Bruno Latour & Gabriel Tarde (2/4)

The road from the monism of Tarde (influenced by Liebniz) and the network metaphysics of Latour (influenced by Whitehead) is similar.

Tarde goes through the multiple possibilities to escape from the Cartesian dualism. Firstly, subject and object are two sides of the same coin. Secondly, subject and object have a common source. And lastly, one is reducible to the other. I won’t go into the philosophical discussion, but it’s remarkable how similar the project of Tarde is to the one of Latour in We Have Never Been modern. The enemies in WHNB are those who stick to the two categories and merely investigate the relations between them instead of questioning the two categories as such. Tarde’s answer to the question is different, in that he suggests a universe of souls. Nevertheless, the further development of these souls into a monadic metaphysics is close to Latour’s networks. Both have relations, materiality and agency as central themes.

In order to explain the post-humanist theory, we’ll go into two important terms in Tarde’s work: desire and belief.[1] According to Tarde, both are universally present in both human and non-human entities. By belief, he means a certain form of knowledge. This knowledge might be explicitly or implicitly present in humans, but it might also be the implicit knowledge of humans or animals about for example the space in which we are living. Our behavior adapts according to our belief (knowledge) of the space in which we are. Neither I nor my cat will run into a wall because the lack of explicit knowledge about the presence of such a wall. With such a broad conception of the term “belief”, all living creatures are believers. A similar argument is made for desire.

The similarity between Tarde and Latour lies in the search for words that allow them to discuss a situation without excluding certain entities by definition by, for example, using anthropocentric words like “actor”. Latour has introduced many new terms with exactly this goal. Unlike Tarde, Latour wants to create a vocabulary that not only fits to describe living organisms, but every possible entity.

The result of Tarde’s monads and Latour’s networks has the same consequences: (1) a metaphysical equality for all entities, (2) there is no ultimate level, every entity is always a part of a whole and a whole with parts, (3) there are no a priori categories to divide the object of study and (4) every entity in the story keeps its agency.

[1] Tarde (G.), Monadology and Sociology, Re-Press, 2012, p. 15-18.

Bruno Latour & Gabriel Tarde (1/4)

Comparing Bruno Latour with Gabriel Tarde isn’t a random selection of thinkers. Despites the limited fame of the 19^th century French thinker Tarde in his own time, he received a lot of attention in the works of Latour. Tarde is one of the few thinkers who was explicitly mentioned in books like Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns[1] and Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory[2] and he’s the central figure in multiple articles of Latour[3]. By making a comparison between Latour’s work and the reprinted book Monadology and Sociology of Tarde, we will point out the many similarities and the need of a so-called ontological turn.

Both Latour and Tarde are searching an alternative path through metaphysics in order to solve or avoid problematic issues in sociology like micro v. macro; agency v. structure; and individual v. collective.  The result is in both cases a post-humanist metaphysics with a remarkable attention for the practical, almost banal, entities.

Science as an incentive for a new sociology with a post-humanist metaphysics as its foundation.

Latour’s first book was an anthropological study of a contemporary laboratory in California[4]. Tarde too starts in his Monadology and Sociology with great attention to the findings of the sciences in his age. Unlike Latour, he doesn’t undertake an anthropological study, but the scientific progress concerning atoms does play a major role in his aversion of metaphysical substantialism. The atom theory implies a deconstruction of the individual objects. On the one hand, the objects are internally multiple; on the other hand, no object is standing alone in reality; no object is relationless. Especially since Newton, Tarde writes, the range of actions of relations between different objects has grown significantly and became hard to measure[5]. The Cartesian mechanistic world is supplemented by Newtonian powers. The 19^th century scientific progress like the atom theory are continuing the same line of thinking in which interrelation, interdependence and interaction are key. Replacing clear-cut entities by relation-based-entities isn’t only happening in the laboratory, but Tarde takes it to the planets, the human body, water, diseases and nations[6].

Laws of nature and other products of the scientific world are included in the before mentioned list. These aren’t meant as subjective fabrications or products of a subjective network of knowledge. Instead, they are fabricated and are added to reality[7]. A similar kind of social constructivism is present in Latour’s work. It’s only by renouncing the category of the subject that a constructivism in which all entities can play their role fully becomes possible. There is no reason to assume that the activity of humans in the construction of certain entities implies a lack of reality once it’s finished. Neither does it imply that the human actor is the sole creator of these entities, by which he would start from nothing, is influenced by nothing and brings forth everything. The human actor amongst the many other actors with fundamentally similar possibilities, but (case-by-case) different concrete influence, prevents us from taking too decisive a priori stands. The productive and creative[8] part of the science are clearly present in Latour’s work.

Another clear similarity we can find in the dual function of the sciences. Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern makes the distinction between the massive production of new entities and on the other hand their purification.[9] We read the former at Tarde when he writes: “[…] science tends to pulverize the universe and to multiply beings indefinitely.”[10]

It’s remarkable how planets, human bodies and nations are all on the same level. We’ll see how Tarde is constructing a post-humanist sociology based on a metaphysics in which a priori categories are impossible. Sociology as a science is in need of concepts that won’t categories our object of study, but allow us to follow the entities and let them categories themselves. A similar goal for the right terminology can be found throughout the works of Latour. Two of the three steps of Latour I described previously (cf. blog Three Steps Towards a Non-Methodology) are already present in the work of Tarde, namely, radical agnosticism and hybrids.

 

[1] Latour (B.), An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns, Harvard University Press, Cambridge en Londen, 2013,p. 353.

[2] Latour (B.), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, pp. 14-16.

[3] Zo schreef Latour ook samen met Vincent Antonin Lépinay de inleiding tot een heruitgebracht werk van Tarde. Latour (B.) en Lépinay (V.A.), The Science of Passionate Interests: An Introduction to Gabriel Tarde’s Economic Anthropology, Prickly Paradigm Press, Chicago,

[4] Latour (B.) en Woolgar (S.), Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1986, pp. 293.

[5] Tarde (G.), Monadology and Sociology, Re-Press, 2012, pp. 5-8.

[6] Tarde (G.), Monadology and Sociology, Re-Press, 2012, p. 7.

[7] Tarde (G.), Monadology and Sociology, Re-Press, 2012, p. 27.
Dit geldt niet enkel voor wetenschappers, maar ook bij economisten. In een inleiding tot de antropologie van de economie van Tarde citeert Latour het volgende uit Tarde’s werk: “When everyone has been persuaded, on the strength of the work of ancient economists, that the price automatically determined by the ‘free play of supply and demand’ is justice itself, there is no doubt that this general belief plays a part in making it possible for exorbitant prices, or prices so minimal that public conscience would have rejected them other times, to be established without protest, or even with general approval.” Latour concludeert: “[…] the sciences do more than just know: they add themselves to the world […].” (p. 41)

[8] Latour heeft verschillende pogingen ondernomen om bijhorende –ismes te recupereren. Het creationisme in Will Non-Humans be Saved (pp. 469-470) en sociaal constructivisme in The Promises of Constructivism.

[9] Latour (B.), We Have Never Been Modern, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 10.

[10] Tarde (G.), Monadology and Sociology, Re-Press, 2012, p. 15.