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.

Latour

I'm a bit out of the loop on last week's discussions, but thought that since everyone has been addressing the 3rd & 4th questions (after talking through 1 & 2 in class), that I'd have a brief stab at the first 2 instead. My apologies if I'm reiterating what you've already done!

Through his writing on critique, Latour airs his concerns about the direction that critique will take in future. The article has been motivated by reaction and his "worry," for the future of critique, in light of the discovery that his own work has been used to support claims that not reflect the intent that drove his original writing. He is worried, because this very act has problematised an identification of the distinction between ways of thinking that formerly appeared as opposing forces; "what's the difference between deconstruction and constructivism?" (232) What is the future of critique if reappropriation can be performed to such an extent that one theory can serve to argue its counterpart?

In this sense, Latour's concerns seem to align themselves with the ideas of innovation in the arts, exploring the idea that 'it's all been done before' and within the constraints of the medium, can work to justify or deliver an outcome that assumes a plethora of existing approaches. If you think about pop music, it seems more and more to be about taking riffs, bass lines, melodies that work and giving them new definition to create a completely different meaning from the one that originally sold it. It's a kind of manipulation, but if it works, and Latour admits that in his case it did, what comes next? What is the consequence of exploiting critique to spin notions of fact?


See you soon!

Latour on Critique – responses

An object can be described as a gathering of things that is widely accepted. A Thing, by its origins and definition, is an idea debated in parliament and forum. This form of discourse allows an object to become solidified and tangible. When Latour argues “things have become Things again” (p.236), he means that the nature of critical thinking may have to leave accepted truths and move on to reestablishing the basis of theory, as a way of looking at objects and therefore debating things. The brief example of the Twin Tower’s reconstruction in New York City (p.236) brings forth the public debate of what the Towers actually mean, and how they are defined.

The realist attitude is “a realism dealing with […] matters of concern, not matters of fact” (p.231). Prior to his offering, Latour claims that matters of fact are only a minor portion of “states of affairs” (p.232). In other words, critical writing has not yet dealt with many ideas and this is the next challenge associated with critique.

things have become things again...

I'm still not quite sure of this phrase but it keeps taking me to a book i read last year called Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti. In particular Canetti's discussion of 'unmasking.' He argues that if we continue unmasking 'all the leaves of the tree will start to look the same' (apologies for the lack of reference but i haven't got the book within reach). I feel this statement echoes the argument that 'things things have become things again.' By unmasking things based on their facts as opposed to the world of concern i feel like Latour is arguing the world diminishes. The process of unmasking as i'm using it i feel is aptly described by Klara's post when she describes the search for 'ultimate truths' removed from the concerns of the object.

realist attitude celebrated...

"reality is not defined by matters of fact" (Latour quoted in an earlier post by Milana). I agree with Milana in that i feel this assertion is a key concern that provokes Latour's celebration of the realist attitude. The other reference that appears to feature heavily in people's responses is the move toward appreciation of the objects concern as opposed to its matters of fact. The only way i feel able to to shed further light in this area is to consider this attitude in the field of performance studies. Perhaps it is plausible to contrast two readings of an object on stage. For example a recent production i collaborated on worked intensely with underwear as an object in performance. To read this according to 'matters of fact,' the underwear could be studied for its positioning in the space, its material qualities, its motion through time etc. To read this object through matters of concern may lead to a reading that focuses on how the object of underwear was in relation to the other objects on stage. What conditions brought this object to its place in the parliament of objects on stage? Perhaps this is too much of a break from Latour considering he was levelling an argument on critique itself. However it seems to me to read performance according to matters of fact is a futile exercise whereas critique based on matters of concern appear to provoke more fruitful readings.

Latour - Matters of Fact, Matters of Concern

1) Latour's problem is that there has become too big a rift between that of "objects" and "things". There is a division between that of science and technology and that which is “cradled in the respectful idiom of art, craftsmanship and poetry”. Social scientists have tried to explain objects so horribly that they might as well not bother. Yet by breaking down these boundaries things can become things again.

2) The realist attitude that Latour champions is to look at the thing through a matter of concern rather than a matter of fact. Philosophers pick and choose what they want to look at when that should actually be creating a better picture to understand their matters of concern. It is not always possible to explain things through matters of fact.

Latour on Crtitique

“…things have become Things again,…” Why?

An object according to Heidegger is an empty mastery of science and technology and a Thing is a gathering place of a rich set of connections. A coke can is just an object it is a matter of fact, it is a can of soft drink. Whereas a handmade jug is a Thing because it is a meeting place of matters of concern. Who made the jug? Why did they make the jug? How did they make the jug? For whom did they make the jug? Where did they get the material? How did they learn to make the jug? Although, can’t similar questions can be asked of a can of coke?

I believe this is what Latour is getting at. Today every thing (or object) is no longer taken as a simple object that is a matter of fact. The matter of fact seems too simple, too truthful to be the truth. People are searching for deeper meaning in everything, for the truths hidden behind what were once the ultimate truths but now seem to be just the ‘very politicised, polemicised facts’, chosen to take precedence over all the matters of concern that sustain their existence.

What is the realist attitude that Latour celebrates?

The realist attitude that Latour celebrates is an attitude that returns to empiricism. Critique has become extreme in its current form. Every critic is moving further and further away from facts whereas really critics should be moving closer to them. Rather than debunking matters of fact we should be protecting and caring for matters of concern. The many examples of conspiracy theories in the article suggest that he sees these conspiracy theorists as the extremists of theory who are so removed from empiricism and debunking all facts that nothing seems to exist anymore, that there are no truths anymore. He is celebrating a realist attitude that would assemble facts to understand matters of concern rather than debunk them; to multiply and strengthen, rather than subtract and weaken.

Dr. Tony Voss Seminar Response

Dr. Tony Voss’ seminar was about his newly written chapter for the Cambridge History of South African Literature called ‘Refracted Modernisms’. Whilst Voss spoke mainly about the three writers he wrote about, Roy Campbell, N. P. Van Wyk Louw and H. I. E. Dhlomo, he briefly touched upon some issues he had with the title of his chapter and the idea of refracted modernisms. Voss did not choose the title of the chapter rather he was approached by the editors of the collection and was asked to write about three writers who would fit the bill, so to speak. In the end he chose the above mentioned three due to linking themes considered to be ‘modern’ which all appeared in their literary works. These two themes were religion and the exotic. So for instance Van Wyk Louw wrote a poem titled Heilige Petrus (Saint Peter) and Campbell wrote: ‘And God will smile to see/ The peace of many shadows on my soul’ (‘Shadows’, 1916)

Voss described a refracted modernism as a modernism that begins somewhere and changes when it gets somewhere else. So the modernism in South Africa is a refracted version of the original modernism begun in Europe. However, Voss seemed to struggle with the idea of a refracted modernism, or that these writers were even modern, even in a refracted sense. At first he spoke that the writers he was dealing with engaged with two different modernisms. That Campbell was a white South African who wrote in a European modernist style. The when he spoke about Dhlomo he mentioned that he wrote in an African modernist style (this apparently being a refracted style of the original European modernism.) Then he moved on to mention many of the aspects of these writers works that is very unmodern. So for example Van Wyk Louw wrote that “the Human comes out in the national…there is no general person” whereas modernism considers that there is a ‘general person’. He then went on to mention that modernism is a break with the past however most of these writers kept reconnecting with the past. Finally towards the end he questioned whether modernism in the colonial world was a belated form of modernism or a different form of modernism? I would like to add to this query; is it a modernism at all?

When asked are you even convinced that these writers were modernists at all even in a refracted sense, Voss answered that he wasn’t convinced. What this seems to question is the existence of refracted modernisms. How alike to the original modernism does a refracted modernism have to be to still be considered a modernism? Perhaps these refracted modernisms in fact aren’t modernisms but the beginning of maybe postmodernism? Or should they be considered to be individual –isms of their own? Is speaking of refracted modernisms the influence of colonial language, trying to tie the –isms of Western Europe’s colonial lands to the dominant -ism back then; another way of colonising the colonies?