Latour describes to us the conflict that has arisen between current Deconstructionist (post structuralism-esque) thought/critique and empiricism. This form of critique takes experience away where one approaches things
as matters of concern. Critique that often involves sensitive or hard to discuss issues, the rhetoric behind the arguments, as well as the critiques, often loses confidence and the ability to create new ideas.
Why Latour is worried strikes me personally, in two ways, both relating to the two fields I study; English and Journalism. First, with English, my education in epistemology. The point that we are instead renewing empiricism - where objects create their own meaning, conceptually, and that humans, in an anti-Nietzsche-esque way, can access the true meanings of reality by interacting with nature - is truly frightening. As a post-structuralist theory student I've wanted to get away from empiricism (though, undoubtedly, it affects us all and we constantly use it in daily life - there's really no escaping it, as Latour points out) and instead, understand that we can't really access "fact" entirely (one side of the culture v. science wars).
The other way this affects me is in Journalism. I've just started a job as an editor and have worked as an editor for two publications now. The "critique" that Latour explains sounds all too applicable to my work and the nature of my relationship with my writers and the written word. I've always thought that I was taking in to consideration my writers' and my own point of view, not matter how conflicting or complex they were.
I understand why Latour is worried, and I find myself worried at a theoretically standpoint as well, especially when I've spent so much time invested in coursework, in the CSCL department, with ideas and concepts that may conflict or, perhaps even worse, now coincide, in my understanding, with what the "critique" - what Latour describes - is. Critique is no longer the creation of something new, and can even work in the opposite way, by reducing concepts and original ideas. These are ideas that have been ingrained in to our brains since children, culturalized and conditioned in our education and our educators. Often these ideas are left unquestioned and misunderstood, if even interpreted. As much as it may be impossible, if we understand their ideas, lives, points of view(s), etc. to “become again things, mediating, assembling, gathering many more folds” we are able to see fundamental real change.
Eric Best
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ReplyDeleteHaha, so, i had originally posted something and after going back and reading Latour, and thinking more about it, I realized that my comment was, ironically, the exact problem that Latour is addressing, go figure. I think I need to reword/rework/rethink what I said originally. First of all, as another English major, I really related to your post and your thoughts on Latour. It bothers me as well, that instead of encouraging learning and new ways of thinking, critique often tears things apart and reduces ideas, which is not what critique was originally meant to do. Secondly, I am taking a German philosophy class right now, and Kant was really on my mind while reading Latour and thinking about empiricism. Kant claimed that we will never understand "das Ding an sich", the thing in and of itself, in its essence...but we can strive toward it. Latour claims that Kant puts too much emphasis on explaining "facts" through experience or conditions, and not enough emphasis on striving to see what the "matters of fact" were exactly. I have also been guilty of doing this, of the whole, "well, i can't be outside ideology, so fact is impossible etc". Its interesting though, because I wonder how should we go about trying to discover the "Ding"???
ReplyDeleteLatour asks, "While we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective statements, do we now have to reveal the real objective and incontrovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices?" (227). Latour, who has in other works shown how the creators of tools and ideas can never predict or control how these things are used by others once released, is struggling in this essay to figure out how to deal with what he sees as a popular misunderstanding and misuse of the critical tools that he created. He emphasizes constantly that to say that reality is constructed is not to say that it does not really exist. Although we can interpret its "meaning" in any number of ways, if we stick our hand into a fire, we will be burned.
ReplyDeleteTo you, the thought that we can access the true meanings of reality by interacting with nature is truly frightening. To people on "the other side" of the science wars, the thought that we CAN'T access the true meaning of reality by interacting with nature is truly frightening. Latour believes that hijackers flew planes into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, even though he wasn't personally present to witness this event. This essay is born in part out of his frustration that others around him are using his tools of critique to bolster arguments that he sees as unsupported by the evidence at hand.