Editing Actor–network theory (section)

=== Quasi-object ===
For the rethinking of social relations as networks, Latour mobilizes a concept from Michel Serres<ref>{{Cite book |last=Serres |first=Michel |title=The parasite |last2=Schehr |first2=Lawrence R. |date=1982 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |isbn=978-0-8018-2456-2 |location=Baltimore |pages=224–234 |language=en, fr}}</ref> and expands on it in order “to locate the position of these strange new hybrids”.<ref name=":0" /> Quasi-objects are simultaneously quasi-subjects – the prefix ''quasi ''denotes that neither ontological status as subject or object is pure or permanent, but that these are dynamic entities whose status shifts, depending on their respective momentous activity and their according position in a collective or network.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Vries |first=Gerard de |title=Bruno Latour |date=2016 |publisher=Polity Press |isbn=978-0-7456-5062-3 |location=Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA |pages=134}}</ref> What is decisive is circulation and participation, from which networks emerge, examples for quasi-objects are language, money, bread, love, or the ball in a soccer game: all of these human or non-human, material or immaterial actants have no agency (and thus, subject-status) in themselves, however, they can be seen as the connective tissue underlying – or even acticating – the interactions in which they are enmeshed.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sonnenberg-Schrank |first=Björn |title=Actor-Network Theory at the Movies: Reassembling the Contemporary American Teen Film With Latour |date=2020 |publisher=Springer International Publishing |isbn=978-3-030-31286-2 |series=Springer eBook Collection |location=Cham |pages=141}}</ref> In ''Reassembling the Social'', Latour refers to these in-between actants as “the mediators whose proliferation generates, among many other entities, what could be called quasi-objects and quasi-subjects.”<ref name="RtS" />

Actor–network theory refers to these creations as ''tokens'' or ''quasi-objects'' which are passed between actors within the network. As the token is increasingly transmitted or passed through the network, it becomes increasingly punctualized and also increasingly [[Reification (Marxism)|reified]]. When the token is decreasingly transmitted, or when an actor fails to transmit the token (e.g., the oil pump breaks), punctualization and reification are decreased as well.