Re: {GEOG 5100} Abridged summary of geog-5100@googlegroups.com - 4 Messages in 1 Topic
Michael Sz
Bruno Latour: We Have Never Been Modern. Michael Szuberla
Sheriff Al Chambers: You mean to tell me you saw Norman Bates' mother? …well, if the woman up there is Mrs. Bates... who's that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetery? -- Alfred Hitchcock Psycho
If we have never been modern -- what have we been? And perhaps more to the point – what, precisely, are we are not? Bruno Latour describes the practice of the modernism as the effort to divide the world into two supposedly separate “ontological zones” (an immanent human society and a transcendent, mechanistic, non-human nature). Modernity attempts to purify these spheres through a process of translation that allows for the emergence of quasi-objects/hybrids. The problem, Latour contends, is that the division is at best an illusion.
An obvious example of a hybrid/quasi-object is domesticated plants such as corn or broccoli. These plants fit neatly in neither the natural or cultural categories (they straddle both). Unfortunately for modernism, the proliferation of such quasi-objects has made the maintenance of the modernist myth untenable. Quasi-objects are Latour’s ontological refugees -- they have full citizenship in neither the human nor the non-human spheres. A quasi-object is especially subversive to the modernist constitution because “it appears to us sometimes as a thing, sometimes as a narrative, sometimes as a social bond, without ever being reduced to a mere being” (p89).
For Latour, the modernist project was doomed before it began (if it ever began).
Latour used the hole in the ozone to illustrate the impossibility of maintaining the illusion of the discrete spheres of nature and culture. Today, the phenomenon of climate change provides us with an even better example of Latour’s ideas. Industrialization’s impact on the planet’s climate seems as monumental as any “natural” ecological/geological changes that the planet has ever undergone such as the movement of tectonic plates or the eruption of volcanoes. In the face of climate change (and much more) the modernist myth can no longer sustain the delusion of the separation of nature and culture. What’s more, new (but ever-present) “actants” have become obvious. Non-humans such as carbon molecules, rising seas, melting glaciers, greenhouse gases, environmental regulations, carbon markets, methane gas from melting perma-frost, computer simulations, et cetera have all made themselves known. Furthermore, climate change goes beyond the borders of any society or discipline.
The rising seas of “non-modernism” have washed away the levees of modernist culture that once convincingly pretended to separate culture from nature. Climate change (and an increasing number of other events) shows that “society” could not hold back the waters of “nature” and that “nature” cannot withstand the deluge of human actions. The magnitude of this crisis has reduced (climate) science to the fabrication of models. Latour’s notion of “nature-culture” illustrates the mutual shipwreck of what were once thought to be separated spheres.
Latour proposes a counter-revolution (or at least constitutional amendments) to Kant’s formulation of the modernist constitution in which the “things-in-themselves become inaccessible while, symmetrically, the transcendental subject becomes infinitely remote from the world” (p56). A “parliament of things” will give a voice to human and non-human voices. Latour deploys the concept of “actants” as an inclusive/non-anthropocentric term that cover humans, non-humans and hybrids. Such actants can compose a network with general symmetry.
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- Latour Reading Guide [4 Updates]
Lindsay Skog <linds...@gmail.com> Dec 02 01:15PM -0800
Lindsay Skog
GEOG 5100: Introduction to Social Theory
Week 15: Latour
In *We Have Never Been Modern*, Bruno Latour posits that modernity is
constituted by two false dichotomies: 1) The ...more
Ahn Lee <ahn....@gmail.com> Dec 02 02:46PM -0800
Ahn Lee
Geog 5100
Response: Latour’s *We Have Never Been Modern*
In *We Have Never Been Modern *Bruno Latour *outlines *his criticism of the
Modern Constitution, the artificial and ...more
Kaitlin Fertaly <kaitlin...@gmail.com> Dec 02 02:54PM -0800
Kaitlin Fertaly
GEOG 5100
Response to *We Have Never Been Modern* by Bruno Latour
“Real as nature, narrated as Discourse, collective as
Society, existential as ...more
jacquelynjampolsky <jacquelyn...@gmail.com> Dec 02 04:54PM -0800
Jacquelyn Jampolsky
11.30.12
Reflection Paper: Latour
*Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been ...more
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