bruno cuconato claro - entry no. 3 (on Latour)

  Drawing from Tolstoy's War and Peace, Bruno Latour starts his book trying to show that “great men” not only do not exist in military campaigns, but also do not exist in the history of science. Talking of Napoleonic campaigns, Tolstoy writes "if in the accounts given us by historians, especially French historians, we find their wars and battles conforming to previously prescribed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that their accounts are not true." According to Latour, Tolstoy would have said the same about the French historiography (or hagiography?) of the Pasteurian movement and its so-called leader, Louis Pasteur.

Latour briefly captures the zeitgeist of the Belle Époque, emphasizing its belief in the virtue of science and reason. After the ideas of Freud and Darwin sunk in, and the great wars came, nobody seemed to believe in the Enlightenment anymore, but as Latour puts it, “nobody has yet recovered from this loss of faith. Not to believe in it is to feel that we have been thrown back into the Dark Ages.” This is one of the greatest challenges of our time, regardless of whether we call it post-modernity or post-colonialism. Getting back to the problem of heroization of the history of science, Latour claims that the main cause of this mistake is dismissing the “diffusion of an idea, a gesture, a technique” as unimportant, and thus concentrating effort at the formation of the idea/gesture/technique. If one agrees that there exists no such thing as an “original idea,” this procedure is nonsense. Even if one concedes the possibility of “original ideas,” ignoring how ideas propagate and mutate as they pass from a person to another is to oversimplify events, and therefore render a false account of history.

To correct this error of perception, Latour suggests the Tolstoyan methodology: distributing the agency from the “great men” to all other agents of society – and of the biosphere, Latour stresses – involved. In order to do so, Latour tries to recompose the french society of the time, specially the scientific community, by means of the analysis of three contemporary journals. Another factor that difficultates proper history of science, according to Latour, is ignoring the social context of scientific discoveries – most times, the context of a new discovery is merely the last discovery. Latour shows how the almost pseudo scientific hygienist movement paved the way to the Pasteurians, reinforced them, and helped them to act. The preoccupation of the time with the insalubrity of cities also helped the Pausterian “revolution.” It is interesting to observe that although urbanization may have increased the number of disease cases, humans were precisely at that time experiencing a big improvement in medico-sanitary conditions, so the greater social upheaval for better sanitary conditions came less from a recrudescence in diseases (as this was the normal condition of humanity until that time,) but from the fact that losing lives when science was so advanced (sic) seemed unacceptable.

Latour draws comparisons between Pasteur (& Pasteurians) and Freud (& the new science of psychology.) Even if microbiology is an “exact” science and psychology controversial, Latour says, both Freud and Pasteur were in a similar position – that of prominent exponents of new knowledge, knowledge of difficult apprehension to the 'average' person, and thus creating what Latour terms “new sources of power and new sources of legitimacy.” The constructed (but probably justifiable) urgency to fight, say, the rabies virus, and Pasteur's position in microbiology, gave him power over how events would develop from that point.

Bruno Latour starts his analysis of the age of ecological conflicts stating the shift in Earth's position from the background to the foreground of human life. It's a tragicomic contradiction: when humans were almost negligible in terms of geological importance, we could live without consequences, for even if we managed to destroy the ecosystem of a determined region, it would always recover. Now that the name 'anthropocene' compels us to take agency and assume the consequences of our actions to the whole planet, we have no option but to place earth on a prominent position if we intend to survive. It is important to point out, though, that 'anthropocene' is by no means a established geological concept yet.

In his lecture, Latour tries to clear the ground for the ecological conflict to advance. Spelling out some lines of division and harsh truths, Latour hopes to impel the debate forward. His main points are three: firstly, Latour wants us to abandon the concept of a unified science, one that eventually finds an ultimate answer to all problems because of its exactitude (and who can argue with facts?), and consequently we should not wait for science to decree what is true before acting; secondly, Latour stimulates us to take responsibility for our acts, admitting that we have power over that planet and can not continue treating it as if it were impervious to our deeds; last, Latour questions us if ecological conflict is a mere intellectual conflict (debate) or a political conflict (war.) If the latter is the case, there is no use appealing to a common humanity, to our future generations (as does German philosopher Hans Jonas,) or even to the supposedly unquestionable facts of science: we have to take political action, declare enemies, and fight for the planet.