Where I Come From: An ANT Perspective

Three years ago, in the Spring of 2014, I was fresh out of college, waiting to hear from graduate schools, and looking for something to do. So, I did what any nerd looking for his next academic fix would do: I enrolled in an online class taught by Bruno Latour that was offered through Sciences Po. It was called “Scientific Humanities.” The class was beautifully designed with all kinds of clever animations and illustrations of concepts. In one of the lessons on Actor Network Theory, we watched a short video called “The TSR II Aircraft Project,” which is essentially an animation of John Law and Michel Callon’s “The Life andDeath of an Aircraft: A Network Analysis of Technical Change.” You can watch the video above.

My dad, the F-111 tech, almost 10 years younger than I am now.

The reason I bring this up is not to demonstrate an elegant example of ANT – though that is a pleasant side effect – but to talk about why genetic technologies matter less to my sense of identity than other things. As the video shows, the General Electric F-111 Aardvark was adopted by the RAF in 1964. Twenty years later, my father – an airman in the United States Air Force who specialized on the F-111 – was stationed at a Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire, a former RAF base that was then the site of the 20^th Tactical Fight Wing. The network of actors above, which brought the F-111 to the UK, represents a portion of the political and historical forces (which may also include different post-World War and Cold War geopolitical contingencies, trade agreements, and military industrial contracts) that brought my 20-year-old parents to the UK in the 1980s. Law and Callon’s analysis helps, in small part, explain how I ended up being born in Oxford in 1985. I don’t even much like ANT, but I feel like a part of that network. In fact, I feel much more connected to the now-retired death machine named for a Sub-Saharan, pig-snouted insectivore than I do to any migratory history that could possibly be revealed in my genetics. Why? It may be as simple as shallowly pointing out that I’ve actually sat in an F-111, but I’ve never been to Scotland. Or maybe it’s knowing that so many things outside my control had to coordinate to put me where I am. It makes me feel connected to a bigger story of global political history in a way that some genetic revelation never could.