163501319 Stengers Isabelle Cosmopolitics I 1 3

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Cosmopolitics I

I. Th e S cience W arsII. The Inv ention of M echa nics

I I I . Thermodynamics

I S A B E L L E S T E N G E R ST R A N S L A T E D B Y R O B E R T B O N O N N O


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C A R Y W O L F E , S E R I E S E D I T O R

io Cosm opolitics III sabel le Stengers

g Cosm opolitics II sabel le Stengers

8 What Is Posthumanism ?Caiy W olfe

1 Political Affect: Conn ecting the Social and the Soma ticJohn Protevi

6 Anima l C apital: Rendering Life in Biopolilical Tim esNicole Sh ukin

5 Dorsality: Thinking Back through Technology and PoliticsDavid Wills

4 Bios: Biopolitics and PhilosophyRoberto Esposito

3 When Species MeetDonna J . Haraway

2 The Poetics of DNAJudith Roof

i The ParasiteMichel Serres


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I S A B E L L E S T E N G E R S

Cosmopolitics II. The Science Wars

II. The Inven tion of M echanicsIII . Thermodynamics

p o s t h u m a n i t i e s 9

T R A N S L A T E D B Y R O B E R T B O N O N N O

MI NN ES OTAU N I V E R S I T Y O F M I N N E S O T A P R E S S

M I N N E A P O L I SL O N D O N


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P R E F A C E

How can we examine the discordant landscape of knowledgederived from modern sc ience? Is there any consistency to befound amo ng contradictory or mutual ly exclusive v is io ns, am bi-tions, and methods? Is the hope of a "new al l iance" that wasexpre ssed m ore than twenty years ago dest ined to rem ain a hol-low dream?

I would l ike to respond to these questions by arguing for an"ecology of practices." I have constructed my argument in sevensteps or parts, covering two separate volumes (this is the f irst). 'Each of these seven books is sel f -conta ined and can be readon its own, but I hope that readers view individual books as aninvitation to read the others, for the collection forms a unifiedwhole. Step by step, I have attempted to bring into existenceseven problematic landscapes, seven attempts at creat ing thepossibil ity of consistency where there is currently only con-fron tation . W heth er the topic is the nature of phy sics and ph ys-ical law, the debate over self-organization and emergence, orthe chal lenges p osed by ethnopsychiat iy to the div is ion betwee nmodern and archaic knowledge, in each case I tried to addressthe practices from which such knowledge evolves, based on theconstra ints imposed by the uncerta int ies they introduce andtheir corresp ond ing obl igat ions. No un i fy in g body of know ledgewil l ever demonstrate that the neutrino of physics can coexistwith the multiple worlds mobil ized by ethnopsychiatry. None-theless , such coexistence has a meaning, and it has nothing todo with to lerance or disenchanted skept ic ism. Such beings can

v i i


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v i i i P R E F A C Ebe col lect ively aff irmed in a "cosmopolit ical" space where thehopes and doubts and fears and dreams they engender col l ideand cause them to exist . That is why, through the explorat ionof knowledge, what I would like to convey to the reader is also aform of ethical experimentation.


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B OOK I

The Science W ars


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5

Scien t i f ic P ass ions

How do the sciences force us to conceive of the world? Whatdo they teach us about the possibi li ties of understanding it?According to Stephen Hawking, speaking with a l l the apparentauthority of cosmological theory and as a descendant of Gali-leo, Newton, and Einstein , we wi l l soon know the mind of god.John Wheeler , us ing quantum mechanics , c la ims that the uni-verse i tse l f , l ike everything that exists in space-t ime, owesits actual existence to the observer. Believers in the (strong)anthropic theoiy c la im that sc ience i s leading us toward a di f -ferent, but equally unsettling, conclusion: the end point of theuniverse i s the production of those who descr ibe i t . This givesrise to the question of the durabili ty of our cosmic vocation:what wi l l become of mankind in a few bi l l ion years when thesun's resources are exhausted and the universe itself windsdow n? For the m om ent, however , we sti l l don 't know i f q uantummechanics wi l l a l low Schrodinger ' s cat , enclosed in i ts in fer-nal box, to die before the physicist condescends to open it, ori f the entire universe will spin off multiple realities each timea measuring device produces one result rather than another .There is sti l l ongoing debate concerning the possibi li ty of the"stardust" we consist of achieving consc ious exper ience: i s

1


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S C I E N T I F I C P A S S I O N S '3an irreducible property , l ike space or t ime? Can

ii In I 'ully explained in terms of the multiple cross-processingill Information residing in the brain? Or, rather, is it based onquantum effects that have been amplif ied and stabil ized in thebrain 's microtubu les? W hatever the case may be, i f thought canbe reduced to the propert ies of circuits and neuronal systems,shouldn't we begin to treat our ideas about knowledge, the ego,consciousness , perception, and so on as fated to join the crys-ta l spheres of astronomers , the phlogiston of chemists , or theanimal spir its of physicians in the cemeteiy of prescientif ictheor ies?

It is said that the first step in the histoiy of science was thebreak with myth, but equal ly important was the break with s op h-ism. Rat ional discourse would, therefore , from its inception,designate its "others" polemical ly : the f ict ions that evade veri-f icat ion and de fy argum ent, on the one han d, and the argum entsthat exploit the freedo m for those w ho have escaped mythtoprove a thesis (or its opposite), on the other. What of the his-torical sophists , apart from their role as outcasts , as the otherof the philosopher, the fr iend of truth? How do myths funct ionwithin the cultures in which they are an integral part? There isno need to ra ise such quest ions here , for terms l ike "myth" or"sophist ," insofar as the sciences are concerned, serve as codewords, a lways addressed to others , reminding them of thealways renewable rupture . From this perspect ive it could besaid that the sciences fol low a narrow path, ever on the defen-s ive against the powers of the imaginat ion, which are sat is f iedwith explanat ions and s ignif icat ions forged without constraint ,and against the powers of rhetoric, which are sat is f ied with theambiguity of language and the pretenses of pro of.

In fol lowing this narrow path, are scientists real ly capableof balancing and theoriz ing the " larger quest ions" concerningthe universe , i ts origin or f inal ity , human thought , or human-ity's role? If not, is it by again promoting the abstinence and


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S C I E N T I F I C P A S S I O N S '3

proud humility that science must maintain in the face of thedeliciou s tem ptation s of ideology that we will be able to p rom otea harm onio us and paci f ic col laborat ion among the h ardw orkin g"seekers of proof" extol led by epistemology?

In fact , the past and present of so-cal led scient i f ic prac-tices, as inventive as they may be, forc e those wh o study them toacknowledge that those qualit ies are always susceptible of turn-ing into their oppositenarrow-mindedness and arroganceas soon as those who are responsible for cult ivat ing them areforced to position themselves against one another. If the land-scape of pract ice current ly provides the impression of coher-ence, it is one of generalized polemic. Cold or hot, dependingon circumstances, i t i s expressed as contemptuous dis interest ,attempts at annexa t ion (fo r exam ple, that long- awa ited m om entwhen a "rat ional pharmacology" wi l l f inal ly enable us to design"scient i f ic" drugs) , even dramatic proclamations, where a con-tested practice links its fate to that of humanity as a whole (thecri t ic isms of psychoanalysts who warn of the threat presentedby the rise of pharmacological psychiatry). This polemic isembodied stat ical ly in our universi t ies , where every discipl inehas its own territory, its experts, i ts criteria, and where thereassuring fiction of collegiality prevails, one whose only pointof agreement is the disquali f icat ion of the "nonscient i f ic ." Apolemic embodied much more dynamica l ly by the " la rge-sca leoperations"' of mobilization, conquest, and hierarchization thatstructure the landsc ape of the scient i f ic discip l ines.

Thirty years ago, the person who wrote those l ines, then anovice phi losop her, st i ll bel ieved in the exem plary role physicscould play once i t a f f i rmed the possibi l i ty of transforming thescope and sign i f icanc e of i ts funct io n as a m odel fo r other fo rm sof knowledgea function it has served ever since the originof the modern sciences. Order out of Chaos: M an's New Dialoguewith Nature, which I coauthored with I lya Prigogine in 1979,showed how some of the most fascinat ing statements made by


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( i l l N i l I I C P A S S I O N S|ili\niiM |.11 iii nl.ii ly die reduction of the dist inction between|mI mill Inline ' l ime 's arrow"to a mere question of proba-bility. Ini In mic o n f e r r i n gupon phys ics a quas i - prophet ic fun c-lloti, disclosed its f ragi l i ty , the impass ioned adventurousnesslits chara cter. At that time Ilya Prigogine and I wrote: "In anyevent, asfa r as physic ists a re concern ed, they have lost any theo-retical argument for c laiming any pr ivi lege, whether of extra-terr i tor ial i ty or of precedence. As sc ientists , they belong toa culture to which they in their turn contribute." 2 In Entre letemps et leternite, we again stated that "the search f or coheren ceamong forms of knowledge has been the connecting thread int h i s e s s a y . . . . We cannot discover such coherence as i f i t werea truth that transcends our histoiy, whether that history leadsus to truth or has lost its original connection to it. We can onlyconstruct i t with in this history, fro m the cons traints that s i tuateus but which also enable us to create new p oss ibles. " 3 However,i t is much ea sier to annou nce the good news that the prop heticutterances of physics have changed and now ref lect a worldthat is temporal ly asymmetric rather than symmetric , chaoticor bi furcating rather than deterministic , capable of sel f-organization and not inert and static, than to face the bemusedsmile of readers confronted with the idea that physic ists arecapable of tell ing them what kind of world they l ive in. Thatis the lesson I needed to learn. In a sense, for the third t ime, Iintend to rework this notion of coherence and to do so by con-fron ting the question of the relationship betw een the "p assio nfor truth" character ist ic of the scientist , and wh ich m arked bothOrder outof Chaosa n dEntre le temps et leternite, and the questionof a possible peace, a humor of truth.

One possible objection is that the lesson was obvious andshould have been evident to any phi losopher worthy of thename. The veiy t i t le of the book, Order out of Chaos, didn'texactly serve as an example of a denial of prophetic empha-sis . And whenever i t attempted to turn physics into a "poetic


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attentiveness" to nature, didn't it alreadyeven though we hadspecif ied that poetics was to be understood in the etymologi-cal sense of "maker"encourage scientists to range outside thenarrow and austere pathways that defined them, with respectto myth as wel l as the precariousness of discursive proof? Andam I not once m ore in the proce ss of mak ing the same m istake ?Why speak of the humor of truth when the association between"science" and "truth" is now suspect? Shouldn't I acknowledgethat it is the responsibility of critical thought, which teacheseach of us the l imitations of our respective approaches, to pro-mote methodological peace?

I have to acknowledge that the ideal of peace through arejection of the ambitions and passions that the cr it ic con-demns is not my goal. What's more, it seems to me that thisideal is one whose histoiy leads us to doubt i ts relevance. Afteral l , i f there is a turning point in what is referred to as modernscience, wasn't it Galileo's rejection of the eminently rationalcom prom ise of fe red by Cardina l Bel larm in? If the astron om ershad been in agreement, the hel iocentric doctr ine would havebeen recognized as "true," but it would only be so relative to thequestions and calculations of the profession. Indeed, one couldalso claim that the great narrative of the Copernican revolution,wh ich celebrates the destruction of the ancient co sm os, with theEarth at its center, and its substitution by an acentric universein which the Earth is merely a planet, was by no means neces-sary . For the Earth-as-planet is less a substitute for the Earth-as-center than a supplement; i t is a reference point for newquestions, new practices , and new values, but does not producegenuinely scienti f ic answers to age-old questions. But Gal i leo 'srejection of the Jesuit proposal must be heard. The Earth-as-planet is not a s im ple pro fessio nal hypo thesis , i t asserts a truththat no m eth odo logical ban will be ab le to l im it. Ca n w e ask thatGal i leo 's heirs endorse the ascetic rejection he himself refusedto make?


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6 S C I E N T I F I C P A S S I O N S '3One might reply that this backward movement is i l legit i-

ma te, as the period in que stion was one of con f l ict , a t ime w henmore than just the relat ive posit ions of the Earth and the Sunwere at stake. Gali leo was defending freedom of thought in theface of c lerical dogm a, that is , the possib il ity of gen uine crit icalthought. Methodological crit ic ism can only take place in a paci-f ied world, a world where the right to conduct research and theabsence of revealed knowledge are recognized. Gali leo 's heirsno longer need, or should no longer need, weapon s o f q uest ion -able m erit to conq uer a territory that is recognized as their ow n.

Let 's look at another example. In 1908, a t ime when rel i-gious dogma w as no long er a threat to physics , the ph ysic ist MaxPlanck init iated the excommunication of his colleague ErnstMach, whom he proc la imed gui lty , through his h is to r ica l -pra g-matic concep tion of physics , of weak enin g the faith in the in tel-l igible unity of the world. For Mach, physical references thatappeared to refer to a world that existed independentlyabso-lute space and t ime , atoms, an d so onhad to be el im inate d andreplaced by formulations that t ied physical laws to the humanpractices with which they were indissolubly connected. In con-trast to this crit ical app roach , Planck w ould af f ir m the n ecessityof the "physic ist ' s faith" in the possibil ity of achieving a uni-f ied concept of the phy sical wo rld. Without that faith the so urceof inspiration that had enabled minds such as Copernicus,Kepler, Newton, and Faraday to carry out their work would diyup .4

Planck was the f irst to explic it ly posit ion physics within thecontext offaith rather than austere rat ionality, a faith that hadnow become an essential component of the physic ist ' s voca-tion, and to correlat ively a f f i rm that the practice of p hysicswas not just another kind of sc ience. Planck did not actuallydeny the general plausibil ity of Mach's description, he rejectedit for physics. Physic ists must be able to speak of the "world" or"nature" independently of the operational and instrumental


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relationships that, for Mach, were the only source of theory'slegitimacy. Without that, how could physicists have dared claimthat energy is con serv ed and that it wa s already cons erve d be forelife on Earth even existed, that is , before a human was able toconce ive of it? How could they have felt authorized to claim thatthe laws of gravity would continue to govern the movementsof celestial bodies after the destruction of the Earth and all itsinhabitants? In ordertobe able to pro du ce such statementstheculmin ation of mod ern physicsPlanck states that the p hysic istmu st be able to believe that even an "inh abita nt of M ars," or anyother intel l igence in the universe, can produce their equiva-lent. The dif ferentiation establ ished by Planck, based on whichhe def ined the "physic ist ' s vocation," does not juxtapose opin-ion and rational practice but af f ir m s the privilege of ph ysics .In doing so , he connected the inspirational needs of physic istswith a twofold hierarchy: one for the "real it ies" with which wedeal, with physical reality being the only "real" one, and thatof our rational knowledge, with physics at the summit.Here, Planck created what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guat-tari refer to as a "psychosocial type." 5 Planck's physicist is not aportrait, one we might want to compa re against the original. Hisrole is to serve as a "marker ," to function as a reference when-ever physic ists discuss their work, i ts meaning, and the scopeof their theories . And the faith that inhabits Planck's physic istcannot be ass imilated to a type of ideological overload in di f fe r-ent to what one might recognize as strictly scientif ic challenges.W hile the them e of the phy sicist 's vocation m ay reflect a strategyof hie rarch izatio n, it cannot be redu ced to such a strategy in thesens e that it could be understood in purely hum an, social , p ol it-ical, or cultural term s. Planck is not inventing a me ans of d if f er -entiating physics f ro m the other sc ience s ; he states , he l i teral ly"cries out" against Machthe fact o f that dif fe ren ce . He celebratesthe conservation of energy but he is himself the product of theevent engendered by the statement of that conservation, the


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8 S C I E N T I F I C P A S S I O N S '3victim of the power it seems to confer on the physicist: thepower to ta lk about the world independently of the re lat ion-ships of knowledge that hum ans create .

As such, the impassioned vocation of the physicist a f f i rmedby Planck is part of the present, of the identity of physics trans-mitted to ph ysicists , with which they id en ti fy in turn. An d thatvocation serves as a reference not only in "external" d iscourseon the rights and claims of physics but within strictly technicalcontroversies that underl ie concepts considered fundamentalby physicists. It is in itself a vector and ingredient of histoiy.The "physicist" whose commitment i t heralds i s , for better orwo rse , an integral part of the very constru ction of the th eoret i -cal cla ims of twen tieth-cen tury phy sics .

I t seems to me that the impassioned commitment of physi-cists i s bound to resist cri t icism precise ly because i t has beenforged in opposition to critical thought, l ike that of Mach,6 andbecause an act ive component of the history physicists inheri tand which they learn to extend can be found in i ts reference tothe scandalous creativity of a physics that rejects the l imits pro-posed by crit ical ra t ional ism .

Yet , we may veiy wel l wonder whether this vocation, andwith i t the scienti f ic fa i th that serves as an obstacle to m etho d-ological pea ce, are not part of a past only trace s of wh ich rem ainin the present, with those being mostly media related. Clearly, acertain type of "prophetic" physics exists today. But, i f we mustspeak of physics , wouldn't i t be preferable to approach i t f romthe viewpoint of the new undertaking known as "big science"?International f inancing, the construction of large-scale instru-ments , management of an experiment over a period of severalyear s , the organization of large num bers of col leagues, the divi -sion of labor: these are the kinds of practical questions that pre-occupy "cutt ing-ed ge" phy sicists today fa r m ore than the " idea l "question of the physicist 's vocation. Can't we take advantageof this situation, which clearly i l lustrates that, regardless of its


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vocation, physics is confronted with the same kind of di f f icultyfaced by eve iy mega-enterpr i se threatened by bureaucrat iza-t ion and autism , and forget about this outdated mess of arrogantpr e t ens i ons ?

It is an objection we need to take very seriously. A plausiblefuture is w ithin s ight in wh ich the re wi l l obviously be sc ien tists ,but they, as more or less competent employees , wi l l no longerbe dist inguished from anyone else who sel ls their labor power.That this perfect ly plausible future already serves to disqual i fyinterest in the impass ioned s ingular ity of sc ienti f ic practicesmay appear to be an appropriate response to the arroganceof their claims. In The Invention of Modern Science I wrote of theconnivance of the so-ca l led modern sc iences wi th the dynam-ics of redefinit ion that s ingular ize this delocal ized, rhizomaticpow er know n as capital ism." We can see the genial han d of cap i-tal ism in this complic ity, the source of i ts most formidable s in-gularity: its parasitic nature. While capitalism has destroyedmany practices, it also has the abil ity not to destroy those itfeeds on but to redef ine them. So-ca l led modern pract icesare af fected by this paras it ism, which gives them an identitythat weakens any abi l i ty to res ist their subjugation, pits themagainst one another , and leads them to condon e the d estructionof practices whose t ime has come. Wouldn't i t be fair i f sc ien-t i f ic practices , w hich have to a certain extent ben efited f ro m thedynamic of redefinit ion that destroyed so many others , were toexper ience the sam e fate?

However , this vindict ive moral i ty, no matter how appeal ingit may be, is not one I share. Its promulgators wil l always havegood reaso ns f or their verdict , but this verdict wi l l be del ivere drepeatedly, without r isk, and s i tuates them in a monotonouslandscape l i t tered with s imilar reasons for disqual i f icat ion.Where then can we s i tuate, in our present, a "cause" capableof res ist ing the accusation of compromise and able to teach usto resist, along with it ; a cause that we can acknowledge to be


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ii I I N I I I 1 0 P A S S I O N SI I i n1111111cI(v , having resisted not through some histori -iill i iiMlliificnry pr ed ica ted on "not yet.," but through its own

in i'm,(liedynamics of capita list red ef init io n? I f learn ing tothink In learning to resist a future that presents itself as obvi-ous, plausible, and normal, we cannot do so either by evokingan abstract future , f rom which eveiything subject to our disap-proval has been swept aside, or by referring to a distant causethat we could and should imagine to be free of any compromise.To resis t a l ikely futur e in the pre sen t is to gam ble that the pr es -ent sti l l pro vide s sub stanc e fo r resis tan ce, that it is popu lated bypractices that remain vital even if none of them has escaped thegeneral ized pa rasi t ism that imp l icates them al l.

Consequently, it is the " l iving" physicist I need to consider,not the one who wi l l snicke r at the rom antic dr eam pursued byher science and which a harsh reality wil l have destroyed. I donot want to take advantage of the pro ces s that wo uld rep lace thegeneral ized polemic among pract ices with the creat ion of aninstrumental network where each discipl ine would have noother identity but that of a data generator that marks its posi-tion in the network in question. I want to resist this process.This presupposes bett ing on the possibi l i ty of d i f ferent dreamsfor physicists and other modern pract i t ioners . Therefore , i t i sthe anxiety that continues to occupy the physicist at CERN thatI want to confirm and celebrate, and not the l ikel ihood of thecynical laugh that ush ers in the abandon m ent of the dream andthe redef init ion of the physicist as a cog in some more or lessextravagant large-scale undertaking.

" T he diagnosis of becomings in every passing present i swhat Nietzsche ass igned to the phi losopher as physician, 'phy-sician of civi l ization, ' or inventor of new immanent modesof existence," wrote Deleuze and Guattari . 1' ' The challenge theylay out could equally be my own: to diagnose the "new imma-nent modes of existence" our modern pract ices may be capa-ble of . This also implies the possibil ity of "psychosocial" typesactivated by a desire for truth that would not require them to


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S C I E N T I F I C P A S S I O N S '3claim as it did in the case of Planc k and Ern st Mach access to alruth that tra ns ce nd s all othe rs.

The Invention of Modern Science culminated in the appar-ently paradoxical f igure of "nonrelativ ist sophists , " of prac-titioners capable of claiming that "man is the measure of allIhings" and of understanding the statement "not a l l measure-ments are equivalent" as an imperative, to make sure we havemade ou rselves worthy of addre ssing what we cla im to m easure .Tho se sophis ts who are not sa t i s f ied with the mere acknow ledg-ment of the relativity of truth but would affirm the truth of therelative9what I refer to as the humor of truthwould then beequal ly capable of reworking the meaning of the relationshipthat identi f ies science and struggles against opinion and myth.Forand this is the central th esis of The Invention of Modern Sci-ence while the "strugg le against opin ion " is vital to the so -ca lledmodern sciences, that struggle has nothing to do with mattersof principle: the opinion against which a science is invented isnot opinion in general . I t is opinion created with reference tothe invention itsel f , to the possibi l i ty of a new "measurement,"of the creation of a new way, always local and relative, of dif-ferentiating science from fiction. That is why I have tr ied tohighl ight the difference between the event constituted by thecreation of a measurement and the directive embodied in thereduction of this event to an il lustration of the right and generalobl igation to subject a l l things to measurement. This differencecan be stated in pol it ical terms , and it would then c orre spo nd tothe difference between the pol it ics constitutive of the sciencesand a general pol it ics of power. Yes, scienti f ic practices , and inparticular theoreticalexperimental practices , are vulnerableto power but, no, this vulnerabil i ty cannot be confused withfatal ity . This difference can also be stated in terms of a "modeof existence " : the scienc es do not owe the ir existence to the d is-qual i f ication, with which they are identi f ied, of so-cal led "pre-scienti f ic , " or nonrational , knowledge.

Yet the possibi l i ty of other identit ies for the sciences, as I


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tried to bring out in The Invention of Modern Science, i s not suf-f icient for the operat ion of "d iagno sis . " A true diagnosis , in theNietzschean sense, must have the power of a performative . I tcannot be commentary, exteriori ty , but must r isk assuming aninventive posi t ion that brings into existence, and makes per-ceptible , the passions and act ions associated with the becom-ings i t evokes. What I want to make perce ptible are the pa ssion sand actions associated with a peace that is not one of method,that does not demand that those it involves reject the specif icpas sion fo r truth that al lows them to think and create.

Naturally, the act of diagnosis must not be confused witha mere political project. It is not a question of constructing astrategy that hopes to inscribe itself as such in our history andwhich, in ordertodo so, mu st take into account the intere sts a ndef fect ive re lat ions of force without which no cla im, no objec-tive, no alternative proposal would have meaning. If it were aquestion of strategy, the undertaking would be part of a genrethat has demonstrated its abil ity to survive its own absurdity: itwould position me in l ine with thoseand they are legionwhoare convinced that eveiyone 's future is governed by condit ionsthat they them selves are resp on sible fo r establ ishin g.

The diagnosis of becoming is not the start ing point for astrategy but rath er aspeculative o perat ion , a thought exp erim ent.A thought experiment can never cla im to be able to consti tutea program that would s imply need to be put into appl icat ion.With respect to scie nti f ic pract icesas e lsewheresuch exp eri -ments have never had any role other than that of creat ing pos-s ibles , that i s of making vis ible the direct ives , evidences, andreject ions that those possibles must quest ion before they them-selves can become perceptible . And unl ike the thought experi -ments that are part of scienti f ic pract ices , these possibles arenot determined, and what is at stake is not the creation of anexperimental mechanism for actual iz ing and test ing them.The diagnosis of becomings does not assume the identi f icat ion


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S C I E N T I F I C P A S S I O N S ' 3of poss ible s but the ir intr ins ic l ink with a struggle against pro b-abi l i t ies , 10 a s truggle wherein the actors must def ine themselvesin term s of proba bi l i t ies . In other wor ds , i t i s a que st ion of cre -at ing words that are meaningful only when they br ing aboutthei r own re invent ion, w ords whose greates t ambit ion would beto become elements of histor ies that , without them, might havebeen s l ightly d i f fer en t .


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The Neutrino's ParadoxicalMode of Existence

I would l ike to retur n to the point wh ere I appro ached the q ues -t ion of the "physicist 's vocation." I t i s indeed in terms of mys-t i f icat ion that Mach cri t icized the reference to atoms, and toabsolute space and t ime . Seen fro m the persp ective of the re fer -ences accepted at the t ime concerning the opposit ion betweenan authentical ly scientif ic practice and one not subject to theexigencies of scien ti f ic rat ionali ty , Mach was "r ight" and Planckwas wel l aware of this . He knew he was associat ing the "physi-cist 's vocation" with what, fol lowing Marx, should be referredto as mysti f icat ion: the transformation into " the propert iesof things themselves" of something that , according to Mach,should be subject to experimental pract ice and, Marx wouldhave added, to its corresponding social relations. It is this thatmay have tr iggered the violence of Planck's reply , the accusationthat Mach was a " fa lse prop het" : we recogn ize fa lse proph ets , hesaid , by the f ruits of their prophecies , in this case the predict-able death of physics.

But i t i s Emile Meyerson, the phi losopher of science, whobest understoo d the violen ce of the re ject ion by phy sicists of the"rat ional" translat ion of their quest that had been proposedby cri t ical phi losophy. For this emphasized a general ized pre-sentation that contras ted the pass ion for comprehens ion wi th

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the ascet ic readin g of fe red by epistem ology . In the b eg inn ingof Meyerson's f irst great book, Identity and Reality ( 1907), henotes the d i f ference between a " law" and a "cause . " Althoughordinary epistemology took pride in fol lowing Hume in itscrit ique of causal ity, which should, rat ionally , be reduced toem pirical regularity (where the law wo uld def in e the rule) , M ey-erso n show ed that scientists are not sat isf ie d with such regu lar-ity, even if it a l lows them to predict and control . On the otherhand, every t ime a causal hypothesis has led us to assume anature capable of explaining itself , i t has, he claims, exercisedits hold over physicists . The nature of this hypothesisthatatoms collide according to Cartesian laws, that they are attractedto one another in a Newtonian sense, that they are replaced byenergy as understood by Ostwald, or by disturbances in theether, or by a pure physicalmathematical formulat ionisof l it t le importance. What is important , for Meyerson, is theconstruct ion of an "ontological" real ity that could explain whatwe observe and could do so, moreover, by reducing change topermanence , by demonstrat ing the identity of cause and ef fect .Reason anticipates and expects identity, that is , the discoveryof some permanence beyond an observable change, and i t doesso even when the possible real izat ion of its ambit ion for identi-f icat ion would have paradoxical consequences. "Let us supposefor a moment that science can real ly make the causal postu-late prevail ; antecedent and consequent, cause and ef fect , areconf used and becom e ind iscern ib le , s im ul t aneous . And t im eitse l f , wh ose cou rse no longer imp l ies change , i s in disce rnib le ,unimaginable , non-existent . I t i s the confusion of past , pres-ent , and futurea universe eternally immutable. The progressof the wo rld is s t o p p e d . . . . It i s the unive rse im mu table in spaceand t ime, the sphere of Parmenides , imperishable and withoutchange." '

From Meyerson's point of view, the idea of a stable separa-t ion between sc ience and m etaphysics i s a va in pursuit : "M eta-physics penetrates al l science, for the very simple reason that


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t II h N E U T R I N O ' S P A R A D O X I C A L M O D E O F E X I S T E N C Eit is contained in its point of departure. We cannot even isolateit in a precise region. Primum vivere, deincLephilosophari s e e m sto be a precept dictated by wisdom. It is really a chimerical rulealmost as inappl icable as i f we were advised to r id ourselvesof the force of gravitation. Vivere est philosophari.Every timethe possibi l i ty of understanding ar ises, no matter how bold andspeculative, i t be ne f its from a favorable a pr ior i : sc ientists haveapropensity for consider ing that possibi l i ty to be true; i t seems"plausible" to them. For Meyerson, plausibi l i ty is neither apri-or ist ic nor empir ical . Unl ike a Kantian aprior ist ic judgment,i t may be refuted by experiment, but i t nevertheless exerts aseductive power on the mind of the scientist , just as i t does on"common sense" in general , that no empir ical knowledge aloneis capable of justi fyin g.

Because it exists nature can bend to the requirements of thecausal postulate only partial ly . It manifests i tsel f , therefore,in i ts " i rrational i ty, " in the resistance the ef fort at identi f ica-tion always runs up against . This points to the great di f ferencebetween the histoiy of a sc ien ce such as ph ysics , where the ge n-eral and invincible tendency of the human mind to identi fy isref lected in the r isk and creativeness generated by resistance,and other undertakings that are satisf ied with plausibi l i ty. Tostate that the physical bra in m ust obviously explain though t, forexample, is to embrace a "plausible" statement in the Meyerso-nian sens e, and the di f fere nc e betwe en the static f latne ss of thisstatement and the beauty of E instein 's vis ion is explained by thepoverty of the constraints the first will have to satisfy, as well asthe consequences that wi l l have to be ver i f ied. Neither aprior-istic nor em pir ical , such a statement can in dif fe ren tly associateitself with any aspect of neurophy siological resea rch.

I have dwelt on Meyerson's thesis at some length because i tquite accurately d escr ib es the chal lenge that lies befo re me. HadI accepted his c laims, m y pro blem would be solved. It would bepointless to investigate the me anin g assum ed by the "physic ist 's


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faith" at the turn of the last century or the failure of the variouscriticisms leveled at physics. The prestige of the theories thatlend to physics the allure of metaphysics, the hierarchy of thescien ces, as well as the hierarchy that characterizes ph ysics anddiv ides i t into " fundamental physics" and "phenomenologi-cal physics," l imited to the study of observed behaviors, wouldbe se l f -explan atory . And it would be robustly se l f -e xpla nato iybecause no crit ical disclosure of any kind could modify whatwould then po sse ss the al lure of fatal ity . The re wou ld be noth ingleft to do but o f fe r som e sl ightly incantatoiy praise for the "r isk "that characterizes the dif fe ren ce betw een the phys icist ' s " fa ith "and the vacuity of common sense whenever it gets mistaken forsc ience .

But being faced with a challenge does not mean that I havethe means to refute a descript ion l ike the one provided byMeyerson. On the contraiy, I regard such a descript ion as ter-r i fy ingly plausible, much m ore plausib le than those that viewphysics as a project for dom ination or control . Le arn ing to resistthis very Meyersonian plausibil ity , learning not to " identify"physics, whatever the temptat ion, with a metaphysical commonsense that would explain its successes and its excesses, is anattempt to implement a dif ferent idea of philosophy, one that Ihave already r efe rre d to spec if ical ly as "speculat ive" in the sen seof a struggle against probabilit ies.The poss ib i l i ty of a "non -M eyers on ian" solut ion a f fec ts thepast much less than the future. Espec ial ly the future of the re la-t ionsh ip betw een what we call science and what we call philoso -phy. I f Meyerson had been right , those relat ionships would bestable, the scientist repeatedly prod ucin g statements that wouldappear to be a presentat ion of the "real in itself , " the philoso-pher adopting a crit ical posit ion, reminding us, now as before,of the il legitimate character of those statements, the il lusionson which they are base d. An d they wil l continue to pro vide "f ic -tions of matter," which fictionalize physical reality as able to


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ft I II h N E U T R I N O ' S P A R A D O X I C A L M O D E O F E X I S T E N C Eexplain l i fe or consciousness, and to exhibit the irrepressible"fetishization" of the beings constructed by the experimentalsciences. Hasn't the molecule born in the laborator ies of p hy si-c ists , to the great displeasure of those rational chemists whodenounced it the way we denounce fe t i she s , now been o f fe red ,in the form of DNA, to the public at large as the key to humansalvation, the holder of thepurely geneticsecret of humandestiny?

"We must destroy our fetishes " This is the slogan that pro-vides cr i t ical thought with an al l -purpose foundation. "Com-mon sense is fetishist ic , i rrepressibly fetishist ic , and thedestruction you demand is none other than your own, of thepassion that is the l ife of your intellect." This was Meyerson'sreply, which Planck would probably agree with. And Planckmight also add, as Einstein did ("the real incomprehensiblemiracle is that the world turns out to be comprehensible") ,that, where physics is concerned, fetishist ic faith is de factoconfirmed. But what those two antagonistic posit ions have incommon is that they both seem to know a great deal, a bit toomuch in fact , about fetish es, about the way they fun ction , aboutthe "comm on s en se" that al l ma nkind is said to share, about theirrepre ssible te nd enc ies al l cultures are said to m anife st . In thissense, Meyerson, Planck, and Mach are indeed modern, as theterm is understood by Bruno Latour , in that, regardless of theirconfl icts , they belong to a culture whose curious singular ity isthat i t def ines relationships to what are global ly referred to as" fetishes" in terms of bel ief , a l though they are prepared to dis-agree over wh ethe r such bel ief is indisp ens able or not.

When Mach attacks the fetishes that feed on thought, hedemands that the decisive break that def ines modernity berecognized, and maintained, in the face of the temptationsof "regression." "Men" must not only recognize that their prac-tices are an integral part of the referents they cause to exist butthat those refe ren ts refe r only to those practices. They renou nce


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ft I II h N E U T R I N O ' S P A R A D O X I C A L M O D E O F E X I S T E N C Eany syntax that might be directed toward an auton om ous real ity.Natural ly , such renunciat ion confirms the abil ity and vocat ionof modern pract ices to disquali fy al l other pract ices, which donot def ine themselves as antifet ish, but it is this renunciat ionthat Planck refuses to accept on behalf of physics, and Mey-erson, on behal f of common sense i t se l f . However , f rom thepoint of view of m y hypothesis of the po ssibil ity of a "a n on rela -t ive sophist , " such a refusal is inadequate. It is not fet ishist icbelief that need s to be de fend ed, but rather a "cult of fet is he s" ina ll the ir d ivers i ty , mod ern and n on m od ern .This is the decisive step taken by Bruno Latour in his PetiteReflexion surle culte mo derne des dieux faitiches ,3 and it is Lato urI wil l fol low here so I am able to approach Planck's re ject ion interm s othe r than those of an un just if ia ble faith , jus t i f ied in fact .What Planck defends against Mach is not only the physicist ' s"fa ith " in a vis ion of the m etap hys ical-ph ysica l w orld , it is alsoand I am gambling that it is primarilythe fact that the beingsfabricated by physics may nonetheless be referred to as "real , "endowed, no matter that they are "fabricated," with an autono-mous ex istence : factishes, as Latour calls them.

To abandon antifet ishist ic crit ical thinking does not implyacceptanc e of Planc k's posit ion as such , or ackn ow ledgm ent thatphysics uncontrol lably tends toward metaphysics. It is to intro-duce thepossible ambiguity of its posit ion. The theme of " faith,"which Planck makes a condit ion of physics , could be under-stood as a protest by someone who fee ls forced by an ant i fe-t ishist ic ad ver saiy to reject what is , fo r him , the grea tness of hisundertaking . The theme of be l ie f "leave us our fet ishe s ; obvi-ously, we're the ones who create them, but we need to bel ieve,we vital ly ne ed to bel ieve in the ir autonomy" would ref le ct thestrength of the modern antifet ish posit ion: Planck would haveno way, other than in terms of bel ief or faith, to describe whatin his eyes makes physics valuable, that which it cannot aban-don. But based o n this hypothesis , what Planck wants to a f f i r m


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ft I II h N E U T R I N O ' S P A R A D O X I C A L M O D E O F E X I S T E N C Ei s , pr imari ly , that the creatures physics br ings into existencepossess, as their constitutive attribute, the power to legit imatelyclaim an autonomous existence. Without the impassioned yetdemanding tests that have ver i f ied that legit imacy, they wouldnot exist . As for the large theme of necessaiy bel ief in a visionof a uni f ied wor ld , fa r f rom re f lec t ing an i r repress ib le Me yerso-nian tendency, i t would im ply that m od ern an ti fetish ism , whichdestroyed the words Planck needed, replaced them with a c laimthat has all the sedu ctiv ene ss of a wa r ciy. Th e re fer en ce , not tothe autonomy of "physical beings" (atoms, electrons, neutr inos,etc .), but to an auton om ous world that would ensure the uniqueauthority of physics, a l lowed Planck to shi ft f rom defense tooff en se , to counter the authority of cr i t ical thinkin g with theauthority of the tradition of physics as a whole.

My (speculative) interpretation means that the questionof the vocation of the physic ist can be addressed in terms thatare no longe r "genera l purp ose " but inhe rent in the art of fab r i -cating " factish es," wh ich singular izes phy sics. Planck was able todefe nd this s ingular ity only by join ing it to "be l ief . " But isn 't theneed to af f irm such bel ief associated with the def init ion of m od -ern practices as "anti fetishist ic?" And with respect to physicalbeings, d oesn't the possibi l i ty that their c laim to autonomy canbe understood noncrit ical ly then suggest a new app roach to thetheme of the physic ist 's vocation? In other words, isn 't i t pos-sible that the " fact ish es" passionately co nstructed by ph ysic ists ,were they recognized as such, might maintain, with the refer-ences constructed by other forms of knowledge, relationshipsthat are not hierarch ical and polem ical?

I have in mind here the creation of a "psychosocial" physi-c ist whose practice would require her to consider , and whosepractice would m ake poss ible, at the same tim e and coherently,these two apparently contradictoiy proposit ions: that the neu-tr ino is as old as the per iod in which i ts existen ce was f i rst d em -onstra ted, that is, prod uce d, in our lab ora torie s, and that it dates


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ft I II h N E U T R I N O ' S P A R A D O X I C A L M O D E O F E X I S T E N C Eback to the origins of the unive rse. I t wa s both constructed anddefined as an ingredient in al l weak nuclear interactions and,as such, is an integral part of our cosmo logical m od els .

4 C o n s e -quen tly, it can ser ve as the subject of pro po sitio ns that m ake it a

product of our un dersta ndin g and oth ers that m ake i t a pa rt ic i-pant in a cos m ic histo ry that is said to have led to the ap pe ara nceof beings capable of constructing such understanding.

I choose the neutr ino because i t exempli f ies in a part icu-larly dramatic way the paradoxical mode of existence of all thosebeings that have been constructed by physics and that exist ina way that af f i rms their independence with respect to the t imefram e of hum an knowledge. The dem onstrat ion of the ex is tenceof an entity such as the neutr ino ob viously has nothing in com -mon, as Meyerson showed, with the production of a generallaw based on observable and reproducible regular it ies .5 It hasnothing to do with the mo desty of a s im ple d escrip tion result in gfrom the activity of methodical and critical observation, that is ,an activity that would boast of f inally ridding itself of parasiticpassions that paralyze rat ional inqui iy. The neutr ino sweepsaside this apparent modesty. I t denies the idea that the prod-ucts of science present no problem other than that of knowingwhy humans have, for so long, al lowed themselves to be sweptup by their passio ns and deceived by the ir il lusion s. And it doesso in two complementary ways. On the one hand, i t i s a quint-esse ntia l exa m ple of an object that is diffic ult to ob ser ve , fo r itsprimaiy attribute is to be susceptible only to interactions thatoccur very rarely: the devices that enabled it to attain its statusas exi s tent imply and assume an enormous number of instru-ments , interpretations, and references to other part ic les thathave already come into existence for human knowledge, and,insepa rably , a tangle of hum an, social , technical , m athem atical ,inst i tutional, and cultural histories . Moreover , i t i s even more"charged" because the existence of this genuinely phantom par-t ic le, which ignores walls and barr iers , had been postulated, for


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ft I II h N E U T R I N O ' S P A R A D O X I C A L M O D E O F E X I S T E N C Etheoretical-aesthetic reasons of symmetry and conservation,long be fore the m ean s fo r "detecting" i t we re created. How ever ,once the means were created and once i t demonstrated i ts exis-tence under the required conditions, the neutr ino existed withal l the character ist ics of a real "actor ," endo wed w ith prop ertiesthat also enable it to act and explain, autonomous in relation tothe detection device that caused it to bear witness to its exis-tence and which i s now nothing m ore than an " instrum ent . " Forthis was the vocation of the existence i t was endowed with: thepro ofs upo n which the legit ima cy of that existence with in ph ys-ics depended were supposed to give the physic ist the power toclaim that the neu tr ino had existed fo r al l t im e and in al l pla ces,and that the ef fects that make i t observable and identi f iable byhumans are events that demand to be understood as ingredientsnot of human history but of the history of the universe.

The neutr ino is not, therefore, the "normal" intersectionbetween a rational activity and a phenomenal world. The neu-tr ino and i ts peers, starting with Newton's scandalous forceof attraction, bind together the mutual involvement of tworeal i t ies undergoing correlated expansions: that of the densenetwork of our practices and their his tor ies , that of the co m po-nents and m odes of intera ction that populate what is referr ed toas the "physical world." In short , the neutr ino exists s imultane-ously and inseparably " in i t se l f " and " for us , " becoming evenmore " in i tsel f , " a partic ipant in countless events in which weseek the pr in ciple s of matter , as it com es into existenc e " f o r us, "an ingredient of increasingly numerous practices, devices, andpossibles. This apparently paradoxical mode of existenceinwhich, far from being at odds, as is the case in tradit ional phi-losophy, the " in i tsel f" and the " for us" are correlatively pro-ducedis indeed the one targeted by experimental practicein the strong sense, the one whose tr iumph is measured by i tsabi l i ty to br ing into existence factishes that are both dated andtranshistor ic .


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To fol low Latour in ca l l ing " fact ishes" those be ings we fab-ricate and that fabricate us, f rom which the scientist (or thetechnician, v ia d i f fe ren t mo des) " rece ives autonomy by giv ing[them] an autonomy he does not have," 6 does not confer uponthem any identity other than the fully developed identity theyget in physics. That is why it is important to speak of factishesand not fet ishes, for 1 am not trying to establish a general the-ory of fet ishes, which would never be more than the pseudo-posit ive counterpart of their general condemnation. On thecontrary, begin nin g with the que st ion of what allows the p ract i-t ion er to claim that the beings sh e fabrica tes exist auton om ously,it entails posing the problem of the dist inct modes of existenceof the being s we bring into existence an d that brin g us into exis -tence. As wil l be shown, the dist inct ions begin within physicsi t se l f and their number increases whenever we t ry to under-stand the impa ssio ne d interest in new art i facts capable of bein grefer red to as " l iv ing " or even " thinkin g. "

There is nothing consen sual or paci f ic about the " fac t ishe s"we bring into being. Recognizing them as irreducible to a crit i-cal epistemology or to the kind of "objects" philosophy l ikes tocontrast with "subjects" is not at all synonymous with paci f ica-t ion and cohe renc e. But to recognize them as such may func tionas apropo sition addressed to their "creators . " Such a proposi-t ion, while af f ir m in g the singularity of their pract ice as bein gcreative, with no obligation to the great narrative that contrastsmyth and rea son , is not l imited to rat i fyin g what they insist onseeing recognized. It is an active proposit ion that can involvethem in sorting out whatever it is they claim, and especially toconsider superf luous the c la im to the power of d isqual i f ica-t ion. In other words, fact ishes propose a humor of truth. Theycreate the possibil ity of a divergence between two themes thatare frequently coupled: transcendence and assurance. Yes, thecreature transcends its creator, but this is no miracle but anevent whose production polarizes the work of the creator. 7 No,


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ft I II h N E U T R I N O ' S P A R A D O X I C A L M O D E O F E X I S T E N C EIhe produced transcenden ce does not guarantee me mb ershipin a transcendent world, or the availabil ity of that world as suchas a reference for judgments or operations of disqual i f icationor annex ation. Factishes are a way of af f i rm in g the trut hfu l-ness of the relative, that is, a way of relating the power of truthto apractical event and not to a world to which practices wouldmerely provide access.

The factishist ic proposit ion does not c laim a neutral i tythat would be accepted by all . It invites the physicist and otherconstructors o f fac t i shes to d i f ferent iate the conquered- fabr i -cated-discovered autonomy of the i r c reatures f rom the u ne n-gendered autonomy of a world waiting to be discovered. But i talso ref lects a trust , which the neutr ino does not nece ssar i ly j us -t i fy and which is not ev en speci f ical ly addre ssed to it but whichconcerns al l those existents produced in experimental labora-tories. To gamble on the possibil ity of the humor of a truth thatacknowledges i ts fabr ication is to commit onesel f to a futurewhere irony does not tr iumph: these existents wi l l not dissolveins ide a m ourn ful and sempiternal network o f comprom ise andnegotiation that, once deciph ered , wou ld lead to the conclus ionthat they are fabr ications pointing toward a routine of human,all too hum an, negotiation.

In one sens e, I 'm trying to reenact the scene between Planckand Mach. Mach's cr i t ic ism does not allow the phy sic ist to "p res -ent himsel f , " to def ine his vocation, because the words of feredrequire that he deny his passion for truth. Is the factishist icproposit ion able to do so? Can the vision of a "physical world"defen ded by Planck lose i ts sedu ctiven ess? Can i t be recognizedas a "default" response, accepting, for want of anything better ,the adversa iy ' s re ferences , the opposi t ion between ant i fe t i sh-ist ic rationali ty and an irrational but fecu nd faith ? Can factis hesfree physic ists from a mode of presentation that encloses themin an alternative that is somewhat vulnerable to irony: eitherinvoking a faith that would lead them forward the way a carrot


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ft I II h N E U T R I N O ' S P A R A D O X I C A L M O D E O F E X I S T E N C Eleads a donkey, or laying claim to the successes of physics inorder to affirm that it is really on its way to achieving its questfor the w orld's truth, fo r pene trating "the m ind of go d" ? It i s notup to me to d ecide .

In any event, the touchstone of m y un dertak ing is mu ch le ssthe fabricators themselves than the way in which they are, ormight be, presen t am on gu s .

The s cie nc es, as they are taught, that is , as they are p res en tedonce their results are unlink ed fr om the practices of science "asit is practiced," do not have a meaning that is appreciably dif-ferent from a rel igious engine of war, pointing out the path tosalvation, con de m nin g s in and idolatiy. A nd it i s not by ap pea l-ingtoan imp rove d "scienti f ic culture" that this proble m is goingto be resolvedthe problem of the mode of existence amongus of neutr inos, genes, foss i ls , and other scienti f ic creatures .That such a culture is what is always miss ing, the thing whoseabsence is always invoked, whose existence would be a kindof panacea , without any one be ing able to say what i t m ight con -sist of (because the majority of scientists are, apparently, thefirst to lack this w ell- kn ow n culture), i s a good re f lectio n of theghostly existence of what is being invoked. A ghost is not alwayslacking in power, however . In some cultures i ts appearanceforc es its m em be rs to think, conn ect, act .

In our culture the sempiternal return of the great themeof the necessaiy adjunct of "conscience," without which, appar-ently, science would be "the ruin of the soul," commits us tonothing, because what is asked is unclear. No practices exist,ak in to those use d by others to he ed what ins ists and co nstruct am essag e, a messag e that would create a di f fer en ce . In our case, itwould make connections and add new questions to those askedby scientists . In other words, we are haunted by the necessityof sci en tific culture although our practices do not pro vid e it w iththe means to exist.

The manner in which the neutr ino and other sc ient i f i c


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ft I II h N E U T R I N O ' S P A R A D O X I C A L M O D E O F E X I S T E N C El.irl ishe s "are presented" to those who do not share in theirproduction can become a cultural question only i f that cultureis act ive ly dissociated from " information," f rom the possess ionof "cultural knowledge." An awareness of the histoiy of the neu-trino's creation and the problems to which it responded cannotprevent i ts ex istence f rom being genera l ized into a "neutra l "fact, that is, both an authenticated fact that everyo ne "s ho uld "be familiar with if they are to be modern citizens, and an avail-able fact , which anyone may pick up and use for the ir own pur-poses. The question of knowing how the neutrino's existence is ,could be, or wil l be celebrated does not f ind an answer either inthe wil l ingness that recalls , under no obligation, that the sci-ences are human works, or in the irony that recognizes the workbehind the fact.

That the struggle not to forget the multiple componentsof the event that caused the neutrino to exist seems endless andhopeless does not re f lect a "psychologica l " di f f icul ty (humansprefer to be l ieve than to understand) or an "epistemologica l "question (the context of the justif ication takes precedence overthe context of discovery). It reflects the fact that the "discov-ery" of the neutrin o is not an event l ikely to interes t "m an kin d"as such. The neutrino does not mark a step along the path thatleads "mankind" f rom ignorance to understanding; i t owes i tsexistenc e to the fact of hav ing fu lf i l led what Latour cal ls a verydem anding set of " speci f icat ion s , " of having sat is f ied very s pe-ci f ic pro ofs , wh ich a l low "speci f ic people , " the comm unity of i tsfabricators, to forget the avatars of its fabrication, to celebrateits existence " in itself ." If something is to be celebrated or mustforce others to think, it is not the neutrino but the coproduc-t ion of a comm unity and a rea li ty of wh ich, f r om now on, f ro mthe point of view of the community, the neutrino is an integralpart. Such an event has yet to deserve interesting others. Thecultural traditions that are not antifetishist cultivate such aninterest. They know how the constructors of fetishes need to


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be addressed, what can be expected of them, why they shouldbe feared. To consider the social , cultural, and polit ical pres-ence among us of the highly speci f ic communit ies formed bythe con structo rs of fact ishe s may be a way of "ma terializ ing" theghostly r efe ren ce to a "scien ti f ic culture " that is always lackin g.

The "acculturation" of the neutrino is , therefore, a practi-cal quest ion, insepa rable f ro m the re lat ionsh ips that need to bedevelop ed with those who brought it into existen ce, those w ho sepr oo fs it sat isf ied . Other than that of a "neutral fact," the ne utr i-no's identity will f in d stabi li ty only in a network of rela tion ship sthrough which new " immanent modes of existence" for ourpract ices are inven ted. The touchstone of the fact i shist ic p ro p-osition, and more specif ically of what I am trying to do with it ,is not to convince scientists but to bring about a transformationof the interests that identi fy them. And this, of course, is to beunderstood in the radical ly indeterminate sense authorized bythe concept of interest: the way in wh ich what one does intere stsothe rs, that is , beco m es an integral part of the pre sen t of othe rs,or "counts" for others, does not conflict with the way in whichone is interested in what one does oneself , but is an ingredi-ent of i t . Who is interested, how can one be interested, at whatprice, by what means and under what constraintsthese are notsecondary q uest ions associated with the "di f fu s io n" of k now l-edge. They are the ingredients of its identity, that is, the way inw hi ch itexists fo r othe rs and the way in which it s i tuates others.


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5

Culturing the Pharmakon?

There are certain questions that, while they have resonancethroughout the histoiy of phi losophy, assume particular s ig-nif icanc e in a given pe r iod. The q uestion p osed by the soph istsis one of them and I want to address it explicitly, to prevent anyposs ib le misunderstanding.

The histor ical sophists were treated with opprobrium byphilosophers, and were referred to as the phi losopher 's other :they were the ones who bartered the truth, who claimed to healthe c ity 's woes without f i rst obtaining knowledge of good andevi l , who exploited the shadows and appearances of the "cave"rather than se ekin g the ver idical l ight that reveals things in th eirproper guise. They were men who rel ied on opinion, changingand malleable. It 's possible, of course, to return to that point intime to demonstrate the unfairness of this portrait or to "save"cer ta in sophists f rom the judgment that has condemned themall. But it i s not up to me to denounce the ir con dem nation as anoutr ight fabr ica tion or adopt a posit ion of ind if fe ren t objectivitythat af f i rm s histor ical neu trali ty. The qu estion of our relation -ship to the sophists is not c losed. Even m ore than the poet, w howas also chased from the Platonic c ity but has since been rein-tegrated into an honorable civic category, the sophist, vectorof lucidity or creator of i l lusion, doctor or soul thief, continuesto troub le us .

2 8


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4 0C U L T U R I N GT H E PHARMAKON?The problem posed by the sophists is not dependent on any

intrinsic quality that might be attributed to them but rather ontheir lack of it, that is, precisely the instability of the eff ect s usedto quali fy them. One might even state that the sophist embod-ies this instabi l i ty more than he produces i t , and the recur-rent comparison of the sophist with thepharmakon, a dru g thatmay act as a poison or a remedy, clearly reflects this. The lackof a stable and well determined attr ibute is the problem posedby any pharmakon, by any drug wh ose effe ct can mutate intoits opposite, depending on the dose, the circumstances, or thecontext , any drug whose action provides no guarantee, def inesno fixed point of reference that would allow us to recognize andunderstand i ts e f fec ts wi th some assurance. 1

The question of the pharmakon is not un iqu e to the trad i-tion that begins in Greece with the exclusion of the sophists.Eveiy human culture recognizes the intr insic instabi l i ty of cer-tain roles , certain practices , certain drugs. Tobie Nathan notesthat i f there is something unique about the West, it is its "con-f idence" in the doctor or psychotherapist , attr ibuting to themthe transparent desire to "heal" us (whatever the definit ionof heal might be). Other peoples are well aware that althoughhe is able to heal, the therapist can also destroy: 2 the individualwho man ipulates in f lue nce can be savior or sorce rer . Th e in sta-bility of thepharmakon i s not our spe ci f ic pro ble m . What doesseem to make us unique, what the exclusion of the sophists , inits own way, seems to i llustrate, is the intolerance of our tradi-tion in the face of this type of ambiguity, the anxiety it arouses.We requ ire a f ixed point, a foun dation , a guarantee. We re quirea stable dist inction between the beneficial medicament and theharmful drug, between rational pedagogy and suggestive inf lu-ence, between reason and opinion.The con tem pora iy scen e is l i terally saturated with the "m od -ern" heirs of Plato. Each of these heirs denounces his "other,"just as the phi losopher denounced the sophists , accused themof exploit ing that which he himself had tr iumphed over . They


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4 0 C U L T U R I N G T H E PHARMAKON?include not only the heirs of Plato, but those p hi loso phe rs who ,fol lowing the sophists , were used as an argument to demon-strate the need for a foundation. 3 What, in Plato's text, can beread as a network of analogies isolating the terr ible instabi l -ity of the sophistpharmakonhas today sp lit into a nu m be r of"modern practices"(scienti f ic , medical , pol i t ical , technological ,psychoanalytic , pedagogical) that have been introduced, just asPlatonic phi losophy in i ts t ime, as disq ual i fy ing their o t h e r -charlatan, popul ist , ideologue, astrologer , magician, hypnotist ,charismatic teacher .

It is possibleand temptingto do to modern practiceswhat was successful ly done with Plato, who was shown by eru-dite readers to entertain an uneasy relationship to the sophistshe denounced. Just as the sophists used Plato to promote theirarguments, we can show that the question of relation, whichtraditional therapists were expert in, endures as an enigma inthe very heart of m edicine ,* and that sc ienti f ic demonstrationsalways imply an element of persuasion, al though they c laim todiscr iminate between objective proof and subjective persua-sion. We can conclude, then, that the pharmakon refu ses to beexcluded, i t inhabits the heart of the fortresses that are sup-posed to protect us from its instabil ity. But, once again, we arel imited to com peting fo r the best , the most lucid form of " truthtel l ing" without br inging into existence other ways of tel l ing.And this " truth tel l ing" locks us into a sett ing whose only hori-zon is what we callpharmakon. For the sophist , condemn ed forhis exploitation of mal leable and doci le opinion, does not pro-vide us with access to some generic def init ion, which is to say,robust, resistant to the contingency of c ircumstance. He him-self is a contemporaiy of Plato, an inhabitant of the Greek city,where the question of pol i t ics was raised, the question of t i t lesthat authorized pa rtic ipation in govern ing the c ity 'saffairs.S i m -i lar ly, the charlatan so-cal led modern medicine denounces is a"modern" char latan, not the representative of what one would


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4 0 C U L T U R I N G T H E P H A R M A K O N ?call "nonmodern" therapeutic practices . 5 There i s nothing neu-tral about the definition of the insistent figure of the pharma-kon as a symptom in the heart of whatever tr ies to dist inguishitself f ro m it; it isourdef init io n, the one we have constructed byconstructing the practices that have disq ua li f ied and, th ere fore ,tran sform ed , i f not destroyed, the tradit ional ways in wh ich thisinstability we assoc iate with the pharmakon was man aged .

This detour through the sophist and the pharmakon obv i -ously ampli f ies what I have called the " factishist ic proposit ion"and enables us to better identi fy the challenge. For i f the ques-t ion I want to pre sen t is that of the "pre sen ce a m ong us" of ph ys-icists and other constructors of factishes , i t seems obvious thatthis question is doubly pharmacological . First , because i f wehave to speak of " f act ish es" with respect to som e of our pro du c-tions, it is to the extent that these productions are intended toresist the pharmacological accusation. The neutr ino, the atom,or DNA can claim that they "exist" autonomously with respectto the people who constructed them; they have overcome thepr oo fs inte nd ed to de m onstra te that they w ere not jus t fictionscapable of betraying their author. They exempli f ied the experi-mental achievement: " the invention of the power to confer onthings the power of conferr ing on the experimenter the powerto speak in their name."6 However, this threefold power is emi-nently limited for it is not warranted by an exterior fixed point,a general izable def in i t ion of the di f ference between sc ient i f i cstatement and opinion or fiction. Once the neutrino, the atom,or DNA move away from the veiy speci f ic s i te, the networkof labs , wh ere they achieved their existenc e, once they are tak enup in statements that unbind existence, invention, and proof ,they can change m ean ing and be com e the vectors of what m ightbe called "scienti f ic opinion"scienti f ic factishes have a verypharmacological instabi l i ty.

It is with resp ect to this instab ility that we can fo rm ula te thequestion of the "nonrelativ ist sophist" capable of what Bruno


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4 0 C U L T U R I N G T H E PHARMAKON?Latour would call the "cult" of factishes, where cult refers to acelebration of the event that br ing s a new be ing or a new methodof measurement into existence, and to culture, the practiceof establ ishing relationships. The pharmacological instabi l i tyof our factish es, their terr ible abi l i ty to feed the real ob sess ionwith the opposit ional di f ferentiation that makes us unique andrepeatedly leads us to assign them a power they do not have, thepower to disqual i fy practices and questions that don't concernthem, already corresponds to a k ind of cult . Polemics and dis-qual i f ication are relationships and a component of practices.The "ph ysic ist 's vocation " def in ed by Planck, al though it appearsto isolate him, contains the very opposite of that isolation,namely, the construction of a position of judgment that gives the"physical world" the power to transcend al l other real i t ies . Thequestion of the "sophist" capable of celebrating and cultivatingthe event that constitutes the creation of a factish is new onlybecause i t respo nds to a new problem : all cults are not equal. Thatis why I want to r isk qu al i fyin g the prob lem as "ecological. "

The advantage of such an approa ch stem s fr om the fact thatthe term "ecology" has a dual meaning, "sc ienti f ic" and "pol i t i -cal . " Whatever the interdependence among populations of l iv-ing beings may be, it can be called "ecological" in the scientificsense by i ts association with the concern s and rese arch practicesof scientific ecology. By analogy we can characterize the popula-tion of our practices, as such, as an ecological situation, regard-less of the " immanent mode of existence" of each member orthe nature of the contr ibution represented by the existenceof other mem be rs fo r them . In contrast , for those ecologistswhose commitment fal ls within a pol i t ical register , not al l"ecological" s i tuations are equal , especial ly when they includeme mb ers o f the hum an spec ies among thei r protagonists . Eco-logical practice (political in the broad sense) is then related tothe production of values, to the proposal of new m odes of evalu-ation, new meanings. But those values, modes of evaluation,


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C U L T U R I N C T H E PH A R M A K0N? 3 3and meanings do not transcend the s i tuation in question, theydo not constitute its intelligible truth. They are about the pro-duction ofnew relations that are added to a s i tuation already p ro -duced by a multiplicity of relations. And those relations can alsobe read in term s of value , evaluation, and m eaning .

There i s , then, no substant ive di f ference between the eco-logical situations studied by ecologists and those that striveto bring into existence the struggles conducted in the nameof "ecological values ," just as there is no substantive di f ferencebetween the values , evaluations, and meanings created when-ever a parasit ic relat ion is transformed into a symbiotic rela-tion, or when a parasite that destroys its host too efficiently isel iminated, and the values , evaluations, and meanings at theheart of ecological debates. In fact, there is hardly an ecologi-cal s i tuation on E arth wh ere the value s attr ibuted by hu m ans todif fere nt "prod ucts" of nature haven't already con tr ibuted to theconstruct ion of re lat ionships among nonhuman l iv ing beings .Th e only singula rity of political ecology is toexplicitly ass ert, as aproblem, the inseparable relat ion between values and the con-struction of rela t ionsh ips w ithin a wo rld that can always alreadybe deciphered in terms of values and relat ions. Which bothchanges nothing and changes everything, as is the case when-ever what was im plicit becom es explic i t .7

Another advantage of the reference to "ecology" is that itrefers to questions of process , namely, those l ikely to includedisparate terms. Ecology can and should, for example, take intoaccount the conse qu enc es, fo r a given m ilieu, of the a ppe aran ceof a new techn ical practice just as it does for the con seq ue nce sof c l imate change or the appearance of a new species . Follow-ing a logic of equivalence or intentionality, in each case theconsequences do not ref lect a "cause," nor can relat ions them-selves be sepa rated fr om the tem poral regim e of their entan gledcoexistence. 8 I f there is one thing political ecology has had tolearn from scienti f ic ecology, i t i s that we should abandon the


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3 4 C U L T U R 1 N G T H E PHARMAKON?temptat ion to conceive of nature as submissive , manipulable ,ass im ilable to som e "raw ma teria l" on wh ich we would be fre e toimpose whatever organizat ion we choose.

Ecology is not a scienc e of func t ions. The pop ulat ions w hosemo des of entangled coexistence it desc ribes are not ful ly de fine dby the respective roles they play in that entanglement, in such away that we could deduce the identity of each on the basis of itsrole. This role is by definition "metastable," that is to say notguaranteed against some possible instability. It is the productof "bricolage," all we can say of which is that it "works more orless ," and not of a calculat ion whose economy and logic wouldhave to be disclosed. Correlat ively , interdependent populat ionsdo not make a "system" in the sense that they could be definedas parts of a large whole. The point of view that allows us todescribe the re lat ive coherence between their respect ive modesof coexistence must i tse l f interweave mult iple t imescales andissues. For example, a very rare species of bat appears to play nomore than an insignif icant role in the tropical forest of PuertoRico. However, it has been found that its role is in fact crucialfor the forest . A fte r a hu rrican e, bats of this species are , u nl ikethe others, incapable of flying away. Forced, at the risk of theirlives, to survive where they are, the bats in this way contributeto the devastated forest 's ability to recover. ' ' By analogy, we canstate that if the population of our practices presents, for me, theprob lem of a coh erenc e that is not one of general ized polem ic,a producer of arrogance and vector of submission, this coher-ence should have nothing in common with the coherence thatauthorizes a unitary point of v iew fro m wh ich the role ass ig nedto each participant can be deduced.

Ecology is, then, the science of multiplicities, disparatecausal it ies , and unintentional creat ions of meaning. The f ie ldof ecological quest ions is one where the consequences of theme anings we create , the judgm ents we produ ce and to wh ich weassign the status of " fac t ," con cern ing what is primary and what


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4 0 C U L T U R I N G T H E PHARMAKON?

is secondary, must be addressed immediately , whether thoseconsequences are intent iona l or unforeseen . Human soc iet-ies are a lways susceptible to producing a justi f ication for whatthey undergo, of transforming their inventions into norms, andforgetting the price paid for their choices . However, becauseof the construction of questions and knowledge produced byecological practices, a new kind of memory has come into being,a memory of the unintentional processes that in the past wereable to bring about the disappea rance of c it ies , em pir es , or c iv i-l izations, and of the ravages caused by our simplistic industrial ,and even "scienti f ic , " strategies (the "DDT strategy") . And thismemoiy is now part of the present. In that sense, we can saythat our present is cultivating the growth of "pharmacologicalknowledge," a science of processes where good intentions r iskturning into disasters , and in terms of which no action has anidentity inde pe nd en t of the wh ole that stabilizes it but caus es it,und er certain circum stances, to change its m eanin g. 10

Th e "ecological" perspective invites us not to mistake a c o n -sen sus situatio n, w he re the pop ulatio n of our practice s findsitself subjected to criteria that transcend their diversity in thename of a shared intent, a superior good, for an ideal peace.Ecology doesn't provide any examples of such submission. Itdoesn' t understand consensus but, at most, symbiosis , in whicheveiy protagonist is interested in the success of the other forits own reasons. The "symbiotic agreement" is an event, theproduction of new, immanent modes of existence, and not therecognit ion of a more powerful interest before which diver-gent particular interests would have to bow down. Nor is it theconsequence of a harmonization that would transcend the ego-ism of those interests. It is part of what I would refer to as animmanent process of "reciprocal capture," a process that is notsubstantively d iffe re nt fro m other proce sses , such as parasit-ism or predation, that one could qualify as unilateral given thatthe identity of one of the terms of the relation does not appear


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C U L T U R I N G T H E PHAHMAKONlto refer specif ical ly to the existence of the other." The spe-cif ic "strategies" of mimetic defense employed by the caterpil-lar refer to the "cognitive" abilit ies of the bird that threatensit , but it seems that for the bird the caterpillar is just one kindof prey among others . 1 2 The definit ion of the parasite includesa "knowledge" of the means to invade its prey, but this preyappears to simply endure the parasite ' s attack. Both the cater-pi l lar and the parasite exist in a way that aff irms the existenceof their respect ive other, but the oppo site do es not appea r to betrueat least as far as we know at present. In contrast, we canspeak of reciprocal capture whenever a dual process of identityconstruct ion is produced: regardless of the manner, and usu-al ly in ways that are completely dif ferent , identit ies that coin-vent one another eac h integrate a refe ren ce to the other for theirown benefit . In the case of symbiosis , this reference is found tobe posit ive : each of the beings coinvented by the re lat ionshipof reciprocal capture has an interest, if it is to continue its exis-tence, in seein g the other main tain its existenc e.

The co ncept of "recip roca l capture ," l ike a ll those that brin gto mind the stabil ity of a re lat ion without refe ren ce to an in ter-est that would transcend its terms, a l lows us to emphasize theconsequences of the ecological perspect ive I intend to adopt ,primari ly the lack of re levance in this perspect ive of the cus-tomaiy opposit ion between fact and value, the f irst referr ingto the order of " facts ," the second to a purely human judg-ment. Whenever there is reciprocal capture , value is created.Naturally, scientific field ecology can rely on the stability of thesituat ions it s tudies when producing representat ions and anevaluat ion of those s ituat ions. But once human pract ices comeinto play, the ecological perspective cannot rely on such stabilitybut , on the contrary, communicates direct ly with the quest ionof the pharmacological instabil i ty associated with pharmaka ingeneral, and with the factishes that create and are created by ourpractices in particular. The question of the identity of a practice


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4 0 C U L T U R I N G T H E PHARMAKON?would then have to be answered not by a static diagnosis but bya question of "value" and "value creation," that is , the ecologicalquestion of what "counts" and "could count" for that practice. Inother words, "pol it ical ly" recla iming factishes does not implytheir submission " in the name of pol it ical values" but can beaddressed through the immanent question of the way in whicheach practice defines its relationship to others, that is to say,"presents i tsel f" to those others .

As a result, the perspective of an "ecology of practices"requires that we do not v iew "value" as that " in whose name"something can be imposed or must be accepted. Only humanson Earth act " in the name of values" and contrast them with"facts . " But, and this holds true for humans as wel l as non-humans , the creation of value cannot function in this registerof opposition. The invention of a practice or the creation of arelationship of capture are part of what Felix Guattari, in Chaos-mosis, has cal led "axiological creationism": a new constel lationof "value universes" "that are detected as soon as they are pro-duced and which are found to be a lready there, a lways, as soonas they are engendered." ' 3 Just as this creation cannot operate,amo ng hum ans, in the name of value s, it cannot, w he n it des ig-nates nonhuman beings, be associated with an explanation of ascien ti f ic nature, especia lly an interpretation that would s imp lymake it the result of Darw inian selec tion . Th e conce pt of "v alu e"as I use it here, and as Felix Guattari uses it in Chaosmosis, onthe contraiy , introduces the question of what we presupposeevery t ime we give selection the exclusive pow er to explain. The(Guattarian) "creationist" perspective celebrates the existenceof every given type of being that specifically poses the questionof what counts fo r its mode of l i fe. Axiological cre ation ism con -cerns the prod uction of existence fo r everything for wh ich e xis -tence implies a "gamble," a r isk, the creation of a point of v iewabout what, fr om then on, wil l bec om e a mil ie u. ' 4

Can the creation of factishes be understood from the


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4 0 C U L T U R I N G T H E PHARMAKON?vantage point of reciprocal capture? Yes, certainly, in the sensethat here we have the coinvention of a being and those whoserequirements i t has satisf ied: the neutr ino exists for physic istsand, somewh at di f fe ren tly, the phy sic ists exist for the n eu -tr ino. Their def init ion now includes the questions and specu-lations author

163501319 Stengers Isabelle Cosmopolitics I 1 3

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