Bruno Latour’s approach is in itself
a harsh criticism addressed to social sciences, especially to sociology and
history. In an earlier piece of work, he initiated a new field of inquiry
called “laboratory studies”.
The social body is not – as so many
historians seem to think – unmoving. It is an immense reservoir of energy.
Social actors are moved collectively by this source of energy. The more important those collective
efforts are, the bigger the effect on history[1].
Latour has a Tolstoyan view of history: forces have to be commensurate. One has
to admit Pasteur did not revolutionize the society by the power of his mind
alone.
In reality, this huge transformation
of the French society happened only because a consequent number of actors in
the social body had already been pushing for it. Truth is Pasteurians were a
minority. Bacteriology was not mature. Hygienists – that is to say, the
numerous and influent spokesmen of huge social movement – needed such
discoveries to make the task easier for them. Their project was to sanitize the
cities, to regenerate a society they found in decay. But their discourse was
tangent and uncertain, not convincing at all for public authorities.
The Hygienists movement needed
certainty. And Science was a perfect ally to provide certainty. This process in
which Hygiene and Pasteurism united is what Latour calls primary mechanism.
Once reassured on some key-points[2],
Hygienists started to generalize and defend Pasteur’s thesis. They made good
use of their influence to make Pasteur’s work indisputable. Being united in the
scientific hygienism movement made both of them more powerful. It also
legitimated their desire to have a voice on public policies.
This first process led logically to
a second mechanism. The actors wanted Pasteur to become as powerful as possible.
As a consequence, they did not hesitate to praise him continually. Crediting
him with the whole movement was not a problem as long as it benefitted their
project for sure. To give him authority was a mean to pursue their project of
regeneration. Actors are those who make history!
From a completely different angle,
there is another interesting aspect of Latour’s text. A group of people seems
to be able to create a new source of power by appropriating a field of
knowledge. Pasteurians and Hygienists have gained power – as well as
psychoanalyst could have done[3]
– by adopting the posture of the experts. By setting themselves up “as exclusive
interpreters of populations to which no one else had access”. It reminds me of
the Foucauldian concept of power: to put it in very simple words, mastering
knowledge means gaining power.
[1] “A crowd may move a mountain; a
single man cannot. If, therefore, we say of a man that he has moved a mountain,
it is because he has been credited with (or has appropriated) the work of the
crowd that he claimed to command but that he also followed”. (p.22)
[2] Hygienists had doubts about the
doctrine of contagiousness before Pasteurians convinced them with the concept
of variation of the virulence.
[3] see p.40
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