10. Collectives 1: the expanded social world of humans and non-humans
Latour, Bruno. 1999. Chapter 6: A collective of humans and nonhumans. In Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, pp 174-215. Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2000. The Berlin key or how to do words with things. In Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture, edited by Paul Graves-Brown, pp. 10-21. Routledge.
Once again, I thoroughly enjoy Latour’s writing style (especially when he rags on his own diagrams). That said, I was absolutely intrigued by his discussion of the Berlin Key (as well as the speed bump in his other article). The power fused into the key is one of highest authority—regulating the lives of the inhabitants with gross efficiency. As Latour asks, if the key is ruling such intimate aspects of people’s lives, by dealing with the key, is he not “dealing with social relations, with morality, with laws? Of course, but made of steel” (19). The key is essentially an “alternative caretaker”. Furthermore, Latour shows that codes may have replaced the key, and may seem “fancier”, but are not a new concept in terms of restructuring the social.
Another key point Latour explores is the translation of motivation when dealing with objects that stand for social relations (i.e. the speed bump): “The driver’s goal is translated, by means of the speed bump, from ‘slow down so as not to endanger students’ into ‘slow down and protect your car’s suspension’” (144). Although we live in a society of law, how much of it is obeyed by us having the “correct” underlying notion? Latour explains that this law appeals to selfishness rather than morality. Both of Latour’s examples go back to the discussion we had at the beginning of the year about the impact of even the smallest items on our lives (i.e. credit cards, contacts, etc.).
Also, Bennett’s discussion of the North American Blackout reminded me a lot of Crash. It dealt with the same sort of concept—coming face to face with technology that was previously “invisible” (like the projector mentioned in her other paper). But it’s not only technology—natural disasters play a part too. We sometimes forget how much even the weather can impact our lives. We may have umbrellas and rain coats and galoshes, but we cannot stop the rain from coming down. These are protective, not proactive, measures. ~Samantha
I thought Latour's example of the gun was especially relevant given the death of Charlton Heston this weekend.
What interested me about the gun example was Latour's discussion of symmetry. He writes, "the translation is wholly symmetrical. You are different with a gun in your hand; the gun is different with you holding it" (179). Both human and gun are changed by the experience of their relationship, and in the same way that "the chimp plus the sharp stick reach (not reaches) the banana" (182) the citizen plus gun kill their target. This is certainly not the way such a crime is spoken about generally, nor is it how I have typically thought about it. However, Latour is completely right.
Prior to reading Latour’s essay in Pandora’s Hope I couldn’t help having the feeling in the back of my mind that many of the authors we’ve been reading were all saying the same thing as one another—some even inventing entire unnecessary vocabularies for. How can ‘non-humans’ in Latour’s words, “be full-fledged actors in our collective?” For me, everything sort of came together beginning with this passage:
“The mediation, the technical translation that I am trying to understand, resides in the blind spot in which society and matter exchange properties.” (190) In this section Latour advises us to look not just for vague tensions within these ‘zones of articulations’ but for the swapping of properties that could help us tease out the most subtle, hidden of solutions. Such subtle solutions can be described by the word ‘technical.’ And when I think of all the times people use the word ‘technically’ in articulating a concept, this idea makes sense. For example, when one articulates the notion that ‘technically, that woman is man,’ or “technically, the liquid you are about to drink is not apple juice,” they uncover unseen pieces of information, which may or may not influence another’s actions (apologies for the weird examples...it’s late).
Also, my understanding of the term symmetry was made clearer by Latour’s specification of symmetry in the physic’s sense of the word: “Symmetry is defined by what is conserved through transformation.” (as opposed to: “the property of being the same or corresponding on both sides of a central dividing line.”)
Lastly, Latours discussion of responsibility reminded me of the question posed to him at the lecture last month. Latour had just discussed Frankenstein to illustrate technology as an orphan we should not abandon. The person said something to the effect of: “If we take your theory seriously, then what happens, if say a big company like Exxon decides to ‘take responsibility’ for a cleanup? Couldn’t that be disasterous? Makes things worse”
I can’t remember what Latour said exactly at the time, but in this essay he says, “Responsibility for action must be shared among the various actants.” A reply to the person’s question might then be: Since responsibility is shared among actants, then those involved are more than just Exxon but individuals and collectives as well. We would have to take into consideration “the mediating role of all the actants” (180).
Latour is such an energetic, interesting read. The opposite of tedious. It flew by for me!
I found his discussion of the word 'mediation' to be particularly useful. He addresses this word in both texts in varying detail. In the Berlin Key, he quite clearly comments that it can be derived as 'intermediary' or 'mediator.' Each of these interpretations carry different degrees of agency or perhaps 'actant(ism?)' I wonder, though, is he trying to assign more agency to the nonhuman? Or remove some amount of agency from the human? Or perhaps point out our own limits? He repeatedly calls us ignorant- especially of the histories of our so-called objects... "The depth of our ignorance about techniques is unfathomable." (185) hahahaha
I was particularly struck by Latour's explanation of how action is a property of an association of actants. He gives an example, "The chimp plus the sharp stick reach (not reaches) the banana." He also writes, "It is by mistake, or unfairness, that our headlines read "Man flies," "Woman goes into space." These examples are all highly effective in demonstrating how our grammar and language betray our misunderstanding of our actions, and it's almost shocking to read this section and realize that you constantly mispeak. It also implies that if everyone comes to accept the new way of thinking about the world that Latour is suggesting, a new way of speaking would be necessary as well. It would probably be inefficient to try to articulate every actant that relates to a particular action in the way that Latour expands 'the chimp reaches the banana' to 'the chimp andthe sharp stick reach the banana,' especially when dealing with more complex actions. I wonder how language would change to accommodate a different way of explaining actions and relationships. It would be interesting to see people try to transition the singular verb tenses that come to them automatically to include the sharp stick.
What can I say about Latour, the man really articulates the collective nature of human culture existing with non-human agents. They (meaning non-human agencies) are all over the place! That being said, his discussion about guns killing people illuminated this point. That is, the gun acts a tool for the human to complete a task and thus it is the agency of the gun the aids in the human agency of the person. He writes, “…that the good citizen is transformed by carrying the gun. A good citizen who, without a gun, might simply be angry may become a criminal who, gets his hands on a gun.” Therefore, “the intriguing suggestion is that our qualities as subjects, our competences, our personalities, depend on what we hold in our hands” (177). In other words, the objects we choose to interact with on a daily basis define our humanity, have the ability to transform our personality.
I think some objects and things that we choose to hold can transform us, as with the example with the gun, but I also think there are subtle non-human agents that exist that permit others to make inferences about our personality. This brings to my mind our class discussion early in the semester about a person’s “extra layer of skin” i.e. the clothes, shoes, hats, etc.. that we decide to put on every day. Not to mention the technological devices that we carry in our pockets, in our hands as we walk down the street.
I look forward to the other Latour readings next week!
Latour's ideas were my first insight into posthumanist theory (I still remember the "citizen-gun", "gun-citizen" concept from Origins of Human Society), so I was particularly excited to get to this section's reading.
After "The Berlin key or how to do words with things" and "A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans", I remain enthralled. Latour's claims are extremely straightforward, and his breakdown of the levels of mediation to counter the dualist paradigm of subjectivity and objectivity paints a deep-seated vision of what we can expect after accepting the idea that there is such a thing as a cyborg-ian world. His diagrams and eleven levels are seamless compared to ideas from the previous texts, so I'm wondering about the glossovers in his argument that I might not have caught.
His final elaboration on "political ecology" and the tying of nonhuman hybrids into political disputes is extremely interesting; it clearly moves the class to a larger and more politically charged scale than I'm used to finding (particularly after all the fiction). There is also some personal commentary and self-consciousness in his writings, like in his writing about past mistakes made in the field and about how "selfishness is a trait more widely distributed than respect for law and life -- at least in France!" (186) I recall him making similar side chatter in his lecture at Columbia and am guessing that this is an important part of why he is such a memorable lecturer/writer.
The first article, "A Collective" spoke to me completely, but I still have trouble working through the second article's Berlin Key analogy. I feel like all the detail focused on describing the example actually made me lose some his final point. However, I do feel that one passage emphasizes a basic idea of the inseparable relationship of things (or nonhumans) and humans: "We cannot even define precisely what makes some human and others technical, whereas we are able to document precisely their modifications and replacements, their arrangements and their alliances, their delegations and representations. Do technology, and you are now a sociologist. Do sociology, and now you are obliged to be a technologist." (Latour 2000: 20)
Basically, I always get really excited to learn about Latour's visions of hybrids, collectives, and constant entanglement.
Perhaps because the environment issue had also been the topic of his lecture at Columbia earlier this semester, the section in Pandora’s Hope about Political Ecology (Level 11) was particularly engaging in proposing this eleventh interpretation as the most literal and brings in the notion of the political. Political science is a field that is new to me, but a strange and interesting one especially when coming to it from an background in Anthropology. Latour states that, “our newest socio-technical bybrid brings what we have learned to bear on the political system. The new hybrid remains a nonhuman, but not only has it lost its material and objective character, it has acquired properties of citizenship.” (202) In combining the political with the social, Latour brings us back to a type of engagement with the scientific world that in recent decades has been completely abandoned by anthropologists. Our move towards the political requires this kind of scientific inclusion of the environment and we have begun to create a discourse of this “ecological crisis.”
Latour would argue that this philosophical discourse that stands an example of the hybrid he so strongly be believes, yet the action is surely not in the right direction if we are preaching a complete abandonment of our interaction with the environment. This abandonment would not just be negative, but it is completely impossible at this stage it the game. To recognize this instead of trying to leave nature to be “natural” would be a far more effective discourse than the one in which we are currently engaged.
The previously somewhat nebulous concept of black-boxing makes more sense to me after these readings. Latour illustrates how each piece of something is itself a something which, in turn, has pieces, and so on. Things can be taken as wholes only when we stop the black-boxing on a given level, even though the black-boxing can really continue infinitely as you break down things into their component pieces.
Another discussion that I really enjoyed was Latour's discussion of the agency/actancy of guns and humans. The "guns kill people" / "no, people kill people" argument has always bothered me, but Latour's explanation makes so much sense and I recommend that the sociologists and materialists of the world read this chapter. In line with his concept of collectives, Latour explains that two agents coming together will transform each other, becoming not just a human or just a gun but a gun-human or human-gun. He explains the error that sociologists and materialists make by assuming a fixed essence of all agents, ignoring or rejecting the possibility that agents can have effects on each other.
I do have a question about the Berlin key chapter. Latour's explanation of the key and its nuances and implications is fascinating. However, I do not quite understand what the key is illustrating. Maybe it would be clearer to me if I read more of the book that this came from? At the end of the chapter, Latour speaks of the "fratricidal war" that prevents true understanding. What is he talking about? I strongly suspect that the Berlin key discussion is referring to something greater than East Berlin / West Berlin, but I can't figure out what that is...
Latour's emphasis on the relationships between things to me recalls Gell's discussoin of the art nexus and the distributed person. It was mentioned in class once that the Mona Lisa in particular is famous to the point of being a phenomenon, an event, more than the piece of artwork as it was once intended (skilled, cognitive application of paint to wood). The relationship here is clearly the key element, as the physical reality of the objects and subjects is absolutely secondary to how the object is involved in pilgrimages to art museums (or just particular pieces), homages to the position of the object or subject, to the happenstance of its current existence, to its legacy of movement through space, time, and circles of applied intellect.
But here, I run into a wall. The relationships, the networks between these things acting on each other, have been cut adrift from any meaningful existence other than unto themselves. How are we to define the Mona Lisa in the context of our reaction to it? We come to see the Mona Lisa, but we don't even really see the painting, we see the bullet proof glass surrounding it and the crowd surrounding the bullet proof glass. We take a picture for posterity, and they see the blur of the glass, or maybe just us pointing at the crowd with a bemused grin. These new objects, new acts, are a product of the idolized network surrounding the Mona Lisa, perhaps to the black-box of it. Perhaps then the Mona Lisa also carries the distributed personhood of Da Vinci, the Louvre's owners and employees, those that come to see her.
Essentially, I'm baffled. Where do we pin down something to talk about? The eventual ambiguity is frustrating like metaphysics, we know there's something there, but we seem to be brushing it off as sheerly unknowable.
By what lexicon are we defining these networks? I see the mutable shapes of interconnectedness, but I don't know how to judge their changing.
10 comments:
Once again, I thoroughly enjoy Latour’s writing style (especially when he rags on his own diagrams). That said, I was absolutely intrigued by his discussion of the Berlin Key (as well as the speed bump in his other article). The power fused into the key is one of highest authority—regulating the lives of the inhabitants with gross efficiency. As Latour asks, if the key is ruling such intimate aspects of people’s lives, by dealing with the key, is he not “dealing with social relations, with morality, with laws? Of course, but made of steel” (19). The key is essentially an “alternative caretaker”. Furthermore, Latour shows that codes may have replaced the key, and may seem “fancier”, but are not a new concept in terms of restructuring the social.
Another key point Latour explores is the translation of motivation when dealing with objects that stand for social relations (i.e. the speed bump): “The driver’s goal is translated, by means of the speed bump, from ‘slow down so as not to endanger students’ into ‘slow down and protect your car’s suspension’” (144). Although we live in a society of law, how much of it is obeyed by us having the “correct” underlying notion? Latour explains that this law appeals to selfishness rather than morality. Both of Latour’s examples go back to the discussion we had at the beginning of the year about the impact of even the smallest items on our lives (i.e. credit cards, contacts, etc.).
Also, Bennett’s discussion of the North American Blackout reminded me a lot of Crash. It dealt with the same sort of concept—coming face to face with technology that was previously “invisible” (like the projector mentioned in her other paper). But it’s not only technology—natural disasters play a part too. We sometimes forget how much even the weather can impact our lives. We may have umbrellas and rain coats and galoshes, but we cannot stop the rain from coming down. These are protective, not proactive, measures.
~Samantha
I thought Latour's example of the gun was especially relevant given the death of Charlton Heston this weekend.
What interested me about the gun example was Latour's discussion of symmetry. He writes, "the translation is wholly symmetrical. You are different with a gun in your hand; the gun is different with you holding it" (179). Both human and gun are changed by the experience of their relationship, and in the same way that "the chimp plus the sharp stick reach (not reaches) the banana" (182) the citizen plus gun kill their target. This is certainly not the way such a crime is spoken about generally, nor is it how I have typically thought about it. However, Latour is completely right.
Prior to reading Latour’s essay in Pandora’s Hope I couldn’t help having the feeling in the back of my mind that many of the authors we’ve been reading were all saying the same thing as one another—some even inventing entire unnecessary vocabularies for. How can ‘non-humans’ in Latour’s words, “be full-fledged actors in our collective?” For me, everything sort of came together beginning with this passage:
“The mediation, the technical translation that I am trying to understand, resides in the blind spot in which society and matter exchange properties.” (190) In this section Latour advises us to look not just for vague tensions within these ‘zones of articulations’ but for the swapping of properties that could help us tease out the most subtle, hidden of solutions. Such subtle solutions can be described by the word ‘technical.’ And when I think of all the times people use the word ‘technically’ in articulating a concept, this idea makes sense. For example, when one articulates the notion that ‘technically, that woman is man,’ or “technically, the liquid you are about to drink is not apple juice,” they uncover unseen pieces of information, which may or may not influence another’s actions (apologies for the weird examples...it’s late).
Also, my understanding of the term symmetry was made clearer by Latour’s specification of symmetry in the physic’s sense of the word: “Symmetry is defined by what is conserved through transformation.” (as opposed to: “the property of being the same or corresponding on both sides of a central dividing line.”)
Lastly, Latours discussion of responsibility reminded me of the question posed to him at the lecture last month. Latour had just discussed Frankenstein to illustrate technology as an orphan we should not abandon. The person said something to the effect of: “If we take your theory seriously, then what happens, if say a big company like Exxon decides to ‘take responsibility’ for a cleanup? Couldn’t that be disasterous? Makes things worse”
I can’t remember what Latour said exactly at the time, but in this essay he says, “Responsibility for action must be shared among the various actants.” A reply to the person’s question might then be: Since responsibility is shared among actants, then those involved are more than just Exxon but individuals and collectives as well. We would have to take into consideration “the mediating role of all the actants” (180).
Latour is such an energetic, interesting read. The opposite of tedious. It flew by for me!
I found his discussion of the word 'mediation' to be particularly useful. He addresses this word in both texts in varying detail. In the Berlin Key, he quite clearly comments that it can be derived as 'intermediary' or 'mediator.' Each of these interpretations carry different degrees of agency or perhaps 'actant(ism?)' I wonder, though, is he trying to assign more agency to the nonhuman? Or remove some amount of agency from the human? Or perhaps point out our own limits? He repeatedly calls us ignorant- especially of the histories of our so-called objects...
"The depth of our ignorance about techniques is unfathomable." (185) hahahaha
MEGAN
I was particularly struck by Latour's explanation of how action is a property of an association of actants. He gives an example, "The chimp plus the sharp stick reach (not reaches) the banana." He also writes, "It is by mistake, or unfairness, that our headlines read "Man flies," "Woman goes into space." These examples are all highly effective in demonstrating how our grammar and language betray our misunderstanding of our actions, and it's almost shocking to read this section and realize that you constantly mispeak. It also implies that if everyone comes to accept the new way of thinking about the world that Latour is suggesting, a new way of speaking would be necessary as well. It would probably be inefficient to try to articulate every actant that relates to a particular action in the way that Latour expands 'the chimp reaches the banana' to 'the chimp andthe sharp stick reach the banana,' especially when dealing with more complex actions. I wonder how language would change to accommodate a different way of explaining actions and relationships. It would be interesting to see people try to transition the singular verb tenses that come to them automatically to include the sharp stick.
What can I say about Latour, the man really articulates the collective nature of human culture existing with non-human agents. They (meaning non-human agencies) are all over the place! That being said, his discussion about guns killing people illuminated this point. That is, the gun acts a tool for the human to complete a task and thus it is the agency of the gun the aids in the human agency of the person. He writes, “…that the good citizen is transformed by carrying the gun. A good citizen who, without a gun, might simply be angry may become a criminal who, gets his hands on a gun.” Therefore, “the intriguing suggestion is that our qualities as subjects, our competences, our personalities, depend on what we hold in our hands” (177). In other words, the objects we choose to interact with on a daily basis define our humanity, have the ability to transform our personality.
I think some objects and things that we choose to hold can transform us, as with the example with the gun, but I also think there are subtle non-human agents that exist that permit others to make inferences about our personality. This brings to my mind our class discussion early in the semester about a person’s “extra layer of skin” i.e. the clothes, shoes, hats, etc.. that we decide to put on every day. Not to mention the technological devices that we carry in our pockets, in our hands as we walk down the street.
I look forward to the other Latour readings next week!
-Kathryn
Latour's ideas were my first insight into posthumanist theory (I still remember the "citizen-gun", "gun-citizen" concept from Origins of Human Society), so I was particularly excited to get to this section's reading.
After "The Berlin key or how to do words with things" and "A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans", I remain enthralled. Latour's claims are extremely straightforward, and his breakdown of the levels of mediation to counter the dualist paradigm of subjectivity and objectivity paints a deep-seated vision of what we can expect after accepting the idea that there is such a thing as a cyborg-ian world. His diagrams and eleven levels are seamless compared to ideas from the previous texts, so I'm wondering about the glossovers in his argument that I might not have caught.
His final elaboration on "political ecology" and the tying of nonhuman hybrids into political disputes is extremely interesting; it clearly moves the class to a larger and more politically charged scale than I'm used to finding (particularly after all the fiction). There is also some personal commentary and self-consciousness in his writings, like in his writing about past mistakes made in the field and about how "selfishness is a trait more widely distributed than respect for law and life -- at least in France!" (186) I recall him making similar side chatter in his lecture at Columbia and am guessing that this is an important part of why he is such a memorable lecturer/writer.
The first article, "A Collective" spoke to me completely, but I still have trouble working through the second article's Berlin Key analogy. I feel like all the detail focused on describing the example actually made me lose some his final point. However, I do feel that one passage emphasizes a basic idea of the inseparable relationship of things (or nonhumans) and humans: "We cannot even define precisely what makes some human and others technical, whereas we are able to document precisely their modifications and replacements, their arrangements and their alliances, their delegations and representations. Do technology, and you are now a sociologist. Do sociology, and now you are obliged to be a technologist." (Latour 2000: 20)
Basically, I always get really excited to learn about Latour's visions of hybrids, collectives, and constant entanglement.
Perhaps because the environment issue had also been the topic of his lecture at Columbia earlier this semester, the section in Pandora’s Hope about Political Ecology (Level 11) was particularly engaging in proposing this eleventh interpretation as the most literal and brings in the notion of the political. Political science is a field that is new to me, but a strange and interesting one especially when coming to it from an background in Anthropology. Latour states that, “our newest socio-technical bybrid brings what we have learned to bear on the political system. The new hybrid remains a nonhuman, but not only has it lost its material and objective character, it has acquired properties of citizenship.” (202) In combining the political with the social, Latour brings us back to a type of engagement with the scientific world that in recent decades has been completely abandoned by anthropologists. Our move towards the political requires this kind of scientific inclusion of the environment and we have begun to create a discourse of this “ecological crisis.”
Latour would argue that this philosophical discourse that stands an example of the hybrid he so strongly be believes, yet the action is surely not in the right direction if we are preaching a complete abandonment of our interaction with the environment. This abandonment would not just be negative, but it is completely impossible at this stage it the game. To recognize this instead of trying to leave nature to be “natural” would be a far more effective discourse than the one in which we are currently engaged.
The previously somewhat nebulous concept of black-boxing makes more sense to me after these readings. Latour illustrates how each piece of something is itself a something which, in turn, has pieces, and so on. Things can be taken as wholes only when we stop the black-boxing on a given level, even though the black-boxing can really continue infinitely as you break down things into their component pieces.
Another discussion that I really enjoyed was Latour's discussion of the agency/actancy of guns and humans. The "guns kill people" / "no, people kill people" argument has always bothered me, but Latour's explanation makes so much sense and I recommend that the sociologists and materialists of the world read this chapter. In line with his concept of collectives, Latour explains that two agents coming together will transform each other, becoming not just a human or just a gun but a gun-human or human-gun. He explains the error that sociologists and materialists make by assuming a fixed essence of all agents, ignoring or rejecting the possibility that agents can have effects on each other.
I do have a question about the Berlin key chapter. Latour's explanation of the key and its nuances and implications is fascinating. However, I do not quite understand what the key is illustrating. Maybe it would be clearer to me if I read more of the book that this came from? At the end of the chapter, Latour speaks of the "fratricidal war" that prevents true understanding. What is he talking about? I strongly suspect that the Berlin key discussion is referring to something greater than East Berlin / West Berlin, but I can't figure out what that is...
- Hannah Schmidt
Latour's emphasis on the relationships between things to me recalls Gell's discussoin of the art nexus and the distributed person. It was mentioned in class once that the Mona Lisa in particular is famous to the point of being a phenomenon, an event, more than the piece of artwork as it was once intended (skilled, cognitive application of paint to wood). The relationship here is clearly the key element, as the physical reality of the objects and subjects is absolutely secondary to how the object is involved in pilgrimages to art museums (or just particular pieces), homages to the position of the object or subject, to the happenstance of its current existence, to its legacy of movement through space, time, and circles of applied intellect.
But here, I run into a wall. The relationships, the networks between these things acting on each other, have been cut adrift from any meaningful existence other than unto themselves. How are we to define the Mona Lisa in the context of our reaction to it? We come to see the Mona Lisa, but we don't even really see the painting, we see the bullet proof glass surrounding it and the crowd surrounding the bullet proof glass. We take a picture for posterity, and they see the blur of the glass, or maybe just us pointing at the crowd with a bemused grin. These new objects, new acts, are a product of the idolized network surrounding the Mona Lisa, perhaps to the black-box of it. Perhaps then the Mona Lisa also carries the distributed personhood of Da Vinci, the Louvre's owners and employees, those that come to see her.
Essentially, I'm baffled. Where do we pin down something to talk about? The eventual ambiguity is frustrating like metaphysics, we know there's something there, but we seem to be brushing it off as sheerly unknowable.
By what lexicon are we defining these networks? I see the mutable shapes of interconnectedness, but I don't know how to judge their changing.
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