Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics

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If you have any questions please contact the publisher: re.press PO Box 40 Prahran, 3181 Victoria Australia [email protected] www.re-press.org Graham Harman Graham Bruno Latour and Bruno Latour Metaphysics Networks Prince of of Prince Prince of Networks Bruno Latour and Metaphysics Graham Harman re.press Prince of Networks Anamnesis Anamnesis means remembrance or reminiscence, the collection and re-collection of what has been lost, forgotten, or effaced. It is therefore a matter of the very old, of what has made us who we are. But anamnesis is also a work that transforms its subject, always producing something new. To recollect the old, to produce the new: that is the task of Anamnesis. a re.press series Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics Graham Harman re.press Melbourne 2009 re.press PO Box 40, Prahran, 3181, Melbourne, Australia http://www.re-press.org © re.press & Graham Harman 2009 The moral rights of the author are automatically asserted and recog- nized under Australian law (Copyright Amendment [Moral Rights] Act 2000) This work is ‘Open Access’, published under a creative commons license which means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors, that you do not use this work for any commercial gain in any form whatsoever and that you in no way alter, transform or build on the work outside of its use in normal academic scholarship without express permission of the author (or their executors) and the publisher of this volume. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. For more information see the details of the creative commons licence at this website: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Harman, Graham, 1968- Prince of networks : Bruno Latour and metaphysics / Graham Harman. ISBN: 978-0-9805440-6-0 (pbk.) ISBN: 978-0-9806665-2-6 (ebook) Series: Anamnesis. Notes: Includes index. Bibliography. Subjects: Latour, Bruno. Metaphysics. Ontology. 110 Designed and Typeset by A&R This book is produced sustainably using plantation timber, and printed in the destination market reducing wastage and excess transport. Contents Abbreviations page vii intRodUction The lsE Event 3 Preface 5 PART I: thE MEtaphYsics of latoUR 1. Irreductions 11 2. Science in Action 33 3. We Have Never Been Modern 57 4. Pandora’s Hope 71 PART II: obJEcts and RElations 5. Contributions 99 6. Questions 119 7. Object-Oriented Philosophy 151 Bibliography 233 Index 239 v Abbreviations AR Aramis or the Love of Technology, trans. Catherine Porter, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1996. FD La Fabrique du Droit. Une ethnographie du Conseil d’Etat, Paris, Découverte, 2002. LL Laboratory Life. The Construction of Scientific Facts, with Steve Woolgar, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986. MB ‘Can We Get Our Materialism Back, Please?’, Isis, no. 98, 2007, pp. 138-142. MP ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik, or How to Make Things Public,’ in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds.), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2005. NM We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1993. PE ‘On the Partial Existence of Existing and Nonexisting Objects,’ in Lorraine Daston (ed.), Biographies of Scientific Objects, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006. PH Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1999. PF The Pasteurization of France, trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1988. vii viii Prince of Networks PN Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy, trans. Catherine Porter, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2004. RS Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005. SA Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1987. VI Paris ville invisible, Paris, Editions la Découverte, 1998. Available in English at http://www.bruno-latour.fr/virtual/index.html# introduction The LSE Event The initial manuscript of this book was discussed at the London School of Economics on 5 February, 2008 at a daylong symposium entitled ‘The Harman Review: Bruno Latour’s Empirical Metaphysics’. The host for the event was the Innovation Systems and Information Group in the LSE Department of Management, and warm support was provided by its Head, Professor Leslie Willcocks. Bruno Latour was in attendance to respond to the manuscript. The panel discussion was chaired by Edgar Whitley, with additional presentations by Lucas Introna, Noortje Marres, and the author of this book. Frances White provided critical help in organizing the event. The Symposium Organising Committee emphasised further the highly in- ternational flavor of the event, featuring Aleksi Altonen, Ofer Engel, Peter Erdélyi, and Wifak Houij Gueddana (all doctoral candidates) and Dr. Maha Shaikh. In addition, some forty-five specially invited participants were in the audience that day. In the words of Erdélyi: ‘It was such an unusual and unlikely event; even in retrospect it is difficult to believe it actually had taken place. What are the chances of hosting a metaphysical debate between a Heideggerian philosopher and a sociologist known for his dislike of Heidegger on the grounds of a management school, organised by PhD students of an information systems department?’1 The chances are greatly increased when an energetic and visionary group like ANTHEM is involved. The acronym stands for ‘Actor-Network Theory-Heidegger Meeting’. Thanks to Erdélyi and his friends in ANTHEM my intellectual life over the last two years 1. Peter Erdélyi, ‘Remembering the Harman Review’. Blog post at http://www.anthem- group.net/tag/the-harman-review/ 3 4 Prince of Networks has been greatly enriched, and this book was able to become a public actor long before publication in its current, final format. Though I normally avoid ‘acknowledgments’ sections in books from fear of making my readers feel bored or excluded, Erdélyi’s group is not boring and excludes nobody. It is worthwhile to join ANTHEM’s mailing list and browse their website: http://www.anthem-group.net/ Another non-boring, non-exclusive person is Latour himself. At vari- ous stages of writing this book I received the warmest possible treatment from Bruno and Chantal Latour—in Cairo, Paris, and at the Latour ‘hut’ in Châtelperron dans l’Allier. Latour has responded graciously to my que- ries from as early as 1999, when I was just an obscure and unpublished fresh Ph.D. struggling in Chicago. But there are countless such stories of Latour’s openness to the young and the unknown, and readers of this book may one day discover this for themselves.

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