the pages of his book "After the Method" that modern science does not have a method, at least not the one that "European-American metaphysics" is used to and that it - metaphysics-has cultivated since the time of Aristotle for many centuries. the existence of both classical and non-classical scientific paradigms (if we use the conceptual framework of the theory of Thomas Kuhn and his supporters 8). The general concept of a method, stated by John Lo , is:...a system for offering more or less profitable guarantees. It promises to bring us more or less quickly and safely to the destination, that is, knowledge about the processes operating in a single world. It promises to reduce the risks we face along the way. This method allows us to reject false hypotheses: this is an important part of the methodology's self-presentation... It also lets us know that certain methods don't work. But as a framework, the method itself is at least temporarily reliable 9.

But such a universal method is not currently available either in the arsenal of the philosophy of method or in the arsenal of the methodology of science. It turns out, to put it in our language, that the method for Lo is an empty framework concept10.

Applications of AST in the economy are discussed. A full list of the works of the third founder of AST-John Lo-can be found on his official page of the university website, see the Internet resource: http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/main/staff/ people-profile. php?name=John_Law [accessed 30.04.15].

6. See the Internet resource: http:// heterogeneities.net/approach.htm [accessed on 30.04.15]. In Russian, see: Lo J. Obyekty i prostranstva [Objects and spaces] / / Sotsiologiya veshestv. Sb. statei / Ed. by V. Vakhshtayna, Moscow, 2006, pp. 223-243.

7. Lo J. After the method: disorder and social science, Moscow, 2015. 27, 78, 173, 174, 333 - 345.

8. Kun T. Struktura nauchnykh revolyutsii [Structure of Scientific revolutions]. / Transl. from English. under the general editorship of S. R. Mikulinsky and L. A. Markova. Blagoveshchensk, BGC named after I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, 1998.

9. Lo J. After the method. pp. 29-30.

10. On empty framework concepts, see specials: Davydov I. P. Epistema miforituala, Moscow, 2013, pp. 144-146; Prilutsky A.M. Review of the book: Davydov I. P. Epistema miforituala // Vestnik PSTGU. Ser. 1: Theology, philosophy. 2014. N 3 (53). pp. 151-155. In general, John Lo can be considered our ally in the frequency of using the term "framework" - he uses its derivatives in many contexts, meaning, for example, " framework before-

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The method, according to John Lo, needs to be re-constructed (expand - undermine - redo 11). The fruit of his efforts was a new tool - "method-assembly", "sharpened" specifically for the needs of the humanities. In a peer-reviewed book, he made three attempts to define it 12. In our opinion, the most appropriate definition can be considered as the following:

Method-assembly is the process of establishing and fabricating bundles of branching relationships that condense presence and therefore produce absence, forming, mediating, and separating them. Often, the method-assembly is associated with the presentation of realities there-out and the representation of these realities here-in, as well as with the establishment of another state.

Of course, operating with this definition entails the need for subsequent hermeneutical efforts to clarify the meaning of the concepts of "absence" and"Other" 14. A trivial, but rather clear example of how it is possible to "produce absence" is the impression of a seal in sealing wax or the manufacture of a hollow cast-iron mold for chill casting. (And you can also recall the famous passage from the 11th Zhang "Tao te Ching": "Vessels are made of clay, but the use of vessels depends on the emptiness in them.") Since it was important for John Lo to demonstrate the actor-network principle of constructing the topography of the universe, we can refer to his reasoning,

developments in European-American metaphysics", quotes" Science and African Logic " by Hellen Verran in the epigraph to Chapter 7: "In this book, I will try a new form of criticism that differs in its framework construction..." and so on. After the method. pp. 202, 252, etc.).

11. Lo J. After the method. p. 28.

12. Ibid., pp. 176 and 325. 13. Ibid., pp. 252.

14. Lo gives them an exhaustive description: "Absence < is ...a necessary Other presence, which is realized and constituted together with the latter, and also helps to constitute it. There are two forms of absence in a method assembly. Apparent absence - something that is absent, but is recognized as significant for the presence or is presented in it. Absence as Otherness is that which is absent because it is established by presence as irrelevant, impossible, or repressed. < ... > Otherness < is ...that which is neither present, nor recognized or revealed as absent, but is nevertheless created by presence and participates in it when creating it. More precisely, it is something that is both necessary for the presence, but also necessarily suppressed or repressed in the absence of..." After the method. pp. 326-327 and 323).

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expressed in the article "Objects and spaces"15: Portuguese ships off the coast of America and India in the XV-XVI centuries. represented a pronounced presence (military, commercial, etc.) of the Portuguese crown in the New World. Their location in this particular geographical region implies their physical absence in any other square of the sea. And their attempt to oust direct competitors from the Atlantic Caribbean - first the Spaniards, somewhat later the French and Dutch-makes the latter undesirable" other", i.e., competing maritime powers with each other and with Portugal, whose fleets were also equipped with the latest shipbuilding technology of that time.16
The British methodologist ACT proceeds from post-structuralist premises: realities are multiplicative (meaning, apparently, ontological relativism and pluralism); the assembly method in the hands of the researcher always pulls the threads of reality out of the disordered tangle of probabilities 17 and "pulls" reality into a certain plausible bundle of relations (like the braid of a stranded cable), performing a reconstructive, constitutive, explicative function., demarcation, integrative and disintegrating functions; the method assembly itself is not static or constant, it is purely situational, utilitarian, created for a specific task and soon replaced with its new "release", somewhat resembling an endless series of the same computer programs with their "bugs", "patches", "bugs", etc.beta and alpha versions" and regular updates, which makes Lo himself emphasize its performativity.

Since the conceptual framework of John Law's theory is artificially complicated and metaphorical,-

15. Sotsiologiya veshestv [Sociology of Things], Collection of Articles, ed. by V. Vakhshtein, Moscow, 2006, pp. 223 et seq.

16. "...A ship can be represented as a network - a network of < hull kit details>, < spars>, sails, < rigging>, cannons, food stores, cabins, and the crew itself. On the other hand, in a more generalized view, the navigation system with all its ephemeris, astrolabes and quadrants... maps, navigators, and stars can also be considered as a network. Further, with even more detached analysis, the whole Portuguese imperial system, with its ports and warehouses, ships, military dispositions, markets and merchants, can be described in the same categories." Obyekty i prostranstva [Objects and spaces] / / Sotsiologiya tesh [Sociology of Things]. Sb. statei, Moscow, 2006, pp. 226-227).

17. "Alternative metaphysics assumes that the external is inexhaustible, redundant, active, that it is a multitude of fluctuating potentials and, ultimately, an absolutely indeterminate flow" (Lo J. After the method, p. 296).

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The more significant terms and metaphors of its lexicon (such as" hinterland"," assembly"," allegory"," cyborg") are reflected in the special dictionary 18.It is necessary to focus a little more on the terminology of the definition cited above. In our opinion, the relations between "external" "internal" and "Other" are easily defined by the more familiar philosophical oppositions of the transcendent immanent and transcendental in the same visual way - using the semantic square 19 (with one reduced contraposition relation, see Figure 1).:

where A will correspond to the "external" ("there-outside"), A is the "internal" ("here-inside" as a representation / replacement of the transcendent immanent to the observer's coordinate system), A = "Other", repressed in the absence, and A is the impossible "view from nowhere", i.e. scientific fiction of an infinitely remote point in projective geometry (where the "All-seeing Eye" of Christian theism looks from): ...if something is made present, then something else that is related to it is made absent, pushed out of the field of visibility: presence is impossible without absence. < ... > This means that the assembly method makes something present by creating an absence. Formally, I have defined it as the institution of presence, manifest absence, and absence as Other. < ... > the method inevitably produces not only truths and non-truths, realities and non-realities, presence and absence, but also configurations... and builds of things (as well as reports on them) that might be different 20.

18. Lo Dock. After the method. pp. 321-332.

19. Greimas A. J., Kurte J. Semiotic Square / / Semiotics. / Comp., intro. art. and total. Edited by Yu. S. Stepanov, Moscow: Raduga Publ., 1983, pp. 496-502.

20. Lo J. After the method, pp. 294 and 295, John Law prefaces his work with an epigraph from Lewis Carroll's Alice through the Looking Glass. In our opinion, the fragment from the first fairy tale, reflecting the maxim of the Duchess, is congruent with Law's statement: "And the moral from here is: every vegetable has its time. Or, if you want, I'll put it more simply: never think that you are different than you could be otherwise than being different in those cases when it is impossible not to be otherwise " (Carroll L. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Through the mirror and what Alice saw there, or Alice in Wonderland / Pe-

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John Lo needed the postmodern "neo-language" for a transgressive breakthrough beyond the traditional (in the European-American classical and post-classical paradigms) language of describing entities that are amenable to philosophical and scientific observation, description, explanation, and prediction. It postulates the performativity of the subject and object of scientific research produced by the method assembly itself. European and American scientists are used to isolating and explicating the subject of their research from a static, external, given problem field and limited object. But being is a stream: (Heraclitus). Like the Tao, it cannot be stopped. While the scientist will record and analyze the instantaneous single state of the flow "Dao", it will already change (= it is impossible to enter the same river even once), and the results of the analysis will become outdated before they have time to take shape. That is, in the scientific approach of AST, the primary method is assembly, a unique interweaving of possibilities into a subjective version of reality, and the object and subject are secondary, depending on the method of detection, "assembly" of the next "release", the instrumental equipment of observation, fixation, and the language of description:

In contrast to European-American common sense, Latour and Woolgar tell us that it is impossible to isolate from each other: a) production of individual realities; b) production of statements about these realities; c) creation of technical, instrumental, human configurations and practices, recording devices that produce these realities and statements. All this is done together. Scientific realities only come with recording devices. Without recording devices and the statements and records they create, reality does not exist 21.

In other words, according to the AST, reality, including social reality, does not" pose " for the scientist, waiting for him to correctly capture it. The subject of research is individualized-

Translated from English by N. M. Demurova, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1991, p. 74). That is, Carroll, being a logic teacher, through the mouth of the Duchess warns her main character that every time she gets to Wonderland, Alice (A of the semantic square) will necessarily become this Alice (A), and not any other (A).

21. Lo J. After the method. p. 69.

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as a" blend "or" assemblage " made up by the scientist himself, it is not isolated from the permanent and objectified reality by the method of abstraction, but is always constructed anew, so its reliability is forced to be conventional. There is no" Hegelian " objectivity in social science - there is complementarity, that is, the resulting sum of the subjective positions of specific researchers who look at the problem from their own perspective and together with the subject form an actor network with feedback.

What methodological consequences, in our opinion, can the use of this approach in religious studies entail in practice?

In the field of social and religious anthropology: it becomes obvious that it is necessary to accept mythological "big narratives" of aborigines as an alternative to the results of the research installation (method-assembly). The myth is no worse in this respect, and the Australoids, who are forced to share their habitat with the British colonizers, have learned to be content with it, ignoring the value system and even the coordinate system of"white strangers". Moreover, such a myth, when articulated, is not just reactualized, but literally regenerated (which makes us recall Lacan's schizoanalysis as a search for dyslexia and the sacramental phrase of psychiatrists "Who are we today?").:

Narratives and what they claim are not fixed in Aboriginal practice. They are subject to negotiation again and again. <...> The Australian Aborigines <...> have a multiplicity of theories and a regularity of practices - the exact opposite of the European-American uniqueness of theory and multiplicity of practices. That is, the forms of history are repeated, but there is no need for a single form 22.

And this is a fundamental point for the religious studies (i.e., carried out by a religious scholar) analysis of religious self - / identity and self-/identification23: rituals are necessary for the regular re-creation of a single religious identity.-

22. Lo J. After the method. p. 266, 267, plus p. 271-287.

23. Vevyurko I. S., Vinokurov V. V., Davydov I. P., Osipova O. V., Panin S. A., Fadeev I. A. From "places of memory" to religious identity (instead of a Preface). Hermeneutics. Ecclesiology. / Under the general editorship of I. P. Davydov, Moscow: Maska Publ., 2015, pp. 3-45.

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the concept of" land - identity - kinship - religion - ancestors", because, according to the natives, " ...the world is created and recreated in every gathering, every ceremony, every representation... 24. It is enough for the tribal leader or elders, healers and / or priests to pull out the totem pole - and the whole tribe turns into preliminaries, until a new site for the camp is chosen and the totem pole is placed in its place, centering the universe. Here the totem pole is an obvious embodiment of the idea of axis mundi or columna universalis, which was described in detail by the same Mircea Eliade 25. Such a reverent attitude to an arbitrarily chosen coordinate axis is observed not only in mythological and religious consciousness and behavior (cf. Exodus 13: 21-22), but also in everyday life. The scientific approach ("method-assembly") turns out to be a paradigmatic alternative to the "myth-assembly" (our term - I. D.) of aboriginal reality or "game-assembly" (our term. - I. D.) children's fantasies 27.

In the field of phenomenology of religion. John Law applied his method to describe the essence of a Quaker prayer meeting and came to the discovery that the assembly method resonates with certain phenomena, amplifying them so much that some are made visible, while other "frequencies" of the phenomenon are "drowned out", suppressed, turning into background "noises"28. And the scientist is not able to predict in advance what will be highlighted in the subject of research and what will go into the shadow (maybe even in the Jungian Shadow) (there is a situation of tense waiting and mutual dialogical interaction).

24. Lo J. After the method. p. 269.

25. See in Russian: Eliade M. Sacred and mundane. / Transl. Translated from French by N. K. Garbovsky, Moscow: MSU, 1994.

26. Winnie the Pooh and the philosophy of everyday language. Alan Milne. Winnie the Pooh. The house in Bear's Corner. / Transl. Translated from English by T. A. Mikhailova and V. P. Rudnev; Analytical article and commentary by V. P. Rudnev. 3rd ed., reprint Moscow: Agraf, 2000. p. 141. The long stick picked up by Winnie the Pooh in the forest to save Little Roo from the water by the head of the "iskpedition" to the North Pole Christopher Robin is solemnly appointed the axis of the world, which, in fact," iskpedition " triumphantly ends.

27. There is, in our opinion, a very serious problem area of religious studies and cultural anthropology, which reveals its contours in the light of the ideas expressed by Roger Caillois regarding the game and mythology. See in Russian: Kayua R. Games and people; Articles and essays on the sociology of culture. / Transl. from French, comp. S. N. Zenkina, Moscow: OGI, 2007; Kayua R. Myth and Man. Man and the sacred. / Transl. from French. and introductory articles by S. N. Zenkin, Moscow: OGI, 2003.

28. Lo J. After the method. pp. 236-245.

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looking at the subject and object, since they are both actants of the actor network).

In the field of sociology of religion. In the book "Pasteur: The War of Microbes, with an appendix of the Irreducible" (Les Microbes. Guerre et paix, suivi de Irreductions. P.: Pandore, 1984), whose Russian translation is currently being prepared 29, Bruno Latour cites the "parable of colonialism", which John Law quotes in detail, considering it fundamentally important:

They were stronger than the strong because they arrived together. No, better: they arrived separately, each in his own place and each with his own idea of cleanliness... The priests only talked about the Bible... The administrators, with their rules and regulations, attributed their own success to the civilizing mission of their country. Geographers talked only about science... merchants attributed all the virtues of their art to gold, trade, and the London Mercantile Exchange. The soldiers just followed orders...

Engineers attributed the efficiency of their machines to progress 30.

That is, the spheres of influence and professional interests of different social groups of colonists did not actually overlap anywhere, but they were complementary to each other and formed an actor network together with the settlers, which greatly increased the cumulative effect of their disparate efforts. In our opinion, a good illustration of this philosophical parable is the very real fate of small-town Jewish farmers who migrated to Latin America (Argentina) from Eastern Europe and Russia in the late XIX-early XX century31, who sang the Pampa in the biblical style (poets), cultivated virgin land (farmers), blessed immigrants like Moses (rabbis), and so on.

Based on the observations of Anna Shkolnik, the author of this review has tried to verify the methodology of AST (Bruno Latour and John Law) for a concrete approach.-

29. Latour B. Pasteur: the War of Microbes, with the application of the Irreducible. St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2015. For more information, see the Internet resource: http:// www.eupress.ru/books/index/item/id/211 [accessed 03.05.2015].

30.Cit. by: Lo J. After the method. P. 291.

31. Shkolnik A. On the art of sowing wheat and reaping doctors // Eshkolot 17.02.2013: Reap, love, fight: Esoteric arts of the Jews. / Eshkolot Electronic Library [http://www.eshkolot.ru/event/38435 (accessed 03.05.2015)].

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based on the example of the "Jewish Gauchos" 32, he concluded that religious rites and rituals are indeed "the realization of locations" (the term Lo), a way of developing and appropriating space and interiorizing a social group ("To manage means to settle" 33), preserving ethno-religious identity (for example, immigrants) and cooperation of labor forces. in this case, the chairman of the Jewish Colonization Society, Baron Maurice von Hirsch, and many thousands of railway engineers, doctors, lawyers, shepherds, school teachers, rabbis, etc.of the "non - titular nation" of the Russian Empire).

At the end of our conversation, I would like to say a few words about the structure of John Lo's book "After the Method". For a result-oriented pragmatist, it will be enough to get acquainted with the eighth chapter of the peer-reviewed monograph "Conclusion: Ontological Policy and After", which compactly sets out all the basic definitions (methods, method-assembly, etc.) and conclusions of the British theorist, rubricated according to the main patterns of ontological methodology: "method", "realities""gathering", "goods" (primarily truth, politics, beauty, justice, inspiration, spirituality), "reordering" (process, symmetry, multiplicity, uncertainty, re-establishment, etc.). All exotic terminology, as we have already mentioned, is explained by John Lo in a special Glossary A carefully selected bibliography of English-language sources (about 180 titles) makes its argument sound, and Russian translators have accompanied some bibliographic items with an indication of the output data in Russian, if these books were already published in Russia (before 2013). inclusive). John Law himself quotes L. Wittgenstein, F. Guattari, J. Deleuze, B. Latour, F. de Saussure, M. Foucault and other foreign authors for him only in translations into English, apparently in order to become as clear as possible to the English-speaking reader.

His maximum program is to show inferiority

32. Shkolnik A. Real and imaginary Jews of the New World: the temptation of utopia // Jews: another story. / Comp. Edited by G. S. Zelenin, Moscow: ROSSPEN Publ., 2013, pp. 374-403.

33. This slogan was put forward by the Argentine liberal Juan B. Alberdi (d. 1884), who welcomed Jewish immigration to the New World. (See under: Shkolnik A. Real and Imaginary Jews of the New World, p. 392).

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classical and non-classical (and perhaps even post-non-classical) epistemological paradigms in human studies, since their heuristic universality is nullified by failing to withstand elementary verification and falsification procedures (after all, it is enough to find a single counterargument to refute all deductive reasoning 34). Metaphysics is based on constants, but these are precisely what Lo has criticized. He postulates, based on the achievements of A. T. B. Latour and M. Callon, the fluidity and performativity of all things, offering to describe reality in a metaphorical language, which will reflect the research intuitions: "localities", "fractionality", "resonances", "gathering", "weaving processes", "spirals", " vortices", "thickening", "dancing", "passion", "interference" and so on in the same spirit 35.

These metaphors are not groundless - they are, in Law's view, a way of expressing life itself (the everyday life and rituals of Quakers or Australian Aborigines, etc.), freed from the fetters of "common sense". So John Law, in chapter one, "After the Method: An Introduction," begins his discourse by stating the confusion that reigns in the "great jumble" of being, which no method has yet mastered. Chapter two, Scientific Practices, is devoted to explaining Hinterland and method-assembly through the lens of Latour's view of ontology. In the third chapter, "Multiple Worlds", Lo gives specific examples from the practice of phlebology surgeons that call into question the established stereotype of the uniqueness and integrity of the world picture (including the biological body, more precisely, the physiological picture of the vital activity of a particular patient's body). The material in the fourth chapter, "Fluid Results, "is intended to confirm all that has been said in the previous three chapters, focusing the reader's attention on" indeterminate objects " that wander through contexts and escape unambiguous description. This conversation continues with the fifth chapter, "Elusive Objects", which raises issues of hermeneutics-allegorical interpretation, ambiguity, ambivalence as ways to take into account a specific series of events (on the example of the consequences of the terrible railway disaster of 1999). A separate section is devoted to the Quaker Prayer Meeting.-

34." The idea of the universal transportability of universal knowledge has always been a chimera. <...> There is no universal " (Lo J. After the method. pp. 318, 319).

35. Lo J. After the method. p. 320.

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chapter six, "Unconventional forms", which deals with the irreducibility of observed phenomena to the knowledge already accumulated by science (here Lo protests against the principle of explanation through reduction to the known. See, for example, the sub-paragraph "Blinding and simplification"). The main part of the seventh chapter, "Imagination and Narrative", is devoted to the mythological narrative of the Australoids, which regularly serves as a system of sacred coordinates for local tribes over the life of hundreds of generations of Aborigines. In our opinion, it is the material of these two chapters (chapters 6 and 7) that should interest cultural scientists, social anthropologists, and religious scholars in the first place. It seems that the book of the British methodologist will not only find its grateful and thoughtful reader in Russia, but will also enrich the arsenal of epistemological tools of actor-network theory and expand the panorama of alternative epistemologies, the basis for which was laid by the works of, for example, Paul Feyerabend.36
36. See on Rus. In Russian: Feyerabend P. Against methodological coercion. Essay on the anarchist theory of Knowledge / Transl. translated from English and German by A. L. Nikiforova, commonly. edited by I. S. Narsky. Blagoveshchensk: Baudouin de Courtenay BGC, 1998.

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