-~-~·-l; '1 1 ~­ -)' ~CJU~ l"· J' ÛlF .t Studies in Literature and Science published in association with the Society for Literature and Science Editorial Board Chair: N. Katherine Hayles, University of California, Los Angeles JamesJ. Bono, State University ofNew York at Buffalo Clifford Geertz, Institute for Advanced Study Evelyn Fox Keller, University of California, Berkeley Bruno Latour, Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Mines, Paris StephenJ. Weininger, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Tides in the series Transgressive Readings: The Texts ofFranz Kafka and Max Planck by Valerie D. Greenberg A Bkssed Rage for Order: Deconstruction, Evolution, and Chaos by AlexanderJ. Argyros OfTwo Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics by MichaeIJoyce The Artijicial Paradise: Science Fiction and American ReaUty by Sharona Ben-Tov Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time by Michel Serres with Bruno Latour The Natural Contract by Michel Serres Genesis by Michel Serres i 1 h MICHEL SERRES with BRUNO LATOUR Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time 1 1 il Translated by Roxanne Lapidus 1 i AnnArbor 'l'HE l1NIvERSITY OF MICHIGAN PREss English translation copyright © by me University ofMichigan 1995 Originally published in French as Eclaircissements © by Editions François Bourin 1990 AlI rights reserved Published in the United States ofAmerica by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica e Printed on acid~free paper 1998 1997 1996 1995 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalogue recwd fw this book is availoble }Tom the British Library. Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Serres, Michel. [Eclaircissements. English] Conversations on science, culture, and time / Michel Serres with Bruno Latour; translated by Roxanne Lapidus. p. cm. - (Studies in literature and science) ISBN ü-472-09548-X (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-472-06548-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Serres, Michel-Interviews. 2. Authors, French-20th century­ Interviews. 1. Title. II. Series. PQ2679.E679Z46513 1995 194---<1c20 95-2706 CIP The publisher is grateful for partial subvention for translation from the French Ministry-of Culture. Contents Translator's Introduction vii FIRST CONVERSATION Background and Training 1 SECOND CONVERSATION Method 43 THIRD CONVERSATION Demonstration and Interpretation 77 FOURTH CONVERSATION The End of Criticism 125 FIFTH CONVERSATION Wisdom 167 Translator's Note 205 ;:.. r i Translator's Introduction With the publication of Hermès 1. La communication in 1969 Michel Serres set the tone for a controversial body ofwork that has evolved over the past twenty-five years through more than twenty books, which he sees as a series, a natural progression of his lifetime project of understanding what makes our world tick. In that first volume he introduced his main character and alter ego, the Greek god Hermes-the messenger-who, under Serres's pen, travels across time and space, making unexpected connections between seemingly disparate objects and events. These sometimes bewilder­ ingjuxtapositions, which reflect Serres's unorthodox view of time itself, have baffled many critics and general readers. Itwas with an eye to claritying sorne of these sources ofdifficulty that socioIogist Bruno Latour persuaded Michel Serres in 1991 to engage in the interviews that make up this book. Published in France under the title Eclaircissements (clarifications/illumina­ tions), it was a best-seller and did much to dispel sorne of the misunderstandings surrounding Serres's work. For English-speaking readers this translation should serve as an introduction ta Serres, a provocative and unorthodox thinker whose major works are now available in English. His two most recent books are The Legend of the Angf!ls (La Légende des aTlf!!S, 1993) and Atlas (1994). An unabashed maverick, Michel Serres was elected in 1990 to the Académie Française. Roxanne Lapidus University of Califomia, Santa Barbara FIRST CONVERSATION Background and Training Bruno Latour: There is a Michel Serres mystery. You are very weil hnown and yet very unhnown. Yourfellow philosophers scarcely read you. Michel Serres: Do you think 50? BL Even though your books are technically on philosophy. MS 1 hope 50. BL This is where l'd lihe some clarifications. Your books aren't obscure, but the way to approach them is hidden. You map out a path, you go everywhere-the sciences, mythology, literature-but at the same time you often cover up the traces that led you to your results. What l'm hopingfor today is not that you will add more results, nor comment on your otller books, but that you will help us to read them. In tllese conversations 1 hope that we may tahe up the thread that leads you to your mults and that you will show me how you amved there-that we may go behind the magician's curtain, that we may learn about your colleagues and see the underlying design ofa body ofwork that doesn't appear to have one. MS Scarcely eighteen months ago 1 would have refused this exer­ cise; now 1 am willing to go a10ng with it. l'll tell you why a little laler. BL My first difficult:y is that you situate your works under the sign of Hermes. Now, Hermes is mediation, translation, multiplicit:y. But at the same time, especially in your later works, there is a side 1 would cali Catharist-maybe thaÔ not the right wordr-a will toward isolation, s.pa- 2 Conversations on Science~ Culture, and Time ration, immediacy. So my first question has to do with your intellectual formation. You mnot fond of debate; although famous, you am not weil understood Iry your colleagues, and admittedly you often speak ill ofthem. What terrible thing happened to you, in your deuelopment, to make you so ''gun-shy" ofdebate? What /roents pusked you into this solitary exercise of philosophy? The War Generation MS My contemporaries will recognize themselves in what 1 have to say first. Here is the vital environment of those who were born, like me, around 1930: at age six, the war of 1936 in Spain; at age nine, the blitzkrieg of 1939, defeat and debacle; at age twelve, the split between the Resistance and the collaborators, the tragedy of the concentration camps and deportations; at age fourteen, Lib­ eration and the settling of scores it brought with it in France; at age fifteen. Hiroshima. In short. from age nine to seventeen, when the body and sensitivity are being formed, it was the reign of hunger and rationing, death and bombings, a thousand crimes. We continued immediately with the colonial wars, in Indochina and then in Algeria. Between birth and age twenty-live (the age ofmilitary service and ofwar again, since then it was North Africa, followed by the Suez expedition) around me, for me-for us, around us-there ",:,as nothing but hattIe,s. War, a1ways war. Thus, 1was six for my lirst dead bodies, twenty-six for the last ones. Have 1 answered you sufficiently about what has made my contemporar­ ies "gun-sh}"'? BL Yes, in part,.indeed. MS My generation lived through these early years very painfully. The preceding generation was twenty years old at the beginning of these events and, as adults, lived them in an active way, becom­ ing involved in them. My generation could only follow them in the passivity of powerlessness-as child, adolescent-in any case, weak, and without any possibility ofaction. Violence, death, blood and tears, hunger, bombings, deportations, affected my age group and traumatized it, since these horrors took place during the time of our formation-physkal and emotional. My youth goes from Background and Training 3 Guernica (1 cannat bear ta look at Picasso's famous painting) ta Nagasaki, by way ofAuschwitz. A written work. even an abstract one, cannot help remaining a distressed witness for a long time after such events, though it does notjudge them. Perhaps what you are calling "Catharist" (did you know that my heritage descends directly from that tradition?) is the sound of lamentation that emanates from my books. This Jeremiab's cry cornes from nowhere else but those shameful wars and the horrors ofviolence. The lirst woman that 1saw naked was a young girl being Iynched by a mob; this tragic influence forrns not only the spirit and forgiveness but also the body and the senses. Yes, when 1 read Sein und Zeit 1 feel the years before the war emanating from it-not through understanding or memory but physically-I irresistibly breathe the smell ofit. Ask people my age who lived in France at that precise time; ask those who must have sung anthems in school ta Marshal Pétain, before subsequently parading in celebrations of the Liberation, in honor of the Resis­ tance-always flanked by the same adults. How could anyone in their position not feel scorn for those adults, not become old at age ten and experienced or wise? Ask them then if their nostrils don't immediately quiver with nausea in certain situations. 1 see (although 1 can't bear ta look at them) the canvases of Max Ernst or ofPicasso less as artistic works than as witnesses to that terrible era. BL That~ the way that whole era thought ofthose evenls. That~ no longer directly yourformation. MS That's eàsy for you ta say, sitting comfortably here, but did that era really think about those events? The return ta savagery­ ta the Minotaur, for Max Ernst, ta Picasso's paganism-I still see these today as the atrocious forces unleashed on society during that era. Did they express that dangerous era, or did they create it? 1 was about ta say, imprudently, that they produced it. Do 1 dare suggest that my generation still sees Guernica falling on paint­ ing and deconstructing it the way the Nazi planes bombarded the town? BL You", saying that tllese works are symptoms of the evil and not an analysis ofthose symptoms? 4 Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time MS Yes, syrnptoms, and not reactions, either of defense or revoit.