Notes on: Kipnis, A. (2015) Agency
between humanism and post-humanism Latour and
his opponents. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic
Theory 5(2): 43--58
doi.org/10.14318/hau5.2.004
Dave Harris
Latour is insufficiently critical of capitalism
for some critics, but the problems lie in the
application of ant especially in its focus on
'painstaking ethnographic research'.
Post-humanism can be defined as 'analytic stances
that grant agency to nonhuman entities and that
downplay the differences between human and
nonhuman agency' (44). Kipnis wants to grant
agency to nonhuman's but also emphasise the
difference between their agency.
Latour has been attacked from different
directions. Gregory [refs in Kipnis] accuses him
of being a theological critic of humanism, Martin
thinks that post-humanism consolidates neoliberal
hegemony in the Academy and the wider world. This
might represent a particular British or European
context. It is apparently to do with anthropology
and its decision to take an ontological turn away
from Marxian political economy. — The former is
associated with 'certain elite British
institutions'. Kipnis does not see things as
so neatly divided, however.
ANT is post-humanist because it has '"a theory of
value that attributes agency to things' [citing
Gregory] (45). Latour begins with seeing science
as a project to construct facts by human actors,
and this made enemies, even a 'blocked appointment
at Princeton', although he always argued that
scientific facts were constructed but not
necessarily false, merely that they did not speak
for themselves. The black box presented a
misleading appearance that processes yielded
truth. In the piece on modernity the separation of
the social from the scientific further made the
point that science and politics are never
separate. In the work specifically on ANT, the
same critique was applied to social sciences with
a critique of their black boxes like society or
class: the point is to see what processes are
unfolded. The place of the nonhuman also has a
role in those. There may be a theoretical shift
involved in this choice of targets, and some
people have selectively read him, for example to
see him as a neoliberal Conservative who is
deconstructing society. He is said to be 'cynical
and dismissive those with activist inclinations',
and he is critical of some forms of radical
thought and action that are one-sided. He is
critical including toward himself, and has
criticised colonisers [apparently in Latour
2010 On the modern cult of the
factish gods. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.]. He is a
Catholic but he is critical of religious
philosophical and radical thoughts as containing
'"factishes"'.
He has been compared to Althusser on
anti-humanism, but he does not take a simple view
to either deny or enshrine human agency, but takes
a middle position [developed via an anecdote about
shared control?] (46). He is interested in how
things mediate human agency, things of any kind,
the water modifying surfing, a musical instrument
modifying the player, social relationships which
transform individuals: 'all human agency takes
place through attachments' (47).
Martin has argued that post-humanist thinking
leads to avoidance of the abuse of power by
corporations and political apathy, and he blames
texts written by Latour. But are the effects of
these texts just the responsibility of the
authors, or do they have any independent effects
as 'disembodied discourse… Shaped by humans to be
sure but not human in [themselves]' (48].
Political arguments also 'turn on the agency of
nonhuman things' [this sort of agency is
undeniable].
'It is not necessary to say that all agencies of
the same'. The divisions in academia reflect the
notion of different types of agent — subatomic
particles as agents, chemical agents, living
creatures, artworks, human beings. Particular
kinds of agency are to be understood, sometimes in
order to manipulate them. There are differences in
the agency, for example physical particles do
interact with each other in complex ways but 'at
least since Newton (or perhaps Aristotle) we have
known that there are no unmoved movers. The agency
of one particle must be understood in relation to
the agencies of others. With life another factor
enters the equation. Life actively seeks to
persist over time'. Living beings themselves
differ according to how they reproduce, whether
they can move, how they get their energy and so
on. Kipnis also thinks there is a difference
between those beings who are self-conscious who
can separate themselves from the world they
inhabit and thus 'consciously make choices about
the course of action', and proposes a mirror test
to distinguish self-consciousness.
Latour has a different approach not characterising
beings but '"modes of existence", each with its
own conditions and types of beings. However agents
are placed into these categories as modes of
existence. There are different attitudes and
therefore different degrees of post-humanism,
however.
Different modes of existence are linked to
different concepts of truth, 'differing types of
felicity and infelicity conditions' (49) [2013. An inquiry into modes of
existence: An anthropology of the moderns. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press] which apply to all
modes of existence and beings, technologies,
plants and animals everything. We have to extend
the idea of felicity conditions away from
linguistic notions of truth and more towards 'the
ability to reproduce over time'. This however
results in 'forms of anthropomorphic fallacy
typical of post-humanists'. The differences
between human and nonhuman agency are
'flattened' — human agency is not unique,
nor is language and self-consciousness, but
concepts derived from them can only be extended
metaphorically. Latour for example talks about
misunderstanding by technological beings, or mute
forms of life enunciating themselves, or mountains
reproducing themselves and maintaining their
existence [all cited 49]. These are really
different types of agencies — mountains persist
but not because of their own active efforts.
Latour invites us to suggest other kinds of
conditions but Kipnis 'would find it impossible to
do so'
The boundaries do need to be redrawn now and then
between types of agency — chemists change their
idea of agency when chemical reactions involved
electrons, and anthropologists 'became defensive'
after sociobiology. Nevertheless, both specialisms
retained 'enough specificity to the objects of
their research'. There may be further work that
changes this, but until then, it is quite possible
to argue that 'humans, like all species, have
unique characteristics' and 'anthropomorphic
ascriptions of agency [are] a fallacy'. Other
things have agency but not human forms. It's
common to ascribe human forms, as an
acknowledgement of the complexity of interactions
with objects and their attachments.
Latour has been compared with Bourdieu and
'practice theory', which has a concept of
'"agency" as an abstract capacity held by
particular individuals and opposed to the social
"structures" that restrain those individuals'
(50). The two are linked in a zero-sum game and
the first should be increased. Agency here is
conscious and individual, but fails to explain how
individuality arises. It also has problems when
people voluntarily submit to structures, as do
'pious Muslim or Christian women'. However, 'to
become an agent must submit to something' [Althusser!],
to the demands of academic discipline, for
example, to peer review, to the discipline of the
political cause.
Kipnis cites Laidlaw on ethics as involving blame
or responsibility to humans, statements that
involve 'cause, intention, state and response'
(51), all of which modify agency. State of mind is
particularly important for agency, involving
choosing, as we see in law cases, although states
of mind might be caused or influenced by factors
including culture or structure. The attribution of
human agency is already difficult! Latour is no
more difficult than others, although it still
needs to avoid anthropomorphism.
The link with political activism is also
difficult. Some theorists have become activists
despite the implications of their theoretical
commitments — Bourdieu and Foucault spring to
mind. Latour has attacked climate change deniers.
Nevertheless, theory does contain limitations for
any politics, despite the inclinations of the
theorist.
For example there are implications for critical
ethnography. [There is a lengthy example of the
invention of a fictitious machine that enables
considerable manipulations of the stock market,
and the most seemingly neutral ANT analysis of
that black box would obviously involve critical
questions about legality and the behaviour of
those who would use it.
There is also the issue of whether researchers
would ever gain access. This is the main practical
problem with ANT, that and the requirement to do
'slow, painstaking, and careful ethnographic
research'. It would require cooperative research
subjects, with a fair degree of reflexivity, and
clearly powerful people would be unlikely to
cooperate. Latour gives insufficient emphasis to
what is hidden, evaded. It faces the problems of
any ethnographic research. What is required is an
additional element of critical research, which
does not involve the cooperation of subjects.
Latour perhaps does not pay enough attention to
economic inequality, as in his 2013 anthropology
of the moderns'. There is a lack of discussion of
capital and power, and thus of one of the main
modes of existence. There is no discussion of
capital as 'instituted agency', how it excludes
some people in moral calculations, the workforce
that have produced the goods, classically.
There is also insufficient attention to the
concept of power, which might well usefully
substitute for the idea of felicity conditions as
the primary dimension to differentiate types of
agents. Power is both quantitative and
qualitative, both a form of strength and a form of
enticement. As well as coming in different
quantities.
Back to Marx's critique of commodity fetishism,
where people misunderstand ownership as a matter
of relations between persons and things rather
than between people, and how this obscures
relationships between class. Gregory says the same
thing goes on with ANT, but this might be
excessive — property also has other effects, other
relationships between people and things, [some of
them liberating I think he is arguing],
intermixing. There is much to be said for
Hertzfield: 'I "would prefer to avoid the rather
arid debate about whether objects have agency"'
(55). [Avoids the key issue of animals and their
rights, Gaia and the like]
Instead, we can grant agency to everything,
acknowledge that everything can affect us, but
allow for different types of agency. Those with
human beings, 'life and self-consciousness', are
worth differentiating, so are the issues of ethics
and choice and are effects on other human beings.
The same time we might acknowledge that there are
no unmoved movers even with human agency, rather
like Marxist view that men make history but not in
circumstances of their own choosing. This is not
anti-post-humanism but a compromise, and we can
still take political positions without adopting
extremes of voluntarism or determinism.
Agency needs to be differentiated from power.
Instead of increasing the agency of certain
groups, it is preferable to empower them 'for
analytic precision' (56). We see human agency at
work best in 'that contradictory space we
experience whenever we attempt to make a decision
about the unknown', when we don't know the
outcomes of particular decisions. This is not the
same as power, however — power is undoubtedly
distributed unequally [although experiences of
indecision might be far more common].
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