Bruno Labours An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence

Introduction: Trusting Institutions Again?

Latour opens with an anecdote regarding a panel in France in which leading climate
scientists debated the anthropogenic nature of climate change with representatives from industry.
Latour recounts how one scientist, when asked why his opinion should be trusted above those
who deny humanitys role in climate change, responded: If people dont trust the institution of
science, were in serous trouble (3). Latour points out that this response is structurally similar to
a priest, when challenged to confirm the existence of God, were to sketch out the organizational
chart of the Vatican, the bureaucratic history of the Councils, and the countless glosses on
treatises of canon law (4). That is to say, the appeal to the institution itself, rather than the basic
tenants around which the institution is structured (which, in the institution of science, means
empirical and quantifiable evidence), seems like an approach better suited to levelling criticisms
than establishing confidence.
Despite this, Latour recognizes that the scientists shift away from an argument built on
actual empirical evidence and toward an argument supported by an institution is simply how the
game must now be played: Since Certainty had been commandeered by his enemies and the
public was beginning to ask rude questions; since there was a great risk that science would be
confused with opinion, he fell back on the means that seemed to be at hand: trust in an institution
that he had known from the inside for twenty years and that he ultimately had no reason to
doubt (5). Latour admits that his surprise at this response is rooted in his work in the field of
science studies, in which he and his colleagues endeavoured to challenge the institution of

science on this notion of trust and objectivity, for which he had been dismissed by the science
community as a relativist. In light of this climatologists appeal to institutional trust, Latour
rhetorically asks, Isnt it a little late to take refuge suddenly in the notion of trust, without
having prepared yourself for this anyway? (6).
With this in mind, Latour announces the project of this book to be to register the
aftershocks of the modernization front just as the confrontation with Gaia appears imminent (910). Latour endeavours to challenge the Enlightenment-era notion of a dichotomy between
culture and nature, which has lead humanity into a world in which political institutions, under the
promise of a modern future in which the distinction between facts and values is made clear, have
created a society in which humanity has isolated itself from the rest of the natural world to the
detriment of the planet as a whole. Latour denounces the notion of modernization as an
anthropocentric fiction, and posits that this book (and its associated digital apparatus) will serve
to provide a positive companion to his previous negatively titled work, We Have Never Been
Modern. To do this, he outlines his plan to rigorously examine and redefine the mechanisms that
created the vague illusion of the West's ascent to modernity, noting, for example, for a long time
Anthropology has taken it for granted that it has had to set up a contrast between the other
cultures and a process of modernization that was European, or in any case Western in origin
(13). In this way, Latour reframes the prima facie innocuous institution of Anthropology as a
mechanism for reinstating Western superiority (or, at least, Western centrality).
The West, or what Latour calls the Moderns, emerge as a very volatile and problematic
segment of the global population. Although, as Latour has previously argued, the Moderns never

actually were modern, he points out that we certainly thought we were, and for that reason we
subject ourselves to an epistemological paradox: we unquestioningly view ourselves as an
anthropological default against which other cultures can be measured, yet we also view ourselves
as practitioners of self-awareness, self-analysis, critique, [and] lucidity (14). Crucially, Latour
points out that this reflexive and uncritical self-aggrandizement does not imply that the Moderns
are categorically evil, but rather that, encumbered by their treasures, they have never had the
occasion to specify clearly what it is that they really hold dear (14). For this reason, his
approach focuses on directing who the Moderns really were and are, such that, at least
potentially, those who had been othered by the empirical reign of reason might finally take an
interest, in part, in the Western projectat last (16).

Chapter One: Defining The Object of Inquiry

Latour goes on to consider how an anthropologist might go about accounting for the
culture of the Moderns. He notes that a particular quirk of the Moderns is our tendency to view
ourselves as a set of interrelated but still largely distinct domains: Law, Science, Politics,
Religion, The Economy, and so on (29). Latour points out that although the Moderns are
extremely fond of these distinctions, there are many instances in which we can see a very clear
overlap or transgression of their borders. For example, the so-called domain of Science is shot
through with elements that seem to belong rather to Politics, whereas the latter domain is full of
elements that come from Lawand so on (29). For this reason, Latour concludes that the
Moderns own distinctions function not as impassible membranes between homogenous sets, but

rather, an intensification of crossborder traffic between foreign elements (30). Therefore, a new
frame of reference must be constructed.
To do this, Latour turns to the notion of the network, which he applies to re-examine the
so-called domain of Science. He visits a science lab and finds typical indicators that he is
thoroughly in Science: white lab coats, glass test tubes, microbe cultures, articles with
footnotes (30), but also subtle indicators of the porousness of certain borders: visits by a lawyer
who has come to deal with patents, a pastor who has come to discuss ethical issues, a technician
who has to come to repair a new microscope, an elected official who has come to talk about
voting on a subsidyand so on (30). For this reason, notes Latour, rather than investigating the
myth of the homogeneous domain, he would be better off pursuing the heterogeneous network of
border transgressions that facilitate the practical enactment of the domain within the culture as a
whole. In this way, Latour suggests that these domains function as the central nodes of the
societal network, the practical enactment of which (i.e., the practices that make the society
function) inherently highlight their dynamic interactivity. Crucially, Latour points out that this
societal network must be examined not only for what it circulates, but also the geneology of the
structure that enables the circulation: under the word network we must be careful not to
confuse what circulates once everything is in place with the setups involving the heterogeneous
set of elements that allow circulation to occur (32).
With this in mind, Latour focuses in on the network, defining it as a mechanism that
designates a series of associations revealed thanks to a trailthat makes it possible to
understand through what series of small discontinuities it is appropriate to pass in order to obtain

a certain continuity of action (33). In this way, the network becomes a tool for studying the
idealistic domains of the Moderns, as it allows for a cartographic mapping of the points of
transgression, or passage between borders, upon which the society is constructed. This dynamic
networking of domains leads Latour to the suspicion that these domains are not only interactive
and diverse, they are each diverse in the same way. That is to say, the same borderless quality
that disproves the individual domains homogeneity also serves to demonstrate the homogeneity
of the whole. This suspicion is complicated by the insistence, on the part of those actually
participating in or enacting each domain, that while interactions between domains may occur,
each domain is still, somehow, independent of the others. As Latour describes, everything
happens as if there were indeed a boundary, a somehow internal limit, to the networks, one that
the notion of network has not allowed [us] to capture (35). Although the domains appear to be
borderless, there are still real differences between them that must be accounted for.
This places Latour at an impasse. He must either abandon the interactive diversity of the
system in order to retain domanial diversity, or vice versa. The metaphor of the network is useful
here: Just as gas, electricity, influence, or telephone service can be qualified as networks without
being confused with one another (even if they often share the same subterranean conduits
influence in particular!), why not use the same term to qualify regular supplies in science, law,
religion, economics, and so on? (36). In this way, the domains can each be understood as
diverse through the content that their network delivers, while also accounting for the diverse
interactivity that produces that content (i.e., Science may interact with Law, Politics, and
Economics, but it is still distinct in that the content this network ultimately delivers is Science).

This compromise allows Latour to account for the fictional borders imagined between domains,
while also respecting the diversity of values to which the agents of each domain desire to adhere
to. A limitation of this compromise, though, is its inability to identify the precise nature of the
interactivity between domains. Latour points out that both he and his informants are capable, in
any situation whatsoever, of detecting in a fraction of a second, that a give phrase is legal
whereas a different one is notBut when it come to qualifying the nature of what is designated
by these ever-so-precise judgements, [his] informants fall back on incoherent statements that
they try to justify by inventing ideal institutions (37). For this reason, Latour concludes that the
notion of the domain is inadequate for producing a qualitative accounting of the values that are
produced through these networks.
Instead, he turns to the notion of the pass, or the movement between nodal points within
a network. He focuses on the the domain of Law, noting that the term means (i.e., is there a
legal means? or this is not an adequate means) functions as the fluid medium that allows
continuity. Latour gives the example of a case in which an ill-formed demand made by
indignant plaintiffs whose lawyer, first, and then the judge, extracted, as they put it, the legal
means before passing judgement (38). Latour notes that the extraction of legal means, though it
may interact with extralegal elements, follows a trajectory that is unique to the domain of law,
and is discernible only to those indoctrinated into the domain, while appearing discontinuous to
those on the outside. What emerges is an internal boundary to the domain of law that is not the
impassable border of a homogenous frontier, but rather, a distinctly and specifically legal
medium that allows for continuous flow between diverse nodal points in a network. As Latour

describes, Law is not made of law; but in the final analysis, when everything is in place and
working well, a particular fluid that can be called legal circulates there (39). In this sense,
domains are distinct: not in their actual manifestations, but in the processes through which they
are made manifest. In the example above, the production of the judgement appears discontinuous
to outsiders1 but to those indoctrinated into the realm of legal expertise, there is an observable
and continuous trajectory. Therefore, the boundary of the domain is a property of (or at least,
enacted through) the participants who populate it. The interaction of the distinct domains can
now be accounted for, as the movement itself (even if the movement is through other domains) is
the distinctive quality unique to the domain. In this way, each ostensibly impenetrable boundary
can be understood through the notion of the network, and the fluid medium that allows
movement through it. Armed with these tools, Latour posits that every situation can be defined
with two types of data: first, the very general data of the [net] type, which tells us nothing more
than than that we have to pass through surprising associations, and secondsomething that will
allow us to define the quality of the activity in question (42). The first data type serves primarily
as a catalog of the diverse interactivity of the domains of Modern life, while the second identifies
the values that enable the situation to occur.
The final puzzle that must be resolved is why is it so difficult for the actors within their distinct
domains to clearly identify the values to which they are so resolutely attached (or, as Latour puts
it, why is theory so far removed from practice among the Moderns? (42)). He points out that
the sustained existence of the domains essentially requires them to change through time, but this
1 Latour does not get into the specific details of his exemplary case, which I think might be a frustrating
iteration of the interplay between the domain of Academia and legal confidentiality.

change must somehow hang on to some essential values in order to maintain continuity. To
account for this, he turns to the institution of the Christian church, noting that, from its origins, it
has been haunted by a similar question: how to be faithful to itself even as it has transformed
itself from top to bottom (43). Latour suggests a novel solution to this question, in that there is a
requisite interplay between the values of the church and the institution that enacts them.
Sometimes this interplay is harmonious, and sometimes not. These moments of disharmony
between value and institution yield reform and transformation to both, in which all actors are
implicated. Latour then applies this same model to all institutions, suggesting that all Modern
values are the product of the dynamic interplay between a theoretical ideal and its practical
enactment, noting that in each case, perhaps it is necessary to imagine an original and specific
relation between the history of the Moderns values and the institutions to which these values
give direction and which embrace and shelter them and often betray themin return (45). In
this way, all modern values are produced through the dynamic interactivity of domains (which,
as discussed above, is an incredibly complex and heterogeneous process), suggesting that there is
a kind of precarious balance of values that, at least for the moment, hold society steady.

Chapter Two: Collecting Documents For The Inquiry

Latour goes on to attempt to find a mode that, in conjunction with the network, can work
to provide an empirical dimension to any subjective account of an experience. To do this, he
observes that he needs not only the cartography of interactive nodes provided by the network, but
also some kind of interpretive key through which the movements within the network can be

explained. To explain this distinction, Latour outlines what he views to be the two types of
mistakes. The first type, which he terms knowledge mistakes, is an error that can be solved
through research. He gives the example of the tower of a castle that, from a distance, looks more
of less square to me. As I walk toward itI finally understand that it is roundthat it has proven
to be round (49). That is to say, knowledge mistakes are simply a matter of perspective. There
is an understood epistemological framework that needs to be followed through and verified (i.e.,
there is a tower that has some kind of definite three-dimensional shape, and now I just need to
discern, specifically, which one). Latour points out that mistakes of this type will not be of
interest to his inquiry because they are all located, as it were, along the same path, that of
rectified knowledge, and thus they all stem from the same interpretive key (49).
The kind of mistake that Latour is interested in is the second type, which he calls a
category mistake, in which an error is caused not by insufficient knowledge within a given
epistemological framework, but rather, an insufficiency within the framework itself. That is to
say, category mistakes occur when one is armed with the wrong interpretive key. Unlike
knowledge mistakes, category mistakes cannot be resolved through investigation, because the
error is in the epistemological framework (this is sort of like trying to discern scientific data from
a religious text: no matter how many times one reads the Bible, it will never truly offer a
scientific proof for the age of the earth). Latour defines the distinction through a metaphor:
Every hiker knows that it is one thing to embark boldly on a well-marked path; it is quite
another to decide which path to take at the outset in the face of signposts that are hard to
interpret (53). Crucially, Latour points out that in questions of categorical mistakes, the

qualification of true or false is less important than the question, true or false for whom? To
demonstrate this, he returns to the domain of Law, in which the process of serving justice is very
explicitly not the pursuit of an absolute and objective Truth, but rather, the calculation of truth as
qualified by the fluid movement of means (as described in the previous chapter). As Latour
points out, within the domain of Law, the courts judgement is pro veritate habietur (taken as
the truth): neither more nor less (54). For this reason, a person who is looking to the legal
system to provide closure for a traumatic experience, for example, is committing a categorical
mistake because she is looking for something outside of the scope of the interpretive key of the
law. With this in mind, Latour points out that for any given practice, it is necessary to identify the
epistemological structure that allows the production an internal distinction between truth and
falsity, and then develop a mechanism with which one can qualify the interaction between
different epistemological structures.
To do this, he proposes that, rather than identifying propositions as true or false (as
these distinctions have been shown to be relative to their domains), one can productively sort
propositions by felicity and infelicity (i.e., wether a given proposition fits contextually within a
given epistemological framework): On each path of veridiction, we will be able to ask that the
conditions that must be met for someone to speak truths or untruths be specified according to its
mode (56). In this way, Latour is able to define the mechanism that enables claims to truth
within a given mode. What is needed now is a method to distinguish one mode from another. For
this, Latour chooses the term preposition, explaining that he is using it in the most literal,
grammatical sense, to mark a postition-taking that comes before a proposition is stated,

determining how the proposition is to be grasped an thus constituting its interpretive key (57).
In this sense, a statements preposition functions similarly to the key signature on a piece of sheet
music or the genre affixed to a book in a bookstore: it both indicates the type of thing you are
dealing with, and influences the rest of your experience with that thing. In order to understand
any given proposition, you will first have to discern the interpretive key for the mode within
which the proposition is presented. With these tools, argues Latour, any statement or situation
can be accounted for within its mode, and then that mode itself can be qualitatively situated
against other modes.
Armed with the tool of the network and the notion of the preposition, Latour confidently
announces that he is prepared to fully define the project of his inquiry, first captured in his
innocent-seeming impulse to speak well to someone about something that really matters to
them (58). Latour expands this notion, arguing that the speaker who speaks well must (1)
describe the interactive networks that produce a given proposition, at risk of alienating or
shocking practitioners unaccustomed to this mode, (2) verify with these same practitioners that
the given proposition is one and the same as what they already know of themselves, only within
a larger non-dominial framework, (3) explore the epistemological gaps between the networked
account of the proposition and the account provided by the practitioners, and finally (and most
crucially) (4) propose a new formulation of the relationship between the two accounts that would
close the gap between practice and theory. Crucially, Latour points out that the ultimate goal of
this project is to redesign institutions such that the values of all of the previously held domains of
Modern life are accounted for.