The Richness of Things Themselves Steven Shaviro Wayne State University

Criticism

Volume 52 | Issue 1 Article 6

2010 The Richness of Things Themselves Steven Shaviro Wayne State University

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Recommended Citation Shaviro, Steven (2010) "The Richness of Things Themselves," Criticism: Vol. 52 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol52/iss1/6 The Richness Graham Harman’s Prince of Net- works is really two books in one. of Things The first part is a lucid exposition Themselves of the metaphysics of Bruno La- Steven Shaviro tour; the second part presents Harman’s own metaphysical speculations, which are deeply in- debted to those of Latour, but Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour which also strike out in new and and Metaphysics by Graham Har- different directions. man. Anamnesis series. Melbourne, Bruno Latour is well known in Australia: re.press, 2009. Pp. 258. the United States, but he is not $25.00 paper. usually thought of as a philosopher or a metaphysician. Latour is, rather, most familiar as one of the leading figures in science studies: the interdisciplinary field that looks at the actual practices of scientists and scientific institutions, and the cultural implications of these practices. Science studies involves the work of sociologists, anthropolo- gists, and historians, as well as of cultural theorists and rhetoricians, who are often to be found in litera- ture departments. Latour is also frequently cited as one of the de- velopers of actor-network theory, which has had a significant impact in the social sciences and in cultural studies—but which has little in common with the concerns of the philosophy of science as it was practiced in the last century under the influence of such figures as Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. It’s surprising, therefore (at least for English-language readers, though not necessarily for French- language ones) to see Latour pre- sented, as he is by Harman, as a

Criticism, Winter 2010, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 129–133. ISSN: 0011-1589. 129 © 2010 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201-1309. 130 STeven Shaviro metaphysician, in the company of volves a process of translation. Each such figures as Leibniz, Hume, actor mediates (and thereby trans- Kant, and Whitehead. Indeed, forms) other actors and is in its Harman suggests that Latour com- own turn mediated (and thereby pares favorably with such figures transformed) by still other actors: as Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, “There is never an immediate vis- Lacan, and Badiou, those theorists ibility of the fact, but only a series who have entranced American ac- of mediations. . . . Truth is nothing ademia over the last several de- but a chain of translation without cades. One of the great merits of resemblance from one actor to the Prince of Networks is that it not next” (76). And finally, in the only argues for the importance of fourth place, change happens as a Latour’s thought, but also places result of negotiations or battles Latour himself in an entirely new among actors; and the outcome of light. these negotiations or battles de- In the first part of Prince of Net- pends upon the alliances that actors works, Harman outlines Latour’s are able to make with one another: metaphysics through a close read- “For Latour, an object is neither a ing of four of Latour’s texts: “Irre- substance nor an essence, but an ductions” (from The Pasteurization actor trying to adjust or inflict its of France, 1984), Science in Action forces, not unlike Nietzsche’s cos- (1987), We Have Never Been Mod- mic vision of the will to power” ern (1991), and Pandora’s Hope (15). After stating these axioms (1999). Harman discovers a cluster concisely, Harman proceeds to of “four metaphysical axioms” that elaborate and develop them, and to defineL atour’s philosophy (14–16). explore their ramifications and In the first place, the world is made consequences. The result is to re- up of actors or actants, discrete and veal that Latour is actually grap- separate individuals. Human be- pling with many of the major ings are actors, but so are bacteria, concerns of Western philosophy chairs, grapes, and grains of sand. and offering his own innovative In the second place, all these actors suggestions for resolving them. are irreducible. No actor can be en- In the second part of Prince of tirely explained in the terms of, or Networks, Harman steps back from by reference to, another. You can- this close reading, in order to offer not fully account for the being and some criticisms of Latour’s meta- doing of a chair, for instance, by re- physics and to propose his own ferring either to the atoms out of metaphysical speculations as an al- which it is ultimately made or to its ternative. Above all, Harman criti- use by the person who sits in it. In cizes Latour for his relationalism: the third place, any encounter, any “his notion that actors are defined interaction between actors, in- entirely by their relations and alli- ON harman’s Prince of networks 131 ances.” For Latour, actors must be things, Harman remarkably re- “fully relational in character, with vives, and gives new life to, two old no distinction between object and philosophical doctrines that, for accident, object and relation, or ob- most of the last century, have been ject and quality . . . to change one’s regarded as old-fashioned, when relations is to change one’s reality” not forgotten entirely. The first of (104). Harman objects that this di- these doctrines is substantialism: mension of Latour’s thought (which the claim that every object is a sub- he shares with Whitehead) risks stance, which is to say that it is dissolving actors into a sort of pri- something more than the mere mordial indistinction and effacing sum of its qualities. The second of their concrete individuality. Radi- these forgotten doctrines is occa- cal relationalism makes it difficult sionalism: the claim that objects to understand how an actor can cannot influence one another di- change over time. It also risks un- rectly—as in conventional notions dermining the very actuality of ac- of cause and effect—but require tors that Latour otherwise wishes some external mediation in order to affirm, “by not allowing [an ac- to do so. Harman suggests that tor] to be real outside the alliances substantialism is the missing term that articulate it” (129). Harman that could resolve many of the therefore suggests that—contrary problems that remain in Latour’s to Latour’s specific assertions, but metaphysics. And he credits La- in tune with his basic intuitions— tour with the prodigious discovery, actors must be accorded “a reality for the first time in the history of beyond all relationality”; each ac- philosophy, of a secular occasional- tor (or object) must be “in and of ism: a thought that considers seri- itself actual apart from any rela- ously the problem of mediation in tions” (187). Latour’s own insistence any relationship among entities upon the actuality and efficacy of without falling back upon God as actors, nonhuman as well as hu- the ultimate mediator (102, 115, man, implies that each of these ac- 228). Ever since Descartes, West- tors is necessarily “self-contained” ern philosophy has called upon (144). God as the ultimate guarantor of Harman’s own philosophy elab- the world’s coherence; Latour is orates upon, and expands, this ba- the first thinker to envision this co- sic insight. In the second part of herence in entirely immanent and Prince of Networks, Harman fur- secular terms. ther develops, with the help of La- What unites both parts of Prince tour, ideas that he had earlier of Networks is Harman’s quest, fol- formulated in his previous books, lowing Latour, to develop what he Tool-Being (2002) and Guerrilla calls an “object-oriented philoso- Metaphysics (2005). Among other phy.” This is a view of the world 132 STeven Shaviro that—in contrast to nearly all richness of things themselves” in Western philosophy since Kant, or all their multifariousness (119). indeed since Descartes—is not Prince of Networks marks some- centered upon questions of con- thing of a turning point, I think, sciousness, subjectivity, and the in contemporary intellectual dis- epistemological problem of human course. For Harman’s reconstruc- access to an external world. Rather, tion of Latour’s metaphysics, and object-oriented philosophy affirms his presentation of his own meta- a “marvelous plurality of concrete physics, both exemplify an impor- objects” (156), each with its own tant development in recent years: integrity and its own mysterious the revival of metaphysical specu- depths. The “universe of things” is lation. For most of the twentieth not a harmonious whole, but a century, “metaphysics” was taboo, wild anarchy of innumerable ob- or under quarantine. It was gener- jects both withdrawing from and ally seen as something bad, some- reaching out to one another. And thing we had to get away from. these objects cannot be contained The goal of overcoming metaphys- within the fixed categories that we ics was shared by thinkers as other- would seek to impose upon them. wise antagonistic to one another as Object-oriented philosophy is Carnap and Heidegger. And de- therefore equally opposed to scien- spite the vast differences among tific naturalism and to so-called so- them, Wittgenstein, Rorty, and cial constructionism. Against the Derrida were united at least by former, it insists that no object is their incessant efforts to undo the reducible to, or fully explicable in bewitchment of metaphysics, even terms of, its ultimate subatomic if they all conceded that we would constituents. Against the latter, it never be able to escape this be- insists that the world is not made witchment entirely. But it seems by us and for us. Cats, brown that this sort of attitude might fi- dwarf stars, internal combustion nally be giving way. In the twenty- engines, and lava flows all have first century, it might be possible, their own stubborn autonomy and once again, to do metaphysics inherent activity. Latour has often without a bad conscience. Harman been viewed, in the United States suggests as much, both through his at least, as a social constructionist, own bold speculations and through but Harman demonstrates con- what might be thought of as his vincingly that this characterization “outing” of Latour as an unabashed is wrong. Far from reducing the metaphysician. The case of Latour physical world to a human projec- is especially significant in this re- tion, Latour’s philosophy orients spect because it demonstrates that us, as never before, “toward the full-fledged metaphysical specula- ON harman’s Prince of networks 133 tion is not incompatible with the all the more so, in the case of think- most careful, and hardheadedly ers who can also be credited as empirical, examination of local, great writers: think of Plato, Hume, particular facts in minute detail. Nietzsche, and William James. Metaphysics, no less than scientific Graham Harman is, similarly, a examination, is a way of embrac- philosopher who writes well. His ing “the richness of things them- prose style is as seductive as his selves.” It is high time for us to ideas, and indeed it is impossible to have done with the asceticism and separate the two. Prince of Net- superciliousness of the last centu- works is a great adventure of ideas ry’s intellectual climate. Metaphys- (to use a phrase from Alfred North ical speculation, at its best, is a Whitehead); it is one of those rare stimulus to thought; Prince of Net- books that, in style as in substance, works is profoundly engaging and truly invites us to think. challenging even if one does not accept (as I do not) all of its argu- Steven Shaviro is the DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University. He is the ments. author of Connected, or What It Means to In concluding, I should mention Live in the Network Society (University of that Prince of Networks is not just Minnesota Press, 2003), Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics intellectually stimulating, but also (MIT Press, 2009), and Post-Cinematic a delight to read. Philosophy has Affect (forthcoming). never been a matter of mere logical propositions. It has always in- volved the elucidation of a basic stance towards the world, which means that it has always also in- volved a kind of literary style. A manner of writing is not just an adornment to the underlying ideas; it is rather the case that ideas themselves can emerge only when they are given the proper form of ex- pression. Even the philosophers who are most painful and obnox- ious to read—one might mention Kant, Hegel, and (for me at least) Heidegger—have written the way they did because they realized that a new sort of language was re- quired in order to convey their new insights about reality. This is