The complex relationship that Bellacasa identifies in human-soil systems is also connected to Bruno Latour’s, Actor-Network-Theory (1996).[10] Latour argues that ‘Power is always the illusion people get when they are obeyed... people who are obeyed discover what their power is really made of when they start to lose it. They realise, but too late, that it was ‘made of’ the wills of all the others.’[11] Human, as an actor, absolutely needs other human and non-human (tool, thing or object) to work with in order to do ‘action’. Latour asserts that any entity (nonhuman or human) in Actor-Network-Theory is defined as an ‘actant’, which means that nonhumans are also active in the construction of our worlds. Therefore, human and non-human materials are both equally actors within our networked society. Latour argues that humans often identify non-humans (especially those that are inanimate or non-sentient) as being inferior to humans and assume that non-human elements are only materials and resources for supporting humans. Latour points out that humans should treat all actors as equal, whether they are a human, animal, architecture or a smart phone. Human and non-human are integrated through our contemporary technological society and each entity is an actor that is constantly networking with other actors. This also enables each actor/actant in the network to continually redefine themselves and the network itself. Graham Harman’s theory, Object-Oriented-Ontology, also highlights the nuances within and between things; ’Real objects are units, but not empty poles of unity, since this would make all things identical. Things also have qualities that belong to them while differing from them.’[12] The looseness that Harman describes as occurring within the internal organization of things allows us to see the awkwardness present in objects when restricted by human parameters. Harman advocates that human should see themselves as one object among many, instead of maintaining absolute faith in human experience and its domination in relation to the cosmos.

In, Gender Trouble (1990) Judith Butler highlights that even our bodies have been restricted through a process of naming and that our genders should be far more fluid:    

Butler highlights that the Anthropocentric ordering of our environment also includes the classification of our human bodies. The assignations that we construct for bodies, such as boy and girl, limits what we can become. Therefore, this system of naming limits both the human and nonhuman ability to self-present. The traditional perspective of Humanist values is classified through the processes of identification, qualification and morality. In The Order of Things (1966), Foucault classifies the episteme through three stages, Renaissance Episteme,[14] Classical Episteme and Modern Episteme. Especially, in the first episteme, humans are characterised by resemblance and similitude. Particularly since the Renaissance, our human sense of purpose is produced through the search for fitting ourselves into a group, gender, company, society etc. We are in pursuit of a qualification to prove that we are normal or a sanctioned part of the universal Humanist subject. During the eighteenth century, instead of seeking religious or mythical idols beyond the scope of knowledge, humans started to self-identify the ‘I’ as the most powerful arbiter of knowledge. For Immanuel Kant, the principle end goal of God’s identification that humans are naturally moral beings was that the world was created according to our human moral needs. Art was first created for praising or representing the power of God or wealthy patrons. However, during the Enlightenment period, humans changed this to a celebration of self-identity and the human ability to morally judge and reason. The notion of Human was transformed and relied less on religious or mythical idols. Instead, humans believed in their own divinity or ‘genius’ to create or select and own art. For Kant critiquing is a never-ending activity inherent in reason, he explains that, ‘…it was the duty of philosophy to destroy the illusions which had their origin in misconceptions, whatever darling hopes and valued expectations may be ruined by its explanations’.[15] Kant also asserted that through critiquing and identifying the limits and opportunities within the creativity of human thought, it’s development and refinement would become the ultimate goal of human destiny. There is a Humanist and Anthropocentric drive that searches for identification, qualification and definition in the face of increasingly chaotic situations. In contrast, to this drive for human control over all things, the architect Louis Kahn states that even a brick wants to be something:
                                                                                           

In Kahn’s version, even a common brick wants to be something more than it is; it wants to be something better than a brick or just to be a brick that is part of something great. Kahn asks a brick what it wants to do and through this suggests that the brick has the capacity to think and speak. Therefore, Kahn projects onto the object a form of anthropomorphic agency. It appears as though Kahn is having a conversation with the brick; discussing and collaborating in order to make a decision. However, Kahn is most likely talking to himself or his reflection, so the brick acts as a critical device as opposed to an actor. To anthropomorphize an object, is to take human thought as the standard logical principle and then project this onto the object. In contrast, in Harman’s object-oriented-ontology, humans should not attempt to try to ask opinions from an object (brick) as its internal reality is very different to human understanding and consciousness.

In the Anthropocentric approach, humans have the opportunity to ‘decide’ what to see and what to use because they have positioned themselves above other objects. Baudrillard asserts in Cool Memories (1987) that, ‘… we are condemned to social coma, political coma, historical coma.’[17] In this statement, Baudrillard positions all humans as controlled through social, political, economic and historical systems, including language (hence the emphasis of the word ‘coma’).

Baudrillard defined hyperreal in Simulacra and Simulation (1981) as, ‘the generation by models of a real without origin or reality’.[18] He states that because human contemporary time exists in these systems, it is impossible to see the real ‘real’ and the hyperreal has replaced the real.[19] Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly mixed together so that there is no clear distinction between real and fiction. Humans no longer believe in an original or pure realm of the real, if they ever could, because the mediated information that we receive is more reliable than any unknown things that we might encounter. In the Post-truth era, humans have lost our faith in concrete or original truths and instead we are relying on the satisfaction of selecting from a ‘choice’ of mediated options (what can be seen and what can be used). Foucault claims that in the modern episteme humans are at the beginning of uncovering themselves. After being used to receiving and accepting all information from a third-person, Foucault asserts that we are beginning to question the act of receiving identification, qualification and definition from others. Simultaneously, this process reflects that humans are also seeking self-qualification and questioning their own identify. For example, the process of naming provided humans with an ownership over things and anthropomorphizing objects allowed humans to look at themselves reflected in an object. Foucault suggests that this will be different when the superiority of humans is erased, like a footprint drawn in sand that disappears in the waves of time. Humanity’s print is present on things, but as time goes on, it will be erased.

Naming as a key human process still persists but it does increasingly appear (even if subconsciously) to contemporary society to be an old, unstable, fragile forging passage that attempts to bridge the gulf between things and humans via the identified and named object. However, perhaps we have not yet made it into the era of uncovering and repurposing human relations to the future world that Foucault predicted. Naming is still a prevalent and generic process that aims to simplify the complex interconnectivity of things. Therefore, I propose the following questions towards my research and practice: what will happen if all names are flexible and easy to displace? What will the art viewer see if the thing’s name is left blank or put into a network with words that do not attempt to classify its purpose/intent? Will the viewer have a different relationship to what they are looking at?