Science studies and language suppression - A critique of Bruno Latour's we have never been modern

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A

Volumn 28, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 339-361

  Cohen, Sande ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0031161607     PISSN: 00393681     EISSN: 18792510     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0039-3681(96)00017-9     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. 1 I am using Modernism as a synonym for the perpetual recoding of capitalism (which is always neo-capitalism), cultural issues of autonomy vs legislation, the relevance of the Kantian-Nietzsche line in art (the sublime is an 'outrage' vis-à-vis imagination), technology unbounded by social rules, the excessive pressure of conformity, the calling into question of language as communication.
2. 2 B. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge: Harvard, 1993) (hereafter cited as WHNB), p. 14.
3. 3 B. Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge: Harvard, 1987), p. 16.
4. 4 Latour, WHNB..., p. 3. A passage from Latour's Science in Action is indicative of what I mean. There he asserts ... we need to get rid of all categories like those of power, knowledge, profit or capital, because they divide up a cloth that we want seamless in order to study it as we choose. Here 'get rid of' is a piece of symbolic violence, euphemism, just as is 'we want seamless', which installs a demand. Cf. J. J. Lecercle, The Violence of Language (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 179, and P. Bourdieu In Other Words (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), p. 84.
5. 4 Latour, WHNB..., p. 3. A passage from Latour's Science in Action is indicative of what I mean. There he asserts ... we need to get rid of all categories like those of power, knowledge, profit or capital, because they divide up a cloth that we want seamless in order to study it as we choose. Here 'get rid of' is a piece of symbolic violence, euphemism, just as is 'we want seamless', which installs a demand. Cf. J. J. Lecercle, The Violence of Language (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 179, and P. Bourdieu In Other Words (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), p. 84.
6. 4 Latour, WHNB..., p. 3. A passage from Latour's Science in Action is indicative of what I mean. There he asserts ... we need to get rid of all categories like those of power, knowledge, profit or capital, because they divide up a cloth that we want seamless in order to study it as we choose. Here 'get rid of' is a piece of symbolic violence, euphemism, just as is 'we want seamless', which installs a demand. Cf. J. J. Lecercle, The Violence of Language (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 179, and P. Bourdieu In Other Words (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), p. 84.
7. 5 I am presupposing the adequacy of Deleuze's notion of transcendence, where political idealism tries to establish criteria of legitimation and exclusion on the basis of an idea or value or thought's participation in an Idea.
8. 6 P. de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1986), p. 15.
9. 7 De Man, Resistance to Theory, p. 11. I have changed de Man's citation; the original specified that it is not certain that 'literature is reliable'. I believe his argument holds for prose.
10. 8 Latour, WHNB, p. 127.
11. 9 Ibid., p. 137-138.
12. 10 I am drawing upon the remarks of T. Todorov in The Poetics of Prose (Ithaca: Cornell, 1977), p. 146. The literariness of 'a weaver of morphisms' implies super-idealism, that every 'network' is original, its lines and connections secondary.
13. 11 Latour, WHNB, p. 5.
14. 12 Ibid., p. 4.
15. 13 Ibid., p. 4.
16. 14 Ibid. p. 3.
17. 15 Ibid.
18. 16 Ibid., pp. 91 ff.
19. 17 A. J. Greimas and J. Fontanille, The Semiotics of Passions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993), p. 8.
20. 18 Latour, WHNB, pp. 16-17.
21. 19 Ibid., p. 17.
22. 20 One of the most interesting discussions of this topic is found in Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus (New York: Viking, 1977).
23. 21 Latour, WHNB, p. 12.
24. 22 Latour's plea for holistic anthropology, or integrative writing, can lead to some amusing examples. Another anthropologist has written that 'No one buys a Big Mac for the simple reason of eating it... the behavior is part of an entire gestalt in which the consumer participates on a subliminal level... The purchase of a Big Mac involves a "deep" interior perception of self, family, country and socioeconomic status... a consumer "buys" a well deserved break; a vision of family cohesiveness... a particular type of patriotism'. The Big Mac is a hybrid-network! Quoted in the L.A. Times, Thursday 30 December (1993), pp. A1, A18.
25. 23 These remarks are drawn from J. Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies (New York: Semiotext(e), 1990).
26. 24 As when neo-psychoanalysis installs the universality of recognition-claims as its special expertise, e.g. Zizek's unsubstantiable assertion that the realization of desire can never be its fulfillment but rather only 'the reproduction of desire as such, with its circular movement'. Which therein legitimizes the priority of recognition-claims?
27. 25 Latour, WHNB, p. 28.
28. 26 Ibid., p. 34; Latour's italics.
29. 27 Baudrillard argues that liberation is normative, a requirement, for example, of contemporary art where what matters is not the production of images which resist repression (art as negation, as criticism), but images which give the illusion that art is still 'an outside'. Not artist vs world, but art where 'subjectivity... endeavors to reconcile itself with its own image', or art liberated for a greater consumption than resistance against scarcity ever promised. Cf. J. Baudrillard, 'Gesture and Signature', in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (St Louis: Telos, 1970), pp. 109-111.
30. 28 Latour, WHNB, p. 39.
31. 29 Ibid., p. 41. This is a really amazing section: The moderns 'capitalized' but science studies will reign over the right to 'give credit' to what the moderns could not recognize about themselves. Here, surely, ethnography and anthropology converge with the worst elements of post-Freudian psychoanalysis, in taking charge over the sorting and ranking operations of the signifier, practices, institutions.
32. 30 Latour, WHNB, p. 41.
33. 31 Ibid., p. 42.
34. 32 On modern art as hybrid - translation, mediation - any of the works by T. J. Clark are relevant. I might add that it is quite telling that WHNB is silent on art.
35. 33 Ibid., p. 123.
36. 34 Ibid., p. 68.
37. 35 Ibid., p. 71.
38. 36 Ibid., p. 72.
39. 37 Ibid., p. 72.
40. 38 Ibid., p. 76.
41. 39 My thanks to Andrea Loselle for this insight as to the closed loop involved in this anthropologic 'sorting'.
42. 40 Latour, WHNB, p. 80.
43. 41 Ibid., p. 81.
44. 42 Ibid., p. 85.
45. 43 Ibid., pp. 119, 121.
46. 44 Ibid., p. 74. Cf. S. Cohen, Historical Discourse (Berkeley: University of California, 1986) for a critique of historical thought which arrives at nearly the same conclusions as Latour but does so through semiotic analysis.
47. 45 The plus-value of 'resource' is unquestioned by WHNB. Nonetheless, the term is not so neatly 'filed away' on the side of positive virtues. James Adler, chairman of the L.A. County Public Social Services Commission, which is about as fiscally 'tight' as a 'network' can get, calls for treating 'welfare programs themselves' as 'resources', i.e. welfare to be replaced by 'payment for work performed'. L.A. Times, 4 January (1994), p. B7.
48. 46 Latour, WHNB, p. 47.
49. 47 'Sorting' can provide super-identity, even in the name of suspending identity. The transsexual critic S. Stone writes that the hybrid or cyborg called Vampire can serve as a cultural model for the 'metaphorics' of our 'simultaneous desire to destroy and to preserve'. Do we invoke the Vampire as model to explain the proliferation of hybridic relations or do we invoke the model so as to keep circulating an ideal, without which cultural studies would collapse? See S. Stone, 'How Like a Goddess', Artforum (September 1995), p. 125.
50. 48 Latour, WHNB, p. 48.
51. 49 Ibid., p. 51.
52. 50 Ibid., p. 61.
53. 51 Ibid., p. 64.
54. 52 Ibid., p. 64. Academic terror would then be charged against writings which called into question these mediating operations.
55. 53 Ibid., p. 90.
56. 54 Latour's remarks echo the reading of Manfred Frank's What is Neostructuralism? (Minneapolis, 1989).
57. 55 Latour, WHNB, p. 124.
58. 56 Ibid., p. 96.
59. 57 Ibid., p. 104.
60. 58 Cf. M. Biagioli, 'Hoarding Telescopes: Galileo's Discoveries and the Moral Economy of Credit', forthcoming, Science in Context.
61. 59 Latour, WHNB, p. 109.
62. 60 De Man, Resistance to Theory, p. 98.
63. 61 Latour, WHNB, p. 113.
64. 62 Ibid., p. 114.
65. 63 Ibid., p. 120.
66. 64 Ibid., p. 121.
67. 65 Ibid., p. 126.
68. 66 R. Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972), p. 152.
69. 67 Latour, WHNB, p. 129.
70. 68 Ibid., p. 134.
71. 69 Ibid., p. 139.
72. 70 De Man, Resistance to Theory, p. 64.