Comments on: Locating Latour

By: AlphaPsy

AlphaPsy — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:34:32 +0000

Reassembling Latour…

Bruno Latour is a Woody Allen in reverse : a science-studies superstar in the US, his influence in his own country is feeble. The copy of his new book I read was in French (“Changer de Société ~ Refaire de la Sociologie” which means “Change Societ…

By: Dylan

Dylan — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 21:01:17 +0000

I agree, my point must have got lost – i was not trying to say he has no intellectual genealogy – of course he must and i do like your point about “Everyone has articles and inspirations which are uniquely their own and which no one else ‘gets’.” Rather i was trying to make a point about the construction of knowledge and how his books taken together are themselves a project in the production of cultural knowledge about knowledge. His own intellectual origins are thus not his point but rather the origins of intellectuality itself are what he concentrates on bringing out. Thus to understand or ‘get’ Latour’s writings, IMHO, one does not need to go into his library of wonders or intellectual genealogy, although there is nothing wrong with that, but rather one will get most by putting them all together, like the building blocks of a column that if you climb on it, let you get a different perspective on what the social sciences are, were and could be.

By: Rex

Rex — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 17:23:12 +0000

One origin of this Latour post was the “Anthropology of the NYRB” post and the comments that grew up around that — particularly the idea that in the academcy and in general, good writers get read more than bad writers. Latour’s popularity certainly can be accounted for because of his prose style — he manages to be both easy to read and, when necessary, eloquently cryptic in that French way that Americans have grown to love. His ‘potted histories’ also have the virtue of allowing readers from a variety of disciplines to orient themselves to his program because they cast a very wide net in terms of intellectual history.

But the idea that Latour is totally sui generis and has no intellectual genealogy is, to my mind, mistaken. Although the interesting thing about him is that at times his writing works to make you _think_ that’s the case.

By: Dylan

Dylan — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 16:47:44 +0000

Latour is not that hard to read if you accept, as you allude, ‘his canon’ and bending away from the mainstream. What i’ve always loved about him is that when you do read his stuff, Pandora’s Box, Aramis, or the Love of Technology, Laboratory Life, Making things Public, don’t expect to understand in terms of what you know but rather in terms how you know. From Latour we learn an analogy for the construction of knowledge. For example in scientific practice naked access to truth is not possible it must always be mediated through statements and entities like citations, equipment, reputation and laboratories. For example a microbe (which we do not dispute exists) is not visible without a microscope (a human fabrication), and a fact (like the microbe) does not become so without negotiating the nexus between fact and construction, or in other words gaining credibility from a group of peers, through scholarly publication or successful grant application. The establishment of scientific facts like the establishment of discourses and cultural knowledge is a social process it is never passive, objective or an ahistorical truth. They all exist, rise and fall on historical and intercultural evidence. I wish Latour was taught more in Anthro departments his cultural observations are much more alive to me than most syllabus material and it creates great debates from all sides too. I wonder why you say to read Blumer, who i also love, in relation to Latour, why not read Latour chronologically instead? That is ‘his canon.’ The bits, a tad like Bourdieu’s intellectual framework, fit together coherently if you follow the connections from one subject/text to another. Intellectuals who built thier own concepts and frameworks are often, in my opinion, conceptually and interestingly stimulating. Something Latour most definatly is. great blog by the way.