LATOUR AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM: PROBLEMS IN 'TAKING ONE

MORE TURN AFTER THE SOCIAL TURN'

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies

of

The University of Guelph

by

BOYANA PERIC

In partial fulfillment of requirements

for the degree of

Master of Arts

December, 2008

© Boyana Peric, 2008

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ABSTRACT

LATOUR AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM: PROBLEMS IN 'TAKING ONE MORE TURN AFTER THE SOCIAL TURN'

Boyana Peric Advisor: University of Guelph, 2008 Professor A. Wayne

This thesis is an investigation of Bruno Latour's attempt to take 'one more turn

after the social turn'. 'One more turn after the social turn' means going beyond the

standard social constructivist critiques of science and knowledge. I highlight some of

the challenges that Latour's project faces and conclude that he fails to take 'one

more turn after the social turn'.

1

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the help/friendship/encouragement offered throughout my graduate

studies by the following people: our department secretaries (Janet Thackeray, Pam Speers

and Debbie Bailey), Prof. Maya Goldenberg, Prof. Don Dedrick, Prof. Karen Houle, Prof.

Andrew Bailey, philosophy graduate students in general and Nathan Harron in particular,

Rachel Thompson, Michael Davis, and my partner Maggie Cowperthwaite for enduring

me (lovingly) through some of the most stressful months of this project.

My advisor, Prof. Andrew Wayne, has been the kindest, most helpful and efficient soul

and as, such integral to the completion of this project.

Lastly, I would like to thank Prof. Lorraine Code for her encouragement throughout both

my undergraduate and graduate years.

11

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Page 1

Chapter One: Page 6

Chapter Two: Page 32

Chapter Three: Page 50

Chapter Four: Page 71

Bibliography: Page 78

Introduction

Modernism, roughly conceived as 'a new regime, an acceleration, a rupture',

marks the departure from the superstition that dictated the development of knowledge to

the age of reason where knowledge (sciences in particular) flourished solely on the

inherent strength and accuracy of reason and scientific experiments. One goal of

modernity is to liberate from superstition. For Bruno Latour "...it designates a break in

the regular passage of time, and it designates a combat in which there are victors and

vanquished" (Latour 1993, 10). In addition to this conception of modernism, one can

associate modernism with the 16th and 17thcentury scientists and philosophers who

sought to move away from the dogma of the Middle ages. Some prominent figures of this

period include: Descartes, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus.

Some believe that modernism has been successful in its aims while others

are more skeptical about the success of the modern project. One source of skepticism

about the purity of knowledge humans arrive at is echoed in the work of social

constructivism. The moderns believed that, with reason as a guiding force, fields of

knowledge such as science can be free of social factors. Social constructivism points to

the inseparability of science and society. And just as some would accept that the

assessment of science cannot be taken further than what is offered under the umbrella of

social construction, Latour makes a bold statement that we can and need to take 'one

more turn after the social turn' and that he does take that additional step.

My thesis is that Latour fails to take 'one more turn after the social turn'.

The basic idea is that Latour's attempts to do so are already embedded in the subject or

2

the social. Latour's efforts to establish the nonmodem position, a position that keeps only

the useful elements of modernity, postmodernity and social constructivism, are

unsuccessful - he remains under the jurisdiction of social constructivism. The detailed

description of network building by scientists in his Science In Action is an example of

social elements playing various parts in the construction of knowledge or networks: the

Strong Program (one prominent version of social constructivism) could not agree more.

A more explicit effort by Latour to distinguish himself from sociology of knowledge

appears in We Have Never Been Modern and Politics of Nature. The nonmodern position

developed by Latour should somehow remedy the mistakes of modernism,

postmodernism and social constructivism - it should take us a step further than we have

gone so far. I intend to argue that this project, as conceived by Latour, fails to take the

additional step. The additional step as envisioned by Latour should be an improvement on

social constructivism. My argument that Latour fails to take the additional step beyond

the social will be made by highlighting some of the main challenges that the project

encounters. More precisely, whenever Latour claims to have gone beyond the social, I

intend to show how his ideas are linked to and representative of social constructivism.

Consequently, he does not succeed in taking 'one more turn after the social turn'.

My plan is as follows. The first chapter will present four of Latour's works

{Laboratory Life, Science In Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Politics Of

Nature) covering material that is most relevant to my thesis that Latour fails to take 'one

more turn after the social turn'. Laboratory Life is a detailed and descriptive study of

scientists and their work in a laboratory setting. Science In Action is an extension of

Laboratory Life. One of Latour's central arguments developed in Science In Action

3

concerns the role of networks in producing and maintaining facts. The notion of a 'black

box' (where input and output of the 'black box', as opposed to the interior of the box, is

its only relevant aspect) is telling in the sense that it illustrates the final product, or as

Latour puts it, a fact devoid of all the factors that enabled its existence. To show us

'science in the making' Latour takes on the task of opening 'black boxes' with one basic

aim: to remind us that facts are not self-sufficient and that they are produced and

circulate in networks constructed by us. As the title suggests, the purpose of We Have

Never Been Modern is to show us that we have, after all, never been modern. One

unfortunate product of modernity, according to Latour, is the idea of maintaining sharp

distinctions between nature and society, object and subject, human and nonhuman.

Politics of Nature is an effort to bridge the problematic distinctions created by modernity

and move towards what Latour argues is a more inclusive and democratic state of affairs.

The second chapter will illustrate Latour's inability to distinguish his work

from the Strong Program. An area within sociology of knowledge, the Strong Program

aims to study science by tracing the psychological and sociological causes of scientific

beliefs and decisions, and in particular, decisions to accept or reject scientific theories.

The sociology of knowledge is traditionally associated with the Weak Program. The idea

behind the Weak Program is that socio-psychological causes need only be sought for

error, irrationality and deviation from the proper norms and methodological precepts of

science. In contrast to the Weak Program, supporters of the Strong Program argue for the

need to explain, in social and causal terms, all systems of belief regardless of how they

are evaluated. This chapter will show that, despite the desire to establish his work as an

improvement on the Strong Program and as such different from it, Latour remains mostly

4

within the parameters of the Strong Program. The focus of this chapter will be on

Laboratory Life and Science Ln Action, as this is where Latour records in great detail

various social elements that influence scientific results. I intend to show that some of the

underlying themes of these two works by Latour fit in the confines of social

constructivism and as such do not constitute a step forward. Consequently, this shows

support for my thesis that Latour hasn't taken that additional step that would go beyond

social constructivism.

The third chapter will address Latour's nonmodern position directly.

Separations permeate modernism. The modern constitution, according to Latour, invents

and maintains distinctions: between humans and nonhumans, subject and object, society

and nature and so on. To maintain distinctions, modernism relies on two practices:

translation 'and purification. Translation creates mixtures between entirely new types of

beings, hybrids of nature and culture (quasi-objects2), while the work of purification

creates separate spheres of humans and nonhumans. If we maintain that the work of

purification and translation are separate from one another, we are truly modern. But if we

consider the two practices simultaneously then we stop being entirely modern - we

become nonmodern. Latour thinks that once we see the futility of the sharp distinctions

that modernism maintains we realize that the future lies in giving a voice to these hybrids

that have always existed but only in "repression". Focusing on We Have Never Been

Modern and Politics of Nature, I will aim to show the problems that nonmodernism faces

1 In We Have Never Been Modern Latour at first adopts the term "translation". Subsequently, he replaces that term by "mediation". Along with Latour, I use these two terms interchangeably. 2 The following terms are equivalent to quasi-objects: hybrids, imbroglios, actant, collective and nohuman.

5

as it attempts to bridge the separations created and maintained by modernism. Attempts

to bridge these separations are met with challenges that cast significant doubt on the

success of the nonmodern position. Efforts to discard sharp distinctions and grant a voice

to hybrids still involve or employ some of the same tactics or distinctions that Latour is

attempting to eliminate. The nonmodern position should be an improvement on the ideas

of moderns, postmoderns and social constructivism. But the challenges faced by the

nonmodern position are sufficiently severe to prevent Latour from taking that additional

step. This completes my airgument that Latour is not successful in taking 'one more turn

after the social turn'.

6

Chapter One An Introduction To Latour

1.1 Introduction

Many philosophers of science and sociologists of knowledge have taken

on the task of showing that facts are socially constructed rather than representations of

how things "really are". Approaches vary but, according to Latour, the common factor

and also the common error is to accept the distinction between fact and artifact at the

outset of the inquiry and proceed from there. In Laboratory Life, Latour suggests a

different route to understanding how facts come to stand alone and devoid of all the

disorder that once surrounded them. The new approach entails the refusal of the

distinction between fact and artifact and instead grounds the inquiry on close observation

of scientists and their laboratories. This approach is largely anthropological in nature, in

the sense that it attempts to study scientists and the laboratory in the manner analogous to

that of anthropologists studying tribes. The anthropological approach is different from

previous undertakings in social studies of science because it begins without the common

supposition that there is something like a fact and something like an artifact. Broadly

speaking, a fact is something that is indisputably the case whereas an artifact is

something that is built by humans. Discarding these assumptions on the outset is the

distinguishing mark of the anthropological approach as well as its greatest strength over

other approaches. These assumptions are replaced with the full immersion of the

anthropologist in the laboratory that is closely modeled after the immersion of

anthropologists when they set out to study a tribe.

7

This chapter will illustrate the results of an anthropological study of

scientists. The picture that emerges by closely following scientists in their setting

(laboratory) is that of intricate maneuvers and mobilized resources all necessary for

something to emerge as a fact. The message is clear: we have hitherto understood facts as

stable and indisputable but the reality is that they are far from that. The dynamics of the

laboratory and its scientists, and their relationship to the scientific community in general,

are just some of the factors that influence the final result or a fact. The latter has been a

common observation by social constructivists. Latour's project is to go beyond this

observation. He aims to take 'one more turn after the social turn'. Below is an illustration

of the anthropological approach that is fundamental to Latour's project.

Several features illustrate the perspective that we will refer to as

"anthropology of science". First, the research procedure and the empirical data collected

from it are representative of a particular group of scientists and the laboratory in which

they work (again, much like data collected from studying a particular tribe). The

immersion of the observer in the daily activities of scientists is one of the better ways to

understand the process of what Latour calls 'cleaning up' prior to something being

presented as a fact. One of the major problems in studies of science had to do with

scientists changing the manner in which they addressed the outsider about their own field

and work: scientists may feel threatened by the outsider and his or her interest in their

field or work or they may dismiss the outsider as lacking ability to comprehend their

work. This problem affects both sides (scientist and the one attempting to study scientific

activity): it makes it difficult for the outsider to reconstruct scientific events and as such,

we lack an appreciation of how science is done (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 28).

8

The immersion of the observer or the in situ study of a laboratory is a

means to avoid this problem. But it is not merely the avoidance of this problem that

makes the in situ observation a better approach to studying scientific activity. Rather,

what the anthropological approach to studying science offers (and what other approaches

miss) is the detailed account of all the activity (technical and social) that is responsible in

constructing a fact. The mistake so far has been in treating the technical and the social

aspects of scientific activity as separate and as such in need of separate attention. By that

Latour means that we have grown accustomed to studying things as if they exist in a

vacuum, independent of elements that are woven in the technical and the social. With the

anthropological perspective the focus is on examining the process whereby scientists

make sense of their observations. As we will see, what is at play always and at once is

both the social and the technical. It is this understanding that sets the anthropological

approach to science apart from all other efforts to understand scientific activity.

In what follows, I will explicate four of Latour's works {Laboratory Life,

Science In Action, We Have Never Been Modern and Politics of Nature). Laboratory Life

and Science In Action are both descriptive, in the sense that they for the most part

describe scientific activity and in doing so point to a variety of factors that influence and

shape scientific activity. We Have Never Been Modern and Politics of Nature build on the

aforementioned texts and are prescriptive - it is in these texts that Latour establishes the

nonmodern position and, according to him, takes 'one more turn after the social turn'.

The two chapters that follow this one will show that he has not taken that additional step

by arguing that Latour has not moved forward and away from the social constructivist

ground.

9

1.2 Laboratory Life

Laboratory Life is a detailed study of all the activity that occurs in a

laboratory and amongst scientists before scientific knowledge is taken for granted or

before it assumes the status of "unproblematic". We begin by considering the conditions

that are central to the emergence of facts. According to Latour, a statement will become a

fact if it is used and reused. For this to occur a range of activities inside the laboratory

and on the part of the scientists are necessary. Literary inscription is one such activity.

Our anthropological observer is "confronted with a strange tribe who spend the greatest

part of their day coding, marking, altering, correcting, reading, and writing" (Latour and

Woolgar 1979, 49). A striking consequence of inscription is its ability to appear as being

in direct relationship to the original substance (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 51) - a sample

initially extracted from the rats is the diagram that can now be perused by others. Since

the piece of matter has been transferred into a written document, the starting point for

writing an article about this substance is now the diagram (Latour and Woolgar, 1979,

51). Another remarkable consequence of inscription is the tendency to see it as

confirmation, or evidence for or against, particular ideas, concepts, or theories. "A

particular curve, for example, might constitute a breakthrough; or a sheet of figures can

count as clear support for some previously postulated theory" (Latour and Woolgar,

1979, 63).

In addition to utilizing diagrams produced in their own laboratory thanks

to inscription, scientists lean on other (outside) literature for support. The observer notes

that a draft being prepared for publication is "peppered with references, either to other

10

papers, or to diagrams, tables or documents" (Latour and Woolgar, 1979, 47). Our

observer's field notes describe the laboratory as a hub with an intricate system of literary

inscription:

Drafts of articles in preparation intermingle with diagrams scribbled on

scrap paper, letters from colleagues and reams of paper spewed out by the

computer in the next room; pages cut from articles are glued to other

pages; excerpts from draft paragraphs change hands between colleagues

while more advanced drafts pass from office to office being altered

constantly, retyped, recorrected, and eventually crushed into the format of

this or that journal (Latour and Woolgar, 1979, 49).

This is indicative of the very uncertainty or the tortured history of a fact prior to it

assuming the unproblematic status of a fact. Moreover, it shows an array of elements that

play a role, namely, the social (a number of colleagues) and the technical (computer and

lab equipment).

One might ask why all this fervor or mania on the part of the scientists?

Literary inscription enables persuasion. And although scientists shy away from admitting

that they are in the business of persuading and being persuaded ("just discovering

facts/doing cold hard science" is a more common response), the field notes from our

observer illustrate just that. Make use of the apparatus in the laboratory to produce a

written document or a diagram. Incorporate that into your article along with references to

existing literature and hope that the published article will persuade its readers who will

11

then begin to refer to the article in their own work. It is this latter part, the repetition

involved in referencing the findings of a persuasive article, that chisels statements into

facts. When statements are taken up, worked on, borrowed, used and most importantly

reused, eventually there comes a stage where they miraculously assume the

unproblematic status of a fact and as such, get incorporated into textbooks and from then

on are taken for granted.

What this suggests to Latour is that scientific activity is directed not at

reality but toward the modification of statements with the aim to persuade and

accumulate more evidence to further other interests. Latour writes,

If facts are constructed through operations designed to effect the dropping

of modalities which qualify a given statement, and, more importantly, if

reality is the consequence rather than the cause of this construction, this

means that a scientist's activity is directed, not toward "reality", but

toward these operations on statements (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 237).

Scientific activity in general is agonistic in the sense that its energy is directed towards

propping and ensuring the survival of statements. 'Agonistic' is not a negative term or an

idea intended to undermine scientific activity. Rather, it is a descriptive view of science

as an activity that necessarily incorporates elements of the social sphere (such as disputes,

forces and alliances) as it explains epistemological phenomena (such as proof, fact, and

validity) (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 237). Both necessarily constitute scientific activity:

you need the "politics" of science and its "truth" to out-manoeuvre a competitor (Latour

12

and Woolgar 1979, 237). Given this, Latour believes that it becomes meaningless to

speak about scientific activity as solely concerned with or directed at "nature". For

Latour, nature is the consequence that follows from the settlement of a dispute and not its

cause. This becomes apparent to us once we view scientific activity as agonistic - as

engaging in the operations on statements as opposed to engaging with "reality".

Moreover, and in light of the agonistic view of scientific activity, Latour

suggests that science is entirely dependant on circumstances. How things turn out, what

statements are taken up amd not taken up has everything to do with the circumstances

regarding the laboratory equipment, individual ambitions, funding, the current state of the

field one is working in, how and if something will fit in with the rest of the published

literature and so on. The following quote illustrates this claim through the example of

TRF (Thyrotropin Releasing Factor). Latour writes "our claim is not just that TRF is

surrounded, influenced by, in part depends on, or is also caused by circumstances; rather,

we argue that science is entirely fabricated out of circumstance..." (Latour and Woolgar

1979, 239, my emphasis). Again, the apparent durability of a fact is not because we have

got something correct about reality. Instead, as Latour writes, "Reality is

secreted...scientific activity is not "about nature," it is a fierce fight to construct reality"

(Latour and Woolgar 1979, 243). Questioning validity of facts is a daunting task and

expensive task (for example, consider the money necessary for the construction of and

access to equipment). To question the validity of a fact that now not only firmly

constitutes and exists within a network but also supports other parts in a network is to

question the entire network. Or more bluntly, it is to take on the task of disputing an

entire field (physics, biology etc.). The task of making it difficult to raise alternative

13

possibilities is tied to the notion of 'black boxing'. Latour's Science In Action builds on

this notion. Below is an explication of this notion in particular and in general of Latour's

Science In Action.

1.2 Science In Action

The previous section illustrated how various elements (social and

technical) are responsible for and inevitable in the emergence of facts. The notion of a

'black box' furthers our understanding of this phenomenon. And so this section begins by

explicating this idea. In cybernetics, whenever a piece of machinery or a set of

commands is too complex a box is drawn around it. All that is considered relevant is the

input and the output coming from that box. The word used by cyberneticians is 'black

box' (Latour 1987, 3). Latour applies the above term to the work of scientists: the double

helix, and the computer are black boxes. Once they have been established as such, we no

longer worry about their content but are only concerned about their input and output.

Latour wants to worry about their content. He points out that what appears to us as

unproblematic and certain was once just the opposite. "Uncertainty, people at work,

decisions, competition, controversies are what one gets when making a flashback from

certain, cold, unproblematic black boxes to their recent past" (Latour 1987, 4).

Latour notes that when controversies arise, the literature gets very

technical. Other literature is called upon and is stylized in order to ensure a statement's

acceptance or rejection. The purpose of calling on other literature and in great quantity is

to make those questioning feel isolated, lonely and powerless in the sea of "evidence".

"Bringing friends in, launching many references, acting on all these quoted articles...is

14

already enough to intimidate or to force most people out" (Latour 1987, 44). Latour

wants to emphasize all the efforts that go into building armor around a statement to

ensure its survival. Current literature has more muscle, it is ready to defend itself not only

by pointing to many layers it has equipped itself with but also by anticipating any

objections that may arise and also answering those objections. By doing the latter, the

scientist is attempting to put an end to questioning and ensure the survival of a statement.

The most striking consequence of all the ways of making a statement

survive in a hostile environment is that it can now stand on its own. The presence of all

the support called on to ensure its survival is no longer necessary. It becomes

unnecessary once demonstration takes place in laboratories. The statement is "made more

real" with the help of laboratory tools. The dissenter is asked to "believe what they are

seeing". It is now possible to refer to a statement without having to consider any of the

evidence that once surrounded or protected the statement from hostility. It is, at last,

capable of standing alone - it is now a fact, no longer out there to be disputed. It is

borrowed, leaned on as a matter of fact. Its tortured history, now invisible, is comprised

of a multitude of elements (papers, laboratories, professions, interest groups, non-human

allies) that are hard to challenge (Latour 1987, 179). Challenging entails building a new

lab, testing all the literature, layers, graphs and so on. Most dissenters grow tired and find

themselves lost in the sea of technical literature and elaborate machinery so that few are

able to go on with their questioning. Once a fact has been established, the scientist calls

on Nature. According to scientists, Nature is now what made something a fact. It is a fact

because we got the correct representation of something out there in Nature. All the

15

transformations and work taken up to get to this point is forgotten. Nature is now

flaunted.

But as it was noted earlier, Latour claims that Nature is the consequence

and not the cause. Black-boxing, making statements more durable so as to sustain

survival, is responsible for our mistaken impression that we have somehow discovered

something about reality. Largely due to our fascination with distinctions, we have not

realized that everything (facts, objects, social groups) can only exist and travel in

networks. When we follow science in action, when our anthropologist considers at once

the technical and the social as having a joint role in the construction of reality, we begin

to see the web of networks built through various strategies, employing whatever it takes

to advance one's interests.

Although much of the discussion thus far focused on the field of science,

the same applies to all other fields, for example sociology. Latour writes "the very

definition of a 'society' is the final outcome, in sociology departments, in statistical

institutions, in journals, of other scientists busy at work gathering surveys,

questionnaires, archives, records of all sorts, arguing together, publishing papers...any

agreed definition marks the happy end of controversies like all the settlements we have

studied in this book" (Latour 1987, 257). Black boxing, managing controversies to reach

a settlement, is common to all fields. Neither natural science nor social science has any

special status or explanatory powers. The mistake, again, has been to divide studies by

discipline and by object of study (Latour 1987, 16) and as a result we have 'science,

technology and society' studies. The mistake here is our thinking of the two studies as

distinct from one another rather than constituitive of one another. Science, technology

16

and society are not distinct - they, for the lack of a better word, seep into one another.

According to Latour, everything exists and only survives in networks and through

connections and allies. By taking into account all the mobilization prior to a fact being

able to stand alone, all the strategies to close a black box and keep it closed, we see that

fact is a mixture of the social and the technical, of subject and object, of science and

society and technology.

This mixture or play of various elements is at the core of Latour's notion

of networks. Latour writes, "The word network indicates that resources are concentrated

in a few places - the knots and the nodes - which are connected with one another - the

links and the mesh: these connections transform the scattered resources into a net that

may seem to extend everywhere" (Latour 1987, 180). Within a network there is a chain

of associations, of links which are not only integral for sustaining their own network but

are relevant and necessary with respect to other networks. To illustrate the notion of

networks, Latour uses the example of loggings produced by Schlumberger engineers on

oil platforms. In an effort to measure the amount of oil under the ground, a French

engineer, Conrad Schlumberger figured that sending an electric current through the soil

and then measuring the electrical resistance of the layers of rocks at various spots would

accomplish the task. Data was accumulated and methods were perfected. The

consequence of this was now that engineers could be more efficient at directing the

drilling. In other words, and what Latour wants to get at here, is that the loggings

represent an accumulation of oil, money, physics and geology. They [loggings] become

part of a file inside a bank at Wall Street and are then interwoven with other previously

unrelated domains (geology, economics, strategy, law) (Latour 1987, 255). Now

17

integrated, the link travels further (i.e. to boardrooms, investors) making further

associations, allies and etc.

When we bring the notion of networks closer to the central subject of

Science In Action, science, nature and society, we can see clearly now that each is subject

to its own network building, but what is more, they are conjoined through this notion of

networks in ways that we have previously ignored. Latour writes "This book has been

written to provide a breathing space for those who want to study independently the

extensions of all these networks. To do such a study it is absolutely necessary never to

grant to any fact, to any machine, the magical ability of leaving the narrow networks in

which they are produced and along which they circulate" (Latour 1987, 257). In other

words, we cannot make a distinction between nature and society, neither can exist

without its own networks and neither has the special ability to escape the networks it

builds. As such, they should be addressed together and at once. This idea is further

developed in We Have Never Been Modern.

1.3 We Have Never Been Modern

In the previous section Latour opened 'black boxes' in order to show us

the tortured and uncertain history of a fact before it is deemed a fact. By doing so, the

notion of networks and network building emerges. The main consequence of the idea of

networks is that we can no longer consider facts as existing in a vacuum and independent

of the network in which they circulate. Central to modernity is the separation of nature

and society. Building on the notion of networks developed in Science In Action, Latour

argues in We Have Never Been Modern that we have, after all, never been modern. What

18

we took to be distinct entities, namely nature and society, turned out not to be distinct.

Nature and society do not exist in a vacuum. They are conjoined in ways that modernity

has constantly tried to deny. The existence and proliferation of quasi-objects under

modernism and modernism's inability to deal with them suggests that we have been

mistaken in thinking that nature and society can be separate. A quasi-object, according to

Latour, is neither constructed by the society nor is it constituted by the 'hard' natural

parts. Rather it is a fabrication of both - it has no clear definite substance that one can

point to. Moreover, its being is always a being active in networks: it is a collection of

relations, allies, associations. Latour writes "Of quasi-objects...we shall simply say that

they trace networks...they are collective because they attach us to one another, because

they circulate in our hands and define our social bond by their very circulation" (Latour

1993, 89). As such, it becomes pointless to ask if something is nature or if something is

society, and we can no longer ignore this.

Separations permeate modernism. The modern constitution, according to

Latour, invents and maintains distinctions: between humans and nonhumans, subject and

object, society and nature and so on. To maintain distinctions, modernism relies on two

practices: mediation and purification. Mediation creates mixtures between entirely new

types of beings, hybrids of nature and culture (quasi-objects). The work of purification

creates separate spheres of humans and nonhumans (note that 'nonhuman' is later

revealed to be quasi-objects after all) (Latour 1993, 10). What the moderns have always

done (Latour sees this as inevitable or unavoidable) is create quasi-objects in practice but

then they were careful to maintain the distinction between nature and society through the

work of purification: separating humans from nonhumans (quasi-objects). Latour takes

19

this to be precisely the reason that we have never been modern: the modern world has

never happened because the moderns have always and all along done the very thing that

their modern constitution forbids, that is, mixing nature and society - from the outset,

modernism never functioned according to its set principles (Latour 1993, 39).

If we maintain that the work of purification and mediation are separate

from one another, we are truly modern. That is, modernism can only be effective if there

is a clear distinction between nature and society (this is achieved through the practice of

purification) and a clear distinction between the practices of mediation and purification.

More precisely, modernism is only effective if there is something (purification) that will

keep nature and society separate and if there are two different practices (purification and

mediation) that can, when the situation calls, account for this separation. But if we can

consider the two practices simultaneously then we stop being entirely modern - we

become nonmodern. Latour believes that anthropology is particularly suited for linking

the separations of modernism into one single picture. Just as an anthropologist accounts

for numerous factors when he undertakes a study of a particular region or tribe, he can

position himself at the median point where he can follow, simultaneously, the attribution

of both humans and nonhumans, nature and society - he can now account for the quasi-

objects (Latour 1993, 96). By doing this, the anthropologist is transcending the

asymmetry that has plagued modernism as well as postmodernism and social

construction. This seamless cloth of nature and society is at the heart of Latour's

nonmodernism, and it is through this approach that we finally see the futility of the sharp

distinctions that modernism maintaines. The future lies in giving a voice to the quasi-

objects that have always existed but only in repression. They were repressed because of

20

the modern insistence on separations and then purification, but they, in practice or reality,

always existed. The nonmodern task is that of acknowledging and representing quasi-

objects, of allowing them to surface and circulate freely (Latour 1993, 139). The next

several paragraphs illustrate the modern strategies for denying quasi-objects (the four

guarantees of the modem constitution), followed by their reconfiguration or the four

guarantees of Latour's nonmodernism.

According to Latour, the appeal of modernism and its apparent success has

to do with the four guarantees that make up the modern constitution: 1) nature is

transcendent but immanent 2) society is immanent but transcendent 3) nature and society

are distinct and there is no connection between the work of purification and mediation 4)

God is absent but ensures arbitration between nature and society (Latour 1993, 141).

On closer examination, the first two guarantees may seem contradictory,

yet under modernism they work in tandem. The first guarantee suggests that nature has

always been there. It exists completely apart from society, it is transcendent. People do

not make nature, we are merely discovering nature's secrets through science (Latour

1993, 30). But when we do that, when we artificially construct nature in laboratories,

nature becomes immanent. In the second guarantee, society is our doing, it is immanent

to our actions. But somehow, the immanence of society or of human fabrications can be

wiped out (or at least minimized). In other words, our account of society (its

construction) is free from or is purified from the pollution of immanence - society can be

transcended by leaning onto nature when it suits us. Referring to the book that explicated

the work of Boyle and Hobbes, Leviathan and the Air Pump, Latour illustrates the first

two guarantees via Boyle and Hobbes: "Boyle and his countless successors go on and on

21

both constructing nature artificially and stating that they are discovering it; Hobbes and

the newly defined citizens go on and on constructing the Leviathan by dint of calculation

and social force, but they recruit more and more objects to make it last" (Latour 1993,

31).

To mask this apparent contradiction in the mechanism of the first two

guarantees, the third guarantee is introduced: complete separation between society and

nature and between the work of mediation and purification. The first two guarantees can

only exist as unproblematic if the natural world is kept on one side (nevertheless,

constructed by man) and the social world on the other side (nevertheless, sustained by

things or nature) (Latour 1993, 31). This arrangement gives the moderns a scale along

which one can move in whatever direction circumstances demand. Explanatory power or

ability to account for society and nature (without contradiction) is always intact and never

limited by anything, "On the one hand, the transcendence of nature will not prevent its

social immanence; on the other, the immanence of the social will not prevent the

Leviathan from remaining transcendent" (Latour 1993, 32).

Resolution to any conflicts arising from the first three guarantees depends

on the fourth guarantee, what Latour calls the crossed-out God. According to Latour, God

is there but infinitely distanced when the situation demands that. He is nevertheless

available, on standby, when the appeal to transcendence is necessary to settle a conflict

between nature and society. If we invoke the image of a moving scale again, we can now

see that the strength of the moderns, as identified by Latour, lies in strategically

mobilizing or manipulating these four guarantees so as to account for everything without

giving up anything. But, as noted earlier, when we confront the existence of quasi-objects

22

head on we see that the distinctions that make up the modern constitution become harder

to accept. Quasi-objects are the hybrids that were erected by modernism but then,

through the work of purification sorted out. However, the moderns never succeed in this

task - quasi-objects are always already there. Latour writes "the modern explanations

consisted in splitting the mixtures apart in order to extract from them what came from the

subject (or the social) and what came from the object" (Latour 1993, 78). This tactic by

the moderns is their greatest mistake - the mistake that nonmodernism will iron out

through the work of mediation.

Postmodernism has never occupied the ground that nonmodernism

represents. It is so because postmodernists allowed the modernist framework to remain

by denouncing everything that modernism stood for. Much of the work in postmodern

thought has been about challenging assumptions and dichotomies of modernism, but

Latour dismisses post-modernism as merely a symptom of modernism. Postmodern

thinkers have continued to play under the framework of modernism - they have accepted

it and then put a negative sign in front of it (Latour 1993, 134). In other words, Latour is

critical of postmodernism because it has, en route to denouncing modernism, shifted the

focus completely from the nature pole to the society pole and we are no better off with

that approach (see chapter 3).

Latour aims to pull the elements that have been separated under

modernism toward a middle ground or 'the Middle Kingdom'. So far, Latour believes, no

one has taken on the task of studying these separations since there was no adequate

ground or point from which to undertake this study. The nonmodern constitution is

precisely this ground. It is new, a step beyond not only modernism but also

23

postmodernism. Latour wants to take the game a step further, to dissolve the idea that we

are modern, but not through the staleness of the postmodern critique. "The postmoderns

have sensed the crisis of the moderns and attempted to overcome it; thus they too warrant

examination and sorting. It is of course impossible to conserve their irony, their despair,

their discouragement, their nihilism, their self-criticism, since all those fine qualities

depend on a conception of modernism that modernism itself has never really practiced"

(Latour 1993, 134). Here again is an instance of postmodernism as an answer to

modernity but only as negating modernism and as such still not able to account for the

quasi-objects, still not occupying the ground that can absorb both nature and society at

once (see chapter 3). Learning from the mistakes of modernism and postmodernism,

Latour reconfigures the constitution to arrive at nonmodernism.

All that is deemed useful by Latour in modernism and postmodernism is

gathered and reconstructed to form a new constitution: the nonmodern constitution.

Before each guarantee is explicated, here are the four guarantees of the nonmodern

constitution in their abbreviated form: 1) nonseparability of the common production of

societies and nature 2) continuous following of the production of nature and the

production of society but not as separate entities 3) freedom to address quasi-objects

without ever having to choose between the archaism and modernization, the local and the

global, the cultural and the universal - no recognition of the homogenous temporal flow

4) the production of quasi-objects, now made explicit and also construed as a collective

doing, is democracy or giving a voice to hitherto voiceless entities. Furthermore, through

representation we can control the pace at which quasi-objects proliferate (Latour 1993,

141).

24

The first two guarantees reinforce Latour's claim that we must account for

both nature and society at once and do so from the ground that can encompass both.

"Nature and society are no longer explanatory terms but rather something that requires a

conjoined explanation" (Latour 1993, 81). The reference to freedom in the third

guarantee is vague on Latour's part, but it seems to suggest another instance of the

necessary removal from the modern assumption about the possibility of grouping or

organizing elements so as to belong to all times and all ontologies - a rejection of that

modern tendency to totalize. The fourth guarantee suggests that by uncovering quasi-

objects, by allowing them to flourish, they are given a voice and as such this practice is

indicative of democracy on a large scale. We do not know in advance what is nature and

what is society, the two are being constantly negotiated. As such, quasi-objects are

unpredictable and so is the speed with which they proliferate. We can regulate this by

slowing them down through constitutional representation, "this slowing down, this

moderation, this regulation, is what we expect from our morality" (Latour 1993, 142).

Some problems regarding the third and the fourth guarantee in the nonmodern

constitution will be addressed later (see chapter 3. But for now it should be noted that

both guarantees are vague and what is more, there are several challenges to the task that

Latour has framed.

As we have seen, the commitment to the nonmodern constitution is a

commitment to representing quasi-objects. Again, their analysis is impossible under the

modern constitution because the practice of translation and purification is incapable of

accounting for these quasi-objects. In Politics Of Nature, the nonmodern constitution

plays out: blurring of the distinctions and in particular between the human and nonhuman

25

results in our ability to account for these quasi-objects that could not be accounted for

under the modern constitution.

1.4 Politics Of Nature

As should be evident by now, distinctions introduced by the moderns and

distinctions played into by the postmoderris are problematic. We can remedy this problem

if we devote ourselves to what Latour calls political ecology. The term "politics" has

always been defined in opposition to nature (Latour 2004, 1). By that Latour means that

we have unfortunately distinguished between the questions of politics and the questions

of nature. Political ecology, as conceived by Latour, would treat these two sets of

questions as a single issue that arises for everything we encounter (Latour 2004, 1). What

should stand out in the conception of political ecology is the refusal of the notion of

nature as distinct from politics (or society) and especially, the refusal of nature as our

explanatory base.

The purpose of Latour's discussion of Plato's cave analogy below is to

show how we have come to regard 'reality of the external world' and 'the social world'

as distinct from one another. The reality of the external world corresponds to nature while

the social world to society. Latour insists that we need to forget about Plato's allegory of

the Cave because "the entire machine has functioned only if people have found

themselves plunged into the darkness of the cave in advance, every individual cut off

from every other...without contact with the reality...and then and only then will Science

come to save us" (Latour 2004, 16). This myth has allowed the 'epistemological police'

26

to short-circuit anyone questioning the bond between nature and science and how

scientists are able with little effort to hop back and forth between society and nature.

Latour points out that it is precisely this ease with which scientists move

between nature and society that is the evidence that things are not distinct but rather of

one seamless cloth (Latour 2004, 12). He writes, "the double rupture of the Cave is not

based on any empirical investigation or observed phenomena; it is even contrary to

common sense, to the daily practice of all scientists...the epistemology police will

always cancel out that ordinary knowledge by creating the double rupture between

elements..." (Latour 2004, 13). The allegory of the Cave supports a Constitution that

organizes public life into two houses (Latour 2004, 13). The first house in the

Constitution consists of ignorant people who are subject to fiction playing out on the

walls of the Cave. The second house is made up of nonhumans that are somehow

indifferent and detached from the first house (Latour 2004, 14). Unlike the first house,

the second house, or nonhumans define what exists but nonhumans lack speech, "on the

one hand, we have chattering of fictions; on the other, the silence of reality" (Latour

2004, 14). The genius or the subtlety of this model lies in the ability of the few experts to

go back and forth between the houses. With this ability (Latour refers to it as the most

fabulous political capacity ever invented) the select few can " make the world speak, tell

the truth without being challenged, put an end to the interminable arguments through an

incontestable form of authority that would stem from things themselves" (Latour 2004,

14).

In order to get away from this dubious conception of the Constitution, we

need to pair humans and nonhumans in order to allow the collective to assemble a greater

27

number of quasi-objects in a single world or the common world (Latour 2004, 80). The

term collective is used to mark a political philosophy that no longer relies on the two

poles of attraction (nature and society, human and nonhuman). The term 'collective'

means neither "one" nor "two": it means "all" (Latour 2004, 94). The collective cannot

be reduced to a single or two elements, which if unified would define it. The collective is

a steady and an infinite web of relations with no clear boundaries.

Our task is not a simple matter of joining humans and nonhumans. Instead,

in the notion of 'collective' we have a fundamental feature of political ecology: that of

collecting into a whole (Latour 2004, 59). It is this perpetual collecting of humans and

nonhumans that Latour wants to emphasize.

[The extension] of the collective makes possible a presentation of humans

and nonhumans that is completely different from the one required by the

cold war between objects and subjects...as soon as we stop taking

nonhumans as objects, as soon as we allow them to enter the collective in

the form of new entities with uncertain boundaries, entities that hesitate,

quake, and induce perplexity, it is not hard to see that we can grant them

the designation of actors (Latour 2004, 76).

In other words, if we (as in We Have Never Been Modern) refuse the separations that we

have hitherto followed blindly and allow humans and nonhumans to proliferate

simultaneously but not as distinct entities, then we are fully engaged in political ecology.

28

As such, we would encourage 'collecting' of the humans and nonhumans and their

further proliferation in an infinite web of relations.

An actor or an actant is a term from semiotics used to cover both human

and nonhuman entities (quasi-objects). It is any entity that modifies another entity

(Latour 2004, 237). The collective is a melting pot of actants (Latour 2004, 80). Actors

disrupt, and they tell us that things don't fall neatly into objects and subjects. As we saw

in the Laboratory Life, before a fact can be recognized as such, there are a myriad of

factors (human and nonhuman) that are responsible for its emergence. Similarly, the act

of collecting makes explicit and expands the list of actions and relations between humans

and nonhumans that we once took to be distinct from one another. But how does the

association of humans and nonhumans happen? To explain this, a new term needs to be

introduced: a proposition.

A proposition, as conceived by Latour, is not a statement that might be

either true or false and definitely not a vehicle for speaking about external reality. Rather,

it is " an association of humans and nonhumans before it becomes a full - fledged

member of the collective.. .rather than being true or false, a proposition in this sense may

be well or badly articulated" (Latour 2004, 247). A river, a mayor, El Nino, a troop of

elephants are propositions to the collective (Latour 2004, 83). Propositions are going to

be our guide in political ecology, "Who assembles, who speaks, who decides in political

ecology? We now know the answer: neither nature nor humans, but well-articulated

actors, associations of humans and nonhumans, well-formed propositions" (Latour 2004,

86). There of course is the question of what constitutes a well-formed proposition.

Roughly, it will be the one that has the potential to promote further collecting or is

29

conducive to assembling. A proposition that is either well formed or badly formed will go

through the following cycle before it is accepted into the collective or rejected:

[It would induce] perplexity in those who are gathered to discuss it and

who set up the trials that allow them to ensure the seriousness of its

candidacy for existence; it demands to be taken into account by all those

whose habits it is going to modify and who. must therefore sit on its jury; if

it is successful in the first two stages, it will be able to insert itself in the

states of the world only provided it finds a place in a hierarchy that

precedes it; finally, if it earns its legitimate right to existence, it will

become...part of the indisputable nature of the good common world

(Latour 2004, 123).

Because we are no longer bound by clear distinctions that group entities into two houses,

with the acceptance of a proposition into a collective there is also a rejection of another

proposition. The rejected proposition is the one that, for the time being, collectivity

decided to do without (Latour 2004, 124). As new propositions secure their place in the

collective, other propositions are deposited in the sort of dumping ground. As it builds

up, this dumping ground has the power to put the collective in danger by knocking on its

door and asking to be reconsidered thereby putting the assembled collective in flux again.

The work of scientists is a way to bridge all that modernity tried to separate - they are the

spokespersons for nonhumans. At first it may seem as if the outcome might be that of

science once again possessing the special power to get in touch with things out there in

nature minus all the social factors. But this is not the case. Scientists never had the view

30

from nowhere and as we have seen, such notion could only exist under the model of two

houses inspired by the allegory of the Cave.

The way Latour has imagined this project and the work of scientists is best

exemplified in the following: instead of having science and politics divide their territory

and then defend it from the other, Latour proposes that we simply make these two parties

work jointly towards an ever growing list of associations between human and nonhuman

actors, or a collective (Latour 2004, 89). It is this 'stirring together' of humans and

nonhumans that should be our goal. And in a way it is our only choice, it is inevitable

(stirring of nonhumans and humans, collapsing distinctions). Consider the question of

glaciers melting in the north. Glaciers, as the nonhumans, have the scientists as a kind of

prosthetic through which they can speak. Scientists enable them to speak by measuring

the rate and the speed at which they melt and what the consequences might be for our

society. Environmental decisions (affecting many things and people) are made or not

made based on that information. The example illustrates the connections between entities

that have been kept separate under the modern constitution. Again, what should always

be maintained is the refusal to "tie politics to humans, subjects, or freedom, and to tie

science to objects, nature, or necessity..." (Latour 2004, 89). We ought to be nonmodern

and to do so we ought to practice political ecology.

1.5 Concluding Remarks

Each book reviewed in this chapter illustrates Latour's attempts to move

ahead and away from social constructivism, past modernism and postmodernism.

Latour's sense is that for a long time we have been going in the wrong direction in

31

science stvidies. Latour's suggestion is that we should look for all the disorder before the

appearance of order, open black boxes, trace networks, collapse the distinction between

nature and society, subject and object and finally acknowledge the existence of quasi-

objects. Nonmodernism and 'one more turn after the social turn' embody these

prescriptions, and as such they are an improvement on what has gone so far in science

studies. But Latour's attempts to actualize these prescriptions face some challenges. What

should look like 'taking one more turn after the social turn' and nonmodernism often

relies on similar (if not the same) notions Latour is attempting to move away from. The

following chapters will aim to illustrate these shortcomings.

32

Chapter Two Latour & Social Constructivism

2.1 Introduction

This chapter will show that Latour does not succeed in distinguishing

himself from the Strong Program in particular and social constructivism in general. The

conclusions that Latour draws from his findings in Laboratory Life and Science in Action

are congruent with the conclusions that social constructivists have made and continue to l

make. This supports my thesis that Latour does not take 'one more turn after the social

turn'. I begin by illustrating the three traditions that are most relevant to my task:

sociology of knowledge, sociology of scientific knowledge and the Strong Program.

2.2 Sociology Of Knowledge, Sociology Of Scientific Knowledge & the Strong

Program

First emphasized by the ancient philosophers and later adopted as

imperative in the production of knowledge, values such as disinterestedness and

objectivity have been (and continue to be) under scrutiny. Various fields (for example,

feminist epistemology, race studies, and post-colonial studies) have argued in great detail

that what passes as disinterested and objective knowledge is, in fact, not so disinterested

or objective. Rather, it is a reflection of attitudes held by those historically and

traditionally in the position to set standards that determine what counts as knowledge and

what should be relegated as mere belief held by individuals or society. Efforts and ideas

of the aforementioned fields are underpinned by some of the basic tenets of sociology of

knowledge. At its simplest, sociology of knowledge is guided by the belief that

33

knowledge is influenced by the social and cultural contexts in which it is produced

(Mulkay 1979, 1). The sociology of knowledge is concerned with how beliefs are

distributed in various knowledge-making spheres and what factors influence or guide that

distribution. Some of the questions that sociology of knowledge asks are: How is

knowledge transmitted? How stable is it? What processes go into its creation and

maintenance? How is it organized and categorized into different disciplines (Bloor 1976,

5)?

Inspired by this basic stance (that knowledge is influenced by its social

and cultural contexts), several divergent fields have emerged from the sociology of

knowledge. One such field is the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). SSK differs

from traditional sociology of knowledge in that it is a slightly more radical take on the

connection between the social factors and knowledge. This point is well articulated by

Steven Shapin, one of the founders of SSK, "While traditional sociology of knowledge

asked how, and to what extent, "social factors" might influence the products of the mind,

SSK sought to show that knowledge was constitutively social, and in so doing, it raised

fundamental questions about taken-for-granted divisions between 'social versus

cognitive, or natural, factors'" (Shapin 1995, 289). Below is an illustration of some of the

SSK's challenges to the traditional ideas about knowledge.

Against philosophical rationalism, foundationalism, essentialism, and to

some extent realism, SSK set out to construct a framework in which social factors

counted not as contaminants but as constitutive of the very idea of scientific knowledge

(Shapin 1995, 297). The task was to point to the social influences on scientific knowledge

where they were thought not to exist. This included combing through many taken-for-

34

granted assumptions most often present in the so called "hard sciences" (Shapin 1995,

300). For those who viewed and continue to view social factors as pollutants this practice

was interpreted as an effort by the SSK to undermine validity of scientific knowledge and

practice (see Gross and Levitt 1997). This, however, was not the aim of SSK. The

interpretation that the work of SSK compromises purity of knowledge stems from that

ancient premise that social factors contaminate. But the goal of SSK was merely to

illustrate the social dimension hitherto overlooked and to be avoided was a necessary

condition in the construction of knowledge. As such, it is not a blow to the scientific

knowledge and practice but instead a better understanding of what we take to be

knowledge (Shapin 1995, 300). This better understanding was to come from studying

science as action and scientific knowledge as a product of that action. Insofar as

sociology is concerned with studying what people do collectively, how and why they do

it, knowledge producing domains ought to be studied from the sociological point, since,

for example, scientific research is what scientists collectively do (Barnes, Bloor and

Henry 1996, 110).

With diverse aims and approaches to studying science from a sociological

point of view, SSK practitioners splintered into groups while retaining the basic idea of

SSK. The Strong Program is one such variety of SSK. The Strong Program aims to study

science by tracing the psychological and sociological causes of scientific beliefs and

decisions, and in particular, decisions to accept or reject scientific theories (Curd and

Cover 1998, 1308). The sociology of knowledge is traditionally associated with the Weak

Program. The idea behind the Weak Program is that socio-psychological causes need

only be sought for error, irrationality and deviation from the proper norms and

35

methodological precepts of science (see Restivo, 1981; Phillips, 1974). In contrast to the

Weak Program, supporters of the Strong Program argue for the need to explain, in causal

terms, all systems of belief regardless of how they are evaluated (Bloor, 1999; Bloor,

1976; Barnes, Bloor and Henry 1996).

There are four tenets that define the Strong Program. They are causality,

impartiality, symmetry and reflexivity. Causality refers to examining the conditions that

bring about belief or knowledge. Impartiality means that regardless of any dichotomous

labels such as truth and falsity, or rational and irrational, explanations will need to be

given to both sides of dichotomies. Symmetry refers to the style of explanation: the same

types of causes would explain true and false beliefs. Lastly, reflexivity dictates that the

patterns of explanation employed by sociology are applicable to itself. This is a

particularly important characteristic of the Strong Program because ignoring reflexivity

would refute its method and theories (Bloor 1976, 7). If the Strong Program makes the

claim that knowledge is constructed or influenced by social elements, then its own

knowledge claims are subject to that claim as well. In other words, the Strong Program

subjects itself to the same kind of analysis that it adopts for studying science.

These principles aside, the more general characteristic of the Strong

Program is that it is concerned with giving an account of what we take to be our shared

beliefs about nature. It is important to note that the Strong Program is not an effort to

explain nature in terms of society. Rather, and as the previous sentence suggests, it is a

project to understand the character and causes of what people take knowledge to be

(BloOr 1999, 87). The first three principles of the Strong Program (causality, impartiality

and symmetry) dictate the definition of knowledge that the Strong Program adheres to:

36

knowledge is whatever people take knowledge to be (Bloor 1976, 5) and as such, it is

subject to sociological inquiry.

2.3 One More Turn After the Social Turn

Traditional sociology of knowledge was skeptical of social sciences'

ability to study science. The stance taken by SSK cleared up these doubts and for some

time advancements were made. According to Latour, the notion of reflexivity brought

progress to a halt. Latour writes "a few, who call themselves reflexivists, are delighted at

being in a blind alley... they had said that social studies of science could not go anywhere

if it did not apply its own tool to itself...now that it goes nowhere and is threatened by

sterility, they feel vindicated" (Latour 1992, 276). 'One more turn after the social turn' is

a phrase that encapsulates Latour's efforts to rescue science studies from what he claims

is the deadlock it finds itself in. This new and more radical move is inspired by Latour's

findings in Laboratory Life and Science In Action but equally reflected in his later works

such as We Have Never Been Modern and The Politics Of Nature. In what follows, I will

illustrate why Latour thinks it is necessary that we take 'one more turn after the social

turn' and how we should go about doing it.

Latour sees as problematic the framework that he claims has thus far

determined and stunted the inquiry into scientific knowledge. This framework consists of

the subject pole and the object pole. To help with sketching out why this framework is

problematic we are asked to keep in mind several adjectives that run along this line,

"radical", "progressivist", "conservative", "reactionary" and "golden mean" (Latour

1992, 279). On one side of the line we find the nature pole and on the other the subject

37

pole. Along this line we can map previously mentioned adjectives in order to understand

how the debate has gone so far and why we find ourselves in the deadlock. So, someone

who believes that scientific knowledge is entirely constructed "out o f social factors or

relations is a radical and sits closest to the subject pole. A progressivist is someone who

thinks scientific knowledge is partially constructed by social factors but largely by

encountering nature itself. A jump over the golden mean and over to the other side of the

pole and we have a mirror image of this progressivist stance: a conservative who thinks

that science mainly escapes social factors but nevertheless they are capable of leaking in.

Lastly and closest to the object pole is a reactionary who takes shedding of all social

factors as the true mark of scientific knowledge. Those who sit along the golden mean are

merely wishy-washy scholars who shun both extremes while adding a bit of each extreme

here and there (Latour 1992, 279). According to Latour, with this set-up we can log all of

our debates about science along this line and it is precisely this framework that is

responsible for the predicament science studies finds itself in.

With this simple take on how inquiry into scientific knowledge proceeds,

Latour interprets the aim and the work of the Strong Program as being at the far end of

the subject pole. He grants that some progress was made when people started realizing

that social factors play a role in the construction of scientific knowledge. But he is

equally critical of those (the Strong Program especially) who seem satisfied once they

have shifted the focus from the object pole to the subject pole. The criticism is directed at

the Strong Program (the Strong Program here being the most radical brand related to

social constructivism) because their work perpetuates the framework that is

representative of some of the basic and flawed modern ideas. The charge is that the

38

Strong Program is playing into the asymmetrical framework set up by the moderns when

it tries to rely exclusively on the subject pole. In short, and according to Latour, the

approach of the Strong Program (and more broadly postmodernism) is a symptom and not

a solution to the problems that arose from modernist ideas.

There is an inherent imbalance behind the subject and object distinction

and as such this asymmetry dictates that we explain truth with nature and error with

society. According to Latour, the symmetry principle adopted by the Strong Program

would now explain both truth and error with society but this too is completely

asymmetrical. It is asymmetrical because it continues along the same blueprint of the

moderns, only this time the power has shifted to the subject pole. Latour argues that we

need to take a 90 degree shift from the subject pole or from where the Strong Program

sits, in order to overcome asymmetry. Latour's generalized principle of symmetry (the

first principle of symmetry is associated with the Strong Program) is much more radical,

according to Latour, because it will treat the subject pole and the object pole in the same

way (Latour 1992, 281). He seeks an alternative and this alternative (Latour's generalized

principle of symmetry) asserts that the explanation should instead begin from the quasi-

objects that are positioned in the middle of the object-subject pole (see chapter 1, section

1.3). Positioned as such, we are capable of "fanning out" or simultaneously addressing

nature and society - something that sociologists of knowledge cannot accomplish

because they seek to explain from the subject (society) end of the pole. The generalized

principle of symmetry is supposed to restore agency to things and allow us both to

understand the way in which both nature and society are constituted. This is the defining

feature of the 'one more turn after the social turn' approach.

39

Moreover, this new position neither exists nor operates under the

modernist framework - it is a completely new yardstick. This new yardstick requires that

the separations that allowed the modern framework to exist (subject and object, nature

and society) are integrated or redistributed so as to allow for the emergence of a new

point from which we can assess scientific knowledge, nature, reality and so on. Latour is

aware that this is not an easy task but nevertheless it is our only way out of the stalemate.

2.4 Some problems with Latour's position and how it is not non-sociological

The nonmodern position should be an improvement on what has gone on

in the social constructivists circles (Bloor 1999, 82, Latour 1992, 276). It is also a

position that vigorously disassociates itself from social construction and especially the

Strong Program. For Latour, it is construction but not social construction (for example,

the subtitle correction of the second edition of Laboratory Life ). He no longer sees

"social" as bearing any relevance in our explanations. Laboratory Life and Science In

Action showed that the emergence of facts results from the careful assembling of

numerous elements (social and non-social). As a result, it becomes meaningless to hinge

our explanations solely on the social sphere (as the Strong Program does) because the

aforementioned texts have stripped "social" of any meaning or of explanatory power

(Latour and Woolgar 1979, 281).

In "Anti-Latour", Bloor asserts that Latour's criticism of sociology of

knowledge, and more precisely the Strong Program, has no merit because he

It occurred to Latour and Woolgar that the subtitle containing the word "social" was not conveying their message accurately. Their work had stripped the word "social" of meaning. Consequently, the second edition contained the word construction only.

40

fundamentally misinterprets the position he is criticizing (Bloor 1999, 82). The

misrepresentation, according to Bloor, stems largely from Latour's insistence that it is

possible to and that we should abandon the subject-object schema that we have been

relying on so far. We should abandon this schema in favor of a new yardstick, a

nonmodern position or what Latour calls the Middle Kingdom. But Bloor, like myself, is

suspicious that Latour has succeeded in leaving behind the subject-object schema. In

what follows, I will aim to show how Latour, despite his efforts, is unsuccessful in 1)

distancing himself from social construction and in particular the Strong Program and 2)

illustrating what exactly his nonmodern approach is and how it can be actualized. My

arguments will be made with the help of and against the backdrop of the Strong Program.

The conclusion should indicate that Latour cannot get away from the social

constructivism that is central to the sociology of knowledge and from which he wishes to

distance his work.

As previously noted, according to Latour, the traditional schema is flawed.

The sociologists have played into Kant's Critique and as a result we find ourselves in a

deadlock. Latour's understanding of Kant can be briefly summarized as the introduction

of things-in-themselves on the one hand and the Transcendental Ego on the other, which

when put together would account for knowledge. The meeting point of the two purified

sets of resources (things-im-thgmselves and the Transcendental Ego) is where empirical

scientific knowledge emerges. This, according to Latour, is a clear mark of modernism

that we should move away from (Latour 1992, 280). We must collapse the distinctions

that dictate starting points as either society or nature - we need to move away from these

extremes to some middle ground or the Middle Kingdom.

41

But this suggestion is puzzling. It is puzzling because one cannot be sure

how this new position that we arrive at (after taking one more turn after the social turn) is

devoid of elements that Latour criticizes. My criticism regarding this suggestion is in line

with Bloor's: Latour is under the false impression that it is possible to actualize his aim to

produce a non-sociological, non reductionist analysis of knowledge, one that neither

reduces nature to society nor society to nature (Bloor 1999, 87). The problem is that the

necessary 90 degree shift from the Strong Program still contains and always will contain

traces of the subject pole that Latour criticizes and wants to get away from. By this I

mean that even his newly crafted position inevitably begins from the subject, from his

own social convictions or contexts he occupies.

To put it bluntly, Latour is not above "social" nor is he above "nature".

'The middle ground' which he invokes is always and already social. He cannot shed the

social attitudes that prop the nonmodern position for the same reasons that (as his

research in Laboratory Life shows) scientists cannot shed their own attitudes or the

attitudes of their community in laboratories that they occupy. This is not to say that

removing context and social factors is a desirable thing and what Latour should pursue.

Rather, it is to highlight the ubiquitous nature of the subject pole and of the social

elements that Latour criticizes and wants to overcome. His dissatisfaction has mainly to

do with the extent to which social construction and sociology of knowledge rely on the

subject pole. Aimed particularly at the Strong Program, Latour's criticism boils down to

the Strong Program's method of relying exclusively on society to explain nature (the

latter claim being Latour's understanding of the Strong Program, a claim which Bloor

disputes). The highlighting of the ubiquitous nature of social elements serves as a

42

reminder and as a response to Latour's seemingly invincible position that will rescue us

from the predicaments of modernism, postmodernism and social construction. There is a

sense in which 'one more turn after the social turn' represents this special or privileged

point of view or method of analysis - the sort of privileged point of view that we often

grant to science and which Latour criticizes. In other words, 'one more turn after the

social turn' or 'the middle ground' is an instance of 'the view from nowhere4'. It seems

that a further step from social construction leads Latour back to the traditional ideas of

disinterestedness, and detachment.

And it is precisely this that is at once puzzling and ironic: a position that is

somehow above the subject pole and the object pole, capable of addressing both equally

while blissfully ignoring that its basis, its existence is forever or always and already

rooted in the subject, in the social and historical context - in the subject pole. Any efforts

to minimize the role of the subject pole or to shift away from it, as Latour tries to do by

making a 90 degree turn from the subject pole, are going to be driven by the social

elements. As such, Latour, despite his claims, cannot distinguish himself from the social

construction. It was noted earlier that the basic premise of sociology of knowledge is that

social context influences knowledge in some way. Whether that is a good or bad thing is

not a concern, the bottom line is that it impacts how knowledge is constructed. The

second edition of Laboratory Life omits the word "social" in its subtitle because it

occurred to Latour and Woolgar that "social" was, thanks to the findings in Laboratory

Life, now devoid of meaning. It becomes pointless to ask if something is social or not

The phrase 'the view from nowhere' is associated with Thomas Nagel (see Nagel's The View From Nowhere, 1986). In this thesis the phrase 'the view from nowhere' refers to a point that is neither rooted in the social pole nor in the nature pole. Appropriated as such, it is not to be associated with Nagel's use of the phrase.

43

given the intricate web of elements and their associations. In the postscript to Laboratory

Life Latour asks how useful the term "social" is "once we accept that all interactions are

social? What does the term "social" convey when it refers equally to a pen's inscription

on graph paper, to the construction of a text and to the gradual elaboration of amino-acid

chain? Not a lot." (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 281). My claim that we are always and

already grounded in the social seems to get recognized by Latour here and it for a

moment appears as if Latour contradicts himself. EJut that is averted by deflating the

relevance of "social" and replacing it with "construction" without a convincing argument

as to why that is the case or why is that an improvement. If everything is social (as

Latour's quote above suggests), then "construction" is not different from "social

construction".

We as individuals take nature, objects and then proceed to construct from

the subject. My claim is that Latour's nonmodern position inevitably reflects the position

of social construction and that the nonmodern, non-sociological position desired by

Latour is unlikely. It is unlikely because treating the subject and the object pole in the

same way (as his position calls for) demands that the position will neither be from the

object pole nor from the subject pole. Envisioned as such, the 'middle ground', is a

peculiar stance that Latour never spells out. To spell it out would either mean admitting

to a 'view from nowhere' that is reminiscent of the modern idea of detachment or,

equally embarrassing for him, admitting that it is in fact the ideas and language of the

sociologists that, he is relying on after all. The 'view from nowhere' comes to mind

because of Latour's faith in our ability to somehow suspend ourselves from both the

object and the subject pole and treat both in the same way. What Latour conveniently

44

leaves out is the fact that we can not but start from the subject pole and so treating both

poles in the same way as he has envisioned will be "skewed" from the outset. For this

reason, I believe that Latour's distinction between "construction" and "social

construction" and insistence on the former is meaningless - it is always social. 'One more

turn after the social turn' may be a turn but it certainly is not after the social turn or

beyond the social.

As previously indicated, my concerns are in line with David Bloor's.

Latour's reply to Bloor regarding the charges above is vague. In "For David Bloor...and

Beyond: A Reply to David Bloor's 'Anti-Latour'", Latour writes "the problem, of course,

is that David's point of view is not the right one to evaluate our work from. What he sees

as the main sources of obscurity, are the source, for all of us, of our main claim to

analytic clarity" (Latour 1999, 114). The vagueness of Latour's response can and should

be interpreted as proof of his inability to answer the criticism above. That the Strong

Program is not the right point of view to evaluate his work from may be because it

fundamentally undermines Latour's project of taking that further step from social

construction.

Furthermore, if Latour's dissatisfaction has been with the modern

framework of the object pole and subject pole, how has Latour addressed this division by

that 90 degree shift from the subject pole? The reality is that the distinction that he finds

problematic is still very much central to the tenability of his own position. Quasi-objects

help in concealing this. They are positioned in the middle, as a place where one is

somehow suspended and able to navigate at once the field containing nature and society.

Bloor writes "The new principle of symmetry, in which the analyst is poised, as it were,

45

above both nature and society..." (Bloor 1999, 85). The generalized symmetry principle

appears to offer a new and improved way to understand nature and society minus all the

pitfalls of the Strong Program. But it does not accomplish that: if the point from which

Latour is glancing at nature and society is not like that of the Strong Program or of social

construction, what is it? Again, Latour's position cannot be articulated without either

relying on what social construction already relies on or without molding of the position to

something like the 'view from nowhere'. Explanations starting from the quasi-objects

allow Latour to distinguish himself from the Strong Program. "After baffling talk about

'quasi-objects', which are 'produced' and 'circulate', we hear that they 'are a new social

link that redefines at once what nature is made of and what society is made of" (Bloor

1999, 98). Bloor believes that once Latour is pressed to say anything positive about his

recommended approach he slips back into the language of the sociology of knowledge -

he cannot get away from the same starting point as the sociologists of knowledge (Bloor

1999,98).

As a proponent of the Strong Program, Bloor's criticism of Latour points

to the error that Latour makes regarding the distinction between nature and beliefs about

nature. Bloor writes "Because Latour has picked up the wrong end of the stick it isn't

surprising that his subsequent account of the symmetry postulate is confused" (Bloor

1999, 88). Latour claims that the Strong Program makes the mistake of trying to explain

nature in terms of society. Bloor's reply to this charge is that Latour arrives at this

incorrect conclusion about the Strong Program because he fails to make the distinction

between nature and beliefs about nature. He fails to make this distinction with respect to

the Strong Program and his own work as well because "he repeatedly casts the argument,

46

his own as well as that of his opponents, in terms of nature itself rather than beliefs about

it... for Latour, it is society and nature, not society and accounts of nature, which are co-

produced" (Bloor 1999, 87).

As noted earlier, the 'symmetry principle' that guides the Strong Program

rests on the idea that both true and false, and rational and irrational beliefs should be

explained by referring to the same kinds of causes. This means that the sociologist of

knowledge would in all cases seek to locate the local, contingent causes of belief. (Bloor

1999, 84). Latour's account the Strong Program is too broad: he positions the sociology

of knowledge on the extreme subject end of the subject and object pole. As such, Latour

makes the further claim that the sociology of knowledge is really asymmetrical because it

explains "truth through its congruence with natural reality, and falsehood through the

constraint of social categories, epistemes or interests...they [are] asymmetrical" (Latour

1993, 94). As noted earlier, Latour thinks that looking into the local and contingent

causes of belief positions sociology of knowledge on the far end of the subject pole. That

this is a criticism of sociology of knowledge and the Strong Program is rather odd

because Laboratory Life and Science In Action are by and large detailed studies of the

local, and contingent conditions that allow facts to be taken for granted and also sustain

their status as unproblematic. In what follows, I will draw a parallel with Latour's

methods that he relied on in Laboratory Life and Science In Action and the four tenets of

the Strong Program. This is evidence for my claim that he remains under the jurisdiction

of social construction.

47

2.5 Laboratory Life & Science In Action And the Strong Program's Four

Tenets

Networks are vital because they either ensure the survival and

proliferation or deny the survival and proliferation of facts. Survival or perishing depends

largely on the contingent factors within a particular field. So for instance, this is

determined by how well a statement fits with the field's past results and/or how well it

blends in with the current interests of the researchers. Laboratory Life and Science In

Action both demonstrate in great detail the contingency and the locality of scientific

knowledge. The Strong Program's principle of causality calls for an examination of the

conditions that bring about belief or knowledge. Here is one instance of how Latour's

method is parallel to that of the Strong Program. That is, both Latour and the Strong

Program seek to trace the steps that led to something becoming a fact or knowledge. This

shows some resemblance between the two or just enough to suggest that Latour is not as

distant from the Strong Program as he believes he is.

The second example is with respect to impartiality and is closely tied with

the symmetry principle. One way of looking at both Laboratory Life and Science In

Action (and especially the latter) is as offering a sort of 'neutral' description of the

scientific practice and as such it is not interested in truth or falsity but is instead an

attempt to document and map out the activity that is prior to facts or knowledge. The

impartiality principle in the Strong Program seeks to give explanations regardless of the

dichotomous labels such as truth and falsity and the symmetry principle ensures that the

same causes are used in these explanations regardless of what is being explained. Given

this, and that Latour's goals in Laboratory Life and Science In Action are geared towards

48

describing what goes into the construction of fact's in a way that is applicable across the

board (we all stylize, position, build armor around our statements), we can see another

instance of the similarity between Latour's methods and those of the Strong Program.

The third example has to do with the notion of reflexivity. It was noted

earlier that Latour's dissatisfaction with the state that science studies finds itself in is

largely due to the notion of reflexivity. As we have seen, reflexivists, according to him,

are delighted to be in the blind alley and stay there thanks to their principle of applying

patterns of explanations or their own methods to their own practice. Science In Action

was an account of science in action but the findings, according to Latour, are applicable

across all fields and that includes sociology, anthropology and so on. Latour writes "No,

we should not overlook the administrative networks that produce, inside rooms in Wall

Street, in the Pentagon, in university departments, fleeting or stable representations of

what is the state of the forces, the nature of our society, the military balance, the health of

the economy, the time for a Russian ballistic missile to hit the Nevada desert" (Latour

1987, 257). Latour admits, like everyone else, that he is in the business of constructing

networks. This is reflexivity. In the same way that the Strong Program analyzes itself on

account of their principle of reflexivity, Latour follows the same path when he subjects

his own work to the patterns of network building he unveiled in Science In Action and

Laboratory Life. He is clear that his account of science is not more privileged than other

accounts. This admission is not proclaiming the worthlessness of his own account.

Rather, it is trying to make the point against the existence of true and false accounts

(Latour and Woolgar 1979, 284). He takes reflexivity to be a reminder that all texts are

stories (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 284). Similarly, the Strong Program holds that, given

49

the principles that they adhere to, it is imperative that they be subject to the same kind of

analysis as other knowledge claims. In other words, the Strong Program, like Latour,

accepts that its position is not privileged in any way. That both are interested in and see

value in applying the notion of reflexivity to their own accounts suggests to me that

Latour is not as far removed from the Strong Program after all.

2.6 Concluding Remarks

There are two main points that this chapter strove to convey: the first

concerns the problems associated with Latour's new position or 'the middle ground'

located between and below the nature and society poles. At times it seemed to embody

the 'view from nowhere' amd at other times it was not clear how it was any different than

social construction (in the broad sense of the latter term). The second emphasizes the

similarities between the Strong Program and Latour to show that Latour is much closer to

the sociology of knowledge or social construction (again, in the broad sense of those

terms) than he claims to be. These two points lend support to my thesis that Latour does

not succeed in taking 'one more turn after the social turn'. As Latour tries to take this

additional step, he finds himself most often under the framework of sociology of

knowledge, sociology of science and the Strong Program.

50

Chapter Three Latour, Modernism & Postmodernism

3.1 Introduction

What exactly is denoted by "modernism" and "postmodernism" continues

to be notoriously difficult to clarify - there are no clear and definitive answers to this

question. Attempts to define modernism and postmodernism amount to just that,

attempts. These efforts ultimately fail to produce concrete definitions largely because of

the elusive qualities that constitute the two. There is little general agreement among

scholars about the characteristics of modernism and postmodernism. What agreement

there is pertains to some of the basic characteristics or markers which refer to modernism

and postmodernism. But from there the interpretations diverge significantly. There are

several factors that contribute to this divergence and also to the problematic nature of

trying to characterize modernity and postmodernity. Some of these factors include

pinning down historical dates that mark the beginning of modernism and especially the

end (that is, if one takes modernism to have ended), what historical figures mark the

beginning and the end of modern and postmodern thought, and the intended aims of

postmodernism and the consequences of those aims (if one takes those aims to have been

achieved). In what follows, I will first illustrate some of the basic and less disputed

characteristics of modernism and postmodernism and then offer various interpretations

that splinter from there:>. This should form an adequate backdrop against which Latour's

nonmodernism can be evaluated and shown as problematic.

5 Many fields (literature, art) and spheres within society have been influenced by modernity and post-modernity but this illustration will focus primarily on modernism and post-modernism as they pertain to philosophy, science and the production of knowledge.

51

I will aim to . align Latour's nonmodern position with that of

postmodernism in general. Latour distances himself from both modernism and

postmodernism and in doing so believes that he has gone further than the common

critiques of modernism offered by either postmodernism or social constructivism. The

goal is not to offer a detailed critique of his position but rather to show that

nonmodernism, as conceived by Latour, falls under much of what postmodernism'

encompasses. In other words, the analysis below will focus on the question of whether

Latour is truly nonmodern as he claims to be. My goal in this chapter is to show that

Latour is more similar to postmodernism than he wants to admit. This will lend support to

my thesis that Latour is not making a 'one more turn after the social turn'. As noted

earlier, definitions of modernism and postmodernism are contentious but I will not focus

here on that dispute. My illustration of each term will be general rather than exhaustive. I

begin by giving an account of modernism and postmodernism, followed by Latour's

understanding of those terms and ending with my goal of aligning Latour much closer to

postmodernism - the end result being that Latour is not taking a step further as he seems

to believe.

3.2 Modernism

There are two senses that are linked to the term "modern". One is a

reference to what is current and as such distinguished from the earlier times, a contrast

between contemporary and traditional ways (Cahoone6 1995, 11). Moreover, this sense of

6 As it will become apparent, Cahoone is my primary source for illustrating the themes of modernism and postmodernism. The literature on modernism and especially postmodernism is extensive and difficult to understand. Cahoone seems to have the most

52

"modern" is used in all spheres of life but as locally or contextually determined. This

means that references to "modern English" and "modern dance" do not refer to the same

historical period but rather have their own distinct references that are determined

contextually (Cahoone 1995, 11). The other sense of the term "modern" pertains to

"Modernity", a historical and major development in the intellectual circles in Europe and

North America. It is this latter sense of the term "modern" that is central to this chapter.

In his essay "The Century Of Genius", Whitehead notes several factors

that he takes to be responsible for the surge in the rationalist sentiment and scientific

thinking that dominated the seventeenth century. He traces the scientific outburst of the

seventeenth century to some of the characteristics of the Middle Ages: the rise of

mathematics, the strong conviction in a detailed order of nature and the persistent

emphasis on the rationalism of the thought of the later Middle Ages (Whitehead 1967,

57). In the sphere of science this meant a greater than ever appeal to experiment and

inductive reasoning with a particular emphasis on taking great care in documenting

particular instances from which general laws could be established (Whitehead 1967, 57,

63; Foucault 1994, 125). Whitehead points to Bacon as one of the great builders of the

modern world because of his unwavering enthusiasm for induction and collection of

empirical facts that would yield general laws about nature (Whitehead 1967, 63). Bacon's

attitude set the tone for the direction that science would take in the seventeenth century

(and continues to take today). This attitude would become crucial to the concerns and

practices of the eighteenth century or the Age of Enlightenment. It became crucial

because this rational attitude got carried over into the social sphere and consequently

general take on modernism and postmodernism and as these two terms are not the central focus of my thesis, his account is sufficient for my needs.

53

formed a new foundation for the political and sociological theories of the eighteenth

century and on. Religion as an explanatory power was in decline and there was a

noticeable shift towards appealing to the facts of nature instead. From there emerged

various notions about the individual and society that the Western world continues to hold

today. Some of these hallmarks are capitalism, a largely secular culture, liberal

democracy, individualism, rationalism and humanism (Cahoone 1995, 11). There is some

controversy with these traits being exclusively ascribed to modernity because some argue

that there were civilizations prior to modernity that espoused values such as free markets,

individuality and so on (Cahoone 1995, 11). Regardless, there is a sense in which the

Modern period (roughly the last two or three centuries in Europe and North America, and

in full bloom by the early twentieth century) is distinct from other periods in history

because few would dispute the tremendous progress made in the sciences, technology and

in the standard of living (Cahoone 1995, 11).

The more abstract notions that characterize modernity are controversial

because, as Cahoone puts it, minds and cultures are harder to make sense of and specify

than airplanes (Cahoone 1995, 12). Nevertheless, there are some abstract characteristics

or beliefs about modernity that surface again and again. It should be noted that while they

resurface, they are never fully articulated but serve as a rough guide. By this I mean that

if the concept of individuality is emphasized, what is precisely meant by 'individuality' is

often only sparingly articulated as well as greatly contested. The interpretation of the

abstract characteristics turns out to be controversial because it depends a lot on the

platform from which these interpretations are made. Controversies surrounding the

concept of modernity persist because in the myriad of possible modern traits,

54

interpretations and historical figures, scholars often focus their attention on one part of

modernity and construe it as the essential aspect of modernity (Cahoone 1995, 12).

Regardless, we can still speak (however imprecisely) of these general abstract notions.

Some of these characteristics that constitute the image of modernity are either put

forward by the moderns themselves or by others (contemporary philosophers or

historians and so on) whose evaluations often contrast modernity to other historical

periods (most often, the Middle Ages). Below are two such illustrations. These

illustrations highlight some of the abstract characteristics (rationality, objectivity,

scientific rigor) as conceived by the moderns and by others both of which indicate

somewhat of a recurring theme of modernity regardless of the source.

The positive self-image modern Western culture has often given to itself, a

picture born in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, is of a civilization

founded on scientific knowledge of the world and rational knowledge of

value, which places the highest premium on individual human life and

freedom, and believes that such freedom and rationality will lead to social

progress through virtuous, self-controlled work, creating a better material,

political, and intellectual life for all (Cahoone 1995, 12).

And,

The Modern Period was characterized by a desire to abjure the Past and to

discard Tradition and all external authority. Behind that drive was an

55

absolute confidence in the capacity of unaided and autonomous human

reason to solve all puzzles and to remove the veil of mystery from reality.

Reason alone can make the objective world no longer a threat to one's

existence, but fully subject to human control through Science and

Technology, ignoring the past and concentrating on the present in a

calculated and methodical manner (Singh 1997, iii).

Regardless of the tendency by scholars to isolate one part that they take to be the essential

feature of modernity or one or two essential figures, from the lengthy quotations above

we can gather some general features of modernity: emphasis on reason/rationality; deep

conviction that objective and certain knowledge is possible and that the rigor and clarity

of science and philosophy will deliver that; unprecedented belief in human abilities to

control nature; and resting on all this or above all, the eagerness to once and for all be

free of the grip of superstition (often religious). It is precisely these values and

convictions that postmodernism will contest and scrutinize. In what follows, I will give

an overview of postmodernism and present some of its concerns regarding the values and

goals that emerge from modernism.

3.3 Postmodernism

Given that postmodernity is a response to modernity, the existence and the

emergence of it is inevitably tied to the period of modernity and modernist values. As it

pertains to science and philosophy (insofar as they are both concerned with knowledge),

it is most often interpreted as repudiating the core values of modernism (objective

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knowledge, disinterested science and etc.). While most postmodernists are explicit in this

belief there are others who are less so or are ambivalent. They may instead simply

question the modern project or comment on it (for example, the potential for its

actualization, what its consequences are or have been, etc.) without explicitly rejecting it

or replacing it with an alternative (Cahoone 1995, 2). This is related to the question of

whether or not the modern project has ended or if the concerns raised by the

postmodernists represent the continuation of what was started by the modernists. There is

no definitive answer to this question. If defining modernism proved to be a thorny

undertaking then (insofar as postmodernism follows from or comes after modernism)

then defining postmodernism, its goals and how it relates to modernity seems even more

difficult.

But most postmodernists (if not all) welcome this disarray: while emphasis

on order and unity was central to modernism, postmodernists embrace the plurality of

ideas or voices and the contradictions that stem from those. Again, what is precisely

meant by postmodernism is difficult to say, but there are, as with modernism, at the very

least some basic or crude characteristics that stand out. One such feature is the realization

of the serious problems with modernity's conceptions of and push for rationalism,

foundationalism, objectivity, and truth.

These concerns are echoed across the five prominent themes of

postmodernism, four of which are objects of its criticism and one that represents its

method (Cahoone 1995, 14). As articulated by Cahoone, they are 1) criticism of presence

or presentation (versus representation and construction) 2) criticism of origin (versus

phenomena), 3) criticism of unity (versus plurality), 4) criticism of transcendence of

57

norms (versus their immanence) and 5) often carrying out analysis through the idea of the

constituitive other (the latter being its method) (Cahoone 1995, 14).

Presence refers to the immediate experience and thereby to the objects

immediately "presented". As such, it is devoid of any interpretations that may come later

and rely on linguistics signs and concepts, construction or products of human

intervention. Take for instance scientific facts. They are understood as self-sufficient

instances of reality, not relying on or being influenced by any other factors and capable of

being observed as such (Rockmore 2005, 16). Postmodernists argue that there is no such

presentation. They deny the possibility that anything is "immediately present" by

pointing to the inevitability of experience being mediated by signs, language,

interpretation and so on - it's not that there is no "presence", it's just that it is always

going to be through a myriad of human factors, meanings, signs etc. (Cahoone 1995, 14).

Origin, as the word itself suggests and as taken up by modernists, is the

idea that there is a source for whatever is under consideration. This is largely due to the

modernist or rationalist insistence on going beyond phenomena so as to reach their

foundation or origin. Postmodernism denies that this is possible. Reaching the foundation

is impossible because there is no one and authoritative interpretation or view that can

illuminate the origin - there are only various interpretations (equally valid) of whatever is

under the consideration none of which grasps the origin. The saying 'every author is a

dead author,' is an example of the denial of origin, because it denies that the meaning of a

text "can be 'authoritatively' revealed through reference to authorial intentions"

(Cahoone 1995, 15). The meaning of a text is in the hands of later users.

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The possibility of unity is denied under postmodernism. Postmodernists

argue that what has traditionally been passed as unity (a single, integral existence or

concept) is actually plural. "Everything is constituted by relations to other things, hence

nothing is simple, immediate!, or totally present, and analysis of anything can be complete

or final" (Cahoone 1995, 15). In explaining the above, the idea of constituitive other is

useful. Constitutive other as a method foregrounds postmodern analysis of entities

because it holds that what appears to us as one unit (philosophical systems, meanings

etc.) is in fact explained by other processes like exclusion, opposition, and

hierarchization (Cahoone 1995, 16). Moreover, the concept of otherness shows how one

side is valued but only if the other is regarded as foreign, of lesser value. For instance, in

philosophy the dualism between "reality" and "appearance" and the privileged position of

"reality" can only be maintained if "appearance" serves as a waste bin for all that the

privileged position refuses (Cahoone 1995, 16). In addition to that, postmodernism claims

that norms are not independent of the processes that constitute them and as such all

normative claims, including those of postmodernists, are problematic. Norms like beauty,

justice and so on cannot escape the intellectual, historical and social context in which

they are produced. So instead of accepting the transcendence of norms, postmodernism

tries to give an account of the processes of thought, writing, negotiation, and power

which produce normative claims thereby rendering any possibility of the transcendence

of norms problematic or impossible (Cahoone 1995, 16).

The first serious and explicit questioning of the basic tenets of modernism

is usually associated with Nietzsche. From there and as postmodernism gained ground,

several strands within or relating to postmodernism branched out. They are historical,

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methodological and positive postmodernism (Cahoone 1995, 2). Historical

postmodernism makes a historical claim that merely suggests (without claiming that

modernity is or was wrong) that modernity, as first conceived, has been subject to change

or has evolved with the passage of time in all spheres (social, political etc) into a novel

entity and as such it is at an end or going through a major transformation (Cahoone 1995,

17). Methodological postmodernism denies that knowledge is possible in the strict realist

sense as accessible via foundations that yield objective knowledge the 'real' nature of

reality. This entails rejecting dualisms (objectivity and subjectivity, nature and society

etc.) that have been integral to the aforementioned realist ideals. Methodological

postmodernism does not offer an alternative; rather, its focus is on pointing out problems

and shortcomings of intellectual pursuits in general (Cahoone 1995, 18). Positive

postmodernism relies on the aforementioned methodological critique of modernity but

instead offers an alternative. It offers a new conception or ways of understanding (nature,

God, self etc.) now that the shortcomings of modernity have been uncovered.

It is important to note there is no shortage of disagreement among the postmodern

thinkers and that figuring out what postmodernism stands for is, as with modernism,

notoriously difficult. But with respect to both postmodernism and modernism, and in the

absence of precise definitions, the following observation seems fitting, "More important

than discovering an essential commonality is recognizing that there are some important

new developments in the world that deserve examination, that 'postmodern' labels some

of them, and that there are some very important works, raising deep questions, written by

people labeled 'postmodernists;" (Cahoone 1995, 1). On a broad level, perhaps the most

prudent way of conceiving postmodernism would be as continuous re-reading and

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critique of modernism and not necessarily as a clear break from a particular period or

ideology (Malpas 2005, 44). Indeed, thinkers like Lyotard and Baudrillard see

postmodernism as a continual theorization about modernity under the contemporary

circumstances (Redhead 2008, 11; Lyotard 1979, 81). Lyotard writes "The postmodern

would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation

itself...that which searches for new representations, not in order to enjoy them but in

order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable" (Lyotard 1979, 81). In other

words, postmodern can be thought of as a perpetual undertaking or theorizing of modern

values but with a critical eye. As such, broadly construed it represents an evolvement of

modern ideas.

3.4 Latour & Postmodernism

According to Latour, postmodernism is a symptom and not a solution to

modernism's problems. It is so because it plays into andmerely takes what modernism

offered to us and puts a negative sign in front of it, "The postmoderns have sensed the

crisis of the moderns and attempted to overcome it...it is of course impossible to

conserve their irony, their despair, their discouragement, their nihilism, their self-

criticism, since all those fine qualities depend on a conception of modernism that

modernism itself has never really practiced" (Latour 1993, 134, my emphasis).

Postmodernism tries to denounce modernism but it cannot do that because it, according to

Latour, still lives under the modern constitution but does not believe in it. Instead of

focusing their energies on empirically studying networks and their extensions (for Latour,

the only kind of study actually capable of denouncing modernism), postmoderns,

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according to Latour, merely reject empirical work as rationalist and wallow in

disconnected instants and groundless denunciations (Latour 1993, 46). Given that

postmodernists deny the possibility of some of the major concepts that emerged from

modernism one can see why Latour might be inclined to say that postmodernism is

modernism with a negative sign in front. But he fails to notice that their ideas are present

in his own. He traces the root of our problems to modernism and brands postmodernism

as an inadequate response to those problems. According to Latour, the developments in

postmodernism are a continuation of some of the modern practices and as such not

radical or sufficient enough in dispelling modernism. This point is supported by the fact

that moderns and postmoderns "share" the five themes that were explicated in the

previous section (see section 3.3).

According to Latour, to save ourselves from the predicament we find

ourselves in after modernism, we must adopt a considerable shift in how we think about

nature and society, subject and object. Roughly speaking, the shift entails considering

nature and society, nonhuman and human at once so as to blur the distinctions that were

erected by modernism. This, according to Latour, has never been done before or never

done properly. Not even the efforts of social construction, SSK, the Strong Program etc.,

are enough in confronting modernism. The efforts are inadequate because, according to

Latour, the focus is merely shifted from nature to society while failing to notice that this

is a form of the continuation of the modern distinctions between society (subject) and

nature (object). In other words, the emphasis is now on the society as opposed to nature.

A step further from the pitfalls of modernism, postmodernism and social construction is

nonmodernism or 'the turn after the social turn'. The analysis below will strive to

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highlight some of the challenges that Latour faces with this approach and ultimately show

that Latour is, in "taking a step further", unwittingly positioning himself closer to those

whom he criticizes. In making my argument that nonmodernism is in fact postmodernism

for the most part (but also at times, although less often, modernism), the concept of quasi-

objects will be crucial. This later claim, that nonmodernism at times resembles

modernism is a claim that I will not pursue extensively here. The purpose of mentioning

it is to illustrate, indirectly, that nonmodernism is not tenable and cannot function as

Latour had envisioned it.

Laboratory Life and Science In Action showed us how facts are assembled

from an array of elements that are black boxed. Neatly packaged and closed tightly, black

boxes or facts circulate in networks where they are either taken up or dwell in obscurity.

With networks being comprised of these entities that are themselves only an assortment

of a vast number of elements (social and non-social) one can gather that, and as We Have

Never Been Modern and Politics Of Nature suggest, the clear-cut distinctions or

dichotomies that were essential to modernism (for example, the subject and object

distinction) are not so clear anymore. There are no longer ways of justifying strict

separations as we have realized that there are quasi-objects or actants (in semiotics, a

term for both human and nonhuman actors) everywhere. Quasi-objects, Latour writes,

are in between and below the two poles, at the very place around which

dualism and dialectics had turned endlessly without being able to come to

terms with them...[they] trace networks...they are real, quite real, and we

humans have not made them. As soon as we are on the trail of some quasi-

object, it appears to us sometimes as a thing, sometimes as a narrative,

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sometimes as a social bond, without ever being reduced to a mere being

(Latour 1993, 55, 89).

So quasi-object is a collection of things, the sum of complex relations but relations that

always extend elsewhere. For example, a computer is a collection of or a hybrid of

efficiency-communication tool-sedentary lifestyle. These direct and re-direct our health,

productivity, and handwriting all of which expand into numerous other relations.

Visually, it is a dendrite of sorts that always and already touches and is touched. This

image forces us to reconsider the clear-cut lines that have molded our understanding of

objects and subjects as distinct or separate entities that stand alone and are singular. Their

composition is inextricable and nonmodernism can account for these complexities that

we have tried to ignore under modernism. Central to nonmodernism and closely related to

the idea of quasi-objects is mediation. Modernism relied exclusively on the practices of

purification and.mediation and used the split it had created between nature and society as

a way to perpetuate its constitution (see chapter 1, sections 1.3 and 1.4). Consequently, it

has always failed to account for quasi-objects because they are a multiplicity, linking and

linked to layers and networks that defy modernism's distinctions. Tracing networks,

focusing on mediations that constitute and shape quasi-objects is what underpins and

should distinguish nonmodernism from modernism and postmodernism.

Here is an instance where a parallel between postmodernism and

nonmodernism crystallizes: one of the central themes of postmodernism has to do with

rejection of the modern idea of presence (see earlier section on postmodernism). Nothing

is immediately present. Everything is mediated by signs, interpretations, language and a

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multitude of factors and as such there is no possibility of anything existing in its pure

form. Latour's notions of quasi-objects and mediation are in line with the postmodern

objection to the modern notion of presence, of things being present in themselves and

devoid of past and current complexities. As part of postmodern thought, structuralism

maintains that everything is constituted by relations to other things and Latour seems to

adopt the same attitude: black boxing and the emergence of facts all depend on the

deployment of a myriad of factors and entities that contribute to this collective fact

making. Laboratory Life and Science In Action point precisely to that: the multiplicity of

factors and relationships and their interplay as constituting scientific activity. If the idea

of networks, intermediaries, quasi-objects, nonmodernism and so on is the 'turn after the

social turn' then it should not look like the postmodern critique. Yet, it does: the

overarching idea in the four of Latour's works that I focused on embodies relations,

complexities, multiplicities that are all in play at once (for example, consider the

torutured history of a fact prior to its taken for granted status). This, as far as I

understand, has been one of the major realizations that came out of postmodernism in

general (see chapter 3, section 3.3). Moreover, the exercise in locating how exactly

Latour is different (how he manages to go a step farther than the critiques of modernism

offered so far), yields no result mainly because Latour embodies the very same general

concerns that postmodernity had voiced already. Consequently, there is no 'one more turn

after the social turn'. Latour is more postmodern that he wants to admit.

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Another example of the close proximity between postmodern critiques of

modernism and Latour's nonmodernism is to be found in the idea of origin .

Postmodernism denies the possibility of the idea of origin. The saying "every author is a

dead author" shows that the meaning of a text, how it is taken up is left up to others and

their interpretations thereby denying the possibility of author's intentions being the origin

of the meaning of the text. In Science In Action, Latour writes "the fate of facts and

machines is in the hands of later users" (Latour 1987, 59). Latour points out that

statements exist or perish depending on how (and if) they are taken up by others and

appropriated. The point here is that statements or texts are contingent on others, depend

on how they are taken up, appropriated and so on. Latour is describing the very thing that

postmodernists came to realize, namely, that texts are subject to interpretations through

which they are molded. And so is the case with statements and facts as they pass through

different hands. As they are stylized and appropriated (or not) their status and

significance is established. In reference to the scientists and the statements they make

Lyotard writes, "One's competence is never an accomplished fact. It depends whether or

not the statement proposed is considered by one's peers to be worth discussion...the truth

of the statement and the competence of its sender are thus subject to the collective

approval of a group of persons..." (Lyotard 1979, 24). Again, the point is that Latour's

description of statements and facts is in line with the postmodern claim about things

being depended on outside forces for their meaning.

7 Foucault's "geneology", one of the influential postmodern ideas, is not to be interpreted as the search for the origin. Rather, its aim is to show the possibility of plural and contradictory accounts of the past- the result being precisely the denial of the notion of origin (see Foucault's Archaeology Of Knowledge ,1969)

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As noted earlier, positive postmodernism adopts the critique of modernism

that stems from methodological postmodernism (that knowledge is impossible in the

strict realist sense) but unlike methodological postmodernism, positive postmodernism

presents an alternative. This alternative offers a new way of understanding concepts in

light of the critique of modernism. All issues or problems with nonmodernism aside, its

goal too is to offer a novel interpretation of the modern concepts: nature, society etc. As

such and as far as the aims of each are concerned, Latour's nonmodernism is in line with

the methodological postmodernism.

By illustrating the close proximity of nonmodernism to postmodernism I

mean to point out that some of Latour's crucial ideas (i.e. quasi-objects, networks,

rejection of sharp distinctions) are apparent in the postmodern critique. As such

nonmodernism is not a step further from the postmodern critiques that emerged after the

realization that the Modern project has gone sour. In other words, where Latour claims to

have gone farther, he still finds himself under the framework of the basic ideas of

postmodernism. Some of the strategies employed to create the distance between his own

work and the critiques of modernism offered thus far are problematic. In what follows, I

will illustrate some of these shortcomings.

3.5 Some Problems in Latour's Nonmodernism

There are several issues regarding nonmodernism that are worth considering that

do not directly link it to postmodernism. They are worth considering because they

highlight some of the shortcomings of nonmodernism. These shortcomings serve to point

out some problems in taking 'one more turn after the social turn'. This should suggest the

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difficulty in moving away from the critiques and methods put forward by postmodernism

and social constructivism thus far. Here are some of the issues that are problematic in

Latour's philosophy: overcoming the subject and object distinction, reverting to the

modern notions that are (or usually seen as) problematic, and accounting for the power

dynamics that privilege certain groups or networks.

According to Latour, the damning aspect of modernism is the establishment of the

asymmetries, of separations. Quasi-objects force us to recognize the futility of

distinctions and work on the overcoming of dualisms. Nonmodernism should, among

other things, get beyond the subject and object dichotomy. "In abandoning dualism our

intent is not to throw everything into the same pot... [rather] the name of the game is not

to extend subjectivity to things, to treat humans like objects, to take machines for social

actors, but to avoid using the subject-object distinction at all in order to talk about the

folding of humans and nonhumans" (Latour 1999,. 194). Latour fails to get past this

crucial distinction. Lynette Khong, in her article "Actants and enframing: Heidegger and

Latour on technology", argues that establishing a symmetry between dualisms as Latour

envisions it ends up only being possible through granting subjectivity to objects (Khong

2003, 702). Indeed, much of the Politics Of Nature calls for giving a "voice" to

nonhumans so as to achieve full democracy, so as to recognize that which modernists

have denied. Take for instance the speed bump: it is an actant since it acts as a hybrid of

engineer-law-maker-policeman, all of which translates into the speed bump now having

the agency and ability to redirect or shape our actions and so on (Khong 2003, 702). As

such, the object is no longer just an object but it is now endowed with abilities that have

hitherto only been reserved to subjects. This is what leads Khong to conclude "It thus

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appears that the move towards symmetry is to be affected by endowing nonhumans with

an agency that, as Latour is well aware, only serves to preserve the distinction between

actor and acted upon, subject and object" (Khong 2003, 702). What this suggests further

is a kind of anthropocentrism that Latour finds problematic yet remains embedded in

nonmodernism. Furthermore, the subject and object distinction remains in another area as

well: the notion of granting a "voice" to nonhumans. If we are to be more democratic,

this is what we should strive for. However, the concern here is that the 'voice granting' is

still work done by us, humans, subjects. Moreover, it is something that is projected onto

the object (i.e. ozone layer). Latour writes, "There are no more naked truths, but there are

no more naked citizens, either...Natures are present, but with their representatives,

scientists who speak in their name" (Latour 1993, 144). In light of this, it is unclear how

Latour has overcome the subject and object distinction. What is more, it suggests that the

subject pole carries greater weight than Latour wants to attribute to it (this latter point

will be further elaborated later).

Lastly, it is clear that Latour's aim for a true democracy with a greater number of

voices or actants in the parliament of things is a noble undertaking (and one probably

reminiscent of modernism and the ancients), but he seems to fail to address the common

problem of the power asymmetry that seems to be at play everywhere. The power

asymmetry often means that the other exists only in relation to the one. Even if it

emerges, its appropriation and inclusion is subject to the existing power asymmetries.

Some have described Latour's account of science in action as a war zone where alliances

are built and mobilized in order to further one's goals, and indeed, this is in fact, among

other things, what Latour takes as a major aspect that is constitutive of science and of

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networks. But if the aim is for the greater inclusion and for granting more voices to

nonhumans, for always extending networks and so on, then Latour should address some

of the limitation that this approach contains. In Politics Of Nature Latour states that if

those excluded can show that they will aid in the compilation of voices, and further

proliferation of quasi-objects then they can 'petition' for inclusion. Mallavarapu and

Parsad's concern seems fitting when they write "While Latour prides himself on the fact

that his analysis of hybrids and networks opens up space for nonhumans free from

traditional anthropocentric approaches, there is still no guarantee that such an analysis is

going to give voice to all the actants involved, or whether the voices of the actants can

actually be recovered" (Mallavarapu and Prasad 2006, 195). Latour may not claim that he

can accomplish this in the first place but then the worry might be that nonmodernism is

just an ideal to strive for or that it does not represent anything novel in the efforts to give

voices to those who are oppressed. Latour's project seems to overlook or fails to address

the standard dangers that totalizing frameworks inevitably carry within. For example, the

questions and decisions about inclusion and exclusion are notoriously difficult as well as

inheriting the power dynamics that are already in place even before the project gets

underway. In addition to this, in his calling for an anthropological approach to studying

networks, quasi-objects and so on, Latour does not consider the possible undesirable

consequences of that approach: anthropology itself was an integral tool for carrying out

the modern colonial projects (Mallavarapu and Parsad 2006, 192). The above concerns

are serious enough to merit closer attention by Latour if his methods and ideas are

presented as an improvement on what has gone on thus far.

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3.6 Concluding Remarks

Latour is much closer to postmodern critiques of modernism than he wants to

admit. The previous section outlined some of the problems that nonmodernism faces.

Those problems often occur at points where Latour believes that he is taking an

additional step (i.e. overcoming the subject and object distinction). It becomes difficult

to believe that Latour is capable of taking that additional step. This becomes even more

apparent by highlighting the proximity of (if not outright identity) between some

postmodern ideas and nonmodernism. With a particular emphasis on social

constructivism, the conclusion will further illuminate my claim that Latour is not taking

'one more turn after the social turn'.

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Chapter Four Conclusion

The analysis in the previous chapters shows Latour's failure to take the additional

step or 'one more turn after the social turn'. Broadly speaking, my claim about Latour's

shortcoming hinges on the idea that things are inevitably social. And so Latour's aim to

take the additional step becomes problematic because it purports to have overcome or

gone beyond the 'social'. The following key points illustrate why Latour's

nonmodernism, or the taking of 'one more turn after the social turn' cannot be actualized:

failure to establish sufficient distance from social constructivism that would distinguish it

from the latter; false impression that the dichotomies he finds problematic are actually

dissolved under nonmodernism; the peculiar status of 'the middle ground', the position

that is somehow rooted neither in the subject nor the object; the standard problems facing

totalizing frameworks such as nonmodernism (i.e. exclusion, power dynamics). Below is

an explication as well as the interweaving of the points above, all with the aim of

illustrating that Latour does not take 'one more turn after the social turn'.

Although Latour is keen on distinguishing himself from the work of social

construction and postmodernism, I maintain that he does not move away from the basic

notions that are representative of social constructivism and postmodernism - he remains

under the broad umbrella of social constructivism and postmodernism. Roughly speaking,

the term 'postmodern' signals the realization that the modern ideals (i.e. detachment) are

unattainable. Social constructivism follows up on that postmodern awareness. Its work

seeks to emphasize the role of the social and of construction in our notions of reality and

knowledge. As noted in chapter 2, the sociology of knowledge emerged out of this basic

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belief that knowledge is influenced by social factors. Latour's claim that he is taking 'one

more turn after the social turn' signals a departure from the standard notions in social

constructivism such as the society and the subject. Latour's main dissatisfaction with

social constructivism is with (what he takes to be) over-reliance on the subject or society.

The mistake, according to Latour, has been to go from one end (nature) to another end

(society). Nonmodernism, or 'one more turn after the social turn', would absorb both

simultaneously and by doing so lift us out of the predicament we found ourselves in with

respect to the rift between nature and society. The new position, what Latour calls 'the

middle ground' (or "Middle Kingdom") is between and below the nature and society pole

and it is precisely the spot from which one can account for our reality without making the

common error of emphasizing either nature or society.

The Strong Program, according to Latour, has fallen into that trap the most

because it relies heavily on the society to explain our beliefs about knowledge. But this

charge (if one takes it as a charge at all; it could very well represent something inevitable)

can equally be applied to Latour. By this I mean that when Latour speaks about 'the

middle ground' as the position from which we should base our inquiry, he fails to notice

that this position is already embedded in the social or the subject. As such, the

fundamental feature of nonmodernism, 'the middle ground', is not an advancement of the

sort that Latour envisioned. Like both the Strong Program and social constructivism,

nonmodernism too is subject to what I understand to be an unavoidable consequence: that

all knowledge and all inquiry depends on the subject or subjects who know or inquire.

Irigaray writes "Any knowledge is produced by subjects in a given historical

context. Even if it tends towards objectivity, even if its techniques are supposed to be a

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means of controlling objectivity, science is the manifestation of certain choices, certain

exclusions..." (Irigaray 1994, 31). I extend this observation to Latour. The quote is

relevant to nonmodernism in that it reminds one that 'the middle ground', however

imagined by Latour, does not escape the context (that is always social) in which it is

conceived. That 'the middle ground' too is always a reflection of certain attitudes,

exclusions and so forth is sufficient to doubt the success of Latour's project of moving

beyond the mere social. Whenever it seems that he has done so, 'the middle ground'

takes on the problematic status of 'the view from nowhere'. This idea is developed

further below.

In Politics of Nature, Latour is bewildered at the notion that is indicative of

modernism in which scientists are somehow able to shuttle between nature and society,

accessing both and seemingly without problems. My perplexity with respect to 'the

middle ground' which Latour advocates is of the same kind. 'The middle ground' (if one

for a moment takes it as capable of transcending the social) reverts to the modern practice

of the privileged position (the view from nowhere) from which one somehow adjudicates

(see chapter 2, section 2.4). But I maintain that all human knowledge is rooted in the

subject and context and the possibility of overcoming that factor does not exist without

returning to the modern ideals of detachment.

We Have Never Been Modern and Politics Of Nature are prime examples of

Latour's insistence on replacing the strict oppositions created by the ancients and later

adopted by the moderns. The aforementioned texts aim to put aside or dissolve the

distinctions between the subject and object, nature and society, and this is done in favor

of a framework that is free of the separations that have pervaded the Western thought.

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What I want to highlight here is that the dichotomies that Latour finds problematic under

modernism remain so under nonmodernism, as opposed to being dissolved. One of

Latour's criticism of the Strong Program in particular is that it merely takes part in

perpetuating divisions created under modernism by, according to Latour, shifting the

focus from the nature pole to the subject pole, and as such reinforcing the distinction

between the two poles. But the reinforcement of separations is equally present in

nonmodernism.

There are two instances where this is apparent. First, although Latour imagines it

otherwise, 'the middle ground' is always and already marked by the social pole. It is our,

the subject's, the society's doing and construction. So the social pole remains intact.

Moreover, if 'the middle ground' is a novel position, as Latour claims it is, then there is a

sense that it is above or beyond the social, and conceived as such would reinforce the

binaries or opposition that were problematic in the first place (namely, that there is

something to transcend, a view from nowhere). Second, in Politics of Nature, one of the

main tasks that we should embark on, according to Latour, is the granting of voices to

nonhumans hitherto neglected and unaccounted for as the result of the separations under

modernism. From the beginning, this project is characterized by one (the subject)

conferring status to the other (object) - binaries still intact. Moreover, the notion of

granting a voice to something which is not capable of "speaking" on its own is

problematic. The issue here is comparable to the problems encountered when one

attempts to speak for the Other. By this I mean that the glaring problem with granting a

voice to quasi-objects is that of power imbalance that is inevitably embedded in the

relationship between 'the one granting' and 'one being granted'. In addition to this, there

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is an unavoidable issue of what gets included and excluded. The above shows that

binaries and separations aire part of the nonmodern framework just as much as they are

part of any other framework. The dissolution of separations should have been one of the

features that distinguished nonmodernism from social construction - a feature that would

be the example of 'taking one more turn after the social turn' - but the above suggests

that Latour does not accomplish that. This shows support for my thesis that Latour does

not take 'one more turn after the social turn'.

Lastly, Latour's nonmodern position suffers from some of the problems usually

associated with totalizing networks. I understand nonmodernism to be a totalizing

network. The moves that Latour has made from Laboratory Life to Politics in Nature are

geared towards establishing a kind of metaphysics that would be our guide. For example,

the notion of network building that emerges out of Science In Action and then extends to

and is applicable to other domains. Out of this goal, several standard problems that

plague such frameworks emerge. There is immediately the question of the power

differentials in play between those who theorize and those being theorized on or about.

Building on this point, the issue of inclusion and exclusion is problematic: in Politics of

Nature Latour writes that everything that is excluded or not conducive to further

proliferation of imbroglios has a chance to petition for inclusion at a later point.

Conceived as the unprecedented furthering of the already familiar notions of democracy

and equality, Politics of Nature strangely takes on some of the uncanny characteristics of

the frameworks that have been oppressive to groups (e.g. women) that were perceived as

incapable of contributing and had to 'petition' for inclusion. Though this is not what

Latour sets out to do, it still seems bound to occur as nonmodernism presents itself as a

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totalizing network and succumbs to the standard problems associated with such

frameworks.

My study of Latour leads me to some claims that merit further exploration. My

thesis focused on showing that Latour is not successful in taking 'one more turn after the

social turn'. Out of this project another question emerges: is there 'a turn after the social

turn' at all! It may very well be that such turn cannot be taken as we are always and

already embedded in the social. Speaking to the realists, Nietzsche writes "You call

yourselves realists and hint that the world really is the way it appears to you...That

mountain there! That cloud there! What is 'real' in that? Subtract your phantasm and

every human contribution from it, my sober friends! If you can! If you can forget your

descent, your past, your training - all of your humanity and animality^ (Nietzsche 1974,

121, my emphasis). Similarly, Latour (no one for that matter) cannot forget his descent

and past. The criticism that social constructivism is placing too much emphasis on the

social is unfounded because there seems no way out of it. As such, it becomes

meaningless to speak of taking 'one more turn after the social turn' as we always and

already function within it.

My general sentiments point to the impossibility of transcending the subject,

language, history or tradition, the situatedness and interplay of it all. Although I am well

aware of the worrisome (to some) consequences that follow from that (for example,

relativism and its consequences) at least there is consolation in finally abandoning the

pursuit of something that has never existed and cannot exist. Whenever there is resistance

to the latter point, one can subdue the excitement about the prospect of arriving at a

privileged point of view by reflecting on the following thoughts by Rorty "To say that

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values are more subjective than facts is just to say that it is harder to get agreement about

which things are ugly or which actions evil than about which things are rectangular"

(Rorty 1999, 51, my emphasis). I want to suggest that it may be more useful to accept the

ubiquitous influence of the social, our context and histories, and work with this

knowledge as I do not believe in our ability to transcend our own situatedness.

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