Impure Modernity

Impure Modernity December 17, 2014

In his Inquiry into Modes of Existence, Bruno Latour imagines an anthropologist doing field work among the tribe of Science in their natural habitat, the lab. She has been told that the Modern world is separated into interrelated but distinct domains: “Law, Science, Politics, Religion, The Economy.” These must not, she is told, be confused with one another. She is offered a mental map of the terrain and warned to watch the border guards: “When one is ‘in Science,’ she is assured, one is not ‘in Politics,’ and when one is ‘in Politics,’ one is not ‘in Law,’ and so forth” (29).

She quickly discovers “she is being taken for a ride.” A day or two at the lab is enough to dispel the illusion. The lab is thoroughly contaminated by foreign substances. A politician pays a visit to discuss a funding bill; a lawyer comes by to discuss legal matters; a priest drops in to discuss some ethical questions pertaining to the lab’s work. And so on: “It quickly becomes apparent to her that not everything in Science is scientific, not everything is juridical in Law, not everything is economy in The Economy” (29). 

There are not extraneous to Science. They are essential to its operation as modern science. Unless the domains were constantly breached, Science would not exist at all (it would have no funding, no legal protections).The borders have to be porous; the pure domains have to be contaminated. 

Instead of domains, our anthropologist finds networks and flows. Because even if there are no pure domains, it is also not the case that the lab is just another place for Politics or Economics or Religion. As Latour puts it, she discovers: “Law is not made of ‘the legal,’ but ‘something legal’ circulates in it nevertheless; Science is not made ‘of science,’ but something scientific circulates through it nevertheless” (40).

Latour draws a philosophical conclusion about the “essence of a situation,” which is “the list of the other beings through which it is necessary to pass so that this situation can endure. . . . the others through which one has to pass in order to become or remain the same” (41). And Latour thinks that the Christian church is one of history’s most significant exemplars of this principle: It is supremely an institution that must pass innovate to remain constant, must be “contaminated” by what is not-church in order to remain church.


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