LATOUR AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM: PROBLEMS IN 'TAKING ONE
MORE TURN AFTER THE SOCIAL TURN'
A Thesis
Presented to
The Faculty of Graduate Studies
of
The University of Guelph
by
BOYANA PERIC
In partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts
December, 2008
© Boyana Peric, 2008
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ABSTRACT
LATOUR AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM: PROBLEMS IN 'TAKING ONE MORE TURN AFTER THE SOCIAL TURN'
Boyana Peric Advisor: University of Guelph, 2008 Professor A. Wayne
This thesis is an investigation of Bruno Latour's attempt to take 'one more turn
after the social turn'. 'One more turn after the social turn' means going beyond the
standard social constructivist critiques of science and knowledge. I highlight some of
the challenges that Latour's project faces and conclude that he fails to take 'one
more turn after the social turn'.
1
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the help/friendship/encouragement offered throughout my graduate
studies by the following people: our department secretaries (Janet Thackeray, Pam Speers
and Debbie Bailey), Prof. Maya Goldenberg, Prof. Don Dedrick, Prof. Karen Houle, Prof.
Andrew Bailey, philosophy graduate students in general and Nathan Harron in particular,
Rachel Thompson, Michael Davis, and my partner Maggie Cowperthwaite for enduring
me (lovingly) through some of the most stressful months of this project.
My advisor, Prof. Andrew Wayne, has been the kindest, most helpful and efficient soul
and as, such integral to the completion of this project.
Lastly, I would like to thank Prof. Lorraine Code for her encouragement throughout both
my undergraduate and graduate years.
11
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Page 1
Chapter One: Page 6
Chapter Two: Page 32
Chapter Three: Page 50
Chapter Four: Page 71
Bibliography: Page 78
Introduction
Modernism, roughly conceived as 'a new regime, an acceleration, a rupture',
marks the departure from the superstition that dictated the development of knowledge to
the age of reason where knowledge (sciences in particular) flourished solely on the
inherent strength and accuracy of reason and scientific experiments. One goal of
modernity is to liberate from superstition. For Bruno Latour "...it designates a break in
the regular passage of time, and it designates a combat in which there are victors and
vanquished" (Latour 1993, 10). In addition to this conception of modernism, one can
associate modernism with the 16th and 17thcentury scientists and philosophers who
sought to move away from the dogma of the Middle ages. Some prominent figures of this
period include: Descartes, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus.
Some believe that modernism has been successful in its aims while others
are more skeptical about the success of the modern project. One source of skepticism
about the purity of knowledge humans arrive at is echoed in the work of social
constructivism. The moderns believed that, with reason as a guiding force, fields of
knowledge such as science can be free of social factors. Social constructivism points to
the inseparability of science and society. And just as some would accept that the
assessment of science cannot be taken further than what is offered under the umbrella of
social construction, Latour makes a bold statement that we can and need to take 'one
more turn after the social turn' and that he does take that additional step.
My thesis is that Latour fails to take 'one more turn after the social turn'.
The basic idea is that Latour's attempts to do so are already embedded in the subject or
2
the social. Latour's efforts to establish the nonmodem position, a position that keeps only
the useful elements of modernity, postmodernity and social constructivism, are
unsuccessful - he remains under the jurisdiction of social constructivism. The detailed
description of network building by scientists in his Science In Action is an example of
social elements playing various parts in the construction of knowledge or networks: the
Strong Program (one prominent version of social constructivism) could not agree more.
A more explicit effort by Latour to distinguish himself from sociology of knowledge
appears in We Have Never Been Modern and Politics of Nature. The nonmodern position
developed by Latour should somehow remedy the mistakes of modernism,
postmodernism and social constructivism - it should take us a step further than we have
gone so far. I intend to argue that this project, as conceived by Latour, fails to take the
additional step. The additional step as envisioned by Latour should be an improvement on
social constructivism. My argument that Latour fails to take the additional step beyond
the social will be made by highlighting some of the main challenges that the project
encounters. More precisely, whenever Latour claims to have gone beyond the social, I
intend to show how his ideas are linked to and representative of social constructivism.
Consequently, he does not succeed in taking 'one more turn after the social turn'.
My plan is as follows. The first chapter will present four of Latour's works
{Laboratory Life, Science In Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Politics Of
Nature) covering material that is most relevant to my thesis that Latour fails to take 'one
more turn after the social turn'. Laboratory Life is a detailed and descriptive study of
scientists and their work in a laboratory setting. Science In Action is an extension of
Laboratory Life. One of Latour's central arguments developed in Science In Action
3
concerns the role of networks in producing and maintaining facts. The notion of a 'black
box' (where input and output of the 'black box', as opposed to the interior of the box, is
its only relevant aspect) is telling in the sense that it illustrates the final product, or as
Latour puts it, a fact devoid of all the factors that enabled its existence. To show us
'science in the making' Latour takes on the task of opening 'black boxes' with one basic
aim: to remind us that facts are not self-sufficient and that they are produced and
circulate in networks constructed by us. As the title suggests, the purpose of We Have
Never Been Modern is to show us that we have, after all, never been modern. One
unfortunate product of modernity, according to Latour, is the idea of maintaining sharp
distinctions between nature and society, object and subject, human and nonhuman.
Politics of Nature is an effort to bridge the problematic distinctions created by modernity
and move towards what Latour argues is a more inclusive and democratic state of affairs.
The second chapter will illustrate Latour's inability to distinguish his work
from the Strong Program. An area within sociology of knowledge, the Strong Program
aims to study science by tracing the psychological and sociological causes of scientific
beliefs and decisions, and in particular, decisions to accept or reject scientific theories.
The sociology of knowledge is traditionally associated with the Weak Program. The idea
behind the Weak Program is that socio-psychological causes need only be sought for
error, irrationality and deviation from the proper norms and methodological precepts of
science. In contrast to the Weak Program, supporters of the Strong Program argue for the
need to explain, in social and causal terms, all systems of belief regardless of how they
are evaluated. This chapter will show that, despite the desire to establish his work as an
improvement on the Strong Program and as such different from it, Latour remains mostly
4
within the parameters of the Strong Program. The focus of this chapter will be on
Laboratory Life and Science Ln Action, as this is where Latour records in great detail
various social elements that influence scientific results. I intend to show that some of the
underlying themes of these two works by Latour fit in the confines of social
constructivism and as such do not constitute a step forward. Consequently, this shows
support for my thesis that Latour hasn't taken that additional step that would go beyond
social constructivism.
The third chapter will address Latour's nonmodern position directly.
Separations permeate modernism. The modern constitution, according to Latour, invents
and maintains distinctions: between humans and nonhumans, subject and object, society
and nature and so on. To maintain distinctions, modernism relies on two practices:
translation 'and purification. Translation creates mixtures between entirely new types of
beings, hybrids of nature and culture (quasi-objects2), while the work of purification
creates separate spheres of humans and nonhumans. If we maintain that the work of
purification and translation are separate from one another, we are truly modern. But if we
consider the two practices simultaneously then we stop being entirely modern - we
become nonmodern. Latour thinks that once we see the futility of the sharp distinctions
that modernism maintains we realize that the future lies in giving a voice to these hybrids
that have always existed but only in "repression". Focusing on We Have Never Been
Modern and Politics of Nature, I will aim to show the problems that nonmodernism faces
1 In We Have Never Been Modern Latour at first adopts the term "translation". Subsequently, he replaces that term by "mediation". Along with Latour, I use these two terms interchangeably. 2 The following terms are equivalent to quasi-objects: hybrids, imbroglios, actant, collective and nohuman.
5
as it attempts to bridge the separations created and maintained by modernism. Attempts
to bridge these separations are met with challenges that cast significant doubt on the
success of the nonmodern position. Efforts to discard sharp distinctions and grant a voice
to hybrids still involve or employ some of the same tactics or distinctions that Latour is
attempting to eliminate. The nonmodern position should be an improvement on the ideas
of moderns, postmoderns and social constructivism. But the challenges faced by the
nonmodern position are sufficiently severe to prevent Latour from taking that additional
step. This completes my airgument that Latour is not successful in taking 'one more turn
after the social turn'.
6
Chapter One An Introduction To Latour
1.1 Introduction
Many philosophers of science and sociologists of knowledge have taken
on the task of showing that facts are socially constructed rather than representations of
how things "really are". Approaches vary but, according to Latour, the common factor
and also the common error is to accept the distinction between fact and artifact at the
outset of the inquiry and proceed from there. In Laboratory Life, Latour suggests a
different route to understanding how facts come to stand alone and devoid of all the
disorder that once surrounded them. The new approach entails the refusal of the
distinction between fact and artifact and instead grounds the inquiry on close observation
of scientists and their laboratories. This approach is largely anthropological in nature, in
the sense that it attempts to study scientists and the laboratory in the manner analogous to
that of anthropologists studying tribes. The anthropological approach is different from
previous undertakings in social studies of science because it begins without the common
supposition that there is something like a fact and something like an artifact. Broadly
speaking, a fact is something that is indisputably the case whereas an artifact is
something that is built by humans. Discarding these assumptions on the outset is the
distinguishing mark of the anthropological approach as well as its greatest strength over
other approaches. These assumptions are replaced with the full immersion of the
anthropologist in the laboratory that is closely modeled after the immersion of
anthropologists when they set out to study a tribe.
7
This chapter will illustrate the results of an anthropological study of
scientists. The picture that emerges by closely following scientists in their setting
(laboratory) is that of intricate maneuvers and mobilized resources all necessary for
something to emerge as a fact. The message is clear: we have hitherto understood facts as
stable and indisputable but the reality is that they are far from that. The dynamics of the
laboratory and its scientists, and their relationship to the scientific community in general,
are just some of the factors that influence the final result or a fact. The latter has been a
common observation by social constructivists. Latour's project is to go beyond this
observation. He aims to take 'one more turn after the social turn'. Below is an illustration
of the anthropological approach that is fundamental to Latour's project.
Several features illustrate the perspective that we will refer to as
"anthropology of science". First, the research procedure and the empirical data collected
from it are representative of a particular group of scientists and the laboratory in which
they work (again, much like data collected from studying a particular tribe). The
immersion of the observer in the daily activities of scientists is one of the better ways to
understand the process of what Latour calls 'cleaning up' prior to something being
presented as a fact. One of the major problems in studies of science had to do with
scientists changing the manner in which they addressed the outsider about their own field
and work: scientists may feel threatened by the outsider and his or her interest in their
field or work or they may dismiss the outsider as lacking ability to comprehend their
work. This problem affects both sides (scientist and the one attempting to study scientific
activity): it makes it difficult for the outsider to reconstruct scientific events and as such,
we lack an appreciation of how science is done (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 28).
8
The immersion of the observer or the in situ study of a laboratory is a
means to avoid this problem. But it is not merely the avoidance of this problem that
makes the in situ observation a better approach to studying scientific activity. Rather,
what the anthropological approach to studying science offers (and what other approaches
miss) is the detailed account of all the activity (technical and social) that is responsible in
constructing a fact. The mistake so far has been in treating the technical and the social
aspects of scientific activity as separate and as such in need of separate attention. By that
Latour means that we have grown accustomed to studying things as if they exist in a
vacuum, independent of elements that are woven in the technical and the social. With the
anthropological perspective the focus is on examining the process whereby scientists
make sense of their observations. As we will see, what is at play always and at once is
both the social and the technical. It is this understanding that sets the anthropological
approach to science apart from all other efforts to understand scientific activity.
In what follows, I will explicate four of Latour's works {Laboratory Life,
Science In Action, We Have Never Been Modern and Politics of Nature). Laboratory Life
and Science In Action are both descriptive, in the sense that they for the most part
describe scientific activity and in doing so point to a variety of factors that influence and
shape scientific activity. We Have Never Been Modern and Politics of Nature build on the
aforementioned texts and are prescriptive - it is in these texts that Latour establishes the
nonmodern position and, according to him, takes 'one more turn after the social turn'.
The two chapters that follow this one will show that he has not taken that additional step
by arguing that Latour has not moved forward and away from the social constructivist
ground.
9
1.2 Laboratory Life
Laboratory Life is a detailed study of all the activity that occurs in a
laboratory and amongst scientists before scientific knowledge is taken for granted or
before it assumes the status of "unproblematic". We begin by considering the conditions
that are central to the emergence of facts. According to Latour, a statement will become a
fact if it is used and reused. For this to occur a range of activities inside the laboratory
and on the part of the scientists are necessary. Literary inscription is one such activity.
Our anthropological observer is "confronted with a strange tribe who spend the greatest
part of their day coding, marking, altering, correcting, reading, and writing" (Latour and
Woolgar 1979, 49). A striking consequence of inscription is its ability to appear as being
in direct relationship to the original substance (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 51) - a sample
initially extracted from the rats is the diagram that can now be perused by others. Since
the piece of matter has been transferred into a written document, the starting point for
writing an article about this substance is now the diagram (Latour and Woolgar, 1979,
51). Another remarkable consequence of inscription is the tendency to see it as
confirmation, or evidence for or against, particular ideas, concepts, or theories. "A
particular curve, for example, might constitute a breakthrough; or a sheet of figures can
count as clear support for some previously postulated theory" (Latour and Woolgar,
1979, 63).
In addition to utilizing diagrams produced in their own laboratory thanks
to inscription, scientists lean on other (outside) literature for support. The observer notes
that a draft being prepared for publication is "peppered with references, either to other
10
papers, or to diagrams, tables or documents" (Latour and Woolgar, 1979, 47). Our
observer's field notes describe the laboratory as a hub with an intricate system of literary
inscription:
Drafts of articles in preparation intermingle with diagrams scribbled on
scrap paper, letters from colleagues and reams of paper spewed out by the
computer in the next room; pages cut from articles are glued to other
pages; excerpts from draft paragraphs change hands between colleagues
while more advanced drafts pass from office to office being altered
constantly, retyped, recorrected, and eventually crushed into the format of
this or that journal (Latour and Woolgar, 1979, 49).
This is indicative of the very uncertainty or the tortured history of a fact prior to it
assuming the unproblematic status of a fact. Moreover, it shows an array of elements that
play a role, namely, the social (a number of colleagues) and the technical (computer and
lab equipment).
One might ask why all this fervor or mania on the part of the scientists?
Literary inscription enables persuasion. And although scientists shy away from admitting
that they are in the business of persuading and being persuaded ("just discovering
facts/doing cold hard science" is a more common response), the field notes from our
observer illustrate just that. Make use of the apparatus in the laboratory to produce a
written document or a diagram. Incorporate that into your article along with references to
existing literature and hope that the published article will persuade its readers who will
11
then begin to refer to the article in their own work. It is this latter part, the repetition
involved in referencing the findings of a persuasive article, that chisels statements into
facts. When statements are taken up, worked on, borrowed, used and most importantly
reused, eventually there comes a stage where they miraculously assume the
unproblematic status of a fact and as such, get incorporated into textbooks and from then
on are taken for granted.
What this suggests to Latour is that scientific activity is directed not at
reality but toward the modification of statements with the aim to persuade and
accumulate more evidence to further other interests. Latour writes,
If facts are constructed through operations designed to effect the dropping
of modalities which qualify a given statement, and, more importantly, if
reality is the consequence rather than the cause of this construction, this
means that a scientist's activity is directed, not toward "reality", but
toward these operations on statements (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 237).
Scientific activity in general is agonistic in the sense that its energy is directed towards
propping and ensuring the survival of statements. 'Agonistic' is not a negative term or an
idea intended to undermine scientific activity. Rather, it is a descriptive view of science
as an activity that necessarily incorporates elements of the social sphere (such as disputes,
forces and alliances) as it explains epistemological phenomena (such as proof, fact, and
validity) (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 237). Both necessarily constitute scientific activity:
you need the "politics" of science and its "truth" to out-manoeuvre a competitor (Latour
12
and Woolgar 1979, 237). Given this, Latour believes that it becomes meaningless to
speak about scientific activity as solely concerned with or directed at "nature". For
Latour, nature is the consequence that follows from the settlement of a dispute and not its
cause. This becomes apparent to us once we view scientific activity as agonistic - as
engaging in the operations on statements as opposed to engaging with "reality".
Moreover, and in light of the agonistic view of scientific activity, Latour
suggests that science is entirely dependant on circumstances. How things turn out, what
statements are taken up amd not taken up has everything to do with the circumstances
regarding the laboratory equipment, individual ambitions, funding, the current state of the
field one is working in, how and if something will fit in with the rest of the published
literature and so on. The following quote illustrates this claim through the example of
TRF (Thyrotropin Releasing Factor). Latour writes "our claim is not just that TRF is
surrounded, influenced by, in part depends on, or is also caused by circumstances; rather,
we argue that science is entirely fabricated out of circumstance..." (Latour and Woolgar
1979, 239, my emphasis). Again, the apparent durability of a fact is not because we have
got something correct about reality. Instead, as Latour writes, "Reality is
secreted...scientific activity is not "about nature," it is a fierce fight to construct reality"
(Latour and Woolgar 1979, 243). Questioning validity of facts is a daunting task and
expensive task (for example, consider the money necessary for the construction of and
access to equipment). To question the validity of a fact that now not only firmly
constitutes and exists within a network but also supports other parts in a network is to
question the entire network. Or more bluntly, it is to take on the task of disputing an
entire field (physics, biology etc.). The task of making it difficult to raise alternative
13
possibilities is tied to the notion of 'black boxing'. Latour's Science In Action builds on
this notion. Below is an explication of this notion in particular and in general of Latour's
Science In Action.
1.2 Science In Action
The previous section illustrated how various elements (social and
technical) are responsible for and inevitable in the emergence of facts. The notion of a
'black box' furthers our understanding of this phenomenon. And so this section begins by
explicating this idea. In cybernetics, whenever a piece of machinery or a set of
commands is too complex a box is drawn around it. All that is considered relevant is the
input and the output coming from that box. The word used by cyberneticians is 'black
box' (Latour 1987, 3). Latour applies the above term to the work of scientists: the double
helix, and the computer are black boxes. Once they have been established as such, we no
longer worry about their content but are only concerned about their input and output.
Latour wants to worry about their content. He points out that what appears to us as
unproblematic and certain was once just the opposite. "Uncertainty, people at work,
decisions, competition, controversies are what one gets when making a flashback from
certain, cold, unproblematic black boxes to their recent past" (Latour 1987, 4).
Latour notes that when controversies arise, the literature gets very
technical. Other literature is called upon and is stylized in order to ensure a statement's
acceptance or rejection. The purpose of calling on other literature and in great quantity is
to make those questioning feel isolated, lonely and powerless in the sea of "evidence".
"Bringing friends in, launching many references, acting on all these quoted articles...is
14
already enough to intimidate or to force most people out" (Latour 1987, 44). Latour
wants to emphasize all the efforts that go into building armor around a statement to
ensure its survival. Current literature has more muscle, it is ready to defend itself not only
by pointing to many layers it has equipped itself with but also by anticipating any
objections that may arise and also answering those objections. By doing the latter, the
scientist is attempting to put an end to questioning and ensure the survival of a statement.
The most striking consequence of all the ways of making a statement
survive in a hostile environment is that it can now stand on its own. The presence of all
the support called on to ensure its survival is no longer necessary. It becomes
unnecessary once demonstration takes place in laboratories. The statement is "made more
real" with the help of laboratory tools. The dissenter is asked to "believe what they are
seeing". It is now possible to refer to a statement without having to consider any of the
evidence that once surrounded or protected the statement from hostility. It is, at last,
capable of standing alone - it is now a fact, no longer out there to be disputed. It is
borrowed, leaned on as a matter of fact. Its tortured history, now invisible, is comprised
of a multitude of elements (papers, laboratories, professions, interest groups, non-human
allies) that are hard to challenge (Latour 1987, 179). Challenging entails building a new
lab, testing all the literature, layers, graphs and so on. Most dissenters grow tired and find
themselves lost in the sea of technical literature and elaborate machinery so that few are
able to go on with their questioning. Once a fact has been established, the scientist calls
on Nature. According to scientists, Nature is now what made something a fact. It is a fact
because we got the correct representation of something out there in Nature. All the
15
transformations and work taken up to get to this point is forgotten. Nature is now
flaunted.
But as it was noted earlier, Latour claims that Nature is the consequence
and not the cause. Black-boxing, making statements more durable so as to sustain
survival, is responsible for our mistaken impression that we have somehow discovered
something about reality. Largely due to our fascination with distinctions, we have not
realized that everything (facts, objects, social groups) can only exist and travel in
networks. When we follow science in action, when our anthropologist considers at once
the technical and the social as having a joint role in the construction of reality, we begin
to see the web of networks built through various strategies, employing whatever it takes
to advance one's interests.
Although much of the discussion thus far focused on the field of science,
the same applies to all other fields, for example sociology. Latour writes "the very
definition of a 'society' is the final outcome, in sociology departments, in statistical
institutions, in journals, of other scientists busy at work gathering surveys,
questionnaires, archives, records of all sorts, arguing together, publishing papers...any
agreed definition marks the happy end of controversies like all the settlements we have
studied in this book" (Latour 1987, 257). Black boxing, managing controversies to reach
a settlement, is common to all fields. Neither natural science nor social science has any
special status or explanatory powers. The mistake, again, has been to divide studies by
discipline and by object of study (Latour 1987, 16) and as a result we have 'science,
technology and society' studies. The mistake here is our thinking of the two studies as
distinct from one another rather than constituitive of one another. Science, technology
16
and society are not distinct - they, for the lack of a better word, seep into one another.
According to Latour, everything exists and only survives in networks and through
connections and allies. By taking into account all the mobilization prior to a fact being
able to stand alone, all the strategies to close a black box and keep it closed, we see that
fact is a mixture of the social and the technical, of subject and object, of science and
society and technology.
This mixture or play of various elements is at the core of Latour's notion
of networks. Latour writes, "The word network indicates that resources are concentrated
in a few places - the knots and the nodes - which are connected with one another - the
links and the mesh: these connections transform the scattered resources into a net that
may seem to extend everywhere" (Latour 1987, 180). Within a network there is a chain
of associations, of links which are not only integral for sustaining their own network but
are relevant and necessary with respect to other networks. To illustrate the notion of
networks, Latour uses the example of loggings produced by Schlumberger engineers on
oil platforms. In an effort to measure the amount of oil under the ground, a French
engineer, Conrad Schlumberger figured that sending an electric current through the soil
and then measuring the electrical resistance of the layers of rocks at various spots would
accomplish the task. Data was accumulated and methods were perfected. The
consequence of this was now that engineers could be more efficient at directing the
drilling. In other words, and what Latour wants to get at here, is that the loggings
represent an accumulation of oil, money, physics and geology. They [loggings] become
part of a file inside a bank at Wall Street and are then interwoven with other previously
unrelated domains (geology, economics, strategy, law) (Latour 1987, 255). Now
17
integrated, the link travels further (i.e. to boardrooms, investors) making further
associations, allies and etc.
When we bring the notion of networks closer to the central subject of
Science In Action, science, nature and society, we can see clearly now that each is subject
to its own network building, but what is more, they are conjoined through this notion of
networks in ways that we have previously ignored. Latour writes "This book has been
written to provide a breathing space for those who want to study independently the
extensions of all these networks. To do such a study it is absolutely necessary never to
grant to any fact, to any machine, the magical ability of leaving the narrow networks in
which they are produced and along which they circulate" (Latour 1987, 257). In other
words, we cannot make a distinction between nature and society, neither can exist
without its own networks and neither has the special ability to escape the networks it
builds. As such, they should be addressed together and at once. This idea is further
developed in We Have Never Been Modern.
1.3 We Have Never Been Modern
In the previous section Latour opened 'black boxes' in order to show us
the tortured and uncertain history of a fact before it is deemed a fact. By doing so, the
notion of networks and network building emerges. The main consequence of the idea of
networks is that we can no longer consider facts as existing in a vacuum and independent
of the network in which they circulate. Central to modernity is the separation of nature
and society. Building on the notion of networks developed in Science In Action, Latour
argues in We Have Never Been Modern that we have, after all, never been modern. What
18
we took to be distinct entities, namely nature and society, turned out not to be distinct.
Nature and society do not exist in a vacuum. They are conjoined in ways that modernity
has constantly tried to deny. The existence and proliferation of quasi-objects under
modernism and modernism's inability to deal with them suggests that we have been
mistaken in thinking that nature and society can be separate. A quasi-object, according to
Latour, is neither constructed by the society nor is it constituted by the 'hard' natural
parts. Rather it is a fabrication of both - it has no clear definite substance that one can
point to. Moreover, its being is always a being active in networks: it is a collection of
relations, allies, associations. Latour writes "Of quasi-objects...we shall simply say that
they trace networks...they are collective because they attach us to one another, because
they circulate in our hands and define our social bond by their very circulation" (Latour
1993, 89). As such, it becomes pointless to ask if something is nature or if something is
society, and we can no longer ignore this.
Separations permeate modernism. The modern constitution, according to
Latour, invents and maintains distinctions: between humans and nonhumans, subject and
object, society and nature and so on. To maintain distinctions, modernism relies on two
practices: mediation and purification. Mediation creates mixtures between entirely new
types of beings, hybrids of nature and culture (quasi-objects). The work of purification
creates separate spheres of humans and nonhumans (note that 'nonhuman' is later
revealed to be quasi-objects after all) (Latour 1993, 10). What the moderns have always
done (Latour sees this as inevitable or unavoidable) is create quasi-objects in practice but
then they were careful to maintain the distinction between nature and society through the
work of purification: separating humans from nonhumans (quasi-objects). Latour takes
19
this to be precisely the reason that we have never been modern: the modern world has
never happened because the moderns have always and all along done the very thing that
their modern constitution forbids, that is, mixing nature and society - from the outset,
modernism never functioned according to its set principles (Latour 1993, 39).
If we maintain that the work of purification and mediation are separate
from one another, we are truly modern. That is, modernism can only be effective if there
is a clear distinction between nature and society (this is achieved through the practice of
purification) and a clear distinction between the practices of mediation and purification.
More precisely, modernism is only effective if there is something (purification) that will
keep nature and society separate and if there are two different practices (purification and
mediation) that can, when the situation calls, account for this separation. But if we can
consider the two practices simultaneously then we stop being entirely modern - we
become nonmodern. Latour believes that anthropology is particularly suited for linking
the separations of modernism into one single picture. Just as an anthropologist accounts
for numerous factors when he undertakes a study of a particular region or tribe, he can
position himself at the median point where he can follow, simultaneously, the attribution
of both humans and nonhumans, nature and society - he can now account for the quasi-
objects (Latour 1993, 96). By doing this, the anthropologist is transcending the
asymmetry that has plagued modernism as well as postmodernism and social
construction. This seamless cloth of nature and society is at the heart of Latour's
nonmodernism, and it is through this approach that we finally see the futility of the sharp
distinctions that modernism maintaines. The future lies in giving a voice to the quasi-
objects that have always existed but only in repression. They were repressed because of
20
the modern insistence on separations and then purification, but they, in practice or reality,
always existed. The nonmodern task is that of acknowledging and representing quasi-
objects, of allowing them to surface and circulate freely (Latour 1993, 139). The next
several paragraphs illustrate the modern strategies for denying quasi-objects (the four
guarantees of the modem constitution), followed by their reconfiguration or the four
guarantees of Latour's nonmodernism.
According to Latour, the appeal of modernism and its apparent success has
to do with the four guarantees that make up the modern constitution: 1) nature is
transcendent but immanent 2) society is immanent but transcendent 3) nature and society
are distinct and there is no connection between the work of purification and mediation 4)
God is absent but ensures arbitration between nature and society (Latour 1993, 141).
On closer examination, the first two guarantees may seem contradictory,
yet under modernism they work in tandem. The first guarantee suggests that nature has
always been there. It exists completely apart from society, it is transcendent. People do
not make nature, we are merely discovering nature's secrets through science (Latour
1993, 30). But when we do that, when we artificially construct nature in laboratories,
nature becomes immanent. In the second guarantee, society is our doing, it is immanent
to our actions. But somehow, the immanence of society or of human fabrications can be
wiped out (or at least minimized). In other words, our account of society (its
construction) is free from or is purified from the pollution of immanence - society can be
transcended by leaning onto nature when it suits us. Referring to the book that explicated
the work of Boyle and Hobbes, Leviathan and the Air Pump, Latour illustrates the first
two guarantees via Boyle and Hobbes: "Boyle and his countless successors go on and on
21
both constructing nature artificially and stating that they are discovering it; Hobbes and
the newly defined citizens go on and on constructing the Leviathan by dint of calculation
and social force, but they recruit more and more objects to make it last" (Latour 1993,
31).
To mask this apparent contradiction in the mechanism of the first two
guarantees, the third guarantee is introduced: complete separation between society and
nature and between the work of mediation and purification. The first two guarantees can
only exist as unproblematic if the natural world is kept on one side (nevertheless,
constructed by man) and the social world on the other side (nevertheless, sustained by
things or nature) (Latour 1993, 31). This arrangement gives the moderns a scale along
which one can move in whatever direction circumstances demand. Explanatory power or
ability to account for society and nature (without contradiction) is always intact and never
limited by anything, "On the one hand, the transcendence of nature will not prevent its
social immanence; on the other, the immanence of the social will not prevent the
Leviathan from remaining transcendent" (Latour 1993, 32).
Resolution to any conflicts arising from the first three guarantees depends
on the fourth guarantee, what Latour calls the crossed-out God. According to Latour, God
is there but infinitely distanced when the situation demands that. He is nevertheless
available, on standby, when the appeal to transcendence is necessary to settle a conflict
between nature and society. If we invoke the image of a moving scale again, we can now
see that the strength of the moderns, as identified by Latour, lies in strategically
mobilizing or manipulating these four guarantees so as to account for everything without
giving up anything. But, as noted earlier, when we confront the existence of quasi-objects
22
head on we see that the distinctions that make up the modern constitution become harder
to accept. Quasi-objects are the hybrids that were erected by modernism but then,
through the work of purification sorted out. However, the moderns never succeed in this
task - quasi-objects are always already there. Latour writes "the modern explanations
consisted in splitting the mixtures apart in order to extract from them what came from the
subject (or the social) and what came from the object" (Latour 1993, 78). This tactic by
the moderns is their greatest mistake - the mistake that nonmodernism will iron out
through the work of mediation.
Postmodernism has never occupied the ground that nonmodernism
represents. It is so because postmodernists allowed the modernist framework to remain
by denouncing everything that modernism stood for. Much of the work in postmodern
thought has been about challenging assumptions and dichotomies of modernism, but
Latour dismisses post-modernism as merely a symptom of modernism. Postmodern
thinkers have continued to play under the framework of modernism - they have accepted
it and then put a negative sign in front of it (Latour 1993, 134). In other words, Latour is
critical of postmodernism because it has, en route to denouncing modernism, shifted the
focus completely from the nature pole to the society pole and we are no better off with
that approach (see chapter 3).
Latour aims to pull the elements that have been separated under
modernism toward a middle ground or 'the Middle Kingdom'. So far, Latour believes, no
one has taken on the task of studying these separations since there was no adequate
ground or point from which to undertake this study. The nonmodern constitution is
precisely this ground. It is new, a step beyond not only modernism but also
23
postmodernism. Latour wants to take the game a step further, to dissolve the idea that we
are modern, but not through the staleness of the postmodern critique. "The postmoderns
have sensed the crisis of the moderns and attempted to overcome it; thus they too warrant
examination and sorting. It is of course impossible to conserve their irony, their despair,
their discouragement, their nihilism, their self-criticism, since all those fine qualities
depend on a conception of modernism that modernism itself has never really practiced"
(Latour 1993, 134). Here again is an instance of postmodernism as an answer to
modernity but only as negating modernism and as such still not able to account for the
quasi-objects, still not occupying the ground that can absorb both nature and society at
once (see chapter 3). Learning from the mistakes of modernism and postmodernism,
Latour reconfigures the constitution to arrive at nonmodernism.
All that is deemed useful by Latour in modernism and postmodernism is
gathered and reconstructed to form a new constitution: the nonmodern constitution.
Before each guarantee is explicated, here are the four guarantees of the nonmodern
constitution in their abbreviated form: 1) nonseparability of the common production of
societies and nature 2) continuous following of the production of nature and the
production of society but not as separate entities 3) freedom to address quasi-objects
without ever having to choose between the archaism and modernization, the local and the
global, the cultural and the universal - no recognition of the homogenous temporal flow
4) the production of quasi-objects, now made explicit and also construed as a collective
doing, is democracy or giving a voice to hitherto voiceless entities. Furthermore, through
representation we can control the pace at which quasi-objects proliferate (Latour 1993,
141).
24
The first two guarantees reinforce Latour's claim that we must account for
both nature and society at once and do so from the ground that can encompass both.
"Nature and society are no longer explanatory terms but rather something that requires a
conjoined explanation" (Latour 1993, 81). The reference to freedom in the third
guarantee is vague on Latour's part, but it seems to suggest another instance of the
necessary removal from the modern assumption about the possibility of grouping or
organizing elements so as to belong to all times and all ontologies - a rejection of that
modern tendency to totalize. The fourth guarantee suggests that by uncovering quasi-
objects, by allowing them to flourish, they are given a voice and as such this practice is
indicative of democracy on a large scale. We do not know in advance what is nature and
what is society, the two are being constantly negotiated. As such, quasi-objects are
unpredictable and so is the speed with which they proliferate. We can regulate this by
slowing them down through constitutional representation, "this slowing down, this
moderation, this regulation, is what we expect from our morality" (Latour 1993, 142).
Some problems regarding the third and the fourth guarantee in the nonmodern
constitution will be addressed later (see chapter 3. But for now it should be noted that
both guarantees are vague and what is more, there are several challenges to the task that
Latour has framed.
As we have seen, the commitment to the nonmodern constitution is a
commitment to representing quasi-objects. Again, their analysis is impossible under the
modern constitution because the practice of translation and purification is incapable of
accounting for these quasi-objects. In Politics Of Nature, the nonmodern constitution
plays out: blurring of the distinctions and in particular between the human and nonhuman
25
results in our ability to account for these quasi-objects that could not be accounted for
under the modern constitution.
1.4 Politics Of Nature
As should be evident by now, distinctions introduced by the moderns and
distinctions played into by the postmoderris are problematic. We can remedy this problem
if we devote ourselves to what Latour calls political ecology. The term "politics" has
always been defined in opposition to nature (Latour 2004, 1). By that Latour means that
we have unfortunately distinguished between the questions of politics and the questions
of nature. Political ecology, as conceived by Latour, would treat these two sets of
questions as a single issue that arises for everything we encounter (Latour 2004, 1). What
should stand out in the conception of political ecology is the refusal of the notion of
nature as distinct from politics (or society) and especially, the refusal of nature as our
explanatory base.
The purpose of Latour's discussion of Plato's cave analogy below is to
show how we have come to regard 'reality of the external world' and 'the social world'
as distinct from one another. The reality of the external world corresponds to nature while
the social world to society. Latour insists that we need to forget about Plato's allegory of
the Cave because "the entire machine has functioned only if people have found
themselves plunged into the darkness of the cave in advance, every individual cut off
from every other...without contact with the reality...and then and only then will Science
come to save us" (Latour 2004, 16). This myth has allowed the 'epistemological police'
26
to short-circuit anyone questioning the bond between nature and science and how
scientists are able with little effort to hop back and forth between society and nature.
Latour points out that it is precisely this ease with which scientists move
between nature and society that is the evidence that things are not distinct but rather of
one seamless cloth (Latour 2004, 12). He writes, "the double rupture of the Cave is not
based on any empirical investigation or observed phenomena; it is even contrary to
common sense, to the daily practice of all scientists...the epistemology police will
always cancel out that ordinary knowledge by creating the double rupture between
elements..." (Latour 2004, 13). The allegory of the Cave supports a Constitution that
organizes public life into two houses (Latour 2004, 13). The first house in the
Constitution consists of ignorant people who are subject to fiction playing out on the
walls of the Cave. The second house is made up of nonhumans that are somehow
indifferent and detached from the first house (Latour 2004, 14). Unlike the first house,
the second house, or nonhumans define what exists but nonhumans lack speech, "on the
one hand, we have chattering of fictions; on the other, the silence of reality" (Latour
2004, 14). The genius or the subtlety of this model lies in the ability of the few experts to
go back and forth between the houses. With this ability (Latour refers to it as the most
fabulous political capacity ever invented) the select few can " make the world speak, tell
the truth without being challenged, put an end to the interminable arguments through an
incontestable form of authority that would stem from things themselves" (Latour 2004,
14).
In order to get away from this dubious conception of the Constitution, we
need to pair humans and nonhumans in order to allow the collective to assemble a greater
27
number of quasi-objects in a single world or the common world (Latour 2004, 80). The
term collective is used to mark a political philosophy that no longer relies on the two
poles of attraction (nature and society, human and nonhuman). The term 'collective'
means neither "one" nor "two": it means "all" (Latour 2004, 94). The collective cannot
be reduced to a single or two elements, which if unified would define it. The collective is
a steady and an infinite web of relations with no clear boundaries.
Our task is not a simple matter of joining humans and nonhumans. Instead,
in the notion of 'collective' we have a fundamental feature of political ecology: that of
collecting into a whole (Latour 2004, 59). It is this perpetual collecting of humans and
nonhumans that Latour wants to emphasize.
[The extension] of the collective makes possible a presentation of humans
and nonhumans that is completely different from the one required by the
cold war between objects and subjects...as soon as we stop taking
nonhumans as objects, as soon as we allow them to enter the collective in
the form of new entities with uncertain boundaries, entities that hesitate,
quake, and induce perplexity, it is not hard to see that we can grant them
the designation of actors (Latour 2004, 76).
In other words, if we (as in We Have Never Been Modern) refuse the separations that we
have hitherto followed blindly and allow humans and nonhumans to proliferate
simultaneously but not as distinct entities, then we are fully engaged in political ecology.
28
As such, we would encourage 'collecting' of the humans and nonhumans and their
further proliferation in an infinite web of relations.
An actor or an actant is a term from semiotics used to cover both human
and nonhuman entities (quasi-objects). It is any entity that modifies another entity
(Latour 2004, 237). The collective is a melting pot of actants (Latour 2004, 80). Actors
disrupt, and they tell us that things don't fall neatly into objects and subjects. As we saw
in the Laboratory Life, before a fact can be recognized as such, there are a myriad of
factors (human and nonhuman) that are responsible for its emergence. Similarly, the act
of collecting makes explicit and expands the list of actions and relations between humans
and nonhumans that we once took to be distinct from one another. But how does the
association of humans and nonhumans happen? To explain this, a new term needs to be
introduced: a proposition.
A proposition, as conceived by Latour, is not a statement that might be
either true or false and definitely not a vehicle for speaking about external reality. Rather,
it is " an association of humans and nonhumans before it becomes a full - fledged
member of the collective.. .rather than being true or false, a proposition in this sense may
be well or badly articulated" (Latour 2004, 247). A river, a mayor, El Nino, a troop of
elephants are propositions to the collective (Latour 2004, 83). Propositions are going to
be our guide in political ecology, "Who assembles, who speaks, who decides in political
ecology? We now know the answer: neither nature nor humans, but well-articulated
actors, associations of humans and nonhumans, well-formed propositions" (Latour 2004,
86). There of course is the question of what constitutes a well-formed proposition.
Roughly, it will be the one that has the potential to promote further collecting or is
29
conducive to assembling. A proposition that is either well formed or badly formed will go
through the following cycle before it is accepted into the collective or rejected:
[It would induce] perplexity in those who are gathered to discuss it and
who set up the trials that allow them to ensure the seriousness of its
candidacy for existence; it demands to be taken into account by all those
whose habits it is going to modify and who. must therefore sit on its jury; if
it is successful in the first two stages, it will be able to insert itself in the
states of the world only provided it finds a place in a hierarchy that
precedes it; finally, if it earns its legitimate right to existence, it will
become...part of the indisputable nature of the good common world
(Latour 2004, 123).
Because we are no longer bound by clear distinctions that group entities into two houses,
with the acceptance of a proposition into a collective there is also a rejection of another
proposition. The rejected proposition is the one that, for the time being, collectivity
decided to do without (Latour 2004, 124). As new propositions secure their place in the
collective, other propositions are deposited in the sort of dumping ground. As it builds
up, this dumping ground has the power to put the collective in danger by knocking on its
door and asking to be reconsidered thereby putting the assembled collective in flux again.
The work of scientists is a way to bridge all that modernity tried to separate - they are the
spokespersons for nonhumans. At first it may seem as if the outcome might be that of
science once again possessing the special power to get in touch with things out there in
nature minus all the social factors. But this is not the case. Scientists never had the view
30
from nowhere and as we have seen, such notion could only exist under the model of two
houses inspired by the allegory of the Cave.
The way Latour has imagined this project and the work of scientists is best
exemplified in the following: instead of having science and politics divide their territory
and then defend it from the other, Latour proposes that we simply make these two parties
work jointly towards an ever growing list of associations between human and nonhuman
actors, or a collective (Latour 2004, 89). It is this 'stirring together' of humans and
nonhumans that should be our goal. And in a way it is our only choice, it is inevitable
(stirring of nonhumans and humans, collapsing distinctions). Consider the question of
glaciers melting in the north. Glaciers, as the nonhumans, have the scientists as a kind of
prosthetic through which they can speak. Scientists enable them to speak by measuring
the rate and the speed at which they melt and what the consequences might be for our
society. Environmental decisions (affecting many things and people) are made or not
made based on that information. The example illustrates the connections between entities
that have been kept separate under the modern constitution. Again, what should always
be maintained is the refusal to "tie politics to humans, subjects, or freedom, and to tie
science to objects, nature, or necessity..." (Latour 2004, 89). We ought to be nonmodern
and to do so we ought to practice political ecology.
1.5 Concluding Remarks
Each book reviewed in this chapter illustrates Latour's attempts to move
ahead and away from social constructivism, past modernism and postmodernism.
Latour's sense is that for a long time we have been going in the wrong direction in
31
science stvidies. Latour's suggestion is that we should look for all the disorder before the
appearance of order, open black boxes, trace networks, collapse the distinction between
nature and society, subject and object and finally acknowledge the existence of quasi-
objects. Nonmodernism and 'one more turn after the social turn' embody these
prescriptions, and as such they are an improvement on what has gone so far in science
studies. But Latour's attempts to actualize these prescriptions face some challenges. What
should look like 'taking one more turn after the social turn' and nonmodernism often
relies on similar (if not the same) notions Latour is attempting to move away from. The
following chapters will aim to illustrate these shortcomings.
32
Chapter Two Latour & Social Constructivism
2.1 Introduction
This chapter will show that Latour does not succeed in distinguishing
himself from the Strong Program in particular and social constructivism in general. The
conclusions that Latour draws from his findings in Laboratory Life and Science in Action
are congruent with the conclusions that social constructivists have made and continue to l
make. This supports my thesis that Latour does not take 'one more turn after the social
turn'. I begin by illustrating the three traditions that are most relevant to my task:
sociology of knowledge, sociology of scientific knowledge and the Strong Program.
2.2 Sociology Of Knowledge, Sociology Of Scientific Knowledge & the Strong
Program
First emphasized by the ancient philosophers and later adopted as
imperative in the production of knowledge, values such as disinterestedness and
objectivity have been (and continue to be) under scrutiny. Various fields (for example,
feminist epistemology, race studies, and post-colonial studies) have argued in great detail
that what passes as disinterested and objective knowledge is, in fact, not so disinterested
or objective. Rather, it is a reflection of attitudes held by those historically and
traditionally in the position to set standards that determine what counts as knowledge and
what should be relegated as mere belief held by individuals or society. Efforts and ideas
of the aforementioned fields are underpinned by some of the basic tenets of sociology of
knowledge. At its simplest, sociology of knowledge is guided by the belief that
33
knowledge is influenced by the social and cultural contexts in which it is produced
(Mulkay 1979, 1). The sociology of knowledge is concerned with how beliefs are
distributed in various knowledge-making spheres and what factors influence or guide that
distribution. Some of the questions that sociology of knowledge asks are: How is
knowledge transmitted? How stable is it? What processes go into its creation and
maintenance? How is it organized and categorized into different disciplines (Bloor 1976,
5)?
Inspired by this basic stance (that knowledge is influenced by its social
and cultural contexts), several divergent fields have emerged from the sociology of
knowledge. One such field is the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). SSK differs
from traditional sociology of knowledge in that it is a slightly more radical take on the
connection between the social factors and knowledge. This point is well articulated by
Steven Shapin, one of the founders of SSK, "While traditional sociology of knowledge
asked how, and to what extent, "social factors" might influence the products of the mind,
SSK sought to show that knowledge was constitutively social, and in so doing, it raised
fundamental questions about taken-for-granted divisions between 'social versus
cognitive, or natural, factors'" (Shapin 1995, 289). Below is an illustration of some of the
SSK's challenges to the traditional ideas about knowledge.
Against philosophical rationalism, foundationalism, essentialism, and to
some extent realism, SSK set out to construct a framework in which social factors
counted not as contaminants but as constitutive of the very idea of scientific knowledge
(Shapin 1995, 297). The task was to point to the social influences on scientific knowledge
where they were thought not to exist. This included combing through many taken-for-
34
granted assumptions most often present in the so called "hard sciences" (Shapin 1995,
300). For those who viewed and continue to view social factors as pollutants this practice
was interpreted as an effort by the SSK to undermine validity of scientific knowledge and
practice (see Gross and Levitt 1997). This, however, was not the aim of SSK. The
interpretation that the work of SSK compromises purity of knowledge stems from that
ancient premise that social factors contaminate. But the goal of SSK was merely to
illustrate the social dimension hitherto overlooked and to be avoided was a necessary
condition in the construction of knowledge. As such, it is not a blow to the scientific
knowledge and practice but instead a better understanding of what we take to be
knowledge (Shapin 1995, 300). This better understanding was to come from studying
science as action and scientific knowledge as a product of that action. Insofar as
sociology is concerned with studying what people do collectively, how and why they do
it, knowledge producing domains ought to be studied from the sociological point, since,
for example, scientific research is what scientists collectively do (Barnes, Bloor and
Henry 1996, 110).
With diverse aims and approaches to studying science from a sociological
point of view, SSK practitioners splintered into groups while retaining the basic idea of
SSK. The Strong Program is one such variety of SSK. The Strong Program aims to study
science by tracing the psychological and sociological causes of scientific beliefs and
decisions, and in particular, decisions to accept or reject scientific theories (Curd and
Cover 1998, 1308). The sociology of knowledge is traditionally associated with the Weak
Program. The idea behind the Weak Program is that socio-psychological causes need
only be sought for error, irrationality and deviation from the proper norms and
35
methodological precepts of science (see Restivo, 1981; Phillips, 1974). In contrast to the
Weak Program, supporters of the Strong Program argue for the need to explain, in causal
terms, all systems of belief regardless of how they are evaluated (Bloor, 1999; Bloor,
1976; Barnes, Bloor and Henry 1996).
There are four tenets that define the Strong Program. They are causality,
impartiality, symmetry and reflexivity. Causality refers to examining the conditions that
bring about belief or knowledge. Impartiality means that regardless of any dichotomous
labels such as truth and falsity, or rational and irrational, explanations will need to be
given to both sides of dichotomies. Symmetry refers to the style of explanation: the same
types of causes would explain true and false beliefs. Lastly, reflexivity dictates that the
patterns of explanation employed by sociology are applicable to itself. This is a
particularly important characteristic of the Strong Program because ignoring reflexivity
would refute its method and theories (Bloor 1976, 7). If the Strong Program makes the
claim that knowledge is constructed or influenced by social elements, then its own
knowledge claims are subject to that claim as well. In other words, the Strong Program
subjects itself to the same kind of analysis that it adopts for studying science.
These principles aside, the more general characteristic of the Strong
Program is that it is concerned with giving an account of what we take to be our shared
beliefs about nature. It is important to note that the Strong Program is not an effort to
explain nature in terms of society. Rather, and as the previous sentence suggests, it is a
project to understand the character and causes of what people take knowledge to be
(BloOr 1999, 87). The first three principles of the Strong Program (causality, impartiality
and symmetry) dictate the definition of knowledge that the Strong Program adheres to:
36
knowledge is whatever people take knowledge to be (Bloor 1976, 5) and as such, it is
subject to sociological inquiry.
2.3 One More Turn After the Social Turn
Traditional sociology of knowledge was skeptical of social sciences'
ability to study science. The stance taken by SSK cleared up these doubts and for some
time advancements were made. According to Latour, the notion of reflexivity brought
progress to a halt. Latour writes "a few, who call themselves reflexivists, are delighted at
being in a blind alley... they had said that social studies of science could not go anywhere
if it did not apply its own tool to itself...now that it goes nowhere and is threatened by
sterility, they feel vindicated" (Latour 1992, 276). 'One more turn after the social turn' is
a phrase that encapsulates Latour's efforts to rescue science studies from what he claims
is the deadlock it finds itself in. This new and more radical move is inspired by Latour's
findings in Laboratory Life and Science In Action but equally reflected in his later works
such as We Have Never Been Modern and The Politics Of Nature. In what follows, I will
illustrate why Latour thinks it is necessary that we take 'one more turn after the social
turn' and how we should go about doing it.
Latour sees as problematic the framework that he claims has thus far
determined and stunted the inquiry into scientific knowledge. This framework consists of
the subject pole and the object pole. To help with sketching out why this framework is
problematic we are asked to keep in mind several adjectives that run along this line,
"radical", "progressivist", "conservative", "reactionary" and "golden mean" (Latour
1992, 279). On one side of the line we find the nature pole and on the other the subject
37
pole. Along this line we can map previously mentioned adjectives in order to understand
how the debate has gone so far and why we find ourselves in the deadlock. So, someone
who believes that scientific knowledge is entirely constructed "out o f social factors or
relations is a radical and sits closest to the subject pole. A progressivist is someone who
thinks scientific knowledge is partially constructed by social factors but largely by
encountering nature itself. A jump over the golden mean and over to the other side of the
pole and we have a mirror image of this progressivist stance: a conservative who thinks
that science mainly escapes social factors but nevertheless they are capable of leaking in.
Lastly and closest to the object pole is a reactionary who takes shedding of all social
factors as the true mark of scientific knowledge. Those who sit along the golden mean are
merely wishy-washy scholars who shun both extremes while adding a bit of each extreme
here and there (Latour 1992, 279). According to Latour, with this set-up we can log all of
our debates about science along this line and it is precisely this framework that is
responsible for the predicament science studies finds itself in.
With this simple take on how inquiry into scientific knowledge proceeds,
Latour interprets the aim and the work of the Strong Program as being at the far end of
the subject pole. He grants that some progress was made when people started realizing
that social factors play a role in the construction of scientific knowledge. But he is
equally critical of those (the Strong Program especially) who seem satisfied once they
have shifted the focus from the object pole to the subject pole. The criticism is directed at
the Strong Program (the Strong Program here being the most radical brand related to
social constructivism) because their work perpetuates the framework that is
representative of some of the basic and flawed modern ideas. The charge is that the
38
Strong Program is playing into the asymmetrical framework set up by the moderns when
it tries to rely exclusively on the subject pole. In short, and according to Latour, the
approach of the Strong Program (and more broadly postmodernism) is a symptom and not
a solution to the problems that arose from modernist ideas.
There is an inherent imbalance behind the subject and object distinction
and as such this asymmetry dictates that we explain truth with nature and error with
society. According to Latour, the symmetry principle adopted by the Strong Program
would now explain both truth and error with society but this too is completely
asymmetrical. It is asymmetrical because it continues along the same blueprint of the
moderns, only this time the power has shifted to the subject pole. Latour argues that we
need to take a 90 degree shift from the subject pole or from where the Strong Program
sits, in order to overcome asymmetry. Latour's generalized principle of symmetry (the
first principle of symmetry is associated with the Strong Program) is much more radical,
according to Latour, because it will treat the subject pole and the object pole in the same
way (Latour 1992, 281). He seeks an alternative and this alternative (Latour's generalized
principle of symmetry) asserts that the explanation should instead begin from the quasi-
objects that are positioned in the middle of the object-subject pole (see chapter 1, section
1.3). Positioned as such, we are capable of "fanning out" or simultaneously addressing
nature and society - something that sociologists of knowledge cannot accomplish
because they seek to explain from the subject (society) end of the pole. The generalized
principle of symmetry is supposed to restore agency to things and allow us both to
understand the way in which both nature and society are constituted. This is the defining
feature of the 'one more turn after the social turn' approach.
39
Moreover, this new position neither exists nor operates under the
modernist framework - it is a completely new yardstick. This new yardstick requires that
the separations that allowed the modern framework to exist (subject and object, nature
and society) are integrated or redistributed so as to allow for the emergence of a new
point from which we can assess scientific knowledge, nature, reality and so on. Latour is
aware that this is not an easy task but nevertheless it is our only way out of the stalemate.
2.4 Some problems with Latour's position and how it is not non-sociological
The nonmodern position should be an improvement on what has gone on
in the social constructivists circles (Bloor 1999, 82, Latour 1992, 276). It is also a
position that vigorously disassociates itself from social construction and especially the
Strong Program. For Latour, it is construction but not social construction (for example,
the subtitle correction of the second edition of Laboratory Life ). He no longer sees
"social" as bearing any relevance in our explanations. Laboratory Life and Science In
Action showed that the emergence of facts results from the careful assembling of
numerous elements (social and non-social). As a result, it becomes meaningless to hinge
our explanations solely on the social sphere (as the Strong Program does) because the
aforementioned texts have stripped "social" of any meaning or of explanatory power
(Latour and Woolgar 1979, 281).
In "Anti-Latour", Bloor asserts that Latour's criticism of sociology of
knowledge, and more precisely the Strong Program, has no merit because he
It occurred to Latour and Woolgar that the subtitle containing the word "social" was not conveying their message accurately. Their work had stripped the word "social" of meaning. Consequently, the second edition contained the word construction only.
40
fundamentally misinterprets the position he is criticizing (Bloor 1999, 82). The
misrepresentation, according to Bloor, stems largely from Latour's insistence that it is
possible to and that we should abandon the subject-object schema that we have been
relying on so far. We should abandon this schema in favor of a new yardstick, a
nonmodern position or what Latour calls the Middle Kingdom. But Bloor, like myself, is
suspicious that Latour has succeeded in leaving behind the subject-object schema. In
what follows, I will aim to show how Latour, despite his efforts, is unsuccessful in 1)
distancing himself from social construction and in particular the Strong Program and 2)
illustrating what exactly his nonmodern approach is and how it can be actualized. My
arguments will be made with the help of and against the backdrop of the Strong Program.
The conclusion should indicate that Latour cannot get away from the social
constructivism that is central to the sociology of knowledge and from which he wishes to
distance his work.
As previously noted, according to Latour, the traditional schema is flawed.
The sociologists have played into Kant's Critique and as a result we find ourselves in a
deadlock. Latour's understanding of Kant can be briefly summarized as the introduction
of things-in-themselves on the one hand and the Transcendental Ego on the other, which
when put together would account for knowledge. The meeting point of the two purified
sets of resources (things-im-thgmselves and the Transcendental Ego) is where empirical
scientific knowledge emerges. This, according to Latour, is a clear mark of modernism
that we should move away from (Latour 1992, 280). We must collapse the distinctions
that dictate starting points as either society or nature - we need to move away from these
extremes to some middle ground or the Middle Kingdom.
41
But this suggestion is puzzling. It is puzzling because one cannot be sure
how this new position that we arrive at (after taking one more turn after the social turn) is
devoid of elements that Latour criticizes. My criticism regarding this suggestion is in line
with Bloor's: Latour is under the false impression that it is possible to actualize his aim to
produce a non-sociological, non reductionist analysis of knowledge, one that neither
reduces nature to society nor society to nature (Bloor 1999, 87). The problem is that the
necessary 90 degree shift from the Strong Program still contains and always will contain
traces of the subject pole that Latour criticizes and wants to get away from. By this I
mean that even his newly crafted position inevitably begins from the subject, from his
own social convictions or contexts he occupies.
To put it bluntly, Latour is not above "social" nor is he above "nature".
'The middle ground' which he invokes is always and already social. He cannot shed the
social attitudes that prop the nonmodern position for the same reasons that (as his
research in Laboratory Life shows) scientists cannot shed their own attitudes or the
attitudes of their community in laboratories that they occupy. This is not to say that
removing context and social factors is a desirable thing and what Latour should pursue.
Rather, it is to highlight the ubiquitous nature of the subject pole and of the social
elements that Latour criticizes and wants to overcome. His dissatisfaction has mainly to
do with the extent to which social construction and sociology of knowledge rely on the
subject pole. Aimed particularly at the Strong Program, Latour's criticism boils down to
the Strong Program's method of relying exclusively on society to explain nature (the
latter claim being Latour's understanding of the Strong Program, a claim which Bloor
disputes). The highlighting of the ubiquitous nature of social elements serves as a
42
reminder and as a response to Latour's seemingly invincible position that will rescue us
from the predicaments of modernism, postmodernism and social construction. There is a
sense in which 'one more turn after the social turn' represents this special or privileged
point of view or method of analysis - the sort of privileged point of view that we often
grant to science and which Latour criticizes. In other words, 'one more turn after the
social turn' or 'the middle ground' is an instance of 'the view from nowhere4'. It seems
that a further step from social construction leads Latour back to the traditional ideas of
disinterestedness, and detachment.
And it is precisely this that is at once puzzling and ironic: a position that is
somehow above the subject pole and the object pole, capable of addressing both equally
while blissfully ignoring that its basis, its existence is forever or always and already
rooted in the subject, in the social and historical context - in the subject pole. Any efforts
to minimize the role of the subject pole or to shift away from it, as Latour tries to do by
making a 90 degree turn from the subject pole, are going to be driven by the social
elements. As such, Latour, despite his claims, cannot distinguish himself from the social
construction. It was noted earlier that the basic premise of sociology of knowledge is that
social context influences knowledge in some way. Whether that is a good or bad thing is
not a concern, the bottom line is that it impacts how knowledge is constructed. The
second edition of Laboratory Life omits the word "social" in its subtitle because it
occurred to Latour and Woolgar that "social" was, thanks to the findings in Laboratory
Life, now devoid of meaning. It becomes pointless to ask if something is social or not
The phrase 'the view from nowhere' is associated with Thomas Nagel (see Nagel's The View From Nowhere, 1986). In this thesis the phrase 'the view from nowhere' refers to a point that is neither rooted in the social pole nor in the nature pole. Appropriated as such, it is not to be associated with Nagel's use of the phrase.
43
given the intricate web of elements and their associations. In the postscript to Laboratory
Life Latour asks how useful the term "social" is "once we accept that all interactions are
social? What does the term "social" convey when it refers equally to a pen's inscription
on graph paper, to the construction of a text and to the gradual elaboration of amino-acid
chain? Not a lot." (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 281). My claim that we are always and
already grounded in the social seems to get recognized by Latour here and it for a
moment appears as if Latour contradicts himself. EJut that is averted by deflating the
relevance of "social" and replacing it with "construction" without a convincing argument
as to why that is the case or why is that an improvement. If everything is social (as
Latour's quote above suggests), then "construction" is not different from "social
construction".
We as individuals take nature, objects and then proceed to construct from
the subject. My claim is that Latour's nonmodern position inevitably reflects the position
of social construction and that the nonmodern, non-sociological position desired by
Latour is unlikely. It is unlikely because treating the subject and the object pole in the
same way (as his position calls for) demands that the position will neither be from the
object pole nor from the subject pole. Envisioned as such, the 'middle ground', is a
peculiar stance that Latour never spells out. To spell it out would either mean admitting
to a 'view from nowhere' that is reminiscent of the modern idea of detachment or,
equally embarrassing for him, admitting that it is in fact the ideas and language of the
sociologists that, he is relying on after all. The 'view from nowhere' comes to mind
because of Latour's faith in our ability to somehow suspend ourselves from both the
object and the subject pole and treat both in the same way. What Latour conveniently
44
leaves out is the fact that we can not but start from the subject pole and so treating both
poles in the same way as he has envisioned will be "skewed" from the outset. For this
reason, I believe that Latour's distinction between "construction" and "social
construction" and insistence on the former is meaningless - it is always social. 'One more
turn after the social turn' may be a turn but it certainly is not after the social turn or
beyond the social.
As previously indicated, my concerns are in line with David Bloor's.
Latour's reply to Bloor regarding the charges above is vague. In "For David Bloor...and
Beyond: A Reply to David Bloor's 'Anti-Latour'", Latour writes "the problem, of course,
is that David's point of view is not the right one to evaluate our work from. What he sees
as the main sources of obscurity, are the source, for all of us, of our main claim to
analytic clarity" (Latour 1999, 114). The vagueness of Latour's response can and should
be interpreted as proof of his inability to answer the criticism above. That the Strong
Program is not the right point of view to evaluate his work from may be because it
fundamentally undermines Latour's project of taking that further step from social
construction.
Furthermore, if Latour's dissatisfaction has been with the modern
framework of the object pole and subject pole, how has Latour addressed this division by
that 90 degree shift from the subject pole? The reality is that the distinction that he finds
problematic is still very much central to the tenability of his own position. Quasi-objects
help in concealing this. They are positioned in the middle, as a place where one is
somehow suspended and able to navigate at once the field containing nature and society.
Bloor writes "The new principle of symmetry, in which the analyst is poised, as it were,
45
above both nature and society..." (Bloor 1999, 85). The generalized symmetry principle
appears to offer a new and improved way to understand nature and society minus all the
pitfalls of the Strong Program. But it does not accomplish that: if the point from which
Latour is glancing at nature and society is not like that of the Strong Program or of social
construction, what is it? Again, Latour's position cannot be articulated without either
relying on what social construction already relies on or without molding of the position to
something like the 'view from nowhere'. Explanations starting from the quasi-objects
allow Latour to distinguish himself from the Strong Program. "After baffling talk about
'quasi-objects', which are 'produced' and 'circulate', we hear that they 'are a new social
link that redefines at once what nature is made of and what society is made of" (Bloor
1999, 98). Bloor believes that once Latour is pressed to say anything positive about his
recommended approach he slips back into the language of the sociology of knowledge -
he cannot get away from the same starting point as the sociologists of knowledge (Bloor
1999,98).
As a proponent of the Strong Program, Bloor's criticism of Latour points
to the error that Latour makes regarding the distinction between nature and beliefs about
nature. Bloor writes "Because Latour has picked up the wrong end of the stick it isn't
surprising that his subsequent account of the symmetry postulate is confused" (Bloor
1999, 88). Latour claims that the Strong Program makes the mistake of trying to explain
nature in terms of society. Bloor's reply to this charge is that Latour arrives at this
incorrect conclusion about the Strong Program because he fails to make the distinction
between nature and beliefs about nature. He fails to make this distinction with respect to
the Strong Program and his own work as well because "he repeatedly casts the argument,
46
his own as well as that of his opponents, in terms of nature itself rather than beliefs about
it... for Latour, it is society and nature, not society and accounts of nature, which are co-
produced" (Bloor 1999, 87).
As noted earlier, the 'symmetry principle' that guides the Strong Program
rests on the idea that both true and false, and rational and irrational beliefs should be
explained by referring to the same kinds of causes. This means that the sociologist of
knowledge would in all cases seek to locate the local, contingent causes of belief. (Bloor
1999, 84). Latour's account the Strong Program is too broad: he positions the sociology
of knowledge on the extreme subject end of the subject and object pole. As such, Latour
makes the further claim that the sociology of knowledge is really asymmetrical because it
explains "truth through its congruence with natural reality, and falsehood through the
constraint of social categories, epistemes or interests...they [are] asymmetrical" (Latour
1993, 94). As noted earlier, Latour thinks that looking into the local and contingent
causes of belief positions sociology of knowledge on the far end of the subject pole. That
this is a criticism of sociology of knowledge and the Strong Program is rather odd
because Laboratory Life and Science In Action are by and large detailed studies of the
local, and contingent conditions that allow facts to be taken for granted and also sustain
their status as unproblematic. In what follows, I will draw a parallel with Latour's
methods that he relied on in Laboratory Life and Science In Action and the four tenets of
the Strong Program. This is evidence for my claim that he remains under the jurisdiction
of social construction.
47
2.5 Laboratory Life & Science In Action And the Strong Program's Four
Tenets
Networks are vital because they either ensure the survival and
proliferation or deny the survival and proliferation of facts. Survival or perishing depends
largely on the contingent factors within a particular field. So for instance, this is
determined by how well a statement fits with the field's past results and/or how well it
blends in with the current interests of the researchers. Laboratory Life and Science In
Action both demonstrate in great detail the contingency and the locality of scientific
knowledge. The Strong Program's principle of causality calls for an examination of the
conditions that bring about belief or knowledge. Here is one instance of how Latour's
method is parallel to that of the Strong Program. That is, both Latour and the Strong
Program seek to trace the steps that led to something becoming a fact or knowledge. This
shows some resemblance between the two or just enough to suggest that Latour is not as
distant from the Strong Program as he believes he is.
The second example is with respect to impartiality and is closely tied with
the symmetry principle. One way of looking at both Laboratory Life and Science In
Action (and especially the latter) is as offering a sort of 'neutral' description of the
scientific practice and as such it is not interested in truth or falsity but is instead an
attempt to document and map out the activity that is prior to facts or knowledge. The
impartiality principle in the Strong Program seeks to give explanations regardless of the
dichotomous labels such as truth and falsity and the symmetry principle ensures that the
same causes are used in these explanations regardless of what is being explained. Given
this, and that Latour's goals in Laboratory Life and Science In Action are geared towards
48
describing what goes into the construction of fact's in a way that is applicable across the
board (we all stylize, position, build armor around our statements), we can see another
instance of the similarity between Latour's methods and those of the Strong Program.
The third example has to do with the notion of reflexivity. It was noted
earlier that Latour's dissatisfaction with the state that science studies finds itself in is
largely due to the notion of reflexivity. As we have seen, reflexivists, according to him,
are delighted to be in the blind alley and stay there thanks to their principle of applying
patterns of explanations or their own methods to their own practice. Science In Action
was an account of science in action but the findings, according to Latour, are applicable
across all fields and that includes sociology, anthropology and so on. Latour writes "No,
we should not overlook the administrative networks that produce, inside rooms in Wall
Street, in the Pentagon, in university departments, fleeting or stable representations of
what is the state of the forces, the nature of our society, the military balance, the health of
the economy, the time for a Russian ballistic missile to hit the Nevada desert" (Latour
1987, 257). Latour admits, like everyone else, that he is in the business of constructing
networks. This is reflexivity. In the same way that the Strong Program analyzes itself on
account of their principle of reflexivity, Latour follows the same path when he subjects
his own work to the patterns of network building he unveiled in Science In Action and
Laboratory Life. He is clear that his account of science is not more privileged than other
accounts. This admission is not proclaiming the worthlessness of his own account.
Rather, it is trying to make the point against the existence of true and false accounts
(Latour and Woolgar 1979, 284). He takes reflexivity to be a reminder that all texts are
stories (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 284). Similarly, the Strong Program holds that, given
49
the principles that they adhere to, it is imperative that they be subject to the same kind of
analysis as other knowledge claims. In other words, the Strong Program, like Latour,
accepts that its position is not privileged in any way. That both are interested in and see
value in applying the notion of reflexivity to their own accounts suggests to me that
Latour is not as far removed from the Strong Program after all.
2.6 Concluding Remarks
There are two main points that this chapter strove to convey: the first
concerns the problems associated with Latour's new position or 'the middle ground'
located between and below the nature and society poles. At times it seemed to embody
the 'view from nowhere' amd at other times it was not clear how it was any different than
social construction (in the broad sense of the latter term). The second emphasizes the
similarities between the Strong Program and Latour to show that Latour is much closer to
the sociology of knowledge or social construction (again, in the broad sense of those
terms) than he claims to be. These two points lend support to my thesis that Latour does
not succeed in taking 'one more turn after the social turn'. As Latour tries to take this
additional step, he finds himself most often under the framework of sociology of
knowledge, sociology of science and the Strong Program.
50
Chapter Three Latour, Modernism & Postmodernism
3.1 Introduction
What exactly is denoted by "modernism" and "postmodernism" continues
to be notoriously difficult to clarify - there are no clear and definitive answers to this
question. Attempts to define modernism and postmodernism amount to just that,
attempts. These efforts ultimately fail to produce concrete definitions largely because of
the elusive qualities that constitute the two. There is little general agreement among
scholars about the characteristics of modernism and postmodernism. What agreement
there is pertains to some of the basic characteristics or markers which refer to modernism
and postmodernism. But from there the interpretations diverge significantly. There are
several factors that contribute to this divergence and also to the problematic nature of
trying to characterize modernity and postmodernity. Some of these factors include
pinning down historical dates that mark the beginning of modernism and especially the
end (that is, if one takes modernism to have ended), what historical figures mark the
beginning and the end of modern and postmodern thought, and the intended aims of
postmodernism and the consequences of those aims (if one takes those aims to have been
achieved). In what follows, I will first illustrate some of the basic and less disputed
characteristics of modernism and postmodernism and then offer various interpretations
that splinter from there:>. This should form an adequate backdrop against which Latour's
nonmodernism can be evaluated and shown as problematic.
5 Many fields (literature, art) and spheres within society have been influenced by modernity and post-modernity but this illustration will focus primarily on modernism and post-modernism as they pertain to philosophy, science and the production of knowledge.
51
I will aim to . align Latour's nonmodern position with that of
postmodernism in general. Latour distances himself from both modernism and
postmodernism and in doing so believes that he has gone further than the common
critiques of modernism offered by either postmodernism or social constructivism. The
goal is not to offer a detailed critique of his position but rather to show that
nonmodernism, as conceived by Latour, falls under much of what postmodernism'
encompasses. In other words, the analysis below will focus on the question of whether
Latour is truly nonmodern as he claims to be. My goal in this chapter is to show that
Latour is more similar to postmodernism than he wants to admit. This will lend support to
my thesis that Latour is not making a 'one more turn after the social turn'. As noted
earlier, definitions of modernism and postmodernism are contentious but I will not focus
here on that dispute. My illustration of each term will be general rather than exhaustive. I
begin by giving an account of modernism and postmodernism, followed by Latour's
understanding of those terms and ending with my goal of aligning Latour much closer to
postmodernism - the end result being that Latour is not taking a step further as he seems
to believe.
3.2 Modernism
There are two senses that are linked to the term "modern". One is a
reference to what is current and as such distinguished from the earlier times, a contrast
between contemporary and traditional ways (Cahoone6 1995, 11). Moreover, this sense of
6 As it will become apparent, Cahoone is my primary source for illustrating the themes of modernism and postmodernism. The literature on modernism and especially postmodernism is extensive and difficult to understand. Cahoone seems to have the most
52
"modern" is used in all spheres of life but as locally or contextually determined. This
means that references to "modern English" and "modern dance" do not refer to the same
historical period but rather have their own distinct references that are determined
contextually (Cahoone 1995, 11). The other sense of the term "modern" pertains to
"Modernity", a historical and major development in the intellectual circles in Europe and
North America. It is this latter sense of the term "modern" that is central to this chapter.
In his essay "The Century Of Genius", Whitehead notes several factors
that he takes to be responsible for the surge in the rationalist sentiment and scientific
thinking that dominated the seventeenth century. He traces the scientific outburst of the
seventeenth century to some of the characteristics of the Middle Ages: the rise of
mathematics, the strong conviction in a detailed order of nature and the persistent
emphasis on the rationalism of the thought of the later Middle Ages (Whitehead 1967,
57). In the sphere of science this meant a greater than ever appeal to experiment and
inductive reasoning with a particular emphasis on taking great care in documenting
particular instances from which general laws could be established (Whitehead 1967, 57,
63; Foucault 1994, 125). Whitehead points to Bacon as one of the great builders of the
modern world because of his unwavering enthusiasm for induction and collection of
empirical facts that would yield general laws about nature (Whitehead 1967, 63). Bacon's
attitude set the tone for the direction that science would take in the seventeenth century
(and continues to take today). This attitude would become crucial to the concerns and
practices of the eighteenth century or the Age of Enlightenment. It became crucial
because this rational attitude got carried over into the social sphere and consequently
general take on modernism and postmodernism and as these two terms are not the central focus of my thesis, his account is sufficient for my needs.
53
formed a new foundation for the political and sociological theories of the eighteenth
century and on. Religion as an explanatory power was in decline and there was a
noticeable shift towards appealing to the facts of nature instead. From there emerged
various notions about the individual and society that the Western world continues to hold
today. Some of these hallmarks are capitalism, a largely secular culture, liberal
democracy, individualism, rationalism and humanism (Cahoone 1995, 11). There is some
controversy with these traits being exclusively ascribed to modernity because some argue
that there were civilizations prior to modernity that espoused values such as free markets,
individuality and so on (Cahoone 1995, 11). Regardless, there is a sense in which the
Modern period (roughly the last two or three centuries in Europe and North America, and
in full bloom by the early twentieth century) is distinct from other periods in history
because few would dispute the tremendous progress made in the sciences, technology and
in the standard of living (Cahoone 1995, 11).
The more abstract notions that characterize modernity are controversial
because, as Cahoone puts it, minds and cultures are harder to make sense of and specify
than airplanes (Cahoone 1995, 12). Nevertheless, there are some abstract characteristics
or beliefs about modernity that surface again and again. It should be noted that while they
resurface, they are never fully articulated but serve as a rough guide. By this I mean that
if the concept of individuality is emphasized, what is precisely meant by 'individuality' is
often only sparingly articulated as well as greatly contested. The interpretation of the
abstract characteristics turns out to be controversial because it depends a lot on the
platform from which these interpretations are made. Controversies surrounding the
concept of modernity persist because in the myriad of possible modern traits,
54
interpretations and historical figures, scholars often focus their attention on one part of
modernity and construe it as the essential aspect of modernity (Cahoone 1995, 12).
Regardless, we can still speak (however imprecisely) of these general abstract notions.
Some of these characteristics that constitute the image of modernity are either put
forward by the moderns themselves or by others (contemporary philosophers or
historians and so on) whose evaluations often contrast modernity to other historical
periods (most often, the Middle Ages). Below are two such illustrations. These
illustrations highlight some of the abstract characteristics (rationality, objectivity,
scientific rigor) as conceived by the moderns and by others both of which indicate
somewhat of a recurring theme of modernity regardless of the source.
The positive self-image modern Western culture has often given to itself, a
picture born in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, is of a civilization
founded on scientific knowledge of the world and rational knowledge of
value, which places the highest premium on individual human life and
freedom, and believes that such freedom and rationality will lead to social
progress through virtuous, self-controlled work, creating a better material,
political, and intellectual life for all (Cahoone 1995, 12).
And,
The Modern Period was characterized by a desire to abjure the Past and to
discard Tradition and all external authority. Behind that drive was an
55
absolute confidence in the capacity of unaided and autonomous human
reason to solve all puzzles and to remove the veil of mystery from reality.
Reason alone can make the objective world no longer a threat to one's
existence, but fully subject to human control through Science and
Technology, ignoring the past and concentrating on the present in a
calculated and methodical manner (Singh 1997, iii).
Regardless of the tendency by scholars to isolate one part that they take to be the essential
feature of modernity or one or two essential figures, from the lengthy quotations above
we can gather some general features of modernity: emphasis on reason/rationality; deep
conviction that objective and certain knowledge is possible and that the rigor and clarity
of science and philosophy will deliver that; unprecedented belief in human abilities to
control nature; and resting on all this or above all, the eagerness to once and for all be
free of the grip of superstition (often religious). It is precisely these values and
convictions that postmodernism will contest and scrutinize. In what follows, I will give
an overview of postmodernism and present some of its concerns regarding the values and
goals that emerge from modernism.
3.3 Postmodernism
Given that postmodernity is a response to modernity, the existence and the
emergence of it is inevitably tied to the period of modernity and modernist values. As it
pertains to science and philosophy (insofar as they are both concerned with knowledge),
it is most often interpreted as repudiating the core values of modernism (objective
56
knowledge, disinterested science and etc.). While most postmodernists are explicit in this
belief there are others who are less so or are ambivalent. They may instead simply
question the modern project or comment on it (for example, the potential for its
actualization, what its consequences are or have been, etc.) without explicitly rejecting it
or replacing it with an alternative (Cahoone 1995, 2). This is related to the question of
whether or not the modern project has ended or if the concerns raised by the
postmodernists represent the continuation of what was started by the modernists. There is
no definitive answer to this question. If defining modernism proved to be a thorny
undertaking then (insofar as postmodernism follows from or comes after modernism)
then defining postmodernism, its goals and how it relates to modernity seems even more
difficult.
But most postmodernists (if not all) welcome this disarray: while emphasis
on order and unity was central to modernism, postmodernists embrace the plurality of
ideas or voices and the contradictions that stem from those. Again, what is precisely
meant by postmodernism is difficult to say, but there are, as with modernism, at the very
least some basic or crude characteristics that stand out. One such feature is the realization
of the serious problems with modernity's conceptions of and push for rationalism,
foundationalism, objectivity, and truth.
These concerns are echoed across the five prominent themes of
postmodernism, four of which are objects of its criticism and one that represents its
method (Cahoone 1995, 14). As articulated by Cahoone, they are 1) criticism of presence
or presentation (versus representation and construction) 2) criticism of origin (versus
phenomena), 3) criticism of unity (versus plurality), 4) criticism of transcendence of
57
norms (versus their immanence) and 5) often carrying out analysis through the idea of the
constituitive other (the latter being its method) (Cahoone 1995, 14).
Presence refers to the immediate experience and thereby to the objects
immediately "presented". As such, it is devoid of any interpretations that may come later
and rely on linguistics signs and concepts, construction or products of human
intervention. Take for instance scientific facts. They are understood as self-sufficient
instances of reality, not relying on or being influenced by any other factors and capable of
being observed as such (Rockmore 2005, 16). Postmodernists argue that there is no such
presentation. They deny the possibility that anything is "immediately present" by
pointing to the inevitability of experience being mediated by signs, language,
interpretation and so on - it's not that there is no "presence", it's just that it is always
going to be through a myriad of human factors, meanings, signs etc. (Cahoone 1995, 14).
Origin, as the word itself suggests and as taken up by modernists, is the
idea that there is a source for whatever is under consideration. This is largely due to the
modernist or rationalist insistence on going beyond phenomena so as to reach their
foundation or origin. Postmodernism denies that this is possible. Reaching the foundation
is impossible because there is no one and authoritative interpretation or view that can
illuminate the origin - there are only various interpretations (equally valid) of whatever is
under the consideration none of which grasps the origin. The saying 'every author is a
dead author,' is an example of the denial of origin, because it denies that the meaning of a
text "can be 'authoritatively' revealed through reference to authorial intentions"
(Cahoone 1995, 15). The meaning of a text is in the hands of later users.
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The possibility of unity is denied under postmodernism. Postmodernists
argue that what has traditionally been passed as unity (a single, integral existence or
concept) is actually plural. "Everything is constituted by relations to other things, hence
nothing is simple, immediate!, or totally present, and analysis of anything can be complete
or final" (Cahoone 1995, 15). In explaining the above, the idea of constituitive other is
useful. Constitutive other as a method foregrounds postmodern analysis of entities
because it holds that what appears to us as one unit (philosophical systems, meanings
etc.) is in fact explained by other processes like exclusion, opposition, and
hierarchization (Cahoone 1995, 16). Moreover, the concept of otherness shows how one
side is valued but only if the other is regarded as foreign, of lesser value. For instance, in
philosophy the dualism between "reality" and "appearance" and the privileged position of
"reality" can only be maintained if "appearance" serves as a waste bin for all that the
privileged position refuses (Cahoone 1995, 16). In addition to that, postmodernism claims
that norms are not independent of the processes that constitute them and as such all
normative claims, including those of postmodernists, are problematic. Norms like beauty,
justice and so on cannot escape the intellectual, historical and social context in which
they are produced. So instead of accepting the transcendence of norms, postmodernism
tries to give an account of the processes of thought, writing, negotiation, and power
which produce normative claims thereby rendering any possibility of the transcendence
of norms problematic or impossible (Cahoone 1995, 16).
The first serious and explicit questioning of the basic tenets of modernism
is usually associated with Nietzsche. From there and as postmodernism gained ground,
several strands within or relating to postmodernism branched out. They are historical,
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methodological and positive postmodernism (Cahoone 1995, 2). Historical
postmodernism makes a historical claim that merely suggests (without claiming that
modernity is or was wrong) that modernity, as first conceived, has been subject to change
or has evolved with the passage of time in all spheres (social, political etc) into a novel
entity and as such it is at an end or going through a major transformation (Cahoone 1995,
17). Methodological postmodernism denies that knowledge is possible in the strict realist
sense as accessible via foundations that yield objective knowledge the 'real' nature of
reality. This entails rejecting dualisms (objectivity and subjectivity, nature and society
etc.) that have been integral to the aforementioned realist ideals. Methodological
postmodernism does not offer an alternative; rather, its focus is on pointing out problems
and shortcomings of intellectual pursuits in general (Cahoone 1995, 18). Positive
postmodernism relies on the aforementioned methodological critique of modernity but
instead offers an alternative. It offers a new conception or ways of understanding (nature,
God, self etc.) now that the shortcomings of modernity have been uncovered.
It is important to note there is no shortage of disagreement among the postmodern
thinkers and that figuring out what postmodernism stands for is, as with modernism,
notoriously difficult. But with respect to both postmodernism and modernism, and in the
absence of precise definitions, the following observation seems fitting, "More important
than discovering an essential commonality is recognizing that there are some important
new developments in the world that deserve examination, that 'postmodern' labels some
of them, and that there are some very important works, raising deep questions, written by
people labeled 'postmodernists;" (Cahoone 1995, 1). On a broad level, perhaps the most
prudent way of conceiving postmodernism would be as continuous re-reading and
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critique of modernism and not necessarily as a clear break from a particular period or
ideology (Malpas 2005, 44). Indeed, thinkers like Lyotard and Baudrillard see
postmodernism as a continual theorization about modernity under the contemporary
circumstances (Redhead 2008, 11; Lyotard 1979, 81). Lyotard writes "The postmodern
would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation
itself...that which searches for new representations, not in order to enjoy them but in
order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable" (Lyotard 1979, 81). In other
words, postmodern can be thought of as a perpetual undertaking or theorizing of modern
values but with a critical eye. As such, broadly construed it represents an evolvement of
modern ideas.
3.4 Latour & Postmodernism
According to Latour, postmodernism is a symptom and not a solution to
modernism's problems. It is so because it plays into andmerely takes what modernism
offered to us and puts a negative sign in front of it, "The postmoderns have sensed the
crisis of the moderns and attempted to overcome it...it is of course impossible to
conserve their irony, their despair, their discouragement, their nihilism, their self-
criticism, since all those fine qualities depend on a conception of modernism that
modernism itself has never really practiced" (Latour 1993, 134, my emphasis).
Postmodernism tries to denounce modernism but it cannot do that because it, according to
Latour, still lives under the modern constitution but does not believe in it. Instead of
focusing their energies on empirically studying networks and their extensions (for Latour,
the only kind of study actually capable of denouncing modernism), postmoderns,
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according to Latour, merely reject empirical work as rationalist and wallow in
disconnected instants and groundless denunciations (Latour 1993, 46). Given that
postmodernists deny the possibility of some of the major concepts that emerged from
modernism one can see why Latour might be inclined to say that postmodernism is
modernism with a negative sign in front. But he fails to notice that their ideas are present
in his own. He traces the root of our problems to modernism and brands postmodernism
as an inadequate response to those problems. According to Latour, the developments in
postmodernism are a continuation of some of the modern practices and as such not
radical or sufficient enough in dispelling modernism. This point is supported by the fact
that moderns and postmoderns "share" the five themes that were explicated in the
previous section (see section 3.3).
According to Latour, to save ourselves from the predicament we find
ourselves in after modernism, we must adopt a considerable shift in how we think about
nature and society, subject and object. Roughly speaking, the shift entails considering
nature and society, nonhuman and human at once so as to blur the distinctions that were
erected by modernism. This, according to Latour, has never been done before or never
done properly. Not even the efforts of social construction, SSK, the Strong Program etc.,
are enough in confronting modernism. The efforts are inadequate because, according to
Latour, the focus is merely shifted from nature to society while failing to notice that this
is a form of the continuation of the modern distinctions between society (subject) and
nature (object). In other words, the emphasis is now on the society as opposed to nature.
A step further from the pitfalls of modernism, postmodernism and social construction is
nonmodernism or 'the turn after the social turn'. The analysis below will strive to
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highlight some of the challenges that Latour faces with this approach and ultimately show
that Latour is, in "taking a step further", unwittingly positioning himself closer to those
whom he criticizes. In making my argument that nonmodernism is in fact postmodernism
for the most part (but also at times, although less often, modernism), the concept of quasi-
objects will be crucial. This later claim, that nonmodernism at times resembles
modernism is a claim that I will not pursue extensively here. The purpose of mentioning
it is to illustrate, indirectly, that nonmodernism is not tenable and cannot function as
Latour had envisioned it.
Laboratory Life and Science In Action showed us how facts are assembled
from an array of elements that are black boxed. Neatly packaged and closed tightly, black
boxes or facts circulate in networks where they are either taken up or dwell in obscurity.
With networks being comprised of these entities that are themselves only an assortment
of a vast number of elements (social and non-social) one can gather that, and as We Have
Never Been Modern and Politics Of Nature suggest, the clear-cut distinctions or
dichotomies that were essential to modernism (for example, the subject and object
distinction) are not so clear anymore. There are no longer ways of justifying strict
separations as we have realized that there are quasi-objects or actants (in semiotics, a
term for both human and nonhuman actors) everywhere. Quasi-objects, Latour writes,
are in between and below the two poles, at the very place around which
dualism and dialectics had turned endlessly without being able to come to
terms with them...[they] trace networks...they are real, quite real, and we
humans have not made them. As soon as we are on the trail of some quasi-
object, it appears to us sometimes as a thing, sometimes as a narrative,
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sometimes as a social bond, without ever being reduced to a mere being
(Latour 1993, 55, 89).
So quasi-object is a collection of things, the sum of complex relations but relations that
always extend elsewhere. For example, a computer is a collection of or a hybrid of
efficiency-communication tool-sedentary lifestyle. These direct and re-direct our health,
productivity, and handwriting all of which expand into numerous other relations.
Visually, it is a dendrite of sorts that always and already touches and is touched. This
image forces us to reconsider the clear-cut lines that have molded our understanding of
objects and subjects as distinct or separate entities that stand alone and are singular. Their
composition is inextricable and nonmodernism can account for these complexities that
we have tried to ignore under modernism. Central to nonmodernism and closely related to
the idea of quasi-objects is mediation. Modernism relied exclusively on the practices of
purification and.mediation and used the split it had created between nature and society as
a way to perpetuate its constitution (see chapter 1, sections 1.3 and 1.4). Consequently, it
has always failed to account for quasi-objects because they are a multiplicity, linking and
linked to layers and networks that defy modernism's distinctions. Tracing networks,
focusing on mediations that constitute and shape quasi-objects is what underpins and
should distinguish nonmodernism from modernism and postmodernism.
Here is an instance where a parallel between postmodernism and
nonmodernism crystallizes: one of the central themes of postmodernism has to do with
rejection of the modern idea of presence (see earlier section on postmodernism). Nothing
is immediately present. Everything is mediated by signs, interpretations, language and a
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multitude of factors and as such there is no possibility of anything existing in its pure
form. Latour's notions of quasi-objects and mediation are in line with the postmodern
objection to the modern notion of presence, of things being present in themselves and
devoid of past and current complexities. As part of postmodern thought, structuralism
maintains that everything is constituted by relations to other things and Latour seems to
adopt the same attitude: black boxing and the emergence of facts all depend on the
deployment of a myriad of factors and entities that contribute to this collective fact
making. Laboratory Life and Science In Action point precisely to that: the multiplicity of
factors and relationships and their interplay as constituting scientific activity. If the idea
of networks, intermediaries, quasi-objects, nonmodernism and so on is the 'turn after the
social turn' then it should not look like the postmodern critique. Yet, it does: the
overarching idea in the four of Latour's works that I focused on embodies relations,
complexities, multiplicities that are all in play at once (for example, consider the
torutured history of a fact prior to its taken for granted status). This, as far as I
understand, has been one of the major realizations that came out of postmodernism in
general (see chapter 3, section 3.3). Moreover, the exercise in locating how exactly
Latour is different (how he manages to go a step farther than the critiques of modernism
offered so far), yields no result mainly because Latour embodies the very same general
concerns that postmodernity had voiced already. Consequently, there is no 'one more turn
after the social turn'. Latour is more postmodern that he wants to admit.
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Another example of the close proximity between postmodern critiques of
modernism and Latour's nonmodernism is to be found in the idea of origin .
Postmodernism denies the possibility of the idea of origin. The saying "every author is a
dead author" shows that the meaning of a text, how it is taken up is left up to others and
their interpretations thereby denying the possibility of author's intentions being the origin
of the meaning of the text. In Science In Action, Latour writes "the fate of facts and
machines is in the hands of later users" (Latour 1987, 59). Latour points out that
statements exist or perish depending on how (and if) they are taken up by others and
appropriated. The point here is that statements or texts are contingent on others, depend
on how they are taken up, appropriated and so on. Latour is describing the very thing that
postmodernists came to realize, namely, that texts are subject to interpretations through
which they are molded. And so is the case with statements and facts as they pass through
different hands. As they are stylized and appropriated (or not) their status and
significance is established. In reference to the scientists and the statements they make
Lyotard writes, "One's competence is never an accomplished fact. It depends whether or
not the statement proposed is considered by one's peers to be worth discussion...the truth
of the statement and the competence of its sender are thus subject to the collective
approval of a group of persons..." (Lyotard 1979, 24). Again, the point is that Latour's
description of statements and facts is in line with the postmodern claim about things
being depended on outside forces for their meaning.
7 Foucault's "geneology", one of the influential postmodern ideas, is not to be interpreted as the search for the origin. Rather, its aim is to show the possibility of plural and contradictory accounts of the past- the result being precisely the denial of the notion of origin (see Foucault's Archaeology Of Knowledge ,1969)
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As noted earlier, positive postmodernism adopts the critique of modernism
that stems from methodological postmodernism (that knowledge is impossible in the
strict realist sense) but unlike methodological postmodernism, positive postmodernism
presents an alternative. This alternative offers a new way of understanding concepts in
light of the critique of modernism. All issues or problems with nonmodernism aside, its
goal too is to offer a novel interpretation of the modern concepts: nature, society etc. As
such and as far as the aims of each are concerned, Latour's nonmodernism is in line with
the methodological postmodernism.
By illustrating the close proximity of nonmodernism to postmodernism I
mean to point out that some of Latour's crucial ideas (i.e. quasi-objects, networks,
rejection of sharp distinctions) are apparent in the postmodern critique. As such
nonmodernism is not a step further from the postmodern critiques that emerged after the
realization that the Modern project has gone sour. In other words, where Latour claims to
have gone farther, he still finds himself under the framework of the basic ideas of
postmodernism. Some of the strategies employed to create the distance between his own
work and the critiques of modernism offered thus far are problematic. In what follows, I
will illustrate some of these shortcomings.
3.5 Some Problems in Latour's Nonmodernism
There are several issues regarding nonmodernism that are worth considering that
do not directly link it to postmodernism. They are worth considering because they
highlight some of the shortcomings of nonmodernism. These shortcomings serve to point
out some problems in taking 'one more turn after the social turn'. This should suggest the
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difficulty in moving away from the critiques and methods put forward by postmodernism
and social constructivism thus far. Here are some of the issues that are problematic in
Latour's philosophy: overcoming the subject and object distinction, reverting to the
modern notions that are (or usually seen as) problematic, and accounting for the power
dynamics that privilege certain groups or networks.
According to Latour, the damning aspect of modernism is the establishment of the
asymmetries, of separations. Quasi-objects force us to recognize the futility of
distinctions and work on the overcoming of dualisms. Nonmodernism should, among
other things, get beyond the subject and object dichotomy. "In abandoning dualism our
intent is not to throw everything into the same pot... [rather] the name of the game is not
to extend subjectivity to things, to treat humans like objects, to take machines for social
actors, but to avoid using the subject-object distinction at all in order to talk about the
folding of humans and nonhumans" (Latour 1999,. 194). Latour fails to get past this
crucial distinction. Lynette Khong, in her article "Actants and enframing: Heidegger and
Latour on technology", argues that establishing a symmetry between dualisms as Latour
envisions it ends up only being possible through granting subjectivity to objects (Khong
2003, 702). Indeed, much of the Politics Of Nature calls for giving a "voice" to
nonhumans so as to achieve full democracy, so as to recognize that which modernists
have denied. Take for instance the speed bump: it is an actant since it acts as a hybrid of
engineer-law-maker-policeman, all of which translates into the speed bump now having
the agency and ability to redirect or shape our actions and so on (Khong 2003, 702). As
such, the object is no longer just an object but it is now endowed with abilities that have
hitherto only been reserved to subjects. This is what leads Khong to conclude "It thus
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appears that the move towards symmetry is to be affected by endowing nonhumans with
an agency that, as Latour is well aware, only serves to preserve the distinction between
actor and acted upon, subject and object" (Khong 2003, 702). What this suggests further
is a kind of anthropocentrism that Latour finds problematic yet remains embedded in
nonmodernism. Furthermore, the subject and object distinction remains in another area as
well: the notion of granting a "voice" to nonhumans. If we are to be more democratic,
this is what we should strive for. However, the concern here is that the 'voice granting' is
still work done by us, humans, subjects. Moreover, it is something that is projected onto
the object (i.e. ozone layer). Latour writes, "There are no more naked truths, but there are
no more naked citizens, either...Natures are present, but with their representatives,
scientists who speak in their name" (Latour 1993, 144). In light of this, it is unclear how
Latour has overcome the subject and object distinction. What is more, it suggests that the
subject pole carries greater weight than Latour wants to attribute to it (this latter point
will be further elaborated later).
Lastly, it is clear that Latour's aim for a true democracy with a greater number of
voices or actants in the parliament of things is a noble undertaking (and one probably
reminiscent of modernism and the ancients), but he seems to fail to address the common
problem of the power asymmetry that seems to be at play everywhere. The power
asymmetry often means that the other exists only in relation to the one. Even if it
emerges, its appropriation and inclusion is subject to the existing power asymmetries.
Some have described Latour's account of science in action as a war zone where alliances
are built and mobilized in order to further one's goals, and indeed, this is in fact, among
other things, what Latour takes as a major aspect that is constitutive of science and of
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networks. But if the aim is for the greater inclusion and for granting more voices to
nonhumans, for always extending networks and so on, then Latour should address some
of the limitation that this approach contains. In Politics Of Nature Latour states that if
those excluded can show that they will aid in the compilation of voices, and further
proliferation of quasi-objects then they can 'petition' for inclusion. Mallavarapu and
Parsad's concern seems fitting when they write "While Latour prides himself on the fact
that his analysis of hybrids and networks opens up space for nonhumans free from
traditional anthropocentric approaches, there is still no guarantee that such an analysis is
going to give voice to all the actants involved, or whether the voices of the actants can
actually be recovered" (Mallavarapu and Prasad 2006, 195). Latour may not claim that he
can accomplish this in the first place but then the worry might be that nonmodernism is
just an ideal to strive for or that it does not represent anything novel in the efforts to give
voices to those who are oppressed. Latour's project seems to overlook or fails to address
the standard dangers that totalizing frameworks inevitably carry within. For example, the
questions and decisions about inclusion and exclusion are notoriously difficult as well as
inheriting the power dynamics that are already in place even before the project gets
underway. In addition to this, in his calling for an anthropological approach to studying
networks, quasi-objects and so on, Latour does not consider the possible undesirable
consequences of that approach: anthropology itself was an integral tool for carrying out
the modern colonial projects (Mallavarapu and Parsad 2006, 192). The above concerns
are serious enough to merit closer attention by Latour if his methods and ideas are
presented as an improvement on what has gone on thus far.
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3.6 Concluding Remarks
Latour is much closer to postmodern critiques of modernism than he wants to
admit. The previous section outlined some of the problems that nonmodernism faces.
Those problems often occur at points where Latour believes that he is taking an
additional step (i.e. overcoming the subject and object distinction). It becomes difficult
to believe that Latour is capable of taking that additional step. This becomes even more
apparent by highlighting the proximity of (if not outright identity) between some
postmodern ideas and nonmodernism. With a particular emphasis on social
constructivism, the conclusion will further illuminate my claim that Latour is not taking
'one more turn after the social turn'.
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Chapter Four Conclusion
The analysis in the previous chapters shows Latour's failure to take the additional
step or 'one more turn after the social turn'. Broadly speaking, my claim about Latour's
shortcoming hinges on the idea that things are inevitably social. And so Latour's aim to
take the additional step becomes problematic because it purports to have overcome or
gone beyond the 'social'. The following key points illustrate why Latour's
nonmodernism, or the taking of 'one more turn after the social turn' cannot be actualized:
failure to establish sufficient distance from social constructivism that would distinguish it
from the latter; false impression that the dichotomies he finds problematic are actually
dissolved under nonmodernism; the peculiar status of 'the middle ground', the position
that is somehow rooted neither in the subject nor the object; the standard problems facing
totalizing frameworks such as nonmodernism (i.e. exclusion, power dynamics). Below is
an explication as well as the interweaving of the points above, all with the aim of
illustrating that Latour does not take 'one more turn after the social turn'.
Although Latour is keen on distinguishing himself from the work of social
construction and postmodernism, I maintain that he does not move away from the basic
notions that are representative of social constructivism and postmodernism - he remains
under the broad umbrella of social constructivism and postmodernism. Roughly speaking,
the term 'postmodern' signals the realization that the modern ideals (i.e. detachment) are
unattainable. Social constructivism follows up on that postmodern awareness. Its work
seeks to emphasize the role of the social and of construction in our notions of reality and
knowledge. As noted in chapter 2, the sociology of knowledge emerged out of this basic
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belief that knowledge is influenced by social factors. Latour's claim that he is taking 'one
more turn after the social turn' signals a departure from the standard notions in social
constructivism such as the society and the subject. Latour's main dissatisfaction with
social constructivism is with (what he takes to be) over-reliance on the subject or society.
The mistake, according to Latour, has been to go from one end (nature) to another end
(society). Nonmodernism, or 'one more turn after the social turn', would absorb both
simultaneously and by doing so lift us out of the predicament we found ourselves in with
respect to the rift between nature and society. The new position, what Latour calls 'the
middle ground' (or "Middle Kingdom") is between and below the nature and society pole
and it is precisely the spot from which one can account for our reality without making the
common error of emphasizing either nature or society.
The Strong Program, according to Latour, has fallen into that trap the most
because it relies heavily on the society to explain our beliefs about knowledge. But this
charge (if one takes it as a charge at all; it could very well represent something inevitable)
can equally be applied to Latour. By this I mean that when Latour speaks about 'the
middle ground' as the position from which we should base our inquiry, he fails to notice
that this position is already embedded in the social or the subject. As such, the
fundamental feature of nonmodernism, 'the middle ground', is not an advancement of the
sort that Latour envisioned. Like both the Strong Program and social constructivism,
nonmodernism too is subject to what I understand to be an unavoidable consequence: that
all knowledge and all inquiry depends on the subject or subjects who know or inquire.
Irigaray writes "Any knowledge is produced by subjects in a given historical
context. Even if it tends towards objectivity, even if its techniques are supposed to be a
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means of controlling objectivity, science is the manifestation of certain choices, certain
exclusions..." (Irigaray 1994, 31). I extend this observation to Latour. The quote is
relevant to nonmodernism in that it reminds one that 'the middle ground', however
imagined by Latour, does not escape the context (that is always social) in which it is
conceived. That 'the middle ground' too is always a reflection of certain attitudes,
exclusions and so forth is sufficient to doubt the success of Latour's project of moving
beyond the mere social. Whenever it seems that he has done so, 'the middle ground'
takes on the problematic status of 'the view from nowhere'. This idea is developed
further below.
In Politics of Nature, Latour is bewildered at the notion that is indicative of
modernism in which scientists are somehow able to shuttle between nature and society,
accessing both and seemingly without problems. My perplexity with respect to 'the
middle ground' which Latour advocates is of the same kind. 'The middle ground' (if one
for a moment takes it as capable of transcending the social) reverts to the modern practice
of the privileged position (the view from nowhere) from which one somehow adjudicates
(see chapter 2, section 2.4). But I maintain that all human knowledge is rooted in the
subject and context and the possibility of overcoming that factor does not exist without
returning to the modern ideals of detachment.
We Have Never Been Modern and Politics Of Nature are prime examples of
Latour's insistence on replacing the strict oppositions created by the ancients and later
adopted by the moderns. The aforementioned texts aim to put aside or dissolve the
distinctions between the subject and object, nature and society, and this is done in favor
of a framework that is free of the separations that have pervaded the Western thought.
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What I want to highlight here is that the dichotomies that Latour finds problematic under
modernism remain so under nonmodernism, as opposed to being dissolved. One of
Latour's criticism of the Strong Program in particular is that it merely takes part in
perpetuating divisions created under modernism by, according to Latour, shifting the
focus from the nature pole to the subject pole, and as such reinforcing the distinction
between the two poles. But the reinforcement of separations is equally present in
nonmodernism.
There are two instances where this is apparent. First, although Latour imagines it
otherwise, 'the middle ground' is always and already marked by the social pole. It is our,
the subject's, the society's doing and construction. So the social pole remains intact.
Moreover, if 'the middle ground' is a novel position, as Latour claims it is, then there is a
sense that it is above or beyond the social, and conceived as such would reinforce the
binaries or opposition that were problematic in the first place (namely, that there is
something to transcend, a view from nowhere). Second, in Politics of Nature, one of the
main tasks that we should embark on, according to Latour, is the granting of voices to
nonhumans hitherto neglected and unaccounted for as the result of the separations under
modernism. From the beginning, this project is characterized by one (the subject)
conferring status to the other (object) - binaries still intact. Moreover, the notion of
granting a voice to something which is not capable of "speaking" on its own is
problematic. The issue here is comparable to the problems encountered when one
attempts to speak for the Other. By this I mean that the glaring problem with granting a
voice to quasi-objects is that of power imbalance that is inevitably embedded in the
relationship between 'the one granting' and 'one being granted'. In addition to this, there
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is an unavoidable issue of what gets included and excluded. The above shows that
binaries and separations aire part of the nonmodern framework just as much as they are
part of any other framework. The dissolution of separations should have been one of the
features that distinguished nonmodernism from social construction - a feature that would
be the example of 'taking one more turn after the social turn' - but the above suggests
that Latour does not accomplish that. This shows support for my thesis that Latour does
not take 'one more turn after the social turn'.
Lastly, Latour's nonmodern position suffers from some of the problems usually
associated with totalizing networks. I understand nonmodernism to be a totalizing
network. The moves that Latour has made from Laboratory Life to Politics in Nature are
geared towards establishing a kind of metaphysics that would be our guide. For example,
the notion of network building that emerges out of Science In Action and then extends to
and is applicable to other domains. Out of this goal, several standard problems that
plague such frameworks emerge. There is immediately the question of the power
differentials in play between those who theorize and those being theorized on or about.
Building on this point, the issue of inclusion and exclusion is problematic: in Politics of
Nature Latour writes that everything that is excluded or not conducive to further
proliferation of imbroglios has a chance to petition for inclusion at a later point.
Conceived as the unprecedented furthering of the already familiar notions of democracy
and equality, Politics of Nature strangely takes on some of the uncanny characteristics of
the frameworks that have been oppressive to groups (e.g. women) that were perceived as
incapable of contributing and had to 'petition' for inclusion. Though this is not what
Latour sets out to do, it still seems bound to occur as nonmodernism presents itself as a
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totalizing network and succumbs to the standard problems associated with such
frameworks.
My study of Latour leads me to some claims that merit further exploration. My
thesis focused on showing that Latour is not successful in taking 'one more turn after the
social turn'. Out of this project another question emerges: is there 'a turn after the social
turn' at all! It may very well be that such turn cannot be taken as we are always and
already embedded in the social. Speaking to the realists, Nietzsche writes "You call
yourselves realists and hint that the world really is the way it appears to you...That
mountain there! That cloud there! What is 'real' in that? Subtract your phantasm and
every human contribution from it, my sober friends! If you can! If you can forget your
descent, your past, your training - all of your humanity and animality^ (Nietzsche 1974,
121, my emphasis). Similarly, Latour (no one for that matter) cannot forget his descent
and past. The criticism that social constructivism is placing too much emphasis on the
social is unfounded because there seems no way out of it. As such, it becomes
meaningless to speak of taking 'one more turn after the social turn' as we always and
already function within it.
My general sentiments point to the impossibility of transcending the subject,
language, history or tradition, the situatedness and interplay of it all. Although I am well
aware of the worrisome (to some) consequences that follow from that (for example,
relativism and its consequences) at least there is consolation in finally abandoning the
pursuit of something that has never existed and cannot exist. Whenever there is resistance
to the latter point, one can subdue the excitement about the prospect of arriving at a
privileged point of view by reflecting on the following thoughts by Rorty "To say that
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values are more subjective than facts is just to say that it is harder to get agreement about
which things are ugly or which actions evil than about which things are rectangular"
(Rorty 1999, 51, my emphasis). I want to suggest that it may be more useful to accept the
ubiquitous influence of the social, our context and histories, and work with this
knowledge as I do not believe in our ability to transcend our own situatedness.
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