Collin Poirot, Entry No. 3 (Latour)

Bruno Latour’s 1988 book The Pasteurization of France seeks to reorient and reframe the contemporary discussion of the life and influence of one of the most important scientists of the late 19^th century: Louis Pasteur. Latour begins by criticizing the traditional ‘hagiography’ of Pasteur, and argues that the dominant narrative which posits Pasteur as a kind of revolutionary figure mistakenly conflates Pasteur the individual with the influence and scope of Pasteurian ideas and the Pasteurian method. Whereas most people would assign Pasteur the responsibility for the rapid and total revision of hygienic sciences and public health in the last decades of the nineteenth century, Latour argues that the influence of bacteriology is due not to Pasteur the man, but to the powerful association of Pasteurian hygienists, microbes, and other socio-economic forces. Latour argues that the rapid adoption of Pasteur’s ideas was only possible thanks to the earlier work of Villermé and others, who established the scientific link between wealth and public health. According to their work, a prosperous industrial society required a healthy population, capable of surviving and thriving in the conditions of modern economic production. The widespread desire for the “regeneration” of society after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 meant that society was desperate for a means of creating this new, healthy workforce. Latour argues that widespread perception of an unmet industrial potential (ie. the workforce was not as healthy or productive as it could have been) created a reservoir of energy and enthusiasm that was eventually channeled into the diffusion of Pasteurian ideas. Latour’s treatment of Pasteur is also intended to mirror Tolstoy’s appraisal of Napoleon, insofar as both analyses show that the great revolutions or movements in history are never the result of any singular will, but can only be explained by an appeal to mass social movements lead by a multitude of individuals.

Although Latour does not mention Foucault, his ideas seem to be heavily influenced by Foucault’s understanding of power. First, Latour’s depiction of the tension between traditional public health and Pasteurian bacteriology as a war between Pasteurians, on one team, and Hygienists, on the other, is a clear instance of the war discourse Foucault discusses in Society Must be Defended. Latour further explains that the Pasteurians ‘won’ the war, and thus spread their ideology, due largely to the fact that Hygienists were unable to focus their attention and energy on any single explanation of contagion; “by its very scope and ambition this movement remained weak, like an army trying to defend a long frontier by spreading its forces thin” (22). The truth claims of the Pasteurians had more explanatory power, since they focused on a single, universally applicable explanation for disease. The victory of Pasteurian science did not come on the wave of some incontrovertible mass of scientific studies, but on the enthusiasm and support of the population, who desperately wanted an explanation for their diseases.

Latour’s discussion of sociology also strikes me as very Foucaultian. First, neither Foucault nor Latour understand society as an assemblage of fixed identities and subjects, and both call our attention to the ways in which subjects are created. Latour is particularly interesting here because he takes Foucault’s insights into subjectification (subject-creation) and applies them to post-human or trans-human social sciences; “We do not know who are the agents who make up our world. We must begin with this uncertainty if we are to understand how, little by little, the agents defined one another, summoning other agents and attributing to them intentions and strategies… The exact sciences elude social analysis not because they are distant or separated from society, but because they revolutionize the very conception of society and of what it comprises” (35-8). Latour also echoes Foucault’s critique of structural Marxism in his analysis of Armaingaud; “Armaingaud, a rather paternalistic reformist, uses the microbe to redefine that celebrated ‘self-interest,’ and to link everybody together through fear of disease. This unexpected strengthening is not in itself ‘reactionary,’ as suggested by some authors who are used to speaking only of power and who see hygiene as a ‘means of social control.’ The allies of the microbe are to be found on the left as well as on the right” (36). Here it seems like Latour is discounting the Foucaultian tradition, but if that was his intention then he seems to misunderstand Foucault! Although Foucault is critical of hygiene and public health, insofar as he considers them micromechanics of power and subjugation, he does not think that they are a means of ‘reactionary social control’ imposed by some dominant class. Instead, he thinks that medicalization is spread not through bourgeoisie machinations, but through the strong explanatory power of its own truth claims – which is very similar to Latour’s own explanation of how Pasteurian thought conquered the vagueries of ‘Hygiene,’ as it existed before the 1880s. In other words, I think that Latour and Foucault share a similar understanding of how particular ideologies are spread, even if Latour seems less concerned about the violent subjugation inherent in public health’s “fantasy of mastery and control” (to borrow a phrase from Judith Butler) over the human being.