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Mark and Wes read and discuss the short 2007 article, “Can We Get Our Materialism Back, Please?” Here Bruno Latour complains that materialism as modern common sense conceives of it is actually idealist: It is a social construction. Instead, a “thick” concept of material things acknowledges and details their historical (i.e. material in the Marxist sense) origins.
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there is a pattern to these attempts at reading “continental” philosophy (or in this case more philosophical anthropology/sociology) where you guys are coming into a long running series of exchanges for which you don’t have the context and miss many/most of the references.
In this particular matter (pardon the pun) Harman is a really poor way into Latour as they were after very different ends/means and that only adds to the gaps.