Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T12:25:40.084Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Few Steps Toward an Anthropology of the Iconoclastic Gesture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour*
Affiliation:
Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation de l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

The argument

A large part of our critical acumen depends on a clear distinction between what is real and what is constructed, what is out there in the nature of things and what is in there in the representation we make of them. Something has been lost however for the sake of this clarity and a heavy price has been paid for this dichotomy between ontological questions on the one hand and the epistemological questions on the other: it has become impossible to understand the simplest features of action. What the critical gesture smashes into pieces is precisely the very possibility of hearing as synonyms the two sentences, “I have fabricated it well, thus it is autonomous.” The paper tries to find a way to avoid the critical gesture and link again together facts and fetishes, producing this rather strange hybrid: factishes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 63 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibiliography

Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Beck, U.. 1995. Ecological Politics in the Age of Risk. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bharathipura, U. R. Anantha Murphy. 1990. “Another India. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1987. “La ddldgation et le fdtichisme politique,” in Choses dites. Paris: Minuit.Google Scholar
Claverie, E. 1991. “Voir apparaître, regarder voir.” Raisons Pratiques 2:1–19.Google Scholar
Cussins, C. 1996. “Ontological Choreography: Agency for Women Patients in an Infertility Clinic.” Social Studies of Science 10.1177/030631296026003004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Aquino, Patricia. 1995. “La construction de la personne dans le Candomblé.” Rio de Janeiro: Musée National.Google Scholar
De Brosses, Charles. [1760] 1988. Du Culte des dieux fétiches. Previously published in Paris: Corpus des Oeuvres de Philosophic, Fayard.Google Scholar
Descola, P., and Palsson, G., eds. 1996. Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ezrahi, Y. 1990. The Descent of Icarus. Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gamboni, D. 1996. The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Halbertal, M., and Margalit, A.. 1992. Idolatry. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Heinich, N. 1993. “Les objets-personnes: Fétiches, reliques et oeuvres d'art.” Sociologie de l'art 6:25–26.Google Scholar
Herstein-Smith, Barbara. 1997. Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
lacono, Alfonso. 1992. Le fétichisme. Histoire d'un concept. Paris: PUF.Google Scholar
Jullien, F. 1995. The Propensity of Things: Toward a history of Efficacy in China. Translated from the French. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jullien, F. 1997. Traité de l'efficacité. Paris: Grasset.Google Scholar
Koerner, J. L. 1995. “The Image in Quotations: Cranach's Portraits of Luther Preaching.” Shop Talk. Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, 143–46, 346–48.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern.” Translated by Catherine, Porter. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1994. “On Technical Mediation,” Common Knowledge 3(2):29–64.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1995. “Moderniser ou écologiser. A la recherche de la septième Cité.” Ecologie politique 13:5–27.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1996a. “Do Scientific Objects Have A History? Pasteur and Whitehead in a Bath of Lactic Acid.” Common Knowledge 5(1):76–91.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1996b. Petite réflexion sur le culte moderne des dieux Faitiches. Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1996c. “On Interobjectivity — with discussion by Marc Berg, Michael Lynch and Yrjo Engelström, Mind Culture and Activity 3(4):228–4510.1207/s15327884mca0304_2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B. 1996d. Aramis or the Love of Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1997. “Socrates' and Callicles' Settlement, or the Invention of the Impossible Body Politic.” Configurations, Spring 1997, no. 2: 189–240.10.1353/con.1997.0011CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mondzainx, M.-J. 1996. Image, icône, économic. Les sources byzantines de l'imaginaire contemporain. Paris: Le Seuil.Google Scholar
Nathan, T. 1994. L'Influence qui guérit. Paris, Editions Odile Jacob.Google Scholar
Nathan, T., and Stengers, I.. 1995. Médecins et sorciers. Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond.Google Scholar
Pickering, A., ed. 1992. Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago: Chicago University Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226668208.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickering, A.. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pietz, , William, . 1993. Fetischism as Cultural Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Simon. “Forgers and Authors in the Baroque Economy.” In preparation.Google Scholar
Serres, M. 1987. Statues. Paris: François Bourin.Google Scholar
Stengers, I. 1997. Cosmopolitiques, vol. 4: Mécanique quantique, la fin du rêve.Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Viramma, Racine, J., and Racine, J.. 1995. Une vie paria. Le rire des asservis. Inde du Sud. Paris: Plon-Terre humaine.Google Scholar
Weinberger-Thomas, C. 1996. Centres d'immortalié. La crémation des veuves en Inde. Paris: Le Seuil.Google Scholar
Whitehead, A. N. [1929] 1978. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar