Handling reality: three paths to understanding the knowledge society

Abstract

The "knowledge society" hypothesis is a useful heuristic for understanding contemporary society after the crisis of modernity that arose in the second half of the 20th century. 

I shall examine the ways in which reality can be handled (reality handlings), that is, all those material-semiotic practices  through which we try to influence the world that surrounds us. I shall focus especially on the epistemological problems of current scientific and political practices. 

I conclude with three specific, but not mutually exclusive avenues that might (or might not) help us fully articulate the idea of the "knowledge society": the modern-sociological, the actantial-articulative, and the genealogical.