The agency of the dead in actor-network theory according to the description of the transfer of the mummy of Ramses II by Bruno Latour

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to translate the actor-network theory into historiography to describe the agency of actors from the “past” in the “present”. This will be done based on Bruno Lator’s description of the displacement of the mummy of Ramses II from the Cairo Museum to Paris in 1976 , in which the author supports his thesis of the historicity of scientific objects. Based on the description of this phenomenon, this article aims to create ethnographic tools that allow the use of the actor-network theory in historiography to trace the politics of time in networks composed of multitemporal agencies. This approach is justified to contribute to the investigation on the agencies of the dead in the “present” as legitimate participants who present propositions in political controversies. Finally, this article concludes that the actor-network can be an efficient methodology for describing the agency of the dead in coevalness, as long as it considers the mediations involved in temporalization processes and assumes an ontological pluralism of ways of manufacturing time.

KEYWORDS
Action; Anachronism; Temporalities