The antifetishist, the unrepentant positivist, and the sturdy realist: pick one!

"We explain the objects we don't approve of by treating them as fetishes; we account for behaviors we don't like by discipline whose makeup we don't examine; and we concentrate our passionate interest on only those things that are for us worthwhile matters of concern." (241)

 As a CSCL/English major, I have been studying lots of different theory and writing over the past four years and have encountered lots of this sort of "academic elitism" that Latour alludes to. I'll start by saying how much especially the middle to back part of Latour's essay really struck a chord for me, and how much I really found myself agreeing with him. This sentence above was the best summary of what I wanted to talk about, but like Jesse said, there were SO many parts of this essay that I would have liked to address. 

The first point in the quote is that of fetishes. I understood this as seeing some thing or idea in somebody else that you don't particularly like or agree with, and in turn, you accuse this person of being "brainwashed" or that they have turned something into an obsession or a fetish. This puts you on a sort of pedestal, where you can "humiliate all believers by showing that it is nothing but their own projections that you, yes you alone, can see"( 239).  As Latour says, and I would agree, a good example of this is religion. A lot of time, the ideas of religious people are written off solely because of their belief in some sort of higher power, and this belief being seen as radical or a fetish. This has very often been the case for me, and I am sure that I am not the only one.

Secondly, Latour talks about behavior, which is linked to the first point. We try to explain certain behaviors in others by blaming them on vague and unseen forces or "powerful causalities." This reminds me again of the idea of religion and things I have been told in the past: "you act/think that way because that is what your pastor/church/community says and you don't even realize it!" Again, this takes the power away from the person, and almost writes off their behaviors as something vague and "out there", and not something present and "in here".  I think it often comes across as extremely arrogant point of view, and Latour would agree. ( as a critic, "you will always be right"). 

I think that the last part of the quote is the most interesting, because it describes the idea of "picking and choosing", which comes up elsewhere in Latour's essay. We choose to be concerned about what we deem is worthy of concern, without realizing that our priorities are very often not going to be the same as someone else's. (I also wonder if what we view as "matters of concern" could be seen as a fetish in the eyes of someone else.) Everyone has these  ideas that they hold dear and try to protect against the barbarity of critique, because as Latour has made clear, critique tends to deconstruct and rip these once "sacred" things apart. I have noticed this sort of panic to protect your own beliefs in some of my other philosophy based classes; people get truly upset when certain beliefs they have are challenged/rocked/picked apart by the likes of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, etc. To be honest,  I find myself feeling indignant on occasion, too.

The problems and dangers of being a "cynical hipster" or "theory/critique elitist" is that instead of building and growing, it tears down and polarizes. Instead of encouraging further learning and questioning (which was the point of critique to start with), it tries to box people/ideas/beliefs into categories. Critique and theory need to be pushing people forward to thinking new thoughts and having better ideas, not pushing them back into corners and with old philosophies and dusty cliches.