Bruno Labour’s An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence

Introduction: Trusting Institutions Again?

Latour opens with an anecdote regarding a panel in France in which leading climate sci-

entists debated the anthropogenic nature of climate change with representatives from industry.

Latour recounts how one scientist, when asked why his opinion should be trusted above those

who deny humanity’s role in climate change, responded: “If people don’t trust the institution of

science, we’re in serous trouble” (3). Latour points out that this response is structurally similar to

a priest, when challenged to confirm the existence of God, “were to sketch out the organizational

chart of the Vatican, the bureaucratic history of the Councils, and the countless glosses on trea-

tises of canon law” (4). That is to say, the appeal to the institution itself, rather than the basic ten-

ants around which the institution is structured (which, in the institution of science, means empiri-

cal and quantifiable evidence), seems like an approach better suited to levelling criticisms than

establishing confidence. 

Despite this, Latour recognizes that the scientist’s shift away from an argument built on

actual empirical evidence and toward an argument supported by an institution is simply how the

game must now be played: “Since Certainty had been commandeered by his enemies and the

public was beginning to ask rude questions; since there was a great risk that science would be

confused with opinion, he fell back on the means that seemed to be at hand: trust in an institution

that he had known from the inside for twenty years and that he ultimately had no reason to

doubt” (5). Latour admits that his surprise at this response is rooted in his work in the field of sci-

ence studies, in which he and his colleagues endeavoured to challenge the institution of science

on this notion of trust and objectivity, for which he had been dismissed by the science commu-

nity as a relativist. In light of this climatologist’s appeal to institutional trust, Latour rhetorically

asks, “Isn’t it a little late to take refuge suddenly in the notion of ‘trust,’ without having prepared

yourself for this anyway?” (6).

With this in mind, Latour announces the project of this book to be “to register the after-

shocks of the modernization front just as the confrontation with Gaia appears imminent” (9-10).

Latour endeavours to challenge the Enlightenment-era notion of a dichotomy between culture

and nature, which has lead humanity into a world in which political institutions, under the prom-

ise of a modern future in which the distinction between facts and values is made clear, have cre-

ated a society in which humanity has isolated itself from the rest of the natural world to the detri-

ment of the planet as a whole. Latour denounces the notion of modernization as an anthropocen-

tric fiction, and posits that this book (and its associated digital apparatus) will serve to provide a

positive companion to his previous negatively titled work, We Have Never Been Modern. To do

this, he outlines his plan to rigorously examine and redefine the mechanisms that created the

vague illusion of the West's ascent to modernity, noting, for example, “for a long time Anthro-

pology has taken it for granted that it has had to set up a contrast between ‘the other cultures’ and

a process of modernization that was European, or in any case Western in origin” (13). In this

way, Latour reframes the prima facie innocuous institution of Anthropology as a mechanism for

reinstating Western superiority (or, at least, Western centrality). 

The West, or what Latour calls “the Moderns”, emerge as a very volatile and problematic

segment of the global population. Although, as Latour has previously argued, the Moderns never

actually were modern, he points out that we certainly thought we were, and for that reason we

subject ourselves to an epistemological paradox: we unquestioningly view ourselves as an an-

thropological default against which other cultures can be measured, yet we also view ourselves

as practitioners of “self-awareness, self-analysis, critique, [and] lucidity” (14). Crucially, Latour

points out that this reflexive and uncritical self-aggrandizement does not imply that the Moderns

are categorically evil, but rather that, “encumbered by their treasures, they have never had the oc-

casion to specify clearly what it is that they really hold dear” (14). For this reason, his approach

focuses on directing who the Moderns really were and are, such that, at least potentially, those

who had been othered by the empirical reign of “reason” might finally “take an interest, in part, in

the ‘Western’ project—at last” (16).

Chapter One: Defining The Object of Inquiry

Latour goes on to consider how an anthropologist might go about accounting for the cul-

ture of the Moderns. He notes that a particular quirk of the Moderns is our tendency to view our-

selves as a set of interrelated but still largely distinct domains: “Law, Science, Politics, Religion,

The Economy, and so on” (29). Latour points out that although the Moderns are extremely fond

of these distinctions, there are many instances in which we can see a very clear overlap or trans-

gression of their borders. For example, “the so-called domain of ‘Science’ is shot through with el-

ements that seem to belong rather to Politics, whereas the latter domain is full of elements that

come from Law…and so on” (29). For this reason, Latour concludes that the Moderns’ own dis-

tinctions function not as impassible membranes between homogenous sets, but rather, “an inten-

sification of crossborder traffic between foreign elements” (30). Therefore, a new frame of refer-

ence must be constructed.

To do this, Latour turns to the notion of the network, which he applies to re-examine the

so-called domain of Science. He visits a science lab and finds typical indicators that he is thor-

oughly “in Science”: “white lab coats, glass test tubes, microbe cultures, articles with footnotes”

(30), but also subtle indicators of the porousness of certain borders: “visits by a lawyer who has

come to deal with patents, a pastor who has come to discuss ethical issues, a technician who has

to come to repair a new microscope, an elected official who has come to talk about voting on a

subsidy…and so on” (30). For this reason, notes Latour, rather than investigating the myth of the

homogeneous domain, he would be better off pursuing the heterogeneous network of border

transgressions that facilitate the practical enactment of the domain within the culture as  a whole.

In this way, Latour suggests that these domains function as the central nodes of the societal net-

work, the practical enactment of which (i.e., the practices that make the society function) inher-

ently highlight their dynamic interactivity. Crucially, Latour points out that this societal network

must be examined not only for what it circulates, but also the geneology of the structure that en-

ables the circulation: “under the word ‘network’ we must be careful not to confuse what circulates

once everything is in place with the setups involving the heterogeneous set of elements that al-

low circulation to occur” (32). 

With this in mind, Latour focuses in on the network, defining it as a mechanism that “des-

ignates a series of associations revealed thanks to a trail…that makes it possible to understand

through what series of small discontinuities it is appropriate to pass in order to obtain a certain

continuity of action” (33). In this way, the network becomes a tool for studying the idealistic do-

mains of the Moderns, as it allows for a cartographic mapping of the points of transgression, or

passage between borders, upon which the society is constructed. This dynamic networking of do-

mains leads Latour to the suspicion that these domains are not only interactive and diverse, they

are each diverse in the same way. That is to say, the same borderless quality that disproves the

individual domain’s homogeneity also serves to demonstrate the homogeneity of the whole. This

suspicion is complicated by the insistence, on the part of those actually participating in or enact-

ing each domain, that while interactions between domains may occur, each domain is still, some-

how, independent of the others. As Latour describes, “everything happens as if there were indeed

a boundary, a somehow internal limit, to the networks, one that the notion of network has not al-

lowed [us] to capture” (35). Although the domains appear to be borderless, there are still real dif-

ferences between them that must be accounted for. 

This places Latour at an impasse. He must either abandon the interactive diversity of the

system in order to retain domanial diversity, or vice versa. The metaphor of the network is useful

here: “Just as gas, electricity, influence, or telephone service can be qualified as networks with-

out being confused with one another (even if they often share the same subterranean conduits—

influence in particular!), why not use the same term to qualify ‘regular supplies’ in science, law,

religion, economics, and so on?” (36). In this way, the domains can each be understood as di-

verse through the content that their network delivers,  while also accounting for the diverse inter-

activity that produces that content (i.e., Science may interact with Law, Politics, and Economics,

but it is still distinct in that the content this network ultimately delivers is Science). This compro-

mise allows Latour to account for the fictional borders imagined between domains, while also re-

specting the diversity of values to which the agents of each domain desire to adhere to. A limita-

tion of this compromise, though, is its inability to identify the precise nature of the interactivity

between domains. Latour points out that both he and his informants “are capable, in any situation

whatsoever, of detecting in a fraction of a second, that a give phrase is ‘legal’ whereas a different

one is not…But when it come to qualifying the nature of what is designated by these ever-so-pre-

cise judgements, [his] informants fall back on incoherent statements that they try to justify by in-

venting ideal institutions” (37). For this reason, Latour concludes that the notion of the domain is

inadequate for producing a qualitative accounting of the values that are produced through these

networks.

Instead, he turns to the notion of the “pass”, or the movement between nodal points within

a network. He focuses on the the domain of Law, noting that the term “means” (i.e., “is there a le-

gal means…?” or “this is not an adequate means”) functions as the fluid medium that allows con-

tinuity. Latour gives the example of a case in which “an ill-formed demand made by indignant

plaintiffs whose lawyer, first, and then the judge, ‘extracted,’ as they put it, the legal ‘means’ be-

fore passing judgement” (38). Latour notes that the extraction of legal means, though it may in-

teract with extralegal elements, follows a trajectory that is unique to the domain of law, and is

discernible only to those indoctrinated into the domain, while appearing discontinuous to those

on the outside. What emerges is an internal boundary to the domain of law that is not the impass-

able border of a homogenous frontier, but rather, a distinctly and specifically legal medium that

allows for continuous flow between diverse nodal points in a network. As Latour describes, “Law

is not made ‘of’ law; but in the final analysis, when everything is in place and working well, a

particular ‘fluid’ that can be called legal circulates there” (39). In this sense, domains are distinct:

not in their actual manifestations, but in the processes through which they are made manifest. In

the example above, the production of the judgement appears discontinuous to outsiders1 but to

those indoctrinated into the realm of legal expertise, there is an observable and continuous trajec-

tory. Therefore, the boundary of the domain is a property of (or at least, enacted through) the par-

ticipants who populate it. The interaction of the distinct domains can now be accounted for, as

the movement itself (even if the movement is through other domains) is the distinctive quality

unique to the domain. In this way, each ostensibly impenetrable boundary can be understood

through the notion of the network, and the fluid medium that allows movement through it.

Armed with these tools, Latour posits that every situation can be defined with two types of data:

1 Latour does not get into the specific details of his exemplary case, which I think might be a frustrating iteration of the interplay between the domain of Academia and legal confidentiality.

“first, the very general data of the [net] type, which tells us nothing more than than that we have

to pass through surprising associations, and second…something that will allow us to define the

quality of the activity in question” (42). The first data type serves primarily as a catalog of the di-

verse interactivity of the domains of Modern life, while the second identifies the values that en-

able the situation to occur.

The final puzzle that must be resolved is why is it so difficult for the actors within their

distinct domains to clearly identify the values to which they are so resolutely attached (or, as La-

tour puts it, “why is theory so far removed from practice among the Moderns?” (42)). He points

out that the sustained existence of the domains essentially requires them to change through time,

but this change must somehow hang on to some essential values in order to maintain continuity.

To account for this, he turns to the institution of the Christian church, noting that, from its ori-

gins, it has been haunted by a similar question: “how to be faithful to itself even as it has trans-

formed itself from top to bottom” (43). Latour suggests a novel solution to this question, in that

there is a requisite interplay between the values of the church and the institution that enacts them.

Sometimes this interplay is harmonious, and sometimes not. These moments of disharmony be-

tween value and institution yield reform and transformation to both, in which all actors are impli-

cated. Latour then applies this same model to all institutions, suggesting that all Modern values

are the product of the dynamic interplay between a theoretical ideal and its practical enactment,

noting that “in each case, perhaps it is necessary to imagine an original and specific relation be-

tween the history of the Moderns’ values and the institutions to which these values give direction

and which embrace and shelter them— and often betray them—in return” (45). In this way, all

modern values are produced through the dynamic interactivity of domains (which, as discussed

above, is an incredibly complex and heterogeneous process), suggesting that there is a kind of

precarious balance of values that, at least for the moment, hold society steady.

Chapter Two: Collecting Documents For The Inquiry

Latour goes on to attempt to find a mode that, in conjunction with the network, can work

to provide an empirical dimension to any subjective account of an experience. To do this, he ob-

serves that he needs not only the cartography of interactive nodes provided by the network, but

also some kind of interpretive key through which the movements within the network can be ex-

plained. To explain this distinction, Latour outlines what he views to be the two types of mis-

takes. The first type, which he terms “knowledge mistakes”, is an error that can be solved through

research. He gives the example of “the tower of a castle that, from a distance, looks more of less

square to me. As I walk toward it…I finally understand that it is round—that it has proven to be

round” (49). That is to say, “knowledge mistakes” are simply a matter of perspective. There is an

understood epistemological framework that needs to be followed through and verified (i.e., there

is a tower that has some kind of definite three-dimensional shape, and now I just need to discern,

specifically, which one). Latour points out that mistakes of this type will not be of interest to his

inquiry because “they are all located, as it were, along the same path, that of rectified knowledge,

and thus they all stem from the same interpretive key” (49). 

The kind of mistake that Latour is interested in is the second type, which he calls a “cate-

gory mistake”, in which an error is caused not by insufficient knowledge within a given episte-

mological framework, but rather, an insufficiency within the framework itself. That is to say,

“category mistakes” occur when one is armed with the wrong interpretive key. Unlike knowledge

mistakes, category mistakes cannot be resolved through investigation, because the error is in the

epistemological framework (this is sort of like trying to discern scientific data from a religious

text: no matter how many times one reads the Bible, it will never truly offer a scientific proof for

the age of the earth). Latour defines the distinction through a metaphor: “Every hiker knows that

it is one thing to embark boldly on a well-marked path; it is quite another to decide which path to

take at the outset in the face of signposts that are hard to interpret” (53). Crucially, Latour points

out that in questions of categorical mistakes, the qualification of “true” or “false” is less important

than the question, “true or false for whom?” To demonstrate this, he returns to the domain of

Law, in which the process of  serving justice is very explicitly not the pursuit of an absolute and

objective Truth, but rather, the calculation of truth as qualified by the fluid movement of “means”

(as described in the previous chapter). As Latour points out, within the domain of Law, the

court’s judgement is “pro veritate habietur (‘taken as the truth’): neither more nor less” (54). For

this reason, a person who is looking to the legal system to provide closure for a traumatic experi-

ence, for example, is committing a categorical mistake because she is looking for something out-

side of the scope of the interpretive key of the law. With this in mind, Latour points out that for

any given practice, it is necessary to identify the epistemological structure that allows the pro-

duction an internal distinction between truth and falsity, and then develop a mechanism with

which one can qualify the interaction between different epistemological structures.

To do this, he proposes that, rather than identifying propositions as “true” or “false” (as

these distinctions have been shown to be relative to their domains), one can productively sort

propositions by felicity and infelicity (i.e., wether a given proposition “fits” contextually within a

given epistemological framework): “On each path of veridiction, we will be able to ask that the

conditions that must be met for someone to speak truths or untruths be specified according to its

mode” (56). In this way, Latour is able to define the mechanism that enables claims to truth

within a given mode. What is needed now is a method to distinguish one mode from another. For

this, Latour chooses the term “preposition”, explaining that he is “using it in the most literal,

grammatical sense, to mark a postition-taking that comes before a proposition is stated, deter-

mining how the proposition is to be grasped an thus constituting its interpretive key” (57). In this

sense, a statement’s preposition functions similarly to the key signature on a piece of sheet music

or the genre affixed to a book in a bookstore: it both indicates the type of thing you are dealing

with, and influences the rest of your experience with that thing. In order to understand any given

proposition, you will first have to discern the interpretive key for the mode within which the

proposition is presented. With these tools, argues Latour, any statement or situation can be ac-

counted for within its mode, and then that mode itself can be qualitatively situated against other

modes.

Armed with the tool of the network and the notion of the preposition, Latour confidently

announces that he is prepared to fully define the project of his inquiry, first captured in his inno-

cent-seeming impulse to “speak well to someone about something that really matters to them”

(58). Latour expands this notion, arguing that the speaker who “speaks well” must (1) describe

the interactive networks that produce a given proposition, at risk of alienating or shocking practi-

tioners unaccustomed to this mode, (2) verify with these same practitioners that the given propo-

sition is one and the same as what they already know of themselves, only within a larger non-do-

minial framework, (3) explore the epistemological gaps between the networked account of the

proposition and the account provided by the practitioners, and finally (and most crucially) (4)

propose a new formulation of the relationship between the two accounts that would close the gap

between practice and theory. Crucially, Latour points out that the ultimate goal of this project is

to redesign institutions such that the values of all of the previously held domains of Modern life

are accounted for.