The "Parliament" of the Running Body in the Lens of Bruno Latour

Abstract

This paper examines running as a microcosm that highlights key challenges and transformations of the modern era in general and sport in particular: our complex relationship with technology, the redefinition of human boundaries, the deconstruction of traditional humanism, the emergence of new social forms, and the urgent need to build a different relationship with nature. Running practices are used to demonstrate that reality is not "discovered" but "assembled" and "stabilized," thereby confirming Bruno Latour's central thesis. The object of study is the phenomenon of running in its sociocultural determinacy, understood as a complex dynamic system encompassing practices from prehistoric hunting to elite and amateur sports. The subject of study is the ontological structure and dynamics of the phenomenon of running, analyzed through the prism of Latour's actor-network theory. The aim of this work is to philosophically reconceptualize the phenomenon of running by overcoming classical modernist dichotomies (subject/object, etc.), allowing us to present it as a constantly reassembled sociotechnical assemblage, revealing the ontological and political complexity of the object under consideration. Research methods: 1. Actor-network analysis. 2. Conceptual philosophical analysis. 3. Comparative-historical method. 4. Case study. 5. Philosophical reflection and critique. Unlike traditional approaches that consider running through the prism of the dualism of body and spirit, this article substantiates its fundamental hybridity. The runner is shown not as a sovereign subject using a body-object, but as an assemblage point, a "spokesperson" for a heterogeneous collective. The study shifts the analysis of running from the plane of the ethics of individual effort and biomechanics to the realm of "cosmopolitics". Rules, records, and doping are interpreted as the result of "negotiations" and struggles between various networks of actors, revealing hidden strategies for constructing sporting "facts." The article expands the concept of agency in sport by assigning it to non-human entities (sneakers, stadiums, weather conditions, digital platforms), which are transformed from passive instruments into active participants, transforming the very essence of athletic practices. The productivity of Latourian descriptive language ("translation," "parliament of things") for analyzing sporting reality is demonstrated, overcoming the limitations of both scientistic and purely humanistic approaches by proposing a more complex and realistic conceptualization.