Discussion of Latour's articles incl. 'When Things Strike Back'

Bruno Magalhaes says

Hi all,
Here is some follow-up thinking on the discussion we had on Bruno Latour’s work. I will try to be brief as the Christmas spirit has already took our minds away from all those weird things like objects who object and doors that discriminate. Let me just say that the chat was most instigating.

After the talk I kept thinking in specific on how Latour’s understanding of objectivity can be connected to his ambiguous relation with Foucault’s thought and to the dialogical understanding of politics he works with (that, among other problems, leads to his favouring of the voice, as Martin suggested). I kept thinking on these points because I also see them as problematic. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that they are sufficient reason to discredit Latour’s innovative way of approaching the link between the production of scientific knowledge and the socialization of what we accept as the objective reality of things. That distinction is important to me, because it allows me to maintain the break with epistemological explanations to the enactment of the objective, from which Labour derives his argument, while at the same time arriving at a completely different understanding of what is to be political.

If I may, I would like to make two short remarks respecting the lines suggested by Owen and defined in the posts below. The first remark has to do with the implications of Latour’s reading of objectivity. The second, with how I see his relation with Foucault. About politicality, I will just try to raise the question that is keeping me awake by now.

Objectivity: Allow me a quick exegetic incursion here. For Latour, the mechanics involved in the production of scientific knowledge play a central role in the definition of what we accept as the objective reality of the elements studied by both “hard” and “soft” science. He argues that scientific knowledge not simply describes reality, but creates the objectified reality of the element under study. His intention is not to deny out-thereness or to suggest that science has the magic power of materializing a desired reality, but to demonstrate that the specific signifieds we come to attribute to that referent out-thereness is always culturally situated. Out-there and reality become two different ontological categories, and what the scientists can have the pretension to understand is how the specific culture under study came to establish their interpretations of the out-there as reality and how that interpretation generates interest outside the laboratory. To our discussion, I think that division between out-there and reality as different ontological categories is interesting because is upon it that Latour defines his argument about objectivity as recalcitrance. The process of mangling a specific reality to the out-thereness of an atom, although not a direct emanation from the exterior reality of the atom is influenced by what the atomic element in his row condition allows the scientists to say about him. That is a way of bringing some material determinism while at the same time breaking with an image of language as simple representation (in that sense, he is indeed quite close to what I read of Hacking in Representing and Intervening, although Hacking maintains a commitment with historical ontology). When applied to the sciences of the social, that same logic leads Latour to the understanding of politicality as democratization of science, that we all criticized as naïve, typical Habbermasian dialogicism, a favouring of the voice etc. But I will curb myself here.

To connect that point about objectivity with his schizophrenic relation with Foucault’s thought, I will just jump and say that a common first reaction to Latour’s conclusion about objectification as socialization of a “normal” reading of the element tends to be a sonorous “so what?”. Is there anything especially innovative in saying that the objective reality is defined relationally and through othering? Since post-structural critique, that is almost a shibboleth, isn’t it? Nevertheless, I do think there is something innovative in the way Latour arrives at that conclusion: through ethnographical work. I think it is innovative not in the elementary sense of adapting a new method to a new field, but because the ethnographical take encouraged Latour to search for the mechanics that are central to the reification of the realities objectified during the production of scientific knowledge.

That image of reification and the framework he builds around it will be considered problematic afterwards, as Rabinow’s critique exemplify. Nevertheless, Latour’s bracketing of post-structural explanations based on historical epistemology in favour of a detailed account of how authorized practices actually define what we accept as the objective realities of elements, I think, is innovative and worth keeping. That is what I meant when I said that it may be important not to throw the baby out with the bath.

Latour and Foucault: the quick remark I would like to make here is about Latour’s relation to Foucault, and his ambition to enlighten our understanding of how things came to be normalized (made objective) as they are through the offer of an alternative epistemological framework. In his early works on lab ethnography, Latour explains the stabilization of one statement as the objectified reality of element studied in terms of path dependency that lead the statement to a status of un-controversy. The existence of multiple statements disputing the reality of the element under study is a sign of immaturity of the debate. As the scientific discussion around the topic matures, routinization and black-boxing provoke homogenization, until, in the end, the scientific reality imputed to the element “discovered” becomes fixed, definite and unambiguous. For Latour, as routinization takes place “the cost of challenging the reified statement is impossibly high. Reality is secreted”.

The acceptance by Latour of that singularization as a necessary outcome of the production of scientific knowledge seems problematic to me. To be secreted as the definite reality in the cultural discourse is not the same than being reified in practice as the only reality, I think. Quite bluntly, there seems to be a problem in the fact that Latour derivates his analysis from a commitment with epistemological symmetry but end-up contradicting that commitment, when trying to construct an epistemological theory from their situated ethnographical findings. That is the price he pays to become the new “maître à penser” in French academy.

In that sense, Rabinow`s critique hits the nail into the head, I think. (Where did you find it Claudia?). However, I didn’t read it as a defence of Foucault`s approach. I read it more as a critique against the pretension to circumscribe the process of objectification of reality in a grand epistemological narrative that connects diffuse practices in a linear process of reification (or normalization; or governmentality). In that sense, the critique is applicable both to Latour as to Foucault, or at least to what was done of Foucault work. In that sense, one could see Latour as a Foucauldian, as he maintains the initial insight that the limits of our episteme were not defined in a punctual moment in history, but constantly re-enacted. But I can also read his work as extremely anti-Foucauldian, as Latour likes Foucault`s work on devices as the pan-opticon, but is not convinced by attempts to articulate diffuse practices in terms of models of governmentality. Interesting enough for me, I can also invert the relation, as Latour is also contradictory himself. So, Latour is criticized by being Foucauldian (or not being Foucauldian enough. Depends of the Foucault you choose), because he starts with the break with epistemological asymmetry but then fall back in an epistemological grand narrative (though maintaining an appearance of fluidity thanks to the resort to ethnography). So, for me, Latour is Foucauldian and anti-foucauldian or the other way around, depending of which Latour and which Foucault I use as reference. (It is starting to remind me of my algebra classes in high school. “Permute and Combination”, isn’t it?).

Politicality: here I am afraid I can’t contribute with a remark, but only with a question. The central one to me is how can I break with epistemological asymmetry and maintain the image of objetivation as constant enactment without being overwhelmed by the fractionality of the real. I am happy we will be reading John Law for the next session, as I think his work opens some interesting lines of flight for rethinking politicality.

Looking forward to our next debate.

Have a great Christmas break everyone and a happy New Year!
Best wishes,
Bruno

18 December 2010, 20:07

Martin Coward says

Hi all.

It seems there is a certain sense of critical scepticism in the comments posted by both Claudia and Eva. I too had a number of concerns while reading Latour. I read his earlier work last year while trying to work out how I could approach the materiality of infrastructures. I also read Reassembling The Social – where there is more explicit methodological comment (though the methodology outlined seemed, to me at least, something like an object oriented discourse analysis). I focussed on Politics of Nature here as it was something I had not read. Since I only read a chapter of the book it is entirely possible that the questions I outline are answered elsewhere – hopefully at some point Nadine (who I think has read the whole book) will be able to correct me if this is the case.

I think I have two main concerns:

1. I think Latour privileges the voice – elements of the collectivity are made to speak in various ways. This reminds me in some ways of Habermas and discourse ethics: unless one can enter the dialogue, one can’t attain a fully political stature. This is, of course problematic in Habermas as it precludes those who do not want to speak in common language from attaining full political stature. I wonder whether this might also be the case in Latour. While he argues against ontology and metaphysics, there is an assumption that events in the world can/will fit a propositional grammar. But that seems to assume a lot about the elements of the world – most importantly that what they do can be regarded as an enunciation in some sense. Of course, this would give rise to an image of the world as an unruly cacophony – which is a nice picture for a progressive politics to claim. But I am not sure: what if the world does not speak? I can see why – in the context of environmental degradation – you would want the world to speak, but what if it is impassive (without falling back into the idea that it has its own essence). This would seem methodologically important as the main question for Latour would be how we can see in any association the conversation that defines its collectivity. If there is no speaking, then the question of how to discern the association is more problematic.
2. With regard to the politics of the piece – as raise by Claudia – I sense something interesting at play. Of course environmental catastrophe is a hot topic right now. And it appears that neither science nor politics can address it. So squaring that circle is attractive. But under this, there is a sense of despair – the idea that we are already too late to save the world and that all is left is to learn from our mistakes. This is where I see Latour positioning himself - and where I see the emphasis on recalcitrance being so important. This is a theory that focuses on broken things: broken planet, broken treaties, broken things. Here Latour also shows his Heideggerian influences (since Heideggerian phenomenology tends to focus on the way that the normal functioning of the world is highlighted when things go wrong and, hence, tends to focus on moments of failure in order to understand the normal functioning of existence). But more importantly, it hides the fact that even recalcitrance is a kind of functioning. It is not refusal, just begrudging acceptance. But then what of those associations that work perfectly well? How do we notice these?

Overall, I have to say that while I find the two warring houses picture very persuasive, I am perhaps more persuaded by Bennett’s naïve realism. I think that she captures the sense of enchantment needed to see things as associative.

I am also struck by the idealism of the politics being invoked. There is a sense of reclaiming a democratic potential, not forging something new.

That said, there is much to discuss – especially in terms of how these ideas might be seen as a method.

Apologies for the late post.

14 December 2010, 21:59

Eva Herschinger says

All in all, I would like to make three points. First, I very much liked Latour’s piece but above all his discussion about objectivity and how the notion allows bringing natural and social sciences together in a very much different way than before. However, for me, his understanding of objectivity prompted some questions, as it seemed to be very much different of the ones advocated in the social and natural sciences. Perhaps I am totally ignorant but the definition of objectivity he gave “objectivity as what allows one entity to object to what is said about it” I would consider as not the general definition of the term in both sciences. I do not consider this as a problem, however, this could easily be used against his plea for integrating science and technology studies into the social sciences, i.e. one could challenge him by denouncing his criticism as not pertinent neither to the natural nor the social sciences because they “share” (although he convincingly shows that they don’t) a distinct understanding of objectivity as the social sciences are ‘imitating’ the natural sciences and he only promotes an understanding of objectivity that has no value to both sciences. Furthermore, couldn’t one argue that a number of points regarding objectivity have been made, for instance, by early poststructuralists in IR and elsewhere? True, their focus was very much less on introducing the object via STS, however, their aim was more often than not to ‘give voice to the unheard’ or ‘let those speak which had no voice before’, i.e. their critical aim aligns them with Latour. For me, with regard to objects this reproduces one general problem we already discussed: how do we know about what the objects want (if they want anything at all), why they are acting this way and not another etc? In the case of marginalized people one might just simply argue, let’s ask them but I cannot ask an electron or a microbe – I cannot even ask an animal expecting to understand what it answers. Hence, when Latour says that the electrons and microbes “will have no scruples whatsoever in objecting to the scientist’s claim” (p. 116), I would like to know how does he know that they have no scruples? For me, again it raises the question of how can we know about the status of an object? And: is an object that is recalcitrant still an object only?

This brings me to my second point: what does this imply for methods? How do we bring in the object and its recalcitrance? In this respect, I think, Latour is very much more precise than earlier texts as one could start by looking for/reconstructing this recalcitrance in experiments, discourses, observations and the like.

My last point is more of a question. I was surprised how big a role the political plays in his text. The “political forum” is the place where the “progressive composition of the common world takes place” (p. 121), and “this assembly in charge of composing the world that should rightly be called politics” (p. 120). Does this imply that by bringing in the recalcitrance of objects allows democratizing our world? Democratization via including objects and no longer reserving agency only to humans – which clearly reminds of Bennett’s plea for non-human agency – but perhaps this is a normative underpinning I believe to read between the lines of his text and not his intention…

15 May 2012, 18:33