watcha readin, crispy? well the great god harvey molotch kind of directed me to bruno latour, who's one of those names you see everywhere. but i'd never really read. kind of like i'd never read much bourdieu until recently, probably because they are officially sociologists rather than philosophers, i guess. the first wave of latour was fundamental "sociology of science," the socialsciency sortofitonic examination/explanation of the activities/institutional contexts/effects of scientists. now of course such activities threaten the self-image of some scientists and advocates of science's exclusive epistemological prestige: they want to believe, or even basically assert, that science essentially has no social context: that it's a raw encounter with the truth or nature.

so when sociologists of science - even so subtle and excellent a one as latour - started to do their thing, they were immediately accused of 'relativism,' or as they themselves might have said, 'social constructivism.' really they were derided as idealists: they supposedly melted the material world into social practices. indeed, many did precisely that, and it is just as ridiculous a position as it appears offhand to be.

in the two books i'm reading - the politics of nature  and re-assembling the social - latour has an extremely interesting and extremely direct and extremely compelling response to the charges of relativism, idealism etc, one which, i must say, i have been screaming at anyone who will listen for decades. we have got to put "non-humans" - other organisms, inanimate objects - back at center stage. there is no us, no social, no human, without them: the dependence is complete, the distinction completely untenable. we live, as you know, in a real world of physical stuff and we are that world in a series of its permutations.

so latour wants to do a sociology or philosophy or politics of human/non-human assemblages, collectivities, juxtapositions, networks. he says that the concept of "the social" as it is deployed in pomo disciplines is just a completely occult agency, a mysterious immaterial force or stuff. replace it in its physical context: replace us in a world of non-humans. restore to us our inhumanity.

ok the development of this perfectly fundamental thought is somewhat labyrinthine, and i won't stroll you through al the permutations. but one thing that just takes your breath away about latour. he is a french intellectual. but he writes extremely clear, lively prose, even at the upper reaches of metaphysical speculation. it's not only his philosophy that's basically pitted against derrida, or gadamer, or whatever: it's the plain-spoken words, the rich attempt to clarify with metaphors, the sudden brutally direct formulaton, even the jokes. latour actually wants you to understand what he's saying, rather than being committed to blowing you away with the genius displayed precisely by profound obscurity.

heidegger and wittgenstein, but it now appears even derrida and foucault and deleuze, were artifacts of the modern era in the sense that they were geniuses comparable to beethoven or van gogh or pollock. the sciences had them too: the figures of infinite creativity and in the case of sci and phil, super-intelligence, intelligence as a super-power. that's why you can't understand what they say; they're on a different evolutionary plain. well one drawback of this amazing persona is that it encourages a kind of preening, a self-cultivation qua genius. giorgio agamben is someone i've read lately who is still inhabiting/impersonating this figure. well i like latour's version of the next step: christ, cut the crap and let's talk about something: you come off thinking what a disarming fellow rather than ohmygod i just almost caught a glimpse of the essence of being. but you do catch a glimpse of the essence of being.