Relating in Henry James (The Artwork of Networks)

This essay argues that Henry James would have been an excellent network theorist. It connects James to the emergence of a “relational era” in modernist aesthetics. It then locates him in the genealogy of philosophical thought about “relating” that begins with William James, continues in Phenomenology, and finds its apotheosis in the network analytics of Bruno Latour. Relating has been the fulcrum of much of the best work on James since the 1970s. This essay provides a new framework for understanding this work. It concludes that James’s description of relating can further the project of reimagining the sociality of the novel—the artwork of the literary network.