ducks & daemons or: momo, pomo, nomo/: latour

[Otto Sell]

>
>  "modern, postmodern, nonmodern, premodern: loose terms which take on a
more
>  exact meaning as soon as the corresponding concepts of science are
>  considered. through the agreement of 'modernism' politics are created in
which
>  political activity is legitimated mostly by a recourse to 'nature'. each
>  conception of the future, in which science or reason will play a greater
role
>  for the political order is thus modernist. 'postmodernism' is the
continuation
>  of modernism, only that here the trust into the spreading of reason has
been
>  lost. in contrary to this, the 'non-modern' refuses to short-circuit the
>  regular political process by using the notion of 'nature', and replaces
the
>  modern and postmodern dichotomy of nature and society with the term of
the
>  collective [of human and non-human beings; see the stuff i posted the day
>  before yesterday, kfl]. 'premodern' is an exotism which emerges from the
>  invention of 'belief' [opposed to the modernist's 'knowledge']; the one
who
>  doesn't salute modernity with enthusiasm is accused of living only in one
>  culture, having only imaginations of belief, but no knowledge about the
world."
>
>  --- bruno latour: pandora's hope, (glossary), quoted in re-translation
from the
>                     german edition, pp. 377f. ---
>
>
>  with his anti-elitist critique of 'modernist' science and politics, as
well as
>  with his special interest into technology's non-human "actants"
>  (symetrically networking with human "actors"), latour is, in my opinion,
rather
>  close to pynchon's artistic modelling of modern "socio-technicity". ducks
&
>  daemons, so to speak ...
>
> kfl  file://:: ps: isn't it refreshing to see someone questioning the
>           momo/pomo-alternative in such a radical way?!
>

Where do you see this questioning of Postmodernism? Could you give me the
German original text, please.

> 'postmodernism' is the continuation
>  of modernism, only that here the trust into the spreading of reason has
been
>  lost.

This is very much true (although Latour gives no reasons or arguments to
support his point) and has a lot to do with Pynchon's "histories" of
Enlightenment imho. But I cannot agree to this:

> replaces the
>  modern and postmodern dichotomy of nature and society with the term of
the
>  collective.

Why should the marxist term "collective" used by the "non-modern" (as
distinct from premodern, modern and postmodern) be any better? I'm not sure
about the content of this term and while I can imagine what and who is
postmodern, modern or pre-modern I wonder what is meant here by non-modern.

But this from Latour (from your earlier post) is very nice though I'm not
sure if the binary opposition of gravity versus microbe is ok here. In this
sense "non-human beings" is used synonym to "natural" here, the two examples
are very different natural phenomena, from very big and really ubiquitious
and in the original sense of the word "universal" to small life forms of the
nanosphere, or are artificial non-human beings included here?

"thinking gets adopted and changed by non-human beings, which
correspondingly modify their ways and stories after the scientist's work has
given them this opportunity (...) in practice every scientist knows that
things do also have a history; newton 'takes place' for gravity, pasteur
'happens' to the microbes. (...) the debate is about control."

Otto

ps  greetings from aunt mary j.