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Name: Souradip Bhattacharyya

M Phil First year

Sub: Modern Social Thought

First Assignment

Question:

Latour proposes historically situated ethnographic study of specific networks in which humans and non-humans act as mediators. Foucault proposes genealogical study of disciplines. Are the two methods complementary or contradictory?

Response:

I should begin my paper with the remark that the final sentence in the above question

really intrigues me. Especially the conjunction “or” which probably seeks to

compartmentalize a priori the comparison between the analytical endeavours of Foucault and

Latour under the strict boundaries of either complement or contradiction. Interestingly

enough, neither Foucault nor Latour would bank much upon the process of

compartmentalization as such. While a certain section of my paper deals with this approach

on behalf of the two philosophers, I also investigate whether such compartmentalization is

possible under the above-mentioned question.

Bruno Latour in his critique of the social scientific approach towards Science Studies

takes into task the formers compulsive endeavour towards discursivization of science where

scientific knowledge is seen as an effect of discourse. Any new invention, discovery or

disciplinary change would be for Social Science questions of discursive change, that is, a

product of language—a technical language of science—a disciplinary mechanism. Placing

science under the paradigm of discourse, the social scientists would claim that it speaks

nothing about the real world.1The operative factor over here would be to investigate the

1 Science for them is a product of discourse that scientists believe in and work, within the technical language of science.

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position of Foucault under such a social scientific approach towards the functionality of

science.2 In Discipline and Punish Foucault talks about the creation of docile (that is, quiet

and easy to control) bodies by disciplinary power under the modern regime that used

elaborate scientific techniques to produce a productive human body.3 For Foucault such

processes produce a discursive truth/real where docility is produced under the tripartite

process of “exploration”, “breakage”, and “rearrangement”4 for its subjection and usage. In

Foucault’s “patiently documentary”5 study of the production of the docile subject his

continuous stress would lie in the procedural implications involved on behalf of disciplinary

power in creating a new body (or rather mind-body) flexible and manipulable enough to the

demands of that power, in other words “to obtain an efficient machine”. 6 For Latour, such a

Foucauldian take on science would be to approach it in a partial way. All that science has

done is just not the proliferation of discourse but it has also addressed various real issues.

Going by the Latour-ian logic, scientific descriptions of the impending danger in the

widening of the ozone hole or the control of Aids are not merely rhetorical representations.

Of course, such reports affect the daily life of people through various disciplinary

constrictions. But for Latour the role of science does not end there. In addressing the question

of the ozone hole or the control of Aids science must be focussing on certain real problems,

real because they affect the life of people, have a possibility of annihilating it.7

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? After all, Foucault’s criticism of disciplinary power in its appropriation of the body and characteral traits/behaviour (what Foucault calls “gesture”) of human beings has been of insurmountable importance in the proliferation of anti-humanist scholarship.3

? Foucault’s approach is not exactly in alliance with the social scientific claim of the disinterest of scientific processes in the real world.4

? Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (Vintage: New York, 1995).

5 Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 76-100.

6 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (Vintage: New York, 1995).7

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To contrast the methodologies of Foucault and Latour under just the above-mentioned

aspects of the Science-Social dyad would be to miss the underlying intricacies. The

Foucauldian and Latour-ian schemas are not exactly binary opposites in understanding socio-

scientific phenomena. After all, Foucault is not very far from Latour’s criticism of the

modernizing procedure of disentangling the pre-modern phenomenon of a nature-culture

complex into self-explanatory watertight categories of nature (or “things-in-themselves”) and

“culture” (or “humans-among-themselves”). “Culture” or the realm of sociality among

humans is not an a priori in life. There can never be a space for “humans-among-themselves”

because the category of the human is not inherent, there are actually no pure “humans-in-

themselves”.8 As Foucault’s analysis of “Docile Bodies” would show, docility is

created/produced in and through the physical and behavioural aspects of man under the dual

registers of the “Anatomico-metaphysical” and the “Technico-political”9 for submission and

use. On the other hand, the Latour-ian schema would deal with the act of “purification” (the

separation into “nature” and “culture”) as well, albeit in his way. Latour understands

modernity as a work of purification that creates a non-negotiable boundary between the

subject and object presupposing a flow from the subject to the object. This flow, or the act of

mediation between the subject (“human”) and object (“non-human”) happens under a

medium where the “non-human” (like the “machine”) does nothing of its own but is worked

upon or transformed by human labour. The “non-human”—for the modern—has no agency

on its own. Very interestingly, while Foucault’s objective was to document the production of

a docile human mind-body under Discipline’s scientific mechanism, Latour tries to

investigate the subsumption of “non-human” by the subject by critiquing modern historicity

? The crucial proposition in the Latour-ian tongue would be to criticize the partial falsification of the role of science by exemplifying such critical issues to say that science is just not an effect of rhetoric8

? Rather, we can say that the “among” and the “in” in the above-mentioned phrases are discursively produced.9

? Ibid.

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and making in turn a historical analysis of the modern theory of progress10. For the modern

theory of progress and historicity (passage of time) events are situated, unlike calendar time

“with respect to their intensity”.11 Since “progress” aligns itself to development, the passage

from bad to good, modernity undergoes a break with the past.12 The act of denigrating the

past coincides with the act of purification or is purification. The constant need to purify is to

cleanse the present, to invest into a certain progress devoid of the effect of the past. While the

act of purification separates the pole of “nature” from that of “culture”, trying to disentangle a

pre-modern hybrid to create pure categories which can mediate objectively, such an

“objective” mixture of pure categories actually feed into highlighting one “type” of category

over another, working essentially through suppression. Such a stance is, nevertheless,

paradoxical because it is precisely out of fear of the past that the “Gordian Knot”13 has been

broken and no wonder it is this very fear that constantly drives the need to progress. What

becomes very clear is the unavoidability of this fear. The operative question over here is to

trace this fear which has made modernity adhere to a notion of time that is contemporary and

follows a progressive continuity. Here Latour’s reference to Shapin and Schaffer’s analysis of

Boyle’s experiment becomes very crucial. The main objective of Latour through such an

elaborate description is to shift the attention of social scientists to the practice of science, to

observe what scientists actually do.14 Boyle’s experiment of the vacuum pump is significant

because in here the witness of the non-human (the chicken feather) produces scientific

10 Latour criticizes a modern theory of progress that he thinks functions under the tripartite structure of “purification”, “mediation”, and “translation”. For further reference see Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Harvard: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993).11

? Ibid.12

? The linear development to the future bases itself on the elimination of the past.13

? For further discussion on the “Gordian Knot” see Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter, Chapter 1, (Harvard: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993).14 No doubt the discursivity underlying the universal application of Boyle’s law in unavoidable. Every laboratory is a constructed fact, an act of human intervention producing a natural law as a result of that intervention.

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knowledge. Contrary to modernist logic therefore, the non-human seizes to be a mere object,

a recipient. Such an experiment disrupts the entire modernist enterprise of the subject

controlling the object, the equation of the act of manipulation flowing from the active agent

(subject) to the “inert” object. Not only are the self-explanatory categories of subject-hood

and object challenged (how can the subjects be one such controlling agent if object seizes to

be inert and is therefore not an object?) but the very role of agency is put into question.15

Latour here introduces the concept of the “Quasi-”, a combining form in adjectives and nouns

meaning: that appears to be something but is not really so. Humans and non-humans for

Latour are “quasi-objects” or “actants” that do not have inherent qualities but act as mediators

in a particular network. “Actants” are not subjective or objective “who”. They have no

essence because their actions are singular and variable. Hence there are no inner attributes

attributable to “actants”. Hence the possibility of any precedence is annihilated. The world,

for Latour, is a shifting network of “actants”. Hence a historical analysis of “actants” would

fail to trace any permanent quality in them. Furthermore, the variability/changeability in the

action of quasi-objects in accordance with the shifting nature of networks prevents the

modern regime from actually breaking fundamentally with the past. Conceptualizing time

according to qualitative change is a methodological tool that modernity adopts to actually

suppress not the past but its fear. This is because of the unpredictability of the arrival of

quasi-objects which lack essence and cannot belong to one particular network and hence

cannot be purified. However, here paradoxically lies modernity’s endeavour in purifying. If

Latour’s historical investigation disrupts the mutual exclusiveness of “nature” and “culture”

to talk about the unavoidability of hybrids16 and certain mobility in the nature of the “quasi-”,

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? The functionality of agency necessitates a before, a prior, a construct that makes one an agent. However, there is possibly no agency of the chicken feather in Boyle’s experiment for the particularity in the task of the agent. Neither are they completely active conscious beings.16 The hybridity exists too well from the laboratory (non-human witness and human observation producing hybrid knowledge) to the factory.

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modernity would suppress such hybridity and try to discursively control the degree of

stabilization of the quasi-object for human progression, for the control over the static object

by the subject.

Coming back to Foucault’s analysis of docile bodies, his focus—as I have already

mentioned—is on the disciplinary construction of the human mind-body. Unlike Latour,

Foucault is not interested in the singularity or variability of non-humans but in turn focuses

on the power relations involved within disciplinary mechanism. However, it would be a

major flaw to say that “objects” or “non-humans” do not play any part under such a

mechanism. The point is to see how. Foucault in his genealogical study of disciplines does

not just trace the evolution of disciplinary mechanism from sovereign power but

simultaneously and consequentially attempts a genealogy of actions on the human body.

Interestingly, in Foucault’s analysis the politico-juridical relations that defined sovereignty

did not undergo an abrupt ending and then successively give rise to disciplinary power. There

is no definite point of change within monarchical power, an “origin” inside monarchy that

can vow for the change to discipline. Foucauldian genealogy necessarily looks for events that

occur abruptly, accidentally and exterior to the mode of pre-existing power though without a

fundamental break with it.17 However, without addressing the possible reasons behind such

change the genealogical analysis would remain incomplete. The shift from spectacular

violence on the body of the condemned to its disciplining, and the scientific techniques that

are borrowed from historically preceding institutions (probably belonging to a different

episteme) define the technicality and objective of disciplinary mechanism. In Foucault’s

analysis the scientific object employed to regulate the life of human beings18 like the time-

table, the routine or the mode of hierarchical observation had evolved over time to be used

17

? The establishment of disciplinary power doesn’t break completely with sovereign power but each seeps into another while the gradual transformation takes place.18 Human beings like the soldiers, the pupils, or the condemned.

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differently under different circumstances. Like the Latour-ian analysis of the variability in the

functionality of “actants”, the time-table or the design of hierarchical observation haven’t

followed into present actions (i.e., under discipline) in exactitude from the monastic space or

technology of the telescope. The idea of established rhythms, imposition of “particular

occupations”,19 or that of “eyes that must see without being seen”20 must have undergone

changes, modifications or disruptions to feed into the present. However, one fundamental

difference between the Latour-ian analysis and Foucault genealogical understanding lies in

the concept of unpredictability of the “non-human”. For Foucault such disruptions are results

of chance but in the changing power-relation between subjects within the disciplinary milieu

and never the de-objectification of the object/”non-human”. Under the Foucauldian paradigm

there are no “humans-in-themselves” because the docile body is a discursive creation.21

However, he seems to be caught up much in this problematic of the human to completely

ignore what the stance of the non-human could have been. For Latour therefore, Foucault is

guilty of the notion of the human; he criticizes the social but brings back another image of the

social and can never overstep the boundaries set by the human. Foucault criticizes the human

sciences alright but—Latour asks—do “things” really occur in Foucault? Foucault’s example

of the “body-object articulation” provides a glaring example. In learning to hold the rifle in

the correct posture and also in learning to shoot, the subject—for Foucault—manipulates the

object. The body of the soldier is instrumentally coded but that codification depends on the

skilful mastery of the rifle; it revolves around an entire set of practices and guidelines that

teach the usage of a rifle and hence codifies the human body. It depends on the manipulation

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? Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (Vintage: New York, 1995).20

? Ibid.21

? Humans are never “pure” categories and if the Latour-ian lexicon can be borrowed, humans for Foucault are hybrids.

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of the object by the subject. Hence for Foucault, “misfiring” the gun is a certain disruption of

the rule of firing and never the variability of the rifle.22

I would like to end this paper with a short insight on Latour’s endeavour to bring the

objectification of “non-humans” into question. No doubt, by using the term “quasi-” he has

been able to break the strict compartmentalization between “nature” and “culture”. In and

with the “quasi-” not only is a degree of mobility attained but the distinction between an

“agent” and a “recipient” is challenged. What however is the necessity behind this sameness?

Foucault fails to recognize the presence of “things” of course. But what is the necessity of a

parliament of things? It would be surprising if Latour wasn’t aware of the metaphorical

implication of “parliament” and its technical constructs to use such a political space to

represent a congregation of things. One cannot help but notice a secret desire in Latour to

stretch the “quasi-” to the realm of the human. One might therefore wonder what Latour

secretly whispers into the ears of the “quasi-object”, a language that he claims not many

social scientists have understood.

Bibliography:

1. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (Vintage: New York, 1995).

2. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Harvard: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993).

3. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault

Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 76-100.

22 Foucault as we can therefore see also adheres to a certain law, the law of firing the gun.