Review of "An Inquiry into Modes of Existence" by Bruno Latour

Common Knowledge, 2013, fall 2014

An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (AIME) is a multimedia exhibition of the results of Latour's thirty-year-long investigation into how Moderns -Western, educated, technically well-equipped, well-meaning, proudly enlightened, and self-described rational humans -comport themselves and explain the world.

Forthcoming in European Journal of Social Theory

One key feature of modern life is the dissatisfaction with modernity's own selfdescriptions. Accounts of these experiences vary greatly, of course, but more often than not they reflect on disappointed expectations and the gaps between 'facts ' and 'values' or between 'representation' and 'reality'. Equally modern is the view that modernity can only be described adequately if we do so in its totality and on the basis of a more or less radical claim to originality: historical conditions make it necessary that a new narrative is attempted; previous accounts are to be discarded but now we will succeed in avoiding past mistakes. A sequel to his own We have never been modern, Bruno Latour's most recent book belongs decidedly to this modernist genre in which modernity is treated as a single civilizational complex that is in need of full reconsideration: it is a thoroughly modern attempt to account for the modern dissatisfaction with the modern experience of unfulfilled promises that come out of modernity's own successes and failures. To Latour, the modern world we inhabit exists but not in the way people think it does. It can and ought to be explained objectively but the scientists who have produced these explanations have radically misunderstood what they are doing; it works well, but this is despite our misunderstanding technology as merely a means to an end; it has been beautifully represented in countless works of arts but these are neither the creation of particular authors nor a reflection of their time and place. You and I are real, but 'our' consciousness and bodily constitution are not really ours and tell us anything about our shared humanity.

2930 long project. Just like We Have Never Been Modern, it's mainly 2931 a theoretical work in which sociology, anthropology and phi-2932 losophy are coming together 1 . e starting point is the same: 2933 "e moderns have never been modern, but they have believed 2934 they are modern" 2 . ere are many similarities with his pre-2935 vious works, although his modes of existence are a huge step 2936 in the network ontology. For many years he aacked the on-2937 tological foundations of traditional sociology. Now, L 2938 finally gives an example of how his idea of an ontological plu-2939 ralism, the network metaphor and empiricism come together. 2940 e result is a multiplicity of various modes of existence, each 2941

Isis 105/3 (2014): 673-675

In this article I take a critical look at the origins and sources of Bruno Latour's pluralism as it is expressed in his book AN INQUIRY INTO MODES OF EXISTENCE, and compare it to other similar projects (Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, Badiou). I consider the accusations of reductionism and of relativism, and demonstrate that Latour's «empirical metaphysics» is not an ontological reductionism but a pluralist ontology recognising the existence of a plurality of entities and of types of entities. Nor is it an epistemological relativism but an ontological pluralism affirming the existence of a plurality of types of existence. These two strands, pluralist ontology and ontological pluralism, mutually reinforce each other to produce at least the outlines of a robust pluralist realism.

Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 1994

Given the proliferating literature on postmodernism, one might think that all the changes on the subject had been runge Such an assumption would underestimate the creative capacity of French philosophers. Bruno Latour's Nous n~vons jamais~t~modemes: Essai d~nthropoJogiesymetrique(Paris: Editions la Decouverte, 1991) manages to turns the discussion inside out by challenging a central assumption shared by friend and foe of postmodernism alike.

Resilience: Journal of Environmental Humanities, 2016

A small group of Canadian and French scholars experiment with a digital project called An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (http://modesofexistence.org), which is led by French science studies theorist Bruno Latour. Does Latour’s An Inquiry into Modes of Existence project suggest possibilities for how digital formats might change the way we approach scholarship, publication, and peer editing in the environmental humanities? How does it provoke? Who does it provoke? What are its possibilities? What are its limits?