Responding to Latour on Critique

“...things have become Things again...” p236

Within the context of Latour’s Matters of Fact, Matters of Concern, I understand the above quote as referring to a re-conception and new direction for critique. While the common practice of critique had traditionally assumed a distinction between matters on fact (objects, or facts) and matters of concern (things, or fairies) as two mutually exclusive ontologies, Latour proposes a third category; that of the fair (p243). As our experiences are defined subjectively, it is not fair to discount the “rich and complicated qualities of the [/someone else's] celebrated Thing” (p233). This shift in attitude is what has allowed “things [to] become Things again”.

What is the realist attitude that [Latour] celebrates

Latour criticises the tradition where by ‘realists’ “have picked and chosen, and, worse, [...] have remained content with that limited choice” (p244) the aspects that they consider as comprising ‘reality’. This selective gaze, he argues, is destructive. Rather, “a multifarious inquiry[...] to detect how many participants are gathered in a thing to make it exist and to maintain its existence” (p246) is, in contrast, both more constructive, and productive.