Tracing My Steps
An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (hereafter, AIME) is the fifth book I read in my sequence, after Rejoicing and before Pandora’s Hope. While I am certainly glad that I chose this book for my independent study, and while I would recommend that it should be included in any reading list designed to give a student a comprehensive understanding of Latour’s philosophy, I have some doubts as to whether I placed it in the perfect spot in my sequence. So, here I would like to offer some reflections concerning where one might most strategically place this book in his/her own sequence, and I would also like to offer some suggestions concerning how this book might be read in conjunction with Latour’s other works. As always, however, I remind the reader that I firmly believe that any navigation through Latour, carried out in whatever manner, will yield its own unique understanding of his thought, and no way of understanding him is inherently better than any other. I think it all depends on what a reader wants to get out of his/her reading. Speaking only for myself, I wanted to get two things out of my sequence; first, I wanted to arrive at the most comprehensive understanding of Latour’s philosophy that I could; and second, I wanted to arrive at some rough understanding of the progression of Latour’s thought over the course of his career. Thus, all my recommendations and suggestions will be written with an eye toward these goals. And yet I hope that reading my reflections can also help readers map out alternative trajectories if they so choose. That said, I suppose that here would be the appropriate place to offer my first suggestion for any reader making his/her way through Latour for the first time: make sure you first define what it is you want to get out of your readings before you start reading. Doing so will help you decide where to start, where to go next, and where to end up.
Returning to my own personal objectives, I think I did well in choosing my books with respect to the first goal: a comprehensive understanding. But I’m not so sure I did as well as I could have with the second goal: an understanding of a progression. While I’m glad I read AIME toward the end of my sequence ( I can’t imagine how intimidated I would have been if I have tried to read it first), I think I should have read it at the very end, instead of putting it right before Pandora’s Hope. After reading AIME, I felt like Pandora’s Hope, while very interesting, was sort of a step backward in time (which it is if you look at the publication date). Honestly, I would have probably put PH somewhere toward the beginning, and then read We Have Never Been Modern right before AIME (I’ll explain why later). Just to recap, my sequence went like this: WHNBM, Aramis, Factish Gods, Rejoicing, AIME, Pandora’s Hope. In hindsight, maybe it should have gone something like this: Pandora’s Hope, Aramis, Factish Gods, Rejoicing, WHNBM, AIME. I realize that this sequence would have been beset with just as many problems as the first, but I think I would have gotten a little bit better of a sense of a progression toward AIME, though of course, in terms of publication, the chronological order of these books is all out of whack. But like Latour says, it’s all a matter of sorting, and any path through the network will yield a different network. Like actors in a network, the identity of each of these books changes based on its relations with the others.
Before moving on to my description of the text, I would like to propose, though I’m not sure I would say “recommend”, a totally different way of reading AIME. I think it would be interesting if someone read AIME slowly, in parts, in conjunction with the others in the sequence. For example, one could read the first chapter of AIME, then read WHNNBM for a more detailed treatment of the main philosophical assumptions and arguments that inform the first chapter of AIME. Then, when the reader comes upon Latour’s chapter in AIME on technology, he/she could stop and read Aramis right after. After the chapter on religious speech, read Rejoicing; after the chapter on Science, read Pandora’s Hope, and so on. Such a method would hopefully give a reader a sort of macrocosm/ microcosm understanding of the various modes of existence that Latour discusses in AIME. Granted, this method would produce just as many problems as any other, but I think it would yield some interesting benefits too. Give it a try and get back to me!
A Note on AIME as a Text
One of the most interesting features of AIME as a text is that it is not just a text; it’s a project in the very real sense that it has a whole team (run by Latour) and its own website, which gives anyone who registers full access to the content of the book. Frankly speaking, this website is truly remarkable! I would suggest registering (anyone who has an email address can do it) just to see all the things that this website does/ has on it. On this site one will find the text, a very thorough and comprehensive glossary of terminology, additional documents that serve as empirical evidence for claims, and also a forum for discussion and contributions (check it out at modesofexistence.org) Since Latour sees AIME (the book) as only a provisional summary of AIME (the project), and since he views the project as necessarily collaborative, readers of the book are encouraged to submit their own reflections, queries, and suggestions to the website. Understanding the online component of the AIME project is crucial to one’s understanding of AIME as a text. Throughout the book, the reader will encounter abbreviations (such as [NET] and [PREP], symbols, and marginal phrases that float beside the main text. All of these abbreviations, symbols, and “sub-texts” (if I may call them that) correspond to features of the website, which it would be helpful to visit regularly while reading the text.
An Apology for the Brevity of My Description
I would like to say a few words about my description of this text before offering it to the reader. In this brief note, I am using the word “Apology” in two different but related ways; first, I am using the word “apology” in its more intuitive, colloquial sense, for I do sincerely apologize for the fact that my description, due to its brevity and to the ineptitude of the writer (me), will inevitably fail to do justice to a book that is, quite frankly, beyond my ability to comprehend in all of its nuance and complexity; second, I am using “apology”, in the sense that I want to defend my choice. Since AIME is such a long, arduous, thorough, and ambitious text, a point-by-point, or even chapter-by-chapter description of it would be too long to be of use as a resource. One might as well read the book! And so, what I have decided to do is provide a brief description of Part I, along with only a very brief summary of the contents of Parts II and III. My hope is that this will be sufficient in giving the reader a sense of what this book is about, what is in it, and what the overall project AIMs (See what I did there?!) at accomplishing. Without further ado, here goes my best shot…
Description of the Text
Latour’s Project
Latour argues that an anthropology of the Moderns has never really been done before because the Moderns have only previously defined themselves according to false distinctions that never truly worked to describe what was really going on with them. The Moderns have always defined themselves, for example, as those who understood the true distinction between subjects and objects, between Society and Nature, between knowledge and belief. But since these distinctions are merely illusions set up by the Modern Constitution, the Moderns have never really been Modern. They have always attempted to “make a home for themselves” by attempting to reduce the foundation of their identity to concepts like “the Economy” or “ecology”. But Latour argues that they have never fully dwelled in either place, for that would make their identity as a people reducible to one main concept, which Latour insists is impossible. Therefore, the Moderns are homeless, floating in the no-man’s-land between Economy and Ecology. Latour is attempting to provide them with a new home, one that actually corresponds to “reality” in the practical, empirical sense. It is his hope that if we can finally place the Moderns in a home, providing them with a true description of themselves, then they can begin to understand what others are and have been as well. Finally, we Moderns can stop defining ourselves and others according to false dichotomies and ontologies, and we can begin the work of true diplomacy, of learning how to speak truthfully of ourselves, others, and of our relations in the world.
The Importance of Networks
One of the first steps that Latour claims we must follow in order to accomplish these of understanding and diplomacy is to abandon the notion of distinct “domains” of knowledge. He argues that an anthropologist who traces the actions and negotiations of the Moderns in practice will soon discover that scientists are forced to do all kinds of things that look more like law, or politics, or even religion. And the same is true for members of other “disciplines” and “domains” as well. In the end, these domains cross paths so often that anyone doing an anthropology of the Moderns would not get anywhere by adhering to the notion that these domains are separate. Latour insists that we replace the notion of pure domains of knowledge with the notion of networks. He argues that the idea of tracing networks allows us the “freedom of maneuver” necessary to follow the associations between actors wherever they arise without worrying about whether the associations lie within certain domains. In fact, it’s guaranteed that they won’t. The notion of tracing networks also, therefore, allows us to include all sorts of actors, human and nonhuman, that would previously have to have been excluded from a given study.
Here it’s crucial to understand that what arises out of this method of tracing networks is NOT the discovery that there is really no such thing as politics, or law, or religion. These domains are only “false” when they are considered pure domains that do not cross paths with the others, or when they are considered as the metalanguage that explains all the others. Latour insists that only by tracing the associations of actors in networks can we really understand the real reality of politics, law, religion, or any of these domains. He argues that what will happen out of the thorough tracing of networks is that the anthropologist will discover that each of these domains is distinct from the others only because it follows its own unique “veridiction”, or path toward truth making. The anthropologist will discover that these domains are not really domains, but different “modes of existence” that all have their own unique way of truth-making and truth-telling. Borrowing from speech-act theory, Latour says that each mode of existence’s capacity for truth-telling depends on a distinct set of “felicity and infelicity conditions” that are unique to each mode. For example, religion is a mode of existence that follows a different path of veridiction from science. In order for religious utterance to speak truthfully, it must align itself with the felicity conditions that are necessary for this mode to speak truth in its own way. In order for Sciecne to speak truth, on the other hand, it follows a different path of veridiction, and it must satisfy the felicity conditions that are unique to the mode.
Latour insists throughout the book that you cannot use one mode of existence to explain or evaluate the others, nor can you reduce the others in terms of any one of them. In other words, one cannot ask Science questions of Religion, or evaluate the truth claims of Religion based on the veridiction and felicity conditions of Science. Such a misguided gesture would amount to what Latour calls a “category mistake.” Each mode of existence must be respected for its own unique way of telling truth, and we must be careful to ask the right questions of the right modes, so as to avoid making faulty judgments according to category mistakes.
Hiatuses, Mediations, and Veridiction
It’s important here, before moving on, to go into a little more detail about what this term “veridiction” means for Latour. To understand this word, it is important to understand that just because each mode of existence arrives at truth in its own way, and just because we can’t evaluate or explain one mode in terms of another, this does not mean each mode does not encounter its own problems. In fact, one of the crucial traits that defines any mode is the unique way in which it maintains its ability to speak truth in the face of problems. Latour argues that each mode, as it moves along its own path toward truth, encounters discontinuities, or hiatuses, things that interrupt its linear progression toward arriving at perfect unmediated truth. If there were no such discontinuities, then there would be a mode of existence that could deliver pure, unmediated Truth (shot straight from Heaven along an unbroken, linear path), and this mode could serve as the evaluative and reductive metalanguage of all the others. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of Platonists to argue otherwise, no such mode exists. So, each mode of existence must pass (a crucial word in this book) through these discontinuities in its own way in order to arrive at a finished product of associations that look continuous. This phrase from the book says it all: “continuity is always the effect of a leap across discontinuities” (267). The way this “leap” is achieved is through “translation”, or “mediation”, an event by which actors in the network (and the network itself) must be transformed into something else in order to create continuity.
Let me try my hand at giving an example from Science (And I really mean it when I say I am unsure whether I fully understand what Latour is getting at, to say nothing of whether this example actually illustrates it). Science operates according to the rules of the reference mode of existence, and the discontinuity, or hiatus, that the reference mode must face is that it must constantly refer to things in the world that are not actually present to the audience. For example, a scientist studying the Amazon cannot actually bring the Amazon to the reader, nor can he even perform all of his work in the middle of the forest. What reference must do to pass through this discontinuity is create a system of signs and inscriptions that are self-referential and ultimately stand in as representative of that which cannot be brought to the reader directly. Thus, the scientist studying the Amazon must collect soil samples that become, by an act of translation, signs that work within a whole system of reference, a system of charts, graphs, laboratories, journal articles, etc, so that in the end, the forest can be represented, and the claims about it can be taken as truthful. The only way that the reference mode can pass through the discontinuities presented to it is through the mediation of signs and inscriptions. But what has been said of reference in this example is true of all modes; they all must perform their own translations to pass. The way that a mode of existence mediates, the way that it makes a trajectory of continuity that passes through discontinuities, this is what Latour means when he says “veridiction.”
The Importance of Prepositions
And yet, for all its importance, the anthropologist’s act of following networks, that method by which she might arrive at an understanding of each mode of existence on its own terms, is not sufficient to the task creating the possibility of diplomacy. Simply creating a comprehensive list of all the modes is not enough. For diplomacy entails that we learn “how to speak well of” each mode and learn how to speak of it in relationship to other modes. For that task, we need the term “preposition” to be included in our new anthropology, so that it can become the comparative anthropology that Latour claims we so desperately need. Borrowing here from William James, Latour argues that any being derives its identity through its relations with other beings; thus, prepositions become the hinges on which the ontology of beings hang—X with Y is fundamentally different from X over Y, or in Y. And no being has any inherent, a priori, essence apart from its prepositional relationship to all others. For Latour, this is especially true of modes of existence. We cannot understand any mode of existence without considering it in relationship to another. He argues that in order for diplomacy to be a real possibility, we must consider a given mode of existence with respect to its prepositional crossing with other modes. What the prepositional aspect allows us to do is resist the temptation to analyze each mode in terms that are isolated from the rest, and instead grasp each mode in terms of the appropriate interpretive key.
In other words, what the prepositional model allows us to do, Latour argues, is compare the various modes of existence with respect to their relations with others. Of course, this act of comparison is not meant to establish any of the modes as better than the others, or to make any one of them the foundation for all the others, but comparisons must be made if we are to strive toward diplomacy, as make decisions in the real world.
One way that this concept has been explained to me is in terms of Actor-Network Theory’s advantages and disadvantages. I have heard it explained more than once, and Latour essentially says the same thing in this book, that ANT is really good at doing descriptive work. It allows us the “freedom of maneuver” (Latour’s phrase) necessary to trace associations between actors wherever they might lead, which in turn allows us to see connections and topography that we would miss if we adhered strictly to the idea of distinctive domains of knowledge. Essentially, ANT makes networks visible and describes what constitutes their make-up. However, ANT doesn’t do values, and it doesn’t help much with diplomacy. And Latour argues that in our anthropology of the Moderns, values and diplomacy are essential. Latour is not an absolute relativist who claims that none of the modes has anything to say about the others, since they are all equal. He is a relative relativist who wants to compare the modes in terms of their crossings, in terms of their appropriate interpretive keys (which would depend on the preposition). I realize that here it might be a good time for a quote:
“We shall thus say of any situation that it can be grasped first of all in the [NET] mode—we shall unfold its network of associations as far as necessary—and then in the [PRE] mode—we shall try to qualify the type of connections that allow its extension. The first makes it possible to capture the multiplicity of associations, the second the plurality of the modes identified during the course of the Moderns’ complicated history. In order to exist, a being must not only pass by way of another [NET] (network) but also in another manner [PRE] (preposition), by exploring other ways, as it were, of ALTERING itself. By proceeding in this way, I hope to remedy the principal weakness of every theory that takes the form of an association network: the ethnographer will be able to retain the freedom of maneuver proper to network analysis, while respecting the various values to which her informants seem to cling so strongly…To understand rationally any situation whatsoever is at once to unfold its network and define its preposition” (62-63; 66).
The Demon Double-Click
With respect to both the network-based and the preposition-based examination of the modes, Latour warns against speaking of any knowledge whatsoever in terms of what he calls Double-Click communication (a term he has used in at least two other books that I know of). Although Latour does acknowledge Double-Click as its own mode of existence, he often refers to it as a demon, and he frequently warns against speaking of any mode in its terms. What Double-Click communication does is seek to offer up pure knowledge divorced from its chains of association, divorced from its mediations, divorced from its appropriate interpretive key. Double-Click, in the realm of Science, for instance, claims that “facts speak for themselves” and is always seeking truths that are somehow transcendent from the realm of networks and mediation. It wants to speak of truth for all time. Latour argues that so long as we speak of truth in terms of Double-Click communication, we can never achieve diplomacy; we will just keep pitting various universal, immutable truth claims from different modes against one another (the claims of Science against the claims of Religion for example). Double-Click prevents us from seeing that modes of existence operate according to unique veridictions, and from seeing that they only speak truth under certain felicity and infelicity conditions.
Building the Pivot Table
Although I’m leaving so many things out, I nevertheless feel like I have provided the necessary information that will allow me to summarize (very, very, briefly) the contents of the rest of this book. Essentially, the rest of AIME is dedicated to discussing each of the modes of existence in its turn (at least the ones that he has been able to come up with so far). For each mode, Latour makes sure to describe its hiatuses (its discontinuities), its trajectory (the ways in which it passes through hiatuses), its felicity and infelicity conditions, its beings that it must institute in order to create truth, and its alteration (what happens to it as it crosses with other modes). Each of these is a pretty complicated concept that requires very careful reading to grasp, and for me to try to describe in detail what he means by all of these terms would take up too much space for a mere summary. It is helpful to know, however, that Latour does a little bit of translation of his own by putting all of these concepts together in a chart he calls a Pivot Table. The Pivot Table can be found in the back of the book. Essentially, it charts the contents of the book. It’s a very helpful tool actually, one that I have referred to several times while making my way through this book. What I hope to have done in this summary is give the reader a the necessary rudimentary knowledge that will allow them to read and make sense of this Pivot Table, so that their reading of AIME might be enhanced/ aided by it.
After reading Part I and understanding how to read the Pivot Table, it seems to me that one could skip around in this book quite easily. I would recommend this skipping if you want to zero in on any particular mode of existence for say, a research paper. Or, if you’re reading any of Latour’s other books, you can use this skipping method to find the mode of existence most pertinent to the other book and arrive at a deeper understanding of Latour’s philosophy on that subject (Read Chapter 8 on Technology, for example, alongside Aramis).
However you choose to read/use this book, it promises to be fascinating and challenging at every turn. I would love to read some comments on what making your way through this book was like for you. And please let me know if you think I have performed any sort of sacrilege with this summary.
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