On the importance of things : A relational approach to agency

• The present review is conceived to be a contribution from the double perspective of a semiotician and a designer to the current debate on the extended mind and on distributed cognition, focusing on the role of things (artefacts, material culture) for the emergence of agency in animate beings. The theory of material engagement as conceived by Lambros Malafouris was formally introduced seven years ago, proposing an idea of boundless cognition and reformulating key notions such as agency, intentionality, and mental representations, philosophically framed with the help of approaches such as postphenomenology (; ). There is much to commend about a non-hierarchical, interdependent relationship between the world and living organisms — and more specifically between material things and human beings. Nevertheless, a balanced review of the notion of “material agency” is still called for. In this review, I show that an asymmetry can be introduced into the relationship between artefacts and human beings without committing the “sin” of anthropocentrism.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Övrig annan humaniora (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Other Humanities not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

material agency

artefacts

agency

agentive semiotics

design semiotics

design theory

Publikations- och innehållstyp

rec (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)