Bruno Latour

233 Pages·2016·2.554 MB·English

by  Gerard de Vries

Bruno Latour
Key Contemporary Thinkers
Lee Braver, Heidegger
John Burgess, Kripke
Claire Colebrook and Jason Maxwell, Agamben
Jean-Pierre Couture, Sloterdijk
Rosemary Cowan, Cornel West
George Crowder, Isaiah Berlin
Gareth Dale, Karl Polanyi
Colin Davis, Levinas
Oliver Davis, Jacques Rancière
Gerard de Vries, Bruno Latour
Reidar Andreas Due, Deleuze
Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir
Andrew Gamble, Hayek
Neil Gascoigne, Richard Rorty
Nigel Gibson, Fanon
Graeme Gilloch, Siegfried Kracauer
Graeme Gilloch, Walter Benjamin
Phillip Hansen, Hannah Arendt
Sean Homer, Fredric Jameson
Christina Howells, Derrida
Simon Jarvis, Adorno
Rachel Jones, Irigaray
Sarah Kay, Žižek
S. K. Keltner, Kristeva
Valerie Kennedy, Edward Said
Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit, Rawls
Moya Lloyd, Judith Butler
James McGilvray, Chomsky, 2nd Edition
Lois McNay, Foucault
Dermot Moran, Edmund Husserl
Michael Moriarty, Roland Barthes
Marie-Eve Morin, Jean-Luc Nancy
Stephen Morton, Gayatri Spivak
Timothy Murphy, Antonio Negri
William Outhwaite, Habermas, 2nd Edition
Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinner
Ed Pluth, Badiou
John Preston, Feyerabend
Chris Rojek, Stuart Hall
Severin Schroeder, Wittgenstein
Anthony Paul Smith, Laruelle
Dennis Smith, Zygmunt Bauman
Felix Stalder, Manuel Castells
Georgia Warnke, Gadamer
Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick
Christopher Zurn, Axel Honneth
Bruno Latour
Gerard de Vries
polity
Copyright © Gerard de Vries 2016
The right of Gerard de Vries to be identified as Author of this Work has
been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2016 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
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Malden, MA 02148, USA
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5062-3 (hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5063-0 (paperback)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vries, Gerard de, 1948-
Title: Bruno Latour / Gerard de Vries.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016001169| ISBN 9780745650623 (hardback : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9780745650630 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Latour, Bruno. | Science–Social aspects. | Science and
civilization. | Science–Philosophy.
Classification: LCC Q175.46 .V75 2016 | DDC 303.48/3–dc23 LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/201600116
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Contents
Preface vii
Abbreviations ix
1 Empirical Philosophy 1
1.1 Making Paris visible  5
1.2 The path towards ‘empirical philosophy’  11
1.3 The power of addition  17
2 Science Studies 21
2.1 The ‘Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’  26
2.2 An anthropologist visits a laboratory  31
2.3 Anatomy of a scientific paper  37
2.4 Realism in and about science  46
3 Science and Society 53
3.1 ‘The Pasteurization of France: War and Peace  
of Microbes’  57
3.2 ‘The Pasteurization of France: Irreductions’  63
3.3 Another turn after the social turn  68
3.4 The turn to ontology  76
4 Another Social Science 82
4.1 Deploying what makes up the social  87
4.2 Deploying how the social is stabilized  95
4.3 Shifting focus  100
vi  Contents
5 A Philosophy for Our Time 114
5.1 ‘We Have Never Been Modern’  118
5.2 The modern Constitution  124
5.3 Relationism  129
5.4 Cosmopolitics  136
6 A Comparative Anthropology of the Moderns 149
6.1 A research protocol for a comparative anthropology  153
6.2 ‘Empirical philosophy’ redefined  166
6.3 Enquiring modes of existence  174
6.4 The modern experience: fifteen modes  181
6.5 Facing ‘Gaia’  191
References 202
Name Index 212
Subject Index 215
Preface
“When men cannot observe, they don’t have ideas; they have
obsessions,” V. S. Naipaul wrote. The modern philosophical tradi-
tion holds observation in high regard; nevertheless it is obsessed
by a worldview that feeds off dualities – between humans and
nonhumans, nature and society, facts and values, science and poli-
tics. Bruno Latour wants us to observe better, with a finer resolu-
tion. To become more attentive, to redescribe the world we live in,
and to better understand our current predicament, he introduced
ethnography and comparative anthropology as vital methods for
philosophy. Latour is an ‘empirical philosopher’.
This introduction to his work follows Latour in his footsteps,
both as an ethnographer and as a philosopher. The light tone of
much of Latour’s writing may easily conceal its profundity. Latour
takes issue with much of what we take for granted as intuitively
evident. By following Latour’s moves closely and by providing
some background from science studies, philosophy and sociology,
to show to what extent and in what sense Latour’s work stands out
against the tradition, I hope to ease access to what Latour claims
to be a richer vocabulary to account for who we are and what we
value, that is, a better, fairer common sense.
Latour is a prolific writer on an amazingly varied set of topics,
so some selection was inevitable. To introduce his empirical work,
Latour’s studies on science, law and religion will be discussed in
detail; they led to substantial philosophical innovations. Latour’s
philosophy – his thoughts on science, on actor-network theory,
cosmopolitics and his anthropology of the Moderns – is introduced
viii Preface
roughly in the order in which they took shape. But this is not an
intellectual biography; the historical and intellectual context in
which Latour’s thoughts evolved is only touched upon. That also
holds for the reception of his work. This is an introduction to
Latour’s philosophy; not to science studies as a discipline, nor to
the work of those who have followed Latour, used his ideas, or
thought they did.
To write about a living author is an unquiet affair. With the
advantage of hindsight it becomes apparent that Latour’s work has
been driven by a coherent heuristic. But those who followed his
work were often puzzled when he took his thoughts to new levels
and new domains or when he introduced conceptual innovations.
We met in the early 1980s and stayed in contact ever since. Time
and again he forced me to rethink his position, as well as my own.
I want to thank Bruno Latour and my Dutch friends and col-
leagues Huub Dijstelbloem, Rob Hagendijk, Hans Harbers, Josta
de Hoog, Noortje Marres and Annemiek Nelis for their comments
on the draft of this book. I’m also very grateful to John Naughton
for his comments and for helping me out with the subtleties of the
English grammar. As always, my gratitude to Pauline extends far
beyond her comments on my writing.
Abbreviations
For full bibliographical details see the References.
AIME An Inquiry into Modes of Existence – An Anthropology
of the Moderns
AR Aramis or the Love of Technology
CB La Clef de Berlin et autre leçons d’un amateur de sciences
CM Petite reflexion sur le culte moderne des dieux faitiches
FG Face à Gaïa
ICON Iconoclash – Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion,
and Art
IRR Irreductions (part 2 of The Pasteurization of France, cited by
paragraph number)
LL Laboratory Life – The Social Construction of Scientific Facts
LL2 Laboratory Life – The Construction of Scientific Facts
(2nd edition)
ML The Making of Law
MTP Making Things Public – Atmospheres of Democracy
NBM We Have Never Been Modern
PF The Pasteurization of France
PH Pandora’s Hope – Essays on the Reality of Science Studies
PN Politics of Nature – How to Bring the Sciences into
Democracy
PVI Paris ville invisible
RAS Reassembling the Social – An Introduction to
Actor-Network-Theory
REJ Rejoicing – Or the Torments of Religious Speech
SA Science in Action
SPI The Science of Passionate Interests