Check Please

Honestly, this was probably the most difficult post for me to write. Why? Because I want to explain so many of the things I saw in Latour's article! From the passage on 229 that enthralled me and made me think of critique as doubt. Or on page 232 where we try to show our opinions in a matter-of-concerned way. Or the passage on page 237 that subtracts from science. (If you really want to know what passages I'm referring to I put them at the end.) But I finally settled on this:

I simply want to do what every good military officer, at regular periods, would do: retest the linkages between the new threats he or she has to face and the equipment and training he or she should have in order to meet them—and, if necessary, to revise from scratch the whole paraphernalia. (231)

I have a few ideas as to why I am drawn to this sentence. First of all it addresses one of the concepts I was taught from a young age, test, test, then re-test. Or check, check, and re-check. Before I go on trips I check, check, recheck. It's a habit after this long, just like doubt is a habit. Perhaps I subconsciously do these 'things,' 1) check, check, recheck, 2) doubt, because I was raised by a military man, or maybe because I've read Crichton my whole life (or had it read to me). But, whatever the reason this particular sentence pulled my attention.

Is Latour suggesting that we need to check, check and recheck the methods we use for scientific critique? Yes. He pointed out several times throughout this article that the method of critique that we use, put simply, is not working. On 237 he says that this very critique is subtracting from scientific objects rather than adding to it. Why in the world would we continue with an outdated system that contributes nothing to knowledge or experience? Would the military use 50 year old data on nuclear weapons to build new nuclear weapons? No! So why in the world would scientific thoughts, object, and critique continue on an outdated, obsolete path? Perhaps it because we have learned "to become suspicious of everything people say" (229) and this antiquated method of evaluating social science is the only thing familiar and unquestionable. Perhaps. But, the main reason I selected this sentence is because it summarizes exactly what Latour is doing in this article; he is attempting to "revise from scratch the whole paraphernalia." Which is exactly what we were doing in our class.

We examined the ways apotemnophilia currently work. In that sense we discussed (extensively) how gay used to be a disorder in the DMS and now it is not. But the problem with these was this: "Does this work? Or do we need to completely revise our way of thinking about it?" In my opinion, this doubt and uncertainty is perfectly reasonable. When writing a paper if I have a paragraph that I am trying to revise and polish I don't work it to death, over and over and over again until it's something I can work with, I throw it out. I start from scratch, analyzing what exactly I want to say, and how I want it to work. I "retest the linkages." If one is weak and it won't hold up, it's gone. So why can't this be the same for science? Because science, unlike my measly paper, was founded on hundreds of years of research, of debate, and of efforts to prove something. Apetomophilia... what is it? Is it physical or is it psychological? Why can't it be both? Why does this one thing have to be manifest in the brain alone, or in the body? Isn't that a problem? We discussed how there is a "us" versus "them" in rhetoric about FGM. I'm right, you're wrong dualism sort of thing. But why?

"...retest the linkages between the new threats he or she has to face and the equipment and training he or she should have in order to meet them..." If we simply look at one issue from one standpoint, aren't we missing something critical? Aren't we missing the big picture? Like apotemophilia and FGM this rhetoric of us vs. them, this constant dueling dualism subtracts from the issue at hand. That's the problem. Now to fix it. Then check, check, and recheck to make sure it works.

Those other quotes I liked:


In both cases, you have to learn to become suspicious of everything people say because of course we all know that they live in the thralls of a complete illusio of their real motives. Then, after disbelief has struck and an explanation is requested for what is really going on, in both cases again it is the same appeal to powerful agents hidden in the dark acting always consistently, continuously, relentlessly. Of course, we in the academy like to use more elevated causes—society, discourse, knowledge-slash-power, fields of forces, empires, capitalism—while conspiracists like to portray a miserable bunch of greedy people with dark intents, but I find something troublingly similar in the structure of the explanation, in the first movement of disbelief and, then, in the wheeling of causal explanations coming out of the deep dark below. (229)


Is it really impossible to solve the question, to write not matter-of-factually but, how should I say it, in a matter-of-concern way? (232)

And, yet, I know full well that this is not enough because, no matter what we do, when we try to reconnect scientific objects with their aura, their crown, their web of associations, when we accompany them back to their gathering, we always appear to weaken them, not to strengthen their claim to reality. I know, I know, we are acting with the best intentions in the world, we want to add reality to scientific objects, but, inevitably, through a sort of tragic bias, we seem always to be subtracting some bit from it.  (237)