post by effervescent crucibles

Although I disagree with almost every word OF THIS POST, it’s interesting and worth reading.

Main disagreements:

1. For reasons that the blogger already anticipates, I do not at all agree that the Latour passage cited there has anything to do with Derrida. There is a reason why Latour is always talking about things like metro trains and apricots while Derrida is always talking about books. The absence of non-human actors in Derrida is so glaring that I don’t see how Derrida is a salvageable ally for this particular project. It might turn out that other aspects of Derrida are worth saving, but trying to let Derrida hang-glide on Latourian breezes seems like about the least promising project I can imagine.

2. The blogger takes issue with my worries about Latour’s plasma in the following way:

“While I see the worry here, I don’t always buy the argument that something that is inarticulated has necessarily to be unitary. Harman’s position, as I understand it, is that an object is subtracted from all relations but remains, qua object, distinct and differentiated. This is certainly one way of retaining ontological plurality beyond the level of networks. However, I don’t think that otherwise we would end up with some kind of unitary plenum. The undifferentiatedness of plasma (or the reserve or what-have-you) – if we go that way instead of Harman’s – should rather be understood as not (even) one. Once we’ve stepped outside the network of relations, the choice between unity and plurality may prove to be a false one, and it’s for this reason that I think Latour’s idea of plasma may turn out to be surprisingly productive.”

The move here is a familiar one: “the plasma is neither one nor many, since these are human categories.” If it sounds familiar, that’s because Kant was already there 230 years ago. The blogger’s maneuver here is yet another instance of deflating metaphysical issues by trying to pack them back into the sphere of the human subject. And if that’s what you want to do, what’s the point of reading Latour?

An underground realm that is magically both one and differentiated is, I would argue, one of the primary opiates of present-day “cutting edge” continental thought. The blogger’s comments are simply one unfortunate way of pulling off that particular destructive trick.

Nonetheless, I’m quite serious when I say that the post is worth reading. The blogger is a serious and reflective person who lingers in the vicinity of important issues.