bould - learning from the little engine

8/11/2019 Bould - Learning From the Little Engine

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Learning from the Little Engines That Couldn't: Transported by Gernsback, Wells, and LatourAuthor(s): Mark Bould and Sherryl VintSource: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, Technoculture and Science Fiction (Mar., 2006),pp. 129-148Published by: SF-TH IncStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241412.

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2/21

TRANSPORTED

BY

GERNSBACK, WELLS,

AND

LATOUR

129

Mark Bould and

Sherryl

Vint

Learning from

the

Little

Engines

That

Couldn't:

Transported

by Gernsback, Wells,

and Latour

Everyone knows

that,

until one

wins

one,

all awards are travesties.

Even

so,

there is something

unseemly

about the fact

that

Bruno Latour'sAramis

or

The

Love of

Technology was

not nominated for

a

single

sf

award. Published

in

French

in

1993

and in

English

in

1996,

this novel

occupies simultaneously

he

very center and thevery edges of thegenre. Itoffers ways for us to rethinkwhat

sf

can do,

and to reconsider our

relationships

to

technology

and

the conse-

quences

of that for both

subjects

and

objects.

It

is

also a

page-turner,

a

gripping

whodunit,

a

cyborg

and

hybrid manifesto,

and a

profound

meditationon the

relationships inking

science,

science

studies,

and

science fiction. It shouldhave

swept

the

board.

Aramis startsby

announcing

Latour'saim of

restoring

"to

literature

he vast

territories t shouldnever have

given up-namely,

science and

technology"(vii),

while at

the

same time

showing

"technicians

hat

they

cannot conceive of

a

technologicalobject withouttakingintoaccountthe massof humanbeings with

all

their

passions

and

politics

and

pitiful

calculations"

viii).

At the

nexus

of

the

two

cultures,

this

rapprochement

s

attempted hrough

a novel about

a

technolog-

ical research

project-the development

of the

eponymous

publictransport ystem

in

Paris1-that is also

an academicwork investigating he

failure

of

this project.

It

moves between "science and technology"

and

the "passions

and politics" of

human beings,

combining fictional characters(a professor, Norbert, more or

less based

on Latour,

and

his nameless

student/assistant)

with "real-life

interviews"

conducted by Latour, "genuine documents" collected in his

fieldwork,

and other

"mysterious voices,"

including passages

from

Mary

Shelley's

Frankenstein,

or The Modem

Prometheus

1818)

and

even

the

voice

of Aramis

itself

(x).

For

his

"hybrid ask,"

Latour

creates

the

"hybridgenre"

of

"scientifiction,"

nsisting

that its various

"discursivemodes have to be

kept

separate" x),

distinguishedby

their

presentation

n

clearly-headed ections and

different

typefaces.

One

shouldnot mistake such

separations

as an

insistence on

monadicpurity,

however. Latour's

method here, as elsewhere, is more

dialectical. In We Have

Never Been

Modem

(1991),

he

argues thatourunderstanding f science and the

social world is based

on

a

"modernConstitution"

hat separatespolitics from

nature, subjects from objects, humans from

nonhumans.For him, this is not

only politically

damaging

but

also

just plain wrong.

Tracing

the

emergence of

these dichotomies to

the seventeenth

century,

he

observes that

At first

sight

... it

seems that

Hobbes and his disciplescreated he chief resources

that

are

available o

us

for

speaking

about

power ("representation,

"

sovereign,

"

"contract,"

"property,""citizens"),

while

Boyle and

his

successors

developed

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3/21

130 SCIENCE FICTION

STUDIES,

VOLUME

33 (2006)

one of the

major

repertoires

for

speaking

about nature

("experiment," "fact,"

"evidence,"

"colleagues").

It

should thus seem also clear thatwe are

dealing

not

with two

separate

nventions

but

with

only one,

a division

of

power

between

the

two protagonists,to Hobbes, the politics and to Boyle, the sciences. (WeHave

Never

24-25)

From this

divide flows the

modem

epistemology,

with

its

belief in

progressive

humanism,

iberal

democracy,

capitalism,

andscientific

empiricism,

that

Latour

aims to

revolutionize.

He

denies thathis

work

about "the

social constructionof

science.

"

Although

he

insists

upon the

vitality

of

the

"social" world of

human

politics

and

personalities

in

the

production

of

science,

he is

equally

insistent

upon

a

"real

world" with which

these

people interact. He is as

critical of

postmodernism's

linguistic

idealism, which

places

the material

world

beyond

human

reach,

as he

is of the

modem drive toward

separation

and

purification.

His

vision

of

science

(and

politics)

is

about

shifting networks of

connection,

the

building

of collec-

tives.

Latour defines

this

replacement

(of

the

modern/postmodem

divide

between

natureand

society

with the

notion of

the

collective)

as nonmodem.

Latour's concepts of

"translation"

and

"inscription"

distinguish

his work

from more

idealist

or

purely constructivist

versions of

science

studies. These

terms fill

in

the

space left

empty

between

subject and

object

when the

material

and thelinguistic aredeemedseparaterealms.His objectof study s the frequent

traffic

across this

fictitious

divide.

Pandora's

Hope:

Essays

on the

Reality of

Science Studies

(1999) providesa detailed

case

study

of how

the

heterogeneous

world

of things is

translated

nto

systems of

signification

hrough

a

studyof how

soil

samples

begin

as

physical

collections

of

earth

and

are translated

nto tables

and

graphs

representing eaturesof

soil acrossa

territory.These

processes

trace

a

move from

the

concrete

to

the

abstract,

one

that

at

each

stage

"allow[s]

new

translations

and

articulationswhile

keeping

some

relations

intact"

(Pandora's

Hope

54).

Latour

insists,

however,

that,

although

these

processes

do

involve

social shaping, the resulting signification is not separate from the material

world.

Rather,the

chain of

translation

s

always

reversible-we can

move along

it in

either

direction,

toward

the

abstractor

the

concrete.

Translation

refers to

more

thanjust

the

modifications

and

mediations

that

connect the

material

world to its

representation.

For

technology,

translation

lso

refers

to

the

process by

which a

project

"takes on

reality, or loses

it,

by

degrees"

(Aramis

85) by

"enrolling"

various

parties

(machines,

politicians,

money,

politics,

"natural"

bjects) nto its

own

goals.

This

process of

translation

requires

negotiationand

compromise.The

"feasible"

project s not

the

onebased

on the most "true"science but ratherthe one best able to form a rhizomatic

network

of

connections with

other

human

and

nonhuman

actants. Aramis,

a

detailed

llustrationof

this

argument,

demonstrates

how

what

Aramis "is"

shifts

over

the

course of

its "life"

depending

uponthe

connectionswith

other

actants

that it

develops,

maintains,or loses.2

Far

beyond our

understanding f the

practiceof

science

and the

relationship

between

the

material

world and

language,

Latour's

concern

thatscience

and

the

social

not

be

separated

has

deeply

political

consequences

and

mplications

or the



4/21

TRANSPORTED

Y

GERNSBACK,

WELLS,

AND LATOUR

131

practiceof

democracy.

At the end

of WeHave Never Been

Modem,

Latour

calls

for a new

nonmodem

Constitution hat

will

move

beyond

the modem

separation

of human

andNature

o embrace he common

production

of societies

and

natures

and the

existence of

hybrids

who

do not fall

clearly

into

any

of the

epistemo-

logical

separations that structure modem

thought.

Latour's

rejection

of

the

modem Constitution s

political as

well

as

epistemological

because,

as

long

as

we do

not

recognize the role

of

translation

n

the

production

of

science,

the

modem

divide will

always

preserve

a

space

of "truth"

outside

human

struggles

over

meaning.

PerhapsLatour's

most

controversial dea-as well

as

the

most

intriguing

or

sf-is his

insistence

in

Politics

of

Nature: How

to

Bring

the

Sciences

into

Democracy

(1999) thatwe need

to

"adda series of

new

voices to the

discussion

...

the

voices

of

nonhumans"

69).

In

this vision

of

a

new

collective,

Latour

refuses

the

subject/objectdivide and

insteadenvisions a

space

in

which

humans

and

nonhumansare

networked

together,

all

expressing

desires and

goals,

all

thought

of as

having agency.

The

genuine

documents

collected

in

Aramis

repeatedly

apply

terms

like

"supervise" or "allow" or

"notify"

or

"vote"

to

Aramis's

machine

components.

Another

voice-perhaps

the

author's-urges that

we

"not jump too

quickly to

conclusions as to

whether these terms

are

metaphorical,

exaggerated,

anthropomorphic,

or

technical"

(Aramis

61).

Instead,allpossibilities mustremain nplay, andwe must refuse to "purify"our

sense of

the

languageand

assign

it

(and

these

entities)

to

one realm or the

other,

real or

literary.

By

following this

example

and

engaging

in

the play

between

science

fact,

science

fiction,

and

scientifiction,

this

essay

engages with

Aramis

to

explore

what

Latour

might contribute o

the

study

of sf

and

what sf

might

contribute

o

our

understanding of

Latour. We

wonder

whether sf's

commodity form

suppresses he

possibilitiesthat

ie between

the

literal and

the

literary.

We

worry

about

commodity fetishism and the

tendency

in

Latour's

concept of

actants(in

which humans and nonhumans are elevated or reduced to the same stat-

us-equivalized-in the

new

collective)

to

reducehumans

n

technology

to

labor

power.

Aramis

itself

speaks

in

Aramis,just as

many

nonhuman

others

speakin

other

sf,

and so

we

weigh this

speaking

of

the other

in

narrative,

the

speaking

for

the

other

that it

inevitably

entails and

what it

suggests

about

the politics

of

Latour'snew

collective.

Sf

is one of the

actants

hat "real ife"

technology

might

enroll, and

Latour gives

us new

tools

to think

about

this

relationship

between

science

and

technology;

understanding

Latour

maychange our

understanding

f

both

science and

sf.

At one point in Aramis,Norberttries to calm his student/assistant,who has

lost

patiencewith

the

relativism

of their

taskof

discovering"who

killed

Aramis"

(2).

The

student

wants a

"real"

answerabout

Aramis's

technological

feasibility,

not a lot

of

fuzzy

speculation

about

politics and

passions. Norbert

tells

him that

"

s]tudying

a

technologicalproject

sn't

any harder

han

doing

literary

criticism.

Aramis

is one

long

sentence

in

which

the

words

graduallychange

in

response

to

intemal

contradictions

mposed by

the

meaning.

It's only a

text, a

fabric"

(102). Norbert's "isn't

any

harder than"is

somewhat

ambiguous,

but we

will



5/21

132

SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES,

VOLUME

33

(2006)

nonetheless treat Aramis as Latour treats

Aramis,

as

a

literary

text to

be

criticized, as well as

quintessential

sf. Our

first

step

is to release

Latour's

scientifiction into

dialogue

with the version

proposed

by Hugo

Gernsback.

Discussing

the

polytemporality

of

"every

contemporary

assembly,"

Latour

suggests

that "Time is not a

general

frameworkbut

a

provisional

result

of

the

connection between entities"

(We

Have Never

74).

He then

turns

to an

image

familiarto

anyone

who has read more than a

handfulof the rationales ound in

time-travelstories-the

idea

of

time

as a

spiral:

Let us

suppose

...

that

we

are

going

to

regroup

he

contemporary

lements

along

a

spiral

ratherthan a line. We do have a

future and a

past,

but

the

future

takes

the form of a circle

expanding

n

all

directions,

and the

past

is not

surpassed

but

revisited, repeated, surrounded, protected, recombined, reinterpretedand

reshuffled.

Elements that appear

remote

if

we

follow

the

spiral

may

turn out to

be

quite

nearby

if

we

compare

loops.

Conversely,

elements that are

quite

contemporary,

if

we

judge

by

the

line,

become

quite

remote

if

we

traverse

a

spoke.

Such a

temporality

does not

oblige

us to use the labels

"archaic"

or

"advanced,"

since

every

cohort of

contemporary

lements

may

bring together

elements from all

times.

(75)

At several

points, Aramisalludes to

Shelley's

Frankenstein nd Samuel

Butler's

Erewhon,

or

Over the

Range

(1872),

texts

brought

close

by

the

polytemporality

of spiral-time.The more provocativebringing-together,however, is Latour's

coinage

of

"scientifiction,"unawareas he

seems to be

of

the

earlier term

used

to

describe

the kinds of

fiction published

n

AmazingStories. While

Gernsback

defined

scientifiction as

"the Jules

Verne,

H.G. Wells, and

Edgar Allan Poe

type

of

story-a

charming romance

intermingled with

scientific fact and

prophetic

vision"

(qtd

in

Westfahl

70), Latour,

deeming science

fiction

"inadequate, incesuch

writing

usually draws

upon

technologyfor

setting

rather

than

plot"

(Aramis

viii), ponders

what

genre would

be

capable of

"bringing

about

this fusion of

two so

clearly separated

universes,

that of culture

and that

of technology, as well as the fusion of threeentirelydistinct iterarygenres-the

novel, the

bureaucratic ossier,

and

the

sociological

commentary"

viii); he thus

devises his

hybrid

scientifiction.

Coined

nearly

seventy yearsapart, these

scientifictions

are

proximate.Both

postulate

hybrid

monstrosities

and conjure

allies

(Verne, Wells,

Poe;

Shelley,

Butler). Both

fuse

separate realms

(fiction/science;

culture/technology) and

distinct

genres

(romance, fact,

vision;

novel,

bureaucratic

dossier,

sociological

commentary).

Moreover,

these

not-exactly

synonymous

terms do

overlap.

Latour's "novel" s

more sophisticated

han

Gernsback's

"romance,"

certainly,

butboth areprose fictions. And if Gernsback's"'scientific fact' meantlengthy

and

detailed

explanations of current

scientific

knowledge and

discoveries,

equivalent

o those

found

in

science

textbooks and articles"

(Westfahl 39), the

discursive

register

of

this

component

has clear

affinities

with Latour's

bureaucratic

dossier.

Furthermore,

while

Gernsback s

prophetic

visions-"descriptions

and

explanationsof

hypothetical nventions

and

scientific

processes"

(Westfahl

39)-might coincide

with

sociological

commentary

itself



6/21

TRANSPORTED

Y

GERNSBACK,

WELLS,

AND LATOUR

133

hypothetical

and,

at

least,

scientistic),

Westfahl's

exegesis

of the term

also

describes Latour's

project

in

Aramis:

prophecy ... itself combines fact and fiction in that, on the one hand, a

scientifically grounded

prediction

of a future

discovery

might

be

substantive

enough

to warrant

a

patent,

so that

[Gernsback]

once

spoke

of "true

or

prophetic

science" as

if both accounts

of current informationand informed

speculations

about the future could be considered

types

of science. On the other

hand,

a

predicted

invention, even

if

logical

or

inevitable,

cannot be a fact

until it

is

realized;

in

a

different sense

of

the

word,

such a

description

s

a

"fiction."

(39-

40)

Latour

argues

that

"by

definition,

a

technological

project

s a

fiction,

since at

the

outset it does not exist" (Aramis23), and thattheprojectwill gainor lose reality

depending

on whether it is

capable

of

recruiting

sufficient and

suitable

actors

into its network

and

retaining

hem.

Aramis,

like

all such

projects,

is a

"fiction

seeking

to come true"

(18-9).

There

is

a clear sense of

Germsbackian

rophecy

in

the

descriptionof Aramis's

"inventors":

They

invent

a

means

of

transportation hat does not

exist,

paper

passengers,

opportunities

hat have to

be

created, places

to be

designed (often

from

scratch),

component

ndustries,

echnological

revolutions.

They're

novelists.

With

ust

one

difference: their

project-which

is

at first

indistinguishable

rom a novel-will

graduallyveer in one directionor another.Either it will remain a projectin the

file

drawers

...

or else it will

be

transformed nto

an

object. (24)

Finally, both

scientifictionsretain

their

hybridity.

Aramis's

prefacenot

only

describes the

various elements of

which

the book is

composed

but also

insists on

their

clear

demarcation,

while

Westfahl

argues

hat

Gernsback's

"intermingling"

did not

go

so far

as to

integrate

"scientific fact"

seamlessly into the

narrative

flow

but rather

kept

them

as distinct

passages.

Theseshiftsof

discursive

register

are evident

in

Germsback's wn

novel

Ralph

124C 41+: A

Romance

of

the

Year

2660 (1911-12; revisedfixup 1925); as aneditor "hespokeof informationbeing

'contained'

n

the

narrative

..

and their

separability

rom the

narrative

ext was

indicated

in

his

'opinion'

that 'the

ideal

proportion of

a

scientifiction

story

should

be

seventy-five

per

cent

literature

nterwoven

with

twenty-fiveper

cent

science"'

(Westfahl,

quoting

Germsback, 9). The

Heinlein/Campbell

evolution

sought

to

purify

Gernsbackian

scientifiction by

homogenizing its

discursive

mode and

driving out

lengthy

passages

of

exposition,

which were

condemned

as

infodumps.

Ironically

enough,

this move

created

hardsf, a hybrid

orm

retaining

as

one of

its

components

an

expository

discursive mode

that it

must also

always

tryto expunge,as well as suchhybridsas science fantasy,fantasy,and,although

it

could

never

then

admit

t, hegemonic

sf

itself.

Just as

slipstreamand

the New

Weird (and

gap

fiction,

interstitial

fiction,

post-genre

sf, etc.)

recover

the

hybrids

created by

generic

purification(see

Bould), so

Latour's

scientifiction

recuperates,

albeit

unwittingly,

he hybrid

orm hat

Gernsback

titched

ogether.

But

while the

circling of

spiral-time

brings these

scientifictions

closer,

linear

time

drives them

apart.

Nowhere is

this clearer

than in

the different

ways

in

which

Ralph and

Aramis

conceive of

and

represent

technology. In

Aramis's



7/21

134 SCIENCE FICTION

STUDIES, VOLUME

33

(2006)

Epilogue,

Norbert

proposes

a still more radical

book than

Latour's, telling

his

student hat

"I'd like to do a book in which there's no metalanguage,no masterdiscourse,

where you

wouldn't

know

which is

strongest,

the

sociological theory

or

the

documents

or the interviews or the literature

or the

fiction,

where all

these

genres or

regimes

would be at the same

level,

each one

interpreting

he others

without

anybodybeing

able to

say

which

is

judging

what."

(Aramis298)

Admittedly,

it

could be

argued

that

this is

precisely

what Aramis

does,

and that

to see

Norbert's

commentary

on

the

investigation,documents,

and interviews

as

the

text's

metalanguage

s to

misread

it. Yet

Latour's ambition to

reconcile

humanistsand

technologiststhrough

a

conceptualization

f

technology

as

fully

a partof the humansocial realm indicates a vision of the scientifictional ext as

one

in

which all

discursive

elements are held

in

flux,

complexly, dynamically,

and

irresolvably

interacting.

This is in

stark contrast to

Gernsback's

scientifiction,

in

which

the text alternates

statically

amongromance,

scientific

fact,

and

prophetic

vision. In

Ralph,

this

alternation follows a

generally

straightforward

attern.

Ralph

and Alice tour future

New York

(vision), Ralph

explains

the

science behind the marvels

(fact),

and

they

are

linked

by

this odd

courtship

and the

abductionsand rescues it

prompts

(romance).

Such textual

discontinuamake

Gernsback's scientifiction a

clumsy

collision of

"scientific"'

and"fiction,"even as the absenceof visual

markings

o

separate

hese

elements

opens

the

door

to the

Campbell/Heinlein

hegemonization

of

narrativediscourse.

In

contrast, Latour'smarked

discontinua

end

to

keep

in

play

the

elements

thus

separated,

not

least

because

of the

tension

created between the

reader's desire

to

hierarchizeand subsume the

elements into a

single discourse and

to

discern

and order the textual

elements

in

relation to

the text's

metalanguage.

The

very

artificiality

of

Aramis's

separations

einforces

Latour's

nsistencethatthe social

is

always

already

in the

science, thatthey

cannotbe

separatedout into 75 %

to

25 %

proportions,

n

fiction any more than in life.

Campbellian

sf

writers

do

what the

scientist cannot

do, namely

"explor[e]

the

'consequences'

of

scientific

innovations

n

human

society,

"

thusshiftingsf's

function from

inspiration

to

criticism,

providing a "valuable

independent

outlook"

that could be "an

important

factor

in

improving-and control-

ling-scientific

progress"

(Westafhl 194,

195).

Campbell ascribed a dual

function

to sf-"to

indicatewrong

answers,

and why they're

wrong, as well as

suggesting right

answers and

possibilities"

(195)-making the

Gernsbackian

"romance"

an

engagement with

science

ratherthan the scientific

pill's sugar-

coating.WhileGernsback magined hescientistwho "getsthestimulus romthe

story

and

promptly responds

with

the material

invention" (42),

Campbell

pictured

a

scientist or

policymaker

who "would eagerly

consult

texts, looking

for

ideas

and

ramificationsof ideas that

could shape

research strategies and

policy

decisions"

(277).

Despite

Gernsbackian

resonances, then, Latour's

scientifiction

shareswith

Campbellian f a

foregrounding

f the interconnection

of

science and social

world

through its countering of

the

pernicious modern

epistemological

separation of

fact-based

science and value-based

culture-a



8/21

TRANSPORTED

BY

GERNSBACK,

WELLS,

AND LATOUR

135

separation

whose

goal

is

to

"short-circuit

ny

andall

questioning

as to the

nature

of

the

complex

bonds between the

sciences and societies"

(Latour,

Politics

13;

emphasisin original)

Latour's scientifictional

textuality

enacts his desire

to enable

"scientific

worlds [to] become once

again

what

they

had been:

possible

worlds in

conflict

that move and

shape

one

another"

Aramis

x).

Seeing

the world

as

unfixed

and

in

process

ensures

thatLatour'sscientifictionuses

technology

as

plot

rather

han

mere setting. As

possibilities

fizz

between textual

elements and within them

(as

when the

motor,

the

chip,

the

chassis,

the

optical

sensor,

the

central control

panel, and the base

computer-components

of the

as-yet

unrealized

Aramis-squabble about heir

respective

needs and

priorities),

multiple

versions

of the projectco-exist in the spaces createdby the various actants' differing

ideas of

Aramis, which

constantlychange

over

time and

in

relation to

other

actants. Aramis

emerges-or,

rather,

ultimately

does not

emerge-from

the

plethora of

possible Aramises and the

actants'

negotiations

among

them. As

these

negotiationsknot

and reknot

over

twenty-fouryears,

the

"pure"

Aramis,

the "first

Aramis,

the one that

could do

everything,"

came "to

be

called

nominal, while

the series of

alteredand

compromised

Aramises

is

referred

o as

the

simplified

Aramis,

or

the

degraded

Aramis,

or

the VS

(for

very

simplified)

Aramis" (Aramis

100).

A

footnote remarks

that

"'Nominal' here

means

in

conformity with the original function. The dictionary offers other, more

conventionaldefinitions

hat

fit

Aramis

better-e.g.,

'existing

in

name

only,

not

in

reality"'

(100). The

nominal

Aramis is

then

both the

"one that

could

do

everything"

and the

one that does

not-could

not-exist.

During

the

quarter

century

in

which the

nominal

Aramis

struggles to take on

reality by

enlisting

actants nto its

network,

by

translating,

by

"accumulating

ittle

solidities,

little

durabilities, little

resistances"

(45), it

constantly

flickers

between

differing

identities,

constantly

negotiating,

becoming,

without

essence-like the

train

at

the

end of

China

Mieville's Iron

Council

(2004),

suspended n

that

moment,as

in all moments,between arrivalandnon-arrival,betweensuccessfulrevolution

and

failed

revolution,

between all

thepossible

meaningsof these

terms.

That is

the

moment,

the

incompletion-ever-of

the

project.

The world of

Aramis

is very

different

from that of

Ralph.

The

latter is

essentially

static,

fixed,

non-negotiable. A

solitary

genius,

Ralph's

many

inventions

and

discoveriesare

conjured

n the

absence of

society: "He

had

but

to

ask

and his wish

was

law-if it

did not

interfere

with his

work"

(Gemsback

35).

When he has

to

generate

tremendous

energies and

transmit

hem from

his

tower in

New York

to

Switzerland o

melt

the

avalanche

hreatening

Alice, he

sounds a siren

which

could

be heard

within a

radiusof sixty

miles,

sounding ts

warning

to all

to

keep away from

tall

steel or metal

structures,or, if they

could

not do this, to

insulate

themselves. He

sounded

the siren

twice for

ten seconds,

which

meant

that

he

would

direct his

ultra-power or

at

least twenty

minutes, and

everybody

must

be

on

guard

for this

length

of time.

(Gernsback

22)



9/21

136

SCIENCE

FICTION STUDIES,

VOLUME 33

(2006)

As this

mighty phallic ejaculation

indicates, Ralph's prioritization

is

absolute.

His

interactions

with

the social

are minimized and there is never

any

sense

of

his

work being generated from anywhere other than his own will. Gernsback fails

to

perceive

that

"[a]

technology

isn't

one

single

character;

it's a

city,

it's

a

collective,

it's

countless.

All of

Germany

and Switzerland

together

would have

been

needed to keep Victor

[Frankenstein]'s

awkwardly

stitched

together

creature

in

existence" (Aramis

227).

As

pointedly

demonstrated

by

the

hundreds

of

thousands

of

Ralph's admirers who

gather-virtually-in

his transmission

room to

applaud

his

rescue

of Alice from the

avalanche,

the

people

of 2660

exist

merely

as an audience

for

Ralph's

accomplishments.3

Ralph's asociality manifests the modem Constitution's

separation

of

science

from human struggles, which relates science to a "true" and fixed "house of

nature"

rather than the

fluctuating and relative "house of

politics." Under

this

Constitution,

one

house,

nature,

has

authority

and does not

speak

(separated

from

human

relativism,

nature is "real" and "true"

but unable to

speak

except

through

the

scientist),

while the

other

house,

politics,

has

speech

but

no

authority (humans

can

argue

about

political

arrangements,

but there is no certain

ground upon which

absolutely

to elevate

one

position

over

another).

The

scientist has undue

power

and a voice that

silences others because of

"his"

unique

ability

to

"go back

andforth

from one

world

to the

other no matter what:

the passageway closed to all others is open to him alone" (Latour, Politics 11;

emphasis

in

original),

"render[ing]

all

democracy impossible

by

neutralizing

it"

(14).

"He" can

close down all other voices

participating

in

the

formation

of the

common

world

by invoking

"his"

privileged

knowledge

of

nature. Ralph

is

conceived in this

technocratic mode, and his

world

is

one "whose

furnishings

have been already defined"

(Latour, Politics

47).

When

technological

projects

are described in

Ralph,

they are generally

already accomplished, fixed in

place,

leaving the

world of the novel

unavailable for anything

other than often tedious

description.

It

is not a world in

process. New York is

already paved

over with

perfectly uniform steelonium slabs lined with posts to transmit current to those

skating by

on their

Tele-motor-coasters.

Each

sidewalk was divided into two

parts. On the outside

only people going in

one

direction,

on

the inside

only people going

in

the

opposite direction

could

coast.

Collisions, therefore, were

impossible.

If

a person

rolling on the outside

wished to enter a

store,

it was

necessary to

go

to the

end

of the block, and then

turn

to the

left, which

brought

him

on the inside of the

sidewalk where he

could

roll

up to

his

destination. (Gernsback81)

Leaving

aside the

problem

of

what happens at intersections when lateral traffic

is

encountered, it is

significant that New Yorkers'

behavior is never

less than

orderly.

In

contrast,

Aramis

repeatedly draws

attention to the

distinctions

between

the

"paper" people imagined by

different

actants as the project is being

translated. In an

imaginary 1965 Senate hearing about

a PRT system

for Los

Angeles,

an

engineer describes the

following scenario:

When

ome old

lady-a

housewife, let's say-wants to go

downtown,

shefiddles

with her

keyboard.

The

computer

calculates the best route.

It says, "I'll be

there



10/21

TRANSPORTEDBY

GERNSBACK,

WELLS,

AND LATOUR

137

in two minutes

",

it's like

a

taxi.

But

it's a

collective

taxi,

with no

driver,

and

it's

guided

by

computer.

When t

arrives,

the

old

ladyfinds

it's

carrying

afew of

her

cronies whomthe

computer

has decided

to

put

in the same

cab.

There's

no

need

for

a

second

car.

(Aramis

20; emphasis

in

original)

SenatorWallace

objects:

What f instead

offinding

her

"cronies"

..

in this closed car with

no

driver, your

housewife

runs

into a

couple

of

thugs? (I

didn't

say

"blacks"-be sure to

get

that

straight.)

Thenwhat

does

she

do? What

happens

to

her

then?

...

I'll tell

you

what

happens,

she

gets

raped

And the

rapist

has all

the time in

the

world,

in

this

automatedshell

of

yours

with no doors

and no windows. You

know what

you

've

invented?

You've

nventedthe

rape wagon (Aramis

21;

emphasis

in

original)

Part of Aramis's failure to become real derives from the failure of engineers

(whose

paper

people

would

be

delighted

to

give

up

the relative

privacy

and

safety

of

privately-owned

cars

in

exchange

for

relative

convenience,

less

pollution,

and

no

traffic

ams)

to

negotiate

with,

among

other

things,

the

security

offered

by the

anonymity

of

the

larger

shared

spaces

of

buses

and

trains.

Moreover,

they

fail

to

negotiate

between

the

nominal Aramis

and

a

version

of

it that

is

fool-,

vandal-,

and

little-old-lady-proof.

Equally

as

unconvincing

as

2660's

steelonium-and-skates

olution

to urban

transport

s

Gernsback's

Packet-Post

Conveyor,

an

absurdly

omplicated,

mostly

subterranean,

utomatic

deliverysystem

interconnecting

usinesses

and

homes,

which

seems to

have been

constructed

without

any disturbance o

the

smooth

running

of

the

city.

In

short,

in

contrastto

the

world

in

which

Aramis

flickers

between

nominalities,

Ralph's

world

is not

dynamically

becoming

but

already

become,

completed,

done.4

Nominal

systems

have

always

already

concretized,

their

essence

somehow

preceding

their

existence.S But

"[t]o

translate

is to

betray":

If

all

the

actors had

to

agree

unambiguouslyon

the

definition of

what was to

be

done, then the probabilityof carryingout a projectwould be very slight indeed,

for

reality remains

polymorphous for

a

very long

time....

The

only

way to

increase a

project's reality

is

to

compromise, to

accept

sociotechnological

compromises.

(Aramis

48,

99).

Even

Aramis

itself is

prepared o

compromise, to

become

something

other

than

the

nominal

Aramis in

exchange

for

not

being

merely

nominal:

"I

would

have

been

happy

to

be

something,

in

the

end,

anything

at all"

(294;

emphasis

in

original).

Ralph,

however, is

beyond

compromise.

Moreover,

as

Roger

Luckhurst

has

suggested

of

Thomas

Edison's

carefully

fostered

image, the

genius-inventor s an ideologicaldisplacementof the real-worldreplacementof

artisan-inventors

y

the mass

productionof

commodity-innovations,

with

Ralph

indicative

of

"a

much

more

messianic

role

[being]

imagined

for

the

engineer"

(61),

a

role

later

modulated

through

technocratic

discourses

of

expertise,

such

as

those

championed in

Heinlein's

"The

Roads

Must

Roll"

(1940; see

Mendlesohn).

The

conservatism

of

technocratic

f is

ultimatelyas

much

about

the

terror

of

innovation

as

those

countless

gadget

stories

from

the first

half of the

twentieth



11/21

138

SCIENCE

FICTION STUDIES,

VOLUME

33

(2006)

century

n

which a

solitarygenius

creates a marvelous

device that s

nonetheless

destroyed

before it can have social

consequences.

Indeed,

this conservatism

s

intrinsic

to the

extrapolative

method

of

those kinds of sf that

postulate

an

innovationand

attempt

o think

hrough

ts

consequences

ceteris

paribus,

as

well

as to the even

more numeroussf texts that use sf

furniture

but leave

contempo-

rary social

relations

ntact, from the

priggish inhabitants f the final

Everytown

in

the

film

Things

to

Come

(1936)

and the

newspapermen

of Asimov's

"Nightfall"

1941)

to the

corporate

yes-men

and

team-players

of Star Trek:The

Next Generation

1987-94)

and the

drearily suburban

amily

of A.I.

-Artificial

Intelligence

(2001).

A

particularly nstructive ext

in

this

regard

was

published

exactly

a

century

before Aramisfinally died: H.G. Wells's first story, "A Tale of the Twentieth

Century

for Advanced

Thinkers."

Published

n

the Science

Schools Journal

in

May

1887,

it

begins by killing

off the

solitary genius:

"The

Inventorhad died

in

a garret. Too

proud to receive

parish

relief,

he

had eaten

every

article of

clothing he

possessed, scraped

off and

assimilated

every

scrap

of

plaster

on the

walls of his wretched

apartment, gnawed his

finger

nails

down the

quick,

and-died"

(697).

Isolated rom

his

fellows,

his

garret

ooking

backwards o the

artisan-inventor,

he

consumes what little

he has and then

himself,

but

"though

the

Inventorwas

dead,

the

Thoughtwas not"

(697).

Among

his

pawned

patents

is the design for a revolutionary ocomotive, and a limitedcompanyis formed

to

exploit it.

Unlike

Germsback,

who

fantasizes a

heroic

technocrat, Wells

establishes he

autonomous

xistence of the

thought

as

something

divorced from

its

inventor, something

operating

in

the social

realm,

negotiatinghuman

and

nonhuman

actants into

the network

necessary for

its own

realization.

Its first

recruit is

the

Inventor's

pawnbroker,

who "took

the

underground ailway, the

idea,

numerous

influential

persons, and a

prospectus, and

mixed

them up

judiciously,

so that

he influential

personsbecame identified

with the

prospectus.

Scrip

was then

issued,

and the

whole

conception crystallized out as a

definite

tangiblething"(697). Aramis'sscientifically-trained raduate tudentstruggles

with the

proposition

hat

a scientific

project's

feasibility

is

not an attribute

f the

"Thought" tself

but is

contingent on

such

"external"

political

and economic

factors. Reluctant

o look

beyond

the

technological

reports, he

complainsthat,

"I

wasn't used to

making

subtle distinctions

between technical

feasibility and

'official

versions' of

what is

feasible or not"

(Aramis

6).

In

contrast to his

student

(and

Gernsback),the

Wellsian

Norbert

nsists that

Aramis's

death also

has

something o

do with the

French

election of

1986 and

with a former

general

inspector

of

finance's

replacementof

an

expert

in

marketingand

public

relations

as the presidentof RATP (7-8).

6

In

Wells's

story,

a

banquet s held on

July

19, 1999 to

celebrate

he "definite

tangible"

new

Metropolitan

and District

Line:

There were 19

Bishops

in

evening dress, 4

Princes

and their

interpreters,

12

Dukes,

A

Strong-Minded

Female,

the

PRA,

14

popular professors,

1

learned

ditto,

70

Deans

(assorted),

the

Presidentof

the

Materialistic

Religious

Society,

a

popular

low

comedian,

1604

eminent

wholesale

and retail

drapers,

hatters,

grocers,

and tea

dealers,

a

reformed

working

man MP, and

honorarydirectors



12/21

TRANSPORTED

BY

GERNSBACK,

WELLS,

AND LATOUR

139

of well

nigh

the

universe,

203

stockbrokers,

1 Earl

(in

a

prominent

place),

who

had once said a

remarkably

mart

thing,

9

purely

Piccadilly

Earls,

13

sporting

Earls,

17

trading

ditto,

113

bankers,

a

forger,

1

doctor,

12

theatrical

managers,

Bludsole the mammothnovelist, 1 electrician(from Paris), a multitudeno man

could number

of electrical

company

directors,

their

sons and their

sons'

sons,

their

cousins,

their

nephews,

their

uncles,

their

parents,

and

their

friends, the

leading

legal

stars,

2

advertisement

ontractors,

41

patent

medicine manufactur-

ers,

Lords, Senators,

a

Spirit

Raiser,

a

Soothsayer,

foreign

Musicians,

Officers,

Captains,

Guards,

&c.

(698)

As this

company dine,

the

"representative

assengers"

entrain:

There were an

August

person,

his

keeper,

the

Premier,

two

Bishops,

several

popular

actresses, four

generals

(home

department),

various

exotics,

a

person

apparently

onnected with

the

navy,

the Education

Minister,

124

public

service

parasites,

an

idiot, the President of

the Board of

Trade,

a suit

of

clothes,

bankers,

another

diot,

shopkeepers,

forgers,

scene

painters,

still

another

diot,

directors,

&c.

(as per

previous

sample).

(699)

The

mild social

satire

of

these

comic

catalogues,

which

comprise

an

eighth

of

the

story,

might

leave

1880s

society

unchanged

a

century

later but

they

also

demonstrate

wo

things:

Wells not

only conceived of

technology

as

happening

within

a social

milieu,

but

also

acknowledged

ome

very specific

actants-politi-

cians, bankers, and so on-beyond the realm of nature with which the

technological

project

must

negotiate.

These

are not the

only actants

nvolved

in

the

realizationof

the new

tube

line.

Later, "the

scientific

manager(a small and

voluble

mechanism)"

explains

that

the

componentsof the

train

are "of

English

manufacture,"made

by

"the

great

firm

of

Schulz

and Brown

of

Pekin

(they

removed

there

in

1920

in

order

to

obtain

cheap

labour)"

(699),

extending

the

train's network

of

actants o

include

unemployed

British

engineering

workers

as

well

as the

cheaper

Chinese

labor that

has

replaced

them and

the

global

communications

and

transportation

systems

necessary for

their

profitable

exploitation.Althoughtheirrelationships o the trainmight seem as tenuousas

those of the

listed

attendees,

they

indicate,

whether

present

or

absent,the

extent

to

which a

technological

projectmust

negotiateand

recruit

actants nto

a

network

in

order to

become

real.

Regarding

his

complex

interlocking

of

disparate

nterests,

Norbert

observes

that,

[i]f

you

map

out

all the

interests nvolved

in a

project, the

vague or even

reticent

interests

of

those

who are

pursuing

some

other

Aramis have

to

be counted

as

well.

They

are

allies.

Obviously, such

allies are

neither

very

convinced

norvery

convincing.... The full difficulty of innovation becomes apparentwhen we

recognize

that

it

brings

together, in one

place,

on a joint

undertaking,a

number

of

interested

people, a

good

half of

whom

are

prepared

o jump

ship,

and an

array

of

things,

most of

which are

about

to

break down.

(Aramis 49,

58)

The

negotiations

hat

transform

he

nominal

"locomotiveof

a

new type"

(Wells

697)

into the

revolutionary

Metropolitan

nd

District

Line

train,

however,

have

inevitably

altered

its

design-and now it

cannot be

stopped.

It

"whirls[s]

round

the

circle

with

ever-increasing

velocity"

until it

eventually leaves

the

rails,



13/21

140

SCIENCE

ICTION

TUDIES,

VOLUME 3

(2006)

crashes,

and explodes: "Most

of

the

passengers

were

utterly destroyed.

The

august

person,

however,

came down all

right

in

Germany.

The

commercial

speculators descended

in

foreign regions

in

the

form

of

blight" (Wells

700).

Catastrophe

brings

innovation o an end before it can have

consequences

for

the

world,

a conservatism

attested

to

by

a

punchline

that, although

pleasing,

reinstates

an unchanged

world.

While

this

conclusion is tied to the form and

brevity

of

Wells's

tale,

those

formal constraints

(which

are

equally

commercial

ones)

are

nonetheless

instructive

about

sf's

general failure

to

represent

he

complexity

of

innovation.

The

thriller format

that

predominates

in sf

tales of

technological

projects

requires

the

reduction of

complex networks of actants to

various

readily

identifiable-and usuallyhuman-heroes, villains, bureaucratsandpoliticians,

place-holdersand

talking

heads,

whose

relative

ack of

depth

ends

to leave

them

incapableof

acting

as

either realistic or

representative

actants.

This

happens

to

a

significant

degree

even

in

that most

accomplished

story

of a

complex,

innovatory

echnological

project,

Kim

StanleyRobinson's

MARs

rilogy (1992-

1996)-although

it does at times

come

close

to

Latour's

model,

tracing

negotiationsabout

terraforming

nd

political

systems

as

they

develop,

intermin-

gle, and

compromise; and,

more

significantly,

allowing

the

very

landscape

to

become a

powerful

actantwith

which all others must

negotiate.

The overtly political and ecological concerns in which Robinson embeds

Martian

erraforming esonate

strongly with Latour's

determination

o rethink

the modern

relationship

between science and

society

so as to

remove the

scientist's

undue

ability

to limit

debate

through

"his"

privileged

knowledge

of

nature. For

Latour,

even

catastrophe

cannot end

innovation before

it has

consequencesbecause the

(inseparable)

practice

of

science and

politics is always

in

the

process of

producinga

changing

world.

Defming

politics as "the

entire

set

of

tasks

that allow

the

progressive

compositionof a

commonworld"

(Politics

53;

emphasis

in

original), his nonmodern

Constitution

argues

for

a

new pair of

houses: ratherthan separatingnature from politics, the house of "taking nto

account"

asks "how

many

are we?"

and the

house of

"putting

nto

order"

asks

"can

we live

together?"

Through

gathering

ogetheractants nto

this

nonmodern

collective,

a new

common

world

will

be

created.

Latour

distinguishes

"collective,

"

which

"refers

not

to

an

already-established

unit

but

to

a

procedure

for

collecting associationsof

humansand

nonhumans,"

from

"society" (a

term

he

rejects),

which

designates an

"already-constituted

whole that

explains human

behavior and

thusmakes

it

possible to

short-circuit

the

political

task

of

composition"

(Politics

238, 249;

emphasis

in original).

Latoursees thenever-completed,open-ended ask of making hecommonworld

as the

shared

practice of

science and

politics,

activitiesno

longer to be

separated

but

which,

under

the

nonmodern

Constitution,

should

ointly

discover how we

"go

about

getting

those in

whose

name we speak

to

speak for

themselves"

(Politics

70;

emphasis

in

original).

Although

Latour

clearly

understands he

problems of

reconcilingthe

concerns

of human

society with

the needs of

other

beings

with

whom we

shareour

planet,

he

struggles o

provide

solutions.

Aramis

shows

how

various

"stakeholders" n

the project

represent

he needs of

human



14/21

TRANSPORTED

BY

GERNSBACK,

WELLS,

AND LATOUR

141

and nonhuman

components

(the

passengers,

the

politicians,

the

switching

mechanism,the

unemployed

ransport

workers),

but it

gives

no

clues as

to

how

the

collective-in-formation establishes

hierarchy

among

its

many

voices

(including

those deemed

external

to

it)

or

transforms

its

fluid

self

into

"institution."

Strong

on

"taking

nto account," it

neglects

"putting

nto order."

Although the collective is never

finished

or

fixed,

Latour

recognizes

that

most

collectives

try

to

present

themselves as such and to

maintain heir current

form. "Institution"s what

"makes

t

possible

to

respond

to the

requirement

of

closure and to

prepare

the re-collection of the

collective as

it

goes

through

the

next

loop" (Politics

243).

Roughly

corresponding

o Antonio

Gramsci's

theory

of

the

political

hegemony

of

the dominant

class,

a

particularly ideological

configurationof reality, it is nonetheless troubledby those interests hatremain

external(ized)

and thus not

counted

in

the

collective's "how

many."

This

comparison

with

Gramsci

reveals a serious

limitation

in

Latour,

whose

participatory-democratic

model,

presuming

a

(non-existent)

equality

of

voices,

lacks

any

theory of

power.

External(ized)

entities

appear

as

"appellants,"

continually

knocking

on

the door of the

current

teration.Latour

considersthese

appellants

o be

relativelypowerfulbecause

if

heard and

then

counted,they

shift

the entire

collective:

"In

the new

Constitution,

what has

been

externalizedcan

appeal

and come

back to

knock

at

the door

of

the

collective to

demand hat it

be

taken ntoaccount-at theprice, of course, of modifications n the list of entities

present,

new

negotiations,

and a

new

definition

of the outside"

(Politics

125;

emphases

in

original).

Yet

the "real"

case

study

of

Aramis

shows

the

struggle

for

hegemony

to

be much

more

powerful

than the

attempt

to

build any

collective:

"The

nterpretations

ffered

by

the

relativistactors

are

performatives.

They prove

themselves

by

transforming

the world in

conformity with

their

perspective

on the

world.

By

stabilizing

their

interpretation, he

actors

end up

creating

a

world-for-others hat

strongly

resembles

an

absolute

world with

fixed

reference

points"

(Aramis

194-95;

emphasis in

original).

These

actors are

uninterested n the appellantsknocking on theirdoors.'

Latour's

metaphors,

drawn from

the

courts

system

and

representative,

bicameral

democracy,

reveal

the

degree to

which

his

thought

remains

trapped

in

bourgeois

assumptionsand

values,

falsely

rendering

equivalentall

people

and

all

things.

He

imagines the

collective

being

formed

among

the

relative

representation

of

various

propositions

enacted by

scientists

(who

measure

and

test

the

material

world), politicians

(who

understand

compromise

and human

factors), economists

(whose

expertise is

valuable

for

calculating

and

modeling),

and

moralists

(who

refuse to let

us

forget those

appellantsat the

door), but he

offers no theoryof how they speakamongthemselvesor negotiate the serious

power

gaps

among

them.

Latour

argues that

he is not

extending "the

formalism of

social

democracy

to

objects" but

rather

the

"consulting"

of

the

material

world that

happens

through he

experimental

procedures

hat

makethe

material

world

speak(see

his

Science in

Action

[1987]

and

LaboratoryLife

[1979]).

He

characterizes such

consultation

as

more

reliable than

the

assumption

of

"survey

specialists,

sociobiologists,

journalists, and

statisticians" hat

becausehumans

are

endowed



15/21

142 SCIENCE

ICTION TUDIES,

VOLUME 3 (2006)

with

speech, "one

can

speak

of them in their

place" (Politics

170).

Consultation

provides "the risky experimental

apparatus

hat would allow

them to

delineate

their own problems hemselves

nsteadof simply

answering

he

questions

asked"

(171; emphasis

in

original).

However,

Latourdoes not

imagine

how one

might

"experiment"

upon

humans

to

find out

such

data

nor that we

might expect

different and more

complex

things

of humans than

of

other

propositions

n the

collective. When Aramis's automated

systems displace

human

drivers,

the

negotiation

results

in

the decision that

"[w]e

won't

keep

the humans'

physical

presence, their uniforms or

their

outspokenness;

but we'll

keep

some of their

knowledge, their abilities, their knowhow"

(Aramis62; emphasis

in

original).

When it comes to

"consulting

with" the natural

world,

Latour envisions

actants'propertiesas relevantonly insofar as they pertain to the questionat

hand, just as human drivers

are

reduced

to

their

knowhow,

their

intellectual

labor power.

The

design

of

Aramis,

for

example,

must

negotiate

the

speeds

at

which

the

cars might collide

with

one

another

as

they

link

up

to form

a

train

with the rate of impact that

the

humanbodies of

passengers

aboard hese cars

can withstand.

The

humanneeds here are

an

obstacle to the efficient

functioning

of the

system

and thus human

needs, although

factored

in,

are not considered

paramount.

nstead,

"humans

are

being

treatedas

objects

thatdo or do not resist

shocks,

while nonhumans are

granted knowledge,

rights,

a

vote,

and even

refreshments"(225). The humans appear to be in place for the system to

demonstratethe brilliance

of

its nonmaterial

couplings

more than the

system

exists

to

supply transportation

o the humans. In this

particular

collective,

humanshave a "voice"

that

is

limited to this capacity

only-they are small

but

not voluble

mechanisms.8

This

reduction

of

humans

to

singular, pertinentcapacities becomes more

distressing

when the

"voice"

of

displaced

workers is

made

equivalent

o that of

the automated

ystem,

which

"is

demanding

as

well-not about retirementand

Social

Security,

but

about distance

sensors,

orders and

counterorders,

f

we

decide to put it on board; abouttransmission, roadmarkers, informationand

speed,

if

we set

it

up

at

the commandcentre"

(62).

The calculations

by

which

the

collective that

produces Aramis

is

configured do not consider human

suffering

as a

consequence

of

excluding workers' voices. The

system's

needs

become

as,

if

not

more, important

because

able to

gainmore allies) than

those

of the workers

it

displaces. By

making

his

visible to us, Aramisallows us to

see

our social

reality

more

clearly-to see thatpoliticians are

more motivatedby

the

"needs"

of a

system

that can be

marketedat world's fairs and fit into their

self-

perception as

modem and

innovative,

and

so on, than they are moved by

the

needs of workers-and thus the book fills an undertheorizedgap in Latour's

more

strictly political

work

by

acknowledginghow many andwhich voices

are

"presented" n

representative

democracy.

Although

Aramis

only

considers the

questionof how a

particular

echnology

fails to

become

real,

this

nonetheless

points to a serious limitation in

Latour's

plan

to use

science studies

as

a

model "to reinvent

shared forms of public

life"

(Politics

18).

The sense

of "how

many are we?" proposed n Politics of

Nature

does

leave

space

for a

wider

considerationof human

voices, of the

workers'



16/21

TRANSPORTED

Y

GERNSBACK,

WELLS,

AND LATOUR

143

families,

their

suffering beyond just

loss

of

income,

the rise in crime

that

accompanies

poverty,

and so on. Yet

beyondurging

thatwe take as

many

voices

as are "relevant" ntoaccount,Latouroffers no suggestionsas to how to do so

or

even how-or

by

whom-"relevance" is to be

adjudicated.

Ever in

the

process of becoming,

this model

of

politics

has

no

ideal-such

as human

freedom-toward

which to direct

its

configuration;

and there

is no

provision

for

human

needs to be

automatically

considered

a

goal

of

whatever

collective

emerges.

This has

serious

implications

for its

efficacy

as a

politics.

In

every

collective,

there

must be

criteria

for

the

"putting

nto

order,"

but all that

Latour

suggests

is "from the friendliest to the most hostile"

(177). By

refusing

to

privilege

human

happiness,

or

anythingelse,

as the

goal by

which

the collective

might be ordered,Latourrenders such assessments mpossible.

When

a new

entity

knocks

at

the

collective's

door, "[t]he

entire collective

has to ask itself whether it can cohabit

with

so-and-so,

and

at

what

price;

the

entire collective

has to

enquire

nto the trials that

will

allow it to decide

whether

it

is

right or

wrong to carry

out that addition or subtraction"

Politics

196).

Although Latour's political

theory

offers

no

model of

how this

might happen,

he is confidentthat "the miracle

[can be] produced

and the

impossible

harmony

among incommensurables

canbe]

discovered-not because the

right

compro-

mise

has been

made,

but because

the nature

of the

'we' with

which each one had

chosen to identify has been changed" (176). Aramis fails to live, however,

because,

as

it

says

to

those

with whom it

negotiated

its

existence, "you

didn't

love me. You oved me as an

idea.

You

loved me as

long

as

I

was

vague.

The

proof

is that

you

didn't

even

agree

as to whether

I

am

possible

in

principle,

whether

my

essence does

or

does not

implymy

existence"

(Aramis294; emphasis

in

original).

If

those actants could not arrive at an

inclusive "we," what

hope

does a

larger political

collective have of

doing

so?9

Aramis's failure

to exist and Latour's to offer

sufficiently concrete

models

of how collectives

underthe new

constitutionmight

"ensure hat the number

of

voices thatparticipate n thearticulationofpropositions has not beenarbitrarily

short-circuited"

Politics 106;

emphasis

in

original) suggests a place

where sf

might contribute to our

understandingof Latour. In his scientifiction,

the

processes of "putting nto

order" are negotiatedand

the role of power is made

visible-setting

the

criteria for

hierarchization, determining which

voices

become

appellants

to

rather

than members of the collective-as

Aramis

demonstrates hat all ceteris

paribus

assumptions

are fallacious, that all other

things

are not

equal when voices appeal to the

collective. Latoursuggests

that

"

t]o

limit

the

discussionto

humans, heir interests,their subjectivities,and

their

rights, will appearas strangea few years from now as having denied the right

to

vote of

slaves, poor people,

or women" (Politics 69). Althoughour

sense of

the

common

world

must

extend beyond only human interests, it is

nonetheless

disturbing

o

find that the

voices of women, the impoverished,and slaves

count

for

nothing

more

than those of innovative motors

and automated

switching

relays.

In

Aramis, the

relative power of those

representing their respective

voices meansthat the

automated ystem is to

participate n the collective world-

with-Aramis in a

way that

the workers who once drove the trains are

not.



17/21

144 SCIENCE FICTION

STUDIES, VOLUME 33

(2006)

Without

understandingpower,

the

nonmodern

Constitution,

the

open

and

always-becoming

and

goal-less collective,

does

not offer

possibilities

for

a

sufficiently

better

future.

0

The idea of the nonmodern

Constitution,however,

combinedwith

Aramis's

narrativemode, does enable

us

better

o understand he

limitations

of

the

modem

Constitution,

to

think

about

ways

that our

politics might

take account

of

nonhuman

voices,

and

also to see the

potential

consequences

of

lacking

a

clear

vision

of what

we

value

in

our

collective. Latour outlines how the

complex

material world is translated nto

representational

units that

codify

it and

shape

a

particular

way

of

understanding

t. As with

political

representation,

this

scientific

representationproduces

a

map

that

is

bould - learning from the little engine

Documents