Skip to main content

Who is the anthropologist of the moderns?

Yesterday I was in CIESAS-Golfo talking about what Latour intends to do in AIME. The context was interesting, a dialogue between the notions of Mode of Existence in Latour and Language Game in Wittgenstein. Differences are less remarkable as similarities: pluralism, indispensability of incommensurabilities, a normative character associated to each mode/game. In both cases, the descriptive is always external while an internal involvement - as much as an internal criticism - entails already a norm (and a judgement). In terms of Latour, a value. To describe practices (or modes of existence) in external terms is to be indifferent to the values that make them make sense. This is why Latour associates to the modes different a mini-transcendence, as much as a regime of norm. I pointed out that Latour has at his advantage the concept of construction and his elaboration of it through the book (“Parce que c’est bien construit, c’est peut-être bien vrai”). This gives him resources to bring in science studies, and a more detailed analysis of how more than one mode is involved in scientific tinkering. And, of course, Latour would have that Wittgestein's relativity could not traffic in hard cash (it stops short of conceiving how existence is).

My friend Witek, who was presenting Wittgenstein's views on religion, brought about the issue of who is the anthropologist of the modern, the character in Latour's book. I was saying that the different modes can be considered from the prepositional perspective, the one from the PRE mode of existence (see AIME, 265-269, French edition). The anthropologist is therefore one who can manage to see the different modes as different tonalities and who does assuming an ontology of actants, irreductions, constructions and most of the other ontological commitments of Latour (mostly shared with Simondon and Souriau). This is how she is not fooled by Res Ratiotinans and can diagnose the negotiations with non-humans involved in scientific practice. Well, ok, but is she modern? There is no much clue about that, although I guess at some point Latour hints that yes, she is (still, how modern is she, as those that believe in modernity come in different degrees, they are hybrids too). Further, from which mode of existence does she investigate the moderns? Well, I think the book is wise in presenting the anthropologist as someone unknown, much like most anthropologists when they are met by the natives. Natives - in this case, us, moderns - know very little about her and who is she coming from. And often, the clues the natives have are no more than what she assumes and concludes about them.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev...

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Me...

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I ...