| According to Latour, science and politics are both implicated in "governmentality," which "exerts its violence in total silence, through the indisputable foundation, the impression of naturalness, of obviousness that it has succeeded in giving to…institutions" (Latour 2008, 668, translated from French). I argue that Latour's methods, combined with his nuanced positions on critique, can be used to critique contemporary expertise and institutions more effectively, creatively, and empirically than is customarily done. By thoroughly engaging the majority of Latour's writings and offering a detailed overview of his philosophy, while still taking a highly specific direction through his writings, this text stands alone as an "obligatory passage point" (Latour) for any researcher interested in understanding Latour better while also offering indispensable tools for improving critique.;This is the first book-length introduction to Latour's philosophy of scientific and sociological practice that emphasizes the joint influence on his work of both North American pragmatism and European hermeneutics of "suspicion" (Ricoeur), as well as of Deleuze who straddles both sides like Latour. These traditions are both concerned with the relationship between knowledge, discourse, things, and practice. The North American pragmatists influenced Latour's account of innovative and non-reductive science. Also in line with this pragmatist tradition, Latour draws implications from actual scientific practice for sociological research, in an attempt to problematize any sociology that still attempts to imitate an inaccurate (positivist) model of science. Marx, Nietzsche, and Foucault--three important hermeneuts of suspicion that Latour criticizes and praises—have influenced his non-representationalist critique of modern ideologies concerning science and fetishism and his focus on the role of institutional and financial power in the production of scientific facts. Both practice-oriented traditions at work in Latour's philosophy are needed to effectively address the types of violence exerted by contemporary scientific forms of governmentality.;For Latour's pragmatist philosophy of science, controversial expert documents, those that critical sociologists simply call ideologies, are not simply false as if they did not correspond with the world in any way. Instead, such expertise, which today is increasingly becoming complex hybrids between the human and natural sciences, imposes routine and simplistic ways of engaging and deploying the world. Expertise that contributes to the status quo of inequalities maintained by material-institutional networks is limited and "badly articulated" according to Isabelle Stengers' Whiteheadian criteria for "well-articulated" science: innovation. Latour's philosophy of technology, drawing from Foucault, proposes methods of research that carefully trace the interactions of all sorts of actors with materials objects and structures like expert documents, institutions, apparatuses and the singular individuals that work in and in accordance with them.;The critical pragmatism developed in this text promotes "stirring controversies," as opposed to Latour's more passive (positivist) sounding expression "following controversies," encourages researchers to not simply analyze expert documents from afar, but rather to become actively involved in the controversies that the actors in institutions that receive and critique these documents are already involved in. Consistent with Latour's pragmatist model of science as active intervention, interaction, and transformation of material conditions, researchers are even encouraged to start debates where there was no significant open conflict before the stirring occurred. In this way, this text wipes away the last traces of positivism in Latour's anti-positivist sociology by conceiving the researcher as highly interested in specific outcomes like Latour's Pasteur-in-action who ardently defended his microbe. With the help of Latour's philosophy of science, technology, sociology, and critique, this text proposes that critical research can involve the stirring of controversies over expertise within and between institutions to their "critical point" (Latour), which—to use Latour's laboratory metaphor—is like producing a chemical reaction in the process altering current conditions in a productive way. |
