A collective of Humans and Nonhumans Following Daedaluss Labyrinth

1
A collective of Humans and NonhumansFollowing
Daedaluss Labyrinth

• Chapter 6 from
• Buno Latour Pandoras Hope Essays on the Reality
  of Science Studies, 01 June 1999. Harvard
  University Press. ISBN067465336X. Chapter on
  Technology
• Folding Humans and Nonhumans into Each Other
• Pragmatogony Is there an Alternative to the Myth
  of Progress?

2
From review of the book

• Pandoras Hope is an extension and update of
  Bruno Latours two most important books, Science
  in Action (1987) and We Have Never Been Modern
  (1993).
• Latour revisits the relationship between humans,
  natural and artefactual objects.
• http//felix.openflows.org/html/pandora.html

3
Folding Humans and Nonhumans into Each other

• Technical constructionism vs. Social determinism?
• Materialist .vs. Sociological version
• Materialist suggest that our qualities,
  competences, personalities depend on what we hold
  in our hands.
• A sociological version (NRA) suggest that we can
  master tecniques, as pliable and diligent slaves.
• Difficult to understand what things make us do!

4
Guns kill people vs. Guns do not kill
people, people kill people

• Latour concludes that neither guns nor people
  kill people, but what is acting are collectives
  defined as an exchange of human and non-human
  properties inside a corporate body.

5
Mediating technology? Is the gun not more than a
piece of mediating technology?

• What does mediation mean (4)
• Interference
• Composition
• The folding of time space
• Crossing the Boundaries between signs things
• negotiation to resolve differences conducted by
  some impartial party http//www.thefreedictionary
  .com

6
Interference(Goal Translation, Program of Action)
INTERRUPTION
GOAL 1
Agent1
Translation
DETOUR
GOAL 3
Agent2
GOAL 2
Agent1 Agent2

• Responsibility for action must be shared among
  the various actants.
• You are another subject because you hold the
  gun the gun is another object because it has
  entered into a relationship with you

7
Composition
Agent1
GOAL
SUBPROGRAM 1
Agent2
SUBPROGRAM 2
Agent3

• B-52s do not fly, the U.S.Air Force flies.
  Action is simply not a property of humans but of
  an association of actants.

8
The Folding of Time and Space(Reversible Black
Boxing)

• Step1 disinterest
• Step2 interest (interruption, detour,
  enlistment)
• Step3compostition of a new goal
• Step4obligatory passage point
• Step5 alignment
• Step6 blackboxing
• Step7 punctualization
• The action we are trying to measure is subject
  to black-boxing, a process that makes joint
  production of actors and artifacts entirely
  opaque.

Reverse blackboxing
9
Crossing Boundaries between Signs Things/
Deligation
INTERRUPTION
Meaning1
Agent1
Translation
ARTICULATION
Agent2
Meaning2

• Humans are no longer by themselves
• Some, though not all of the characteristics of
  pavement become policemen, and some, though not
  all, of the characteristics of policemen become
  speed bumps.

10
Pragmatogony Is there Alternative to Myth of
Progress?

• We live in collectives, not in societies.
• The name of the game is not to extend
  subjectivity to things, to treat humans like
  objects, to take machines for social actors, but
  to avoid using the subject-object distinction at
  all in order to talk about the folding of humans
  and nonhumans.

11
Pragmatogony cont.

• But do we, even today, have unmediated access to
  naked matter? (matter/form)
• The most important consequences of getting beyond
  the Homo faber myth is that, when we exchange
  properties with nonhumans through technical
  delegation, we enter into a complex transaction
  that pertains to modern as well as traditional
  collectives.

12
State of social relations
State of nonhuman relations
Crossover
Social complexity
1st
Social tools
2nd
Basic tool kit
pliability, durability
Social complication
3rd
articulation
4th
Techniques
externalization
Society
5th
domestication
6th
Internalized ecology
reification
Large-scale management
Megamachine
7th
8th
Industry
automation
extension rearticulation
Networks of power
9th
Technoscience
10th
object-institutions
Political ecology
11th
politics of nature