Habit: the flywheel of cognition

William James famously called habit 'the enormous flywheel of society.'  He could also have called it the flywheel of cognition.  Levi Bryant links to a really fascinating article in The Atlantic on a study that shows how 'poverty taxes brains' - that is, poverty deprives people of the habits that permit wealthier people the luxury of saving cognitive energy by not having to think about so many things.

For example, if you have to think (and worry) about where your next meal is going to come from then you will expend enormous cognitive and emotional resources on achieving only that goal.  A wealthier person who can breeze through the supermarket without having to stop to think whether or not they can afford what is in their basket is free to think about other things.  If they are really wealthy they needn't even set foot in the shop, they simply bark 'food!' and it appears before them!

The really important thing to realise, as James did well over a century ago, is that habits run deep.  We are plastic beings.  Our brains are plastic, our habits are plastic.  It isn't just that the rich person saves time by not having to consciously recall how much money is in their bank account and then carefully add up every item in their basket in order to ensure that they are not humiliated when they reach the checkout because they are unable to pay.  It runs much deeper than that.  No, these kinds of practices affect the way we are 'wired' at every level - the aforementioned study focuses, of course, on brains but it is a general truth.

So writes James:

What is so clearly true of the nervous apparatus of animal life can scarcely be otherwise than true of that which ministers to the automatic activity of the mind … Any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed purpose, or anticipation of results.

Habit is self-perpetuating.  The more that we expend our cognitive energies on survival the less energy we have to expend on other things and, over time, the less we are capable we become of thinking about other things.  The more attuned we become to survival thinking the less attuned we become to anything else.  Habits are plastic - they have a structure that yields but not all at once, as James puts it - and so they can be reversed but only with great effort.  Human being is habitual long before it is 'rational.'  Indeed, rationalities are habitual.

This is at odds with pretty much everything economics and psychology have assumed in the last hundred years - and with the entire disciplinary logic of neoliberalism.  The Atlantic article notes that:

The design of these experiments wasn't particularly groundbreaking, which makes it all the more astounding that we’ve never previously understood this connection between cognition and poverty. “This project, there’s nothing new in it, there’s no new technology, this could have been done years ago,” Shafir says. But the work is the product of the relatively new field of behavioral economics. Previously, cognitive psychologists seldom studied the differences between different socio-economic populations (“a brain is a brain, a head is a head,” Shafir says). Meanwhile, other psychology and economics fields were studying different populations but not cognition.

Behavioural economics is only just catching up with the man who died in 1910.  It's utterly shameful, really.  A brain is not a brain, a head is not a head.  A brain without a body is a dead lump of goo.  A body without all its social accoutrements is a dead lump of flesh and bone.  A human being without its habits is moribund.

Assuming perfect, habit-less rationality of human subjects in order to make your sums add up (as this is what modern economics basically amounts to) is criminal in its absurdity.  Latour (following Callon) is right that economics is a discipline and not a science.

Chapter 5: speech impediments in politics

The summary and discussion thread for chapter 5 of the AIME reading group is online.

I found this to be a very frustrating chapter. Frustrating in many ways because what he’s saying is neither very complicated not especially innovative – but he takes so long to say it. (Indeed, this is only half the argument, there’s another politics chapter to come later in the book.)

Basically (this is as I understand it, I could be wrong): there is a dialectic between being represented and being obeyed. Political representatives must ‘betray’ those they represent because they have to tie together as many people as they can in order to create a ‘we.’ No ‘betrayal,’ no ‘we,’ no politics. If a politician stands up in front of a crowd and ‘says what he really thinks’ in clear, declarative terms – i.e. engages in ‘straight talk’ then – he will most likely fail at his vocation. Some small part of the crowd will be enthusiastically engaged (because they think exactly the same way) but most will be alienated, insulted and bored, by the blunt, cold, unseductive speech. Thus there is no ‘we’ embodied by the person on the soap box, no liberal democratic Leviathan. There is no representation, so no obedience, so no politics.

If, on the contrary, the politician engages in rhetoric, grand standing, even lying and carefully speaks to the issues that matter the vast majority in one way or another then he might be able to appeal to most, perhaps even all of the crowd – thus there is a ‘we’ and there is politics.

Is it just me or is that a really simple argument that doesn’t need such a complex, meandering explanation? Maybe it’s simple because I’ve simplified it (pinned down the proverbial butterfly) but I don’t see that there’s much more to it than that. It’s certainly a valid argument as far as it goes. People are always expecting politicians to speak like scientists and wishing that they ‘just spoke their minds.’ Clearly politicians need the degree of freedom afforded them by rhetoric in order to do their jobs – and, just as clearly, the quasi-scientific straight talk is the death of politics. But this is nothing to base an entire political philosophy around, is it?

We have never been Moderns

There’s a really interesting interview with Latour on his website that I hadn’t read until now. It’s with some art curator. Anyway, the interesting thing is that he acknowledges that the ‘non-moderns’ are now modernising:

…we have very little idea about what the modernists will inherit when they abandon their idea of having been the bearer of rationality. We have very few inklings, and the reason why is that, in the meantimes, which was unexpected when I wrote this book, all of the others are modernizing in the most blatantly modernist unrepentant way: the Chinese, the Indians, the Indonesians. So actually, it’s interesting that you are doing an exhibition on animism, because it’s the spirit of the time, the Zeitgeist. It’s like ‘Iconoclash.’ Suddenly, the Europeans realize that, wait a minute, maybe we made a big mistake in attributing animism to the others. What happens if we have been animists, and in what way were we? Since we have agencies everywhere, we mix the agencies, we made a whole series of transformations about the agent, we added wings, and we took the souls out, and sometimes the opposite. We did all sorts of very, very strange things, and we turned to the others, who are no longer others, and what did they do? Well they modernized without any worry... (emphases added)

So, let’s get this straight. The non-Moderns, the ‘former others,’ the ‘Resteners’ as I called them, are now modernising but that doesn’t make them ‘Moderns.’ No, they are imitating the Westerners, the Moderns, the Whites (all these terms are interchangeable) in extending the modernisation front but this doesn’t make them Moderns themselves – this population remains as pure as the driven snow. They are adopting all the practices of the Moderns but somehow they are still essentially other to the Moderns (even though they are ‘formerly other’), with essentially other values that will need to be 'negotiated' with.

This makes the Moderns themselves begin to look less like a population defined by ‘a variable geometry,’ as Latour puts it in AIME, and a racialised, spatially regionalised, essentialised group. Whether or not he means it like this (I assume he’d deny it), these seem to me to be the necessary consequences of what he’s saying.

My critique at the start of the AIME reading group looks better and better, if I do say so myself! Yes, this is just an interview but it seems very clear and plain to me here that Latour believes that the Moderns do exist, that they are more than avatars of modernism, that they are a meaningful, somewhat geographically definable population on the stage of world history. When he says that the West is declining relative to the East and that this fact demands a kind of ontological diplomacy because Western values can no longer be taken for granted – this isn’t just an abstract, philosophical kind of diplomacy he’s talking about. It is that but it isn’t just that. It's also an overarching political call for Europeans to 'make representations' to the Chinese, Indians, Indonesians, etc. who are now becoming 'our' geopolitical equals and, therefore, our politico-ontological equals also.

And everything I wrote before still applies, in that case.  This really is the Achilles' heel of the whole 'political' project.

The narcissism of minor differences or the importance of small mutations?

In many ways Latour is thoroughly disingenuous in terms of his intellectual predecessors.  He is an enthusiastic cheerleader for the relatively unknown or unfashionable - Tarde, Serres, James, Dewey, etc. - but either ignores or distances himself from other more hegemonic figures whose influence on his work is, nevertheless, unmistakeable.  Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze are the poststructuralist/postmodernist trinity that he attempts to distance himself from perhaps above all.  He generally has good things to say about them when prompted and will occasionally cite Foucault as a good example of this or that but in general they either sit in the background or, in the case of Derrida, become straw men for Latour's rhetorical bonfire.

So, Latour as a philosopher is thoroughly precedented and this is obvious despite his best Oedipal efforts to distance himself from many of his predecessors.  However, those critics who say 'this argument is very similar to that made by X, therefore X said it all before' are utterly misguided.  For one thing, the originality of the likes of Foucault and Derrida is itself often overstated.  Derrida didn't invent the notion of a regulative ideal that must be pursued despite being unachievable (but whenever anyone adopts such a position now they are said to be Derridean).  Many things are often labelled 'Deleuzian' that could just as easy be called Nietzschean.  Likewise Foucault and, say, Bachelard (or Marx who Foucault delights in not citing).

Derrida/Foucault/Deleuze are the presently hegemonic generation of dead white men who are the most read and so ideas tend to get attributed to them rather than to anyone else.  The innocuous academic phrase 'as Y has argued...' inevitably suggests that Y is the brilliant originator of that argument.  It is the enduringly critical role of intellectual history to stretch out these inelastic trajectories into proper genealogies (to whom one may attribute that insight, I'll leave that question open!).

But there is a more fundamental and important flaw in the 'X said it all before' attitude.  It misses the fact that subtle mutations can make huge differences.  Yes, there's hardly a page of anything Latour has written that can't be traced back to a whole slew of predecessors.  But taken as a whole just how much of a resemblance does his work bear to even his closest progenitors - e.g. Deleuze?  Not much.  One has to be attuned to the differences, perhaps, but differences there are - and many of them.

The mutation that turns the unstable linguistic structures of Derrida et al. into the actor-networks of ANT is at once a small difference and a huge one (isn't this inversion of scale a classic ANT insight? or is it?!).  Likewise, the extension of actors into objects in the manner of Harman et al. - a small mutation (almost undetectable at first) that leads to a completely different result.

In a sense Latour's philosophy is just poststructuralism 'writ large' - but he had to write millions of carefully translative, transformative words in order to achieve that!

Bruno Latour is a dialectician - discuss

'Diplomacy' is a kind of dialectics.  It is a form of critique that has three movements: first it dismantles its opponent, then it seeks to extract what is of value in its opponent by rearticulating those values in its own terms and, finally, it makes its results public and allows them to be criticised and negotiated.

It is a philosophical form of digestion.

digerere "to separate, divide, arrange," from dis- "apart" + gerere "to carry"

It is critical.

Latin criticus "a judge, literary critic," from Greek kritikos "able to make judgements," from krinein "to separate, decide" ... [see also crisis:] from PIE root *krei- "to sieve, discriminate, distinguish"

The philosopher qua diplomat doesn't occupy the position of a judge empowered by Reason or Nature.  However, distinction, separation, sifting - all that needs to be added to these qualities is a commitment to negotiation and a deferment of de-cision - a reluctance to cut the thread of debate - and we have diplomacy.

Diplomacy is only 'post-critical' inasmuch as it departs from the vulgar modernist and postmodernist versions of critique that sought to destroy their opponents by enveloping their opponents' being in their own concepts with no remainder, leaving no possibility for engaging with objections.  In many ways this departure is actually a return to older forms of philosophical, dialectical discourse that were built upon conversation.  The major difference from these older forms, in principle, is that there is no Nature or Reason to appeal to, to slap down as a 'trump card' so as to prematurely close the conversation.  But, in practice, the classic dialogues rarely resorted to such vulgarities.  Latour has a theory/practice problem of his own.

Opponents in diplomacy are not antithetical in any metaphysical sense.  Indeed, any diplomatic 'summit' will have many interested parties, those parties will have complex alliances and ententes as well as disagreements and feuds.  But not all forms of dialectics have demanded that their terms be placed in such strict straitjackets as thesis/antithesis.  Diplomacy does not seek synthesis, it seeks settlement.  But then not all dialecticians have been pursuing the end of history.

A thing is what it does.  Diplomacy is simply a reformed dialectical critique imbued with an ethos and aesthetic of compromise, respect and coexistence.  A rose by any other name...

The Moderns don't exist - an initial review

Phew, I just finished reading An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence.  I've still got a lot to think through and write down but here are some initial reflections.

I feel that my initial criticisms vis-a-vis the Moderns and their incoherence have been entirely vindicated!  Quite simply the Moderns as a 'people' don't exist.  The Moderns are nothing more than the ideal subjects of Modernism - or the avatars of Modernism, if you prefer.  Undoubtedly there are many individuals who approximate the image of the Modern but many of these aren't Western or White.  Latour should stick to 'Modern,' it's sufficient.  Trying to turn this into a pseudo-postcolonial critique only makes things harder to understand.

All the fluff about the decline of the West and Gaia proving to the Moderns that their time is up is really just a lot of rhetorical tinsel.  The 'planetary negotiation,' for all its grandeur and pomposity, is an intellectual debate between students, academics, bloggers, interested amateurs, researchers, para-academics, etc. Presumably there'll be some scientists and lawyers involved too but there's a problem with that: I've read most of Latour's books, a lot of actor-network theory type stuff and quite a bit of philosophy and I found this book difficult to read.  This is an issue.  I really wish I'd read the conclusion at the beginning!  The humour, humility and candidness of the last ten pages was really refreshing but it only highlights how stolid and burdensome much of the rest of the book was to read.  That said, I enjoyed it.  However, I am weird.

The last few pages are also interesting because they anticipate many of the criticisms I made of the book as I was working my way through it.  I'll need to redress some of those at a later date.

All in all, there are some really major problems with some of the modes and some quite serious issues with the project overall, however it is a brilliant book despite all that.  Frustrating most of the time, infuriating sometimes.  Probably 75% or more of the book is based on previously published work, however it is an impressive synthesis of a thirty or so year career.

In short, while he admits that the project is 'idiocy' I think that he's just crazy enough that he might pull it off!

I do think that the religion mode needs to be torn down and begun again.  It tries to do too much and doesn't leave any room for secular personification.  Trying to force non-Christians to adopt Christian language is not only an unrealistic diplomatic proposal but also rather offensive.

The politics mode has potential but needs to be greatly expanded beyond the naive and rather outdated musings of Dewey and Lippmann.  We need to understand representative politics as Latour describes it in relation to other forms (e.g. populism, anarchism) and how non-democratic politics can also be representative.

The separation of The Economy into three modes is at times inspired but is sadly incomplete.  The fact is that capitalism isn't just a series of formatting and calculative practices, it's the very lifeblood of our political world.  At the very least it's a group of extremely wealthy and powerful people who actively and aggressively pursue their own class interests.  Whether or not class is thought in terms of scripts (and I see no reason why it can't be) it needs to be conceptualised and taken seriously rather than left to hang in the thin air of abstraction.

But that's the major problem with all these modes - with the whole project, in fact: it is very difficult to bring these abstractions back down to earth and understand concrete events with them.  The State may be an absurd artefact of the Modern imagination but nation states are the basis of all global politics.  To ignore them is political idealism, plain and simple.  The modes are certainly fecund for thought but they're a long way from being anything that can actually make sense of the world as it actually exists.

Latour's philosophy inhabits a twilight zone.  It's neither really empirical or fully philosophical.  He never really commits to either and ends up producing something inbetween.  Compare it to, say, Plato's Republic.  There's never any danger of that thought experiment being confused with reality.  It's full philosophy - and all the richer and more vivid for it.  Latour's partial empiricism stops him from achieving the same scope and breadth of speculation and then, on the other hand, he's not empirical enough that his thoughts can be easily integrated into the world through those filaments of evidence and experience.

The only way it can possibly work is collaboratively and critically, which is why the project as a whole is really rather inspired.  I'm excited to see what happens next.

Auto-ontology (every philosophy must be able to conceive of itself in its own terms)

Terence writes:

Philosophy seems to pose a problem for Latour, and is not officially included in his list of modes of existence, but is declared to be definitory of the Moderns: “the Moderns are the people of Ideas; their dialect is philosophy” (22).

Every philosophy must be able to account for itself within its own terms, otherwise it is a performative contradiction.  A philosophy of discourses must conceive of itself as a discourse; a philosophy of objects must conceive of itself as an object, etc.  Does a modal philosophy have to conceive of itself as a mode?  It might be able to but I'm not sure that it's necessary to conceive of it as a single mode.

Clearly the practice of philosophy (like all concrete practices) must be polymodal.  First, aime is a work of fiction [fic] inasmuch as it uses all kinds of characters, various sorts of shifting and so on.  Whether we are reading Latour in his 'own' voice or speaking through his litany of characters we are encountering a shifting (and rather shifty) actant.  That much is straightforward.  Aime is also political [pol] inasmuch as it declares 'we,' 'us,' and 'them' on various occasions.  The 'talk' of the book is most definitely 'crooked' rather than straight.  It does seem to have the structure of a curve that tries to draw the reader along.  It is actively and explicitly seeking to compose a public.  Latour claims that in his religious writings he aims to 'speak religiously,' although they didn't have that effect on me!  The book also involves elements of reproduction [rep] via technology [tec] in both its printed and electronic forms.  That's true if somewhat banal.  More interestingly, the book is written in a transformative way [met].  It seeks to provoke emotions in us and leave us different to how we started.  It is not written in a fashion that avails itself to evaluative reading.  Indeed, it is hugely frustrating if you want to read it evaluatively along the lines of a scholarly paper or a student essay wherein theses must be first set out then justified.  Latour delights in revealing what he's really talking about only after x hundred pages of dissembling, metamorphising, preparation and preamble.  We could even say that it is a legal [law] text inasmuch as it is seeking to reattach the Moderns to their actions.  Moreover, it is clearly a passionate attachment for its author and doubtless it will be for many of its readers.

I could go on but I think the point is clear.  The book (in all its forms) can be understood in many different modes.  The question is: is that enough?  Is something missed out?  Is there terra incognita lurking at the edges of this field of vision (apologies for the mixed metaphors)?  Is the above confluence of modes sufficient to account for the book itself not just as a book but as a work of philosophy?

I wrote in another post that, as James argues, the distinctive quality of a philosophical truth is that it arrives through reasoning.  Latour's process may not always seem entirely reasonable but it certainly involves a thread of reasoning inasmuch as it presupposes a subject-reader that it must lead on a journey in order to transform that reader, in order to lead its reader to conclusions that can only make sense at the end of the journey, with no shortcuts being taken.  That 'journey' is the key thing.  If philosophy can be thought of as a mode then it's in that transformative journey that the contrast is to be found, I think.

The trifurcation of Nature; Every materialism is also a formalism

Looking back over chapter 4 of aime (on the beings of reproduction [rep]) I'm now struck by the description of formalism.  I think that this is really the key part of the whole chapter.  In fact the whole critique of 'matter' is based around it.

The 'idealist materialism' that Latour roughly delineates is only bifurcated (into material and ideal) if we fail to make another distinction between two kinds of ideality: subjective and objective.  If we take these as separate categories (and given the discussion of Modern formalism I think that this separation makes perfect sense) then we have a trifurcated, triangular configuration:

            1: objective-ideal              2: subjective-ideal




                                       3: matter

And the irony of it is that the most important relation in that triangle, for the Moderns, is the one between the two top terms, between the two idealities.  It's by establishing that relation that the Moderns believe that they come to dominate matter.  It is only by positing that behind all the dirty, complex matter of the actual mountain there is a formal mountain existing in res extensa that one can then conceive of this form being mirrored in the subjective idealist realm of the res cogitans.  In order for 2 to 'mirror' 1, 1 must be radically separated from 3.  The correspondence theory of truth (the quintessence of Modernism, surely?) only makes any sense if there are two realms of ideality with matter filling in the empty, abstract space.

For all the talk of materialism, matter isn't even the most important aspect of this Modern schema.  Modern matter is an artefact of idealism.  It undergirds and fills out the arrangement, nothing more.  Matter explains persistence because it is unbreakable, eternal, it only shifts form - so it undergirds.  And it fills out the schema by being the 'stuff' that has 'adventures through space.'  So, matter gives the metaphysic 'substance' in both senses of that word.  It gives ideality both persistence and content.

Matter is what is to be dominated and possessed thanks to the marriage of the two idealities made possible by the advent of rational thought - that's the Modern metaphysic and the Modern politic.

Every materialism is also a formalism - the latter is rarely given even a fraction of the attention of the former and yet it is arguably the most important term.

A philosophical mode of reasoning?; Finally understanding the religious mode (I think...)

Levi Bryant ponders whether one can conceive of philosophy as a 'mode' or 'sphere' in the senses of Latour or Luhmann.  I don’t have an answer to this question but I think I might have the beginnings of one.

At the start of A Pluralistic Universe James (whose influence on the modes project can hardly be overstated) argues that while any form of discourse can arrive at truths – even common sense, even accidentally – the distinctive quality of a philosophical truth is that it is reasoned.

On its own this is a bit simplistic.  Philosophy must be a distinct mode of reasoning, not reasoning itself.  However, I think it puts us on the right track.  Philosophy is distinct from mysticism because while mysticism may, in a way, concoct wisdom by concealing – it may instigate a particular kind of truth through the artful fabrication of experiences the authors of which are deliberately obscured and unattributed – it is not philosophy because it doesn't follow a philosophical thread of experience, a process of reasoning.  There may be mystical wisdom but that wisdom is not philosophical wisdom.  In fact they are opposites.

I read a chapter in a book a while ago (the names escape me, I need to look it up) on Plato's Statesman.  It was by a classicist who, undoubtedly, has forgotten more about Plato than I'll ever know but one thing struck me that he got absolutely and unequivocally wrong: after about a dozen pages of the dialogue Young Socrates objects that all these progressive distinctions layered upon distinctions upon distinctions (aiming to gradually arrive at the essence of the statesman) are a waste of time.  At that point the Stranger was still cutting through the different kinds of animals (two legged, four legged, etc.), having not yet arrived at the human.  ‘Why not cut right through all that and just say that there are humans on the one hand and non-humans on the other?,’ asks Young Socrates.  The Stranger explains, with joyous condescension, that this would fail to cut nature at its joints; it would do what Greeks do to non-Greeks, it would lump them into a whole category marked 'barbarians' (the root of which is the same as 'babble'; barbarians are those whose language one cannot understand, whose distinctions and differences one is insensitive to, ignorant of).  The Stranger points out that from the point of view of a crane (as in the bird) humans and all other animals may appear to be an undifferentiated mass, too.  I've written a few posts on this part of the dialogue before because I think it's fascinating.

Anyway, the really important point is that the classicist sided with Young Socrates.  He agreed that it was ridiculous that we had to go through all these distinctions layered upon distinctions when, in the end, we arrive at the same place: human beings (and then the statesman).  Why not ‘cut to the chase?’, he raged.  But this, for me, completely misunderstands philosophy.  Yes, the distinctive quality of a philosophical argument is that it is reasoned.  The process of reasoning is not extrinsic to the result of reasoning.  Philosophy is, then, intrinsically dialectical, dialogical.  We may, at the end of the dialogue, forget precisely how we got there but that isn’t the same thing as writing the whole process of reasoning off as a mere prelude, a preamble, a means to the end of the conclusion.  To ‘leap to the end’ (how fascinating that, in this dialogue, the Stranger argues against ‘straight talk’ and ‘double click’ – yes, it’s all footnotes…) would be to lose the thread of the argument, it would be a leap into mysticism, in a sense.

‘Cutting nature at its joints’ has always been understood as the realist, naturalist tenet par excellence.  And in a sense that’s accurate but the insight has been shallowly, thinly understood.  What cutting nature at its joints did in this dialogue was to expose the heterogeneity of being and at one and the same time it made our conclusion more difficult to reach rather than less.  We had to do much more work to get there and we emerged wiser for our efforts!  In order to get there we had to become more sensitive to the differences in the world and not less – the world became bigger and our thus our ignorance proliferated; we become more aware of our ignorance of the world because we came to know the world better.  We benefited from, we were transformed by, the whole thread experience, not just the conclusion.  And – this is key – we had to proliferate stages of reasoning in order to not arrive prematurely.  Had we arrived at our destination too quickly we would not really have arrived at all.

What is that urge?  The urge to ‘get there when we get there.’  Hmm, well that isn’t ‘philosophy’ but I think it is an aspect of the philosophical thread of experience.  At the very least this distinguishes philosophy from reference, as Latour describes it.  With reference [ref] it’s perfectly legitimate (indeed, it’s necessary) to paper over the mediators that got you from A to Z with the smoothing forces of habit [hab].  But philosophy is different.

You can’t just read the last few pages of a philosophy book (a good philosophy book, anyway) and ‘receive’ the whole argument in summary form.  If you can then it’s not philosophy.  The philosophical thread is a transformative thread.  You come out the other side different to how you went in.  Words no longer mean quite the same things; the world doesn’t appear quite the same way.  And as much as you try to explain these new-found insights to your friends and loved ones it is extremely difficult because you have to retrace large parts of the thread of experience that brought you to this point.  There is no substitute for the journey.  Merely stating the conclusions and smiling at them will only provoke blank stares and mutterings of ‘what a load of bollocks.’

Clearly there are ‘hiatuses’ that have to be overcome and threads that have to be followed, threads that cannot be short-circuited (by double-click reasoning) without destroying the paths themselves.  In Plato’s dialogue our becoming-wise depended upon the proliferation of stages, of problems, of hiatuses that had to be overcome not any-old-how but through a reasoned solution.  That ‘reasoned solution’ is the pass of this mode (if, indeed, it is a mode).  What is it that allows the simultaneous creation and solving of problems?  What distinguishes this particular kind of problem resolution?  What are the conditions of felicity that validate (or invalidate) these little leaps, these small steps for philosophy-kind?  What beings are engendered by these threads?

If we can answer those questions then we have our philosophical mode, our [phi].

Taking this further, there is a relationship with law that needs to be explored.  Law, for Latour, is a 'quasi-subjectifying' mode because it allows the attribution of actions to actors; law is the archive of action.  Mysticism, as I described it above, arrives at wisdom by breaking those threads and disavowing authority (it must have a relationship to metamorphosis [met] too but I don’t really understand that mode yet).  Philosophy doesn’t break links but it doesn’t preserve them in the same way as law (more evidence of its modal independence).  The steps needn’t be retraced as such (thus it differs from both law and reference), however the steps cannot be bypassed.  The journey is transformative.  It is similar to the religious mode in this sense (although I believe now that the [rel] mode is most likely two different things conflated together).

The religious mode is another quasi-subjectifying mode (politics makes the trinity).  Religion is really the archetypical instantiation of the mode rather than anything that ‘owns’ it (although it is articulated in purely religious language, confusingly).  The religious experience (and this is only my best understanding at the present moment, it’s not gospel truth!) that ‘personifies’ is the experience of the living (i.e. immanent) and (this point is essential) personal God.  The Word is the conversionary revelation that ‘Jesus died for your sins’ – not humanity’s sins, not yours by implication or association but yours specifically.  It's the statement that God loves you, that you have a personal relationship with Him.   This is metaphysically ‘personifying’ along the lines of Lacan’s mirror stage.  It is being recognised as a self by others that constitutes our self; our sense of self, our personhood, does not precede this recognition, it is not its cause but its consequence.

So, that’s why Latour builds the mode of personification around religion – because encountering the absolute, God, is the most personifying experience possible.  It’s not that it is the only form of personifying experience (he also gives the example of a couple’s declaration of love) but it is the most personifying, the essence of personification.  There are (at least) two problems with this: (1) building the whole personification mode from religious materials obscures non-religious forms of personification and makes the whole apparatus damned confusing and (2) I just don’t buy the whole idea of an immanent God.  However, as a technical term within his overall system religion as in [rel] does make sense because religious experience is, in principle, personification par excellence.

So, returning to what I was talking about before that cognitive RAM dump (I’ve been meaning to write that down all morning), philosophy is similar to religion in that it is transformative but it is transformative in a very different way.  It does not personify.  It is not focused inwards, or at least it has no specific direction in that way.  It changes how we see ourselves, yes, but also the world.

Philosophy tinkers with the very basis of our perceptions, of the structures that form our world as sensible, as meaningful, as structured.  Is philosophy essentially a critique of 'ideology,' then?  Perhaps.  We’d have to redress what we mean by critique (and, indeed, ideology) working within this modal framework but that would seem to be the conclusion I am led to.

Has this rambling string of words been rambling along the paths of philosophy?  Have I been doing philosophy, here?  I’ve certainly been doing it in Deleuze’s sense of writing at (and pushing past) the very limits of my understanding!!  I definitely didn’t know what how this was going to end up when I started.  In that sense I have been transformed, yes.  And I think I've been reasonable.  In that sense this has been philosophy.

A concept of power without potentia

In a recent post I reflected on the significant limitations Latour's Deweyan political mode imparts upon his political philosophy.  I concluded by arguing that politics can only make sense given a concept of power.  Latour rejects power for largely philosophical reasons (and arguably sound reasons as far as they go).  Therefore, we need a concept of power that is compatible with the best of his thought but doesn't submit to the unnecessary limitations that he has placed upon himself.  The following constitutes an initial, schematic, impressionistic move to that end.  A first stream of thought that is hopefully headed in the right direction but has not yet located its target with any precision.

The problematic of power without substance.  To abstain from a concept that is essential for all political thinking because of philosophical quibbles is simply petty.  Power qua the potentia of a substance may be conceptually inadequate for our purposes but etymology is not an impassable barrier to conceptualisation.

Power as placement within an assemblage, a network with hierarchical or non-symmetrical properties.  P has power not because of any innate or bodily potential (his body plays a part, of course, but scarcely more than his aortic valve) but because of his placement within a vast assemblage of corridors, telephone wires, aides, secret service personnel, flags, lawns, bureaucrats, journalists, tanks, guns, bombs, etc.  All these things bear a relationship to P that is asymmetrical.  They are there for him in ways that he is not there for them (and vice versa, in fact).  His face is on practically every flat surface; a house of mirrors with him in the sweet spot. Those who buzz and flit around him are practically invisible by comparison.  He issues orders, they follow them with degrees or gradients of resistance, elements of disobedience and betrayal, yes, but far weaker, shallower gradients, far lesser betrayals than orders issued in the opposite direction!  (This particular Circle is massively lopsided.)

It isn’t difficult to think of power within networks (nor is it especially original).  Power is a property of actors arrayed in a highly particular fashion, a property of network structure – and structures only endure because of processes keeping them that way, yes, but given those processes power is real enough to be referred to by name.  A figuration, a synecdoche, yes – but that is true of all proper nouns.

Gradients of resistance.  The master issues orders and it is as though his words roll downhill, effortlessly.  The servant follows them dutifully without any real objection; his only immediate concern: trying to avoid being crushed under their seemingly massive weight!  The servant can make requests but only at great expense, with difficulty and only on special occasions.  It is as if he has to tenderly, gingerly roll his request up a hill and the master can disinterestedly swat it away, commanding, as he always does, the high ground.  With the slightest of disinclining gestures the request rolls back down again.  The servant is worse off than even Sisyphus, he cannot keep rolling his stone up again and again!  Next time the master’s response may not be as benign as a disinterested swat…

‘Ah, so the master ‘has power’ and the servant ‘does not.’’  Indeed, this is how it appears and it appears this way because this is how the network is structured.  And as long as it remains structured in this fashion then the dialectic keeps a’rollin’.  However, all networks are unstable – and structures are the least stable network-configuration of all!  All networks require institutions to keep them solid.  And this is especially true of tightly structured networks that must, if they are to remain self-respecting, appear to remain unchanged over decades, even centuries.

However, if they do hold (an empirical question) then the master really does ‘have power.’  The amount of ‘work’ he has to do in order to rebuff his servant’s meekest of requests is inconsiderable; the servant, contrariwise, has to work day and night just to meet his master’s approval and even then his words are so weak that they barely leave his mouth.  ‘Yes, sir.  Thankyou, sir.’  These are not his words even if they issue from his lips.  To speak his own words in his master’s presence is extremely risky – that is unless his master has granted him that privilege: ‘You, there! Say what’s on your mind, lad!’  A small foothold on the mountain.

The differential gradients are as real as anything – as long as the structure holds.  We can and should interrogate these structures to see how they work, however we needn’t and, indeed, cannot pick apart every structure every time.  Black boxes, habit – these are not the pudding-skin of false consciousness.  A habituated, instituted structure is a real structure with real effects.  It is churlish and unnecessary, therefore, to deny the existence of power.  Yes, it is a network-effect, yes it is unstable – but what isn’t?  You can’t tackle any explanandum without some explanans and sometimes that means taking network-effects for granted (they grant us this privilege when they stay stable, for whatever reason).  Indeed, this is the only way anything can ever happen.

If every network fell apart all at once there would be nothing because there is nothing beneath networks; no Nature, no God.  Nothing to pick up the pieces.  If the servant stopped to consider his situation, perturbed from the trajectories of obedience for whatever reason, he may come to rebel.  Habit keeps the relationship stable.  The very taken-for-grantedness is one thing that keeps the structure intact.  So, might we not want to untie those bonds for that very reason, to help unburden the poor servant?  Yes, we may very well do.  But (a) one cannot unburden every agent all at once (and not all want saving), (b) habit is only one thing keeping the structure stable, causing the servant to rebel could be very bad for him – he could be fired, thrown out by his unsolidarist former colleagues, blacklisted, even beaten or worse and with impunity because of the master has the ear of the local sheriff, etc. –  and (c) this is only an example, an archetypical (the archetypical) instantiation of a power relationship.  The point is to show that power gradients are real and that they can legitimately function as explanans if they relate to steadily structured network relations, the configuration of which establishes the differential work-gradients that we recognise as ‘power.’

The fact that these gradients depend on more than themselves only matters insofar as (1) we are morally or politically obligated to unpick these configurations in particular (in which case we particulate them and them alone) or (2) these structures aren’t sufficiently stable for our purposes and our explanation risks falling apart when they yield.  In any case, political power and networks are no more incompatible than electricity and the National Grid.

If kept stable the power is indeed there ‘in’ your wall socket.  If patriarchy remains intact then the man sat at the head of the table really 'has' power over his children and womenfolk.  If P succeeds in getting re-elected, avoiding impeachment and assassination, keeps his donors 'onside,' avoids being made a 'lame duck' (where he becomes P in all but name and is then confined to activities that belong purely to his office, i.e. bombing somewhere with a desert) then, yes, he is the most powerful man in the world.

Etymology be damned, a concept of power without potentia is entirely possible – and it is quite simply a requirement for any kind of politics (including [pol]) to make any sense whatsoever.

And before wise people object that none of this is new: I know.  That's my point.  Latour has abstained from 'power' for many, many years and his political philosophy is horrifically malnourished as a result.  My point is that there is simply no need for this.  The problematic is more a stream than a raging river and with some fairly light conceptual work the stream can be bridged.

Power is not a utility in short supply.  There is no danger of blackouts if we tap into the grid.

Theory must increase our ignorance of the world

The worst kind of theory is the theory that explains everything – it closes the box lid and declares playtime over.

The best kind of theory is the theory that allows us to gauge the staggering extent of our ignorance a little better – it leaves us a world ridden with holes, gaps, and fissures, ready for exploration.

The best theory should make us feel less knowing than we felt before. Not because it doesn’t tell us anything about the world but because it does, because it expands the world, because it reveals the world to be far larger than we could ever have imagined. Yes, good theory does tell us something about the world and that increases our ignorance.

People talk of science as though it were gradually filling in all the gaps, tarmacking every last pothole of existence - just a few more to go!  I can't speak for all science, of course, but one thing is for sure: science has increased our sense of ignorance at an exponentially faster rate than it has increased our knowledge. It was only in the 1920s that the existence of other galaxies was proven among astronomers. We went from one galaxy to hundreds of billions (at least) in a matter of decades! And yet we are told that we must think the absolute?! That if we fail to think being qua being then we are hemming ourselves in to our subject-worlds? That we either have the absolute or we die of claustrophobia?

No, it’s the opposite, again. Theory must put us on the path to exploration (and, yes, explanation) instead of wetly whispering in our ear 'don't ever go outside, you have all you need here with me.' It is Theory that is the shut-in.

Empiricism, abandoned; A concrete example of the politics mode; Return to power

One of the most frustrating things with Latour's abandonment of empiricism (in all but the most abstract, philosophical sense) in his works in the past decade (despite the fact that this is the period where he embraces the term most explicitly) is how much more difficult it makes it for him to explain his philosophy - and for us to understand it.  Even anecdotal examples of e.g. the political mode of speech would make it far easier to understand his argument.  Instead he ends up saying the same thing over and over, meandering endlessly, only reaching his conclusion after more or less exhausting his reader.

I'm not asking for 'straight talk,' unembellished, as-the-crow-flies, etc. - I'm just asking for talk that marshals the appropriate resources to get to where it's going without excessive and gratuitous meandering.  Be as direct as possible; no more, no less.  No author has his audience by right - he has to earn their attention.  In the past Latour has been an often brilliant writer but his loss of the empirical has coincided (and I don't think it's a coincidence) with the loss of a large measure of that wit, verve and directness.

Ed Miliband's speech at the Labour Party Conference this year was a good example of politics as Latour describes it (albeit not in its ideal, essential form).  Miliband had been dogged all summer by suggestions in the media that he was a 'weak leader,' that he didn't have the 'full support' of his party and that he couldn't 'connect' with voters.  This speech went a long way towards turning that around.  It contained enough 'red meat' to sate the party faithful in the room but also contained enough populist ideas to appeal to the 'floating voters' and he did enough to distance himself from the left wing of his party (and his family) to at least partially appease centrists/centre-rightists concerned that he might actually be 'red.'  He did a fairly good job of tying this constituencies together (at least according to those who decide the media narrative) and he secured his political position as a result.

The point in relation to Latour's argument is that Miliband did so through rhetoric.  He didn't stand up there in that agora and 'say what he really thinks'; he didn't stand and read a laundry list of the things he'd do, the policies he'd enact in 'straight,' quasi-scientific language.  He intimated, insinuated, explained, joked, grandstanded.  His speech was a compromise between of a vast number of different forces.  Every one of those forces had to be 'betrayed' in order to be represented.  Not one of those constituencies would have been overjoyed at the speech as a whole; not one of those listening would have written that same speech, worded in that same way; and, indeed, if Miliband were to 'say what he really thinks' then undoubtedly the speech would have been very different.

However, the ambiguous, bubbling, swerving 'curve' of his speech was sufficient to draw enough of his constituents along to reaffirm his political status as leader of the Labour Party.  He succeeded in sufficiently representing enough people that he could count on their obedience (in one form or another) again.  That's politics as Latour describes it.  It's intrinsically representative, intrinsically rhetorical.  And, as far as it goes, he has a point.  When people expect 'straight talk' from their politicians they not only expect too much, they misunderstand the politician's vocation.  The only the way a politician can represent and be obeyed is to be afforded the flexibility of rhetoric, the ability to shift positions, to 'betray.'

And with some work we could even extend this idea past its major hangups, past the cosy, cloying liberal democratic language that Latour clings to and see that a king, an autarch must also be sensitive to the needs and wishes of his subjects in order to command their obedience.  Indeed, he has the castles and the money and the power to have them beaten and enslaved but a brutal king runs the risk of rebellion - for he is one and they are many.  If he wants to keep his head on his shoulders he would do well to respect the Circle, too.  All of this is in Machiavelli (and perhaps Hobbes).  It is, in this sense, a realpolitik mode.  It is literally amoral (morality is another mode entirely [mor]).  And if we bear that in mind and strip out some of the Deweyan baggage - turning it from a political [pol] or democratic [dem] mode into a mode of political representation ([rep] is already taken!) - then it starts to look a lot healthier, more 'full cheeked' as Latour says in aime, somewhere.

So, as far as the argument goes it has some saving graces.  However, because it meanders so widely and proceeds so slowly and repetitively it really doesn't go very far.  'Tying constituencies together,' thus representing them, thus establishing their obedience to him is only one of the things that Miliband did well in that speech.  He also demonstrated his competence as a leader.  He reassured sceptical would-be allies that he was 'leadership material,' that, come the next General Election, he could take the platform next to David Cameron and give him 'a run for his money.'  In other words, he reassured unsettled supporters that he could win the election, that he was politically 'potent.'  That doesn't fit in with Latour's narrative at all.  'Alas, a mere detail of habit - the way that the Circle is gradually corrupted by repetition and institution.'  Perhaps, but that doesn't change the fact that there is far more to politics than the Circle.  And the rest is not a remainder, it is not mere detail.

Moreover, it's pretty much impossible, historically speaking, to make the Circle aboriginal of politics.  Dewey was extraordinarily naive on this point, believing that states formed around existing political publics and that the multiplicity of states could be explained by the manner in which 'issues' or 'problems' are spatially limited to particular areas (this argument is in The Public and its Problems).  How can a Frenchman of all people not understand that every polis and every state is born in blood and terror?  There's no territory without terror! - goodness knows, Latour loves etymology enough to know this.  The state doesn't gradually congeal and encrust around an already existing polis, so as to institute it, shield it.  Or, if it does, then this polis bears little resemblance to Lippmann's 'phantom.'

And how can someone who speaks of Gaia every other sentence not see Dewey's naivety vis-à-vis political multiplicity as the result of the spatial finitude of issues?  Okay, Latour would probably argue that Dewey could only have believed what he did in the period 'we thought we were Modern' and that it has since been demonstrated that our state system is inadequate to our Gaia-political moment because issues are now without territorial limit - that, henceforth, politics must be global...  Undoubtedly.  However, it's still astonishingly naive to think that institutions form around issues, that states follow representative politics rather than forming the conditions under which representative politics (with all its carefully, gradually and haphazardly designed limitations) can take place; that just because issues have 'gone global' that institutions not only must follow but will (because, taken at his word, that is what Dewey believed).  Buried within the pseudo-realpolitik (itself hidden within the language of liberal democracy) is the most extraordinary political idealism.

By way of conclusion, then, there are many problems with aime and with the politics mode in particular.  However, I think that it's very important to remember the considerable discursive generosity that Latour is offering with this project.  The 'collaborative' aspect is indeed managed and the website is still very much in development.  However, there are merits to these modes and to the modal system and Latour is not only inviting criticism, he is facilitating it (albeit not with his style of writing, which makes the whole endeavour much more difficult!).  And there are potential remedies.

The main thing that [pol] is lacking a concept of power.  Latour has rejected the very idea of power from the very beginning of his work, however I believe that we are now in a position - now that he has presented us with his magnum opus and effectively said 'have at it' - that a concept of power internal to and consistent with network ontologies can be developed.  That is a topic for a later post...

Latour's Modes, Value Judgements

Latour's modes do not describe their referent practices as they are actually practiced.  The modes describe their referent practices as they are practiced well.  In the case of religion that might mean that the religious mode has been more or less dead for centuries.  In the case of politics, well I wonder whether it has ever actually worked like that.  In the imagination of 'establishment liberal' John Dewey, perhaps, but nowhere else.

Latour's 'values derived from experience' are not, therefore, value neutral.  On the contrary, they derive from a definite value judgement in the normal, non-ironic sense of that term.  These values are inseparable from their author, at least initially.  He may try to pass his experience on to us - and this is right, this is good, why else would we read his books? - but we must not allow him to step away from his instaurations so easily.  He must be made to work and sweat to give them their own lives, their independent trajectories.  So far his achievements in that regard have been mixed.

The modes are most convincing when they are actually based on fieldwork.  The reference mode is an updated version of the famous chapter from Pandora's Hope on circulating reference.  I think that is still the best essay he's ever written and it'll probably be the one that is still read many years from now.  The technology mode is also if not entirely convincing then certainly compelling, especially if you've read his book Aramis.  The law mode isn't particularly well explained in aime but it makes sense in light of his book The Making of Law.  The problem that mode has is the sheer plurality of ways that law is practiced.  However, again, because it is actually derived from fieldwork it makes a strong case (so to speak!).

Where Latour goes awry is in the chapters that aren't based upon fieldwork but upon other philosophers.  The politics mode is, as I suggested above, lifted straight from John Dewey; in particular The Public and Its Problems.  To the best of my knowledge Latour has never done any empirical research on politics whatsoever.  His overlong and, considered alongside the rest of his corpus, rather superfluous Politics of Nature is entirely unblemished by any kind of experiential concreteness.  Dewey also seems to provide the basis of the religion mode with his A Common Faith.

Latour has many more philosophical influences besides Dewey, of course - Lippmann and James just to name the other early twentieth century Americans.  The reproduction chapter is a bit like reader's digest version of Whitehead; the whole 'Gaia' and 'end of Nature' thing is derived from Michel Serres' The Natural Contract; most of the concepts that date back to Irreductions are Nietzschean through and through.  And so on.

Of course, it isn't that doing philosophy is bad.  In fact Latour is a terrific bricoleur of philosophy.  One of the best.  The problem with these 'pure philosophy' modes is that they take the abstraction so very far away from practices but nevertheless maintain the same rhetorical insinuations, continually implying themselves to be concrete, hard-nosed and evidentialist.  These chapters radically conflate the strictly philosophical meaning of 'empiricism' and the other sense that indicates fieldwork and evidence.  They might be empiricist inasmuch as they operate on the basis of a concept of experience derived from James' radical empiricism but they have little to no empirical content in terms of fieldwork, case studies or even anecdotal examples.

These purely philosophical modes are much less convincing.  They cling to their author; he is the only thing holding them up.  The politics mode, for instance, is scarcely deserving of the name.  It is a theory of democratic politics, for a start; it should be called [dem].  It does nothing to describe politics as it is practiced, in fact it makes that more difficult.  It is a work of political philosophy that attempts to describe the processes through which the liberal democratic ideal could be realised.  It operates in a space of pure abstraction.

There's nothing wrong with that as such but it is squarely a matter of political philosophy not political science.  It is, therefore, more or less useless for any actual fieldwork.  In fact it is worse than useless because, operationalised, it would only distract fieldworkers from what is in front of them - the phenomena they should really be paying attention to.  In other words, it would sunder the most fundamental tenet of actor-network theory (and ethnomethodology), to follow the actors and learn from them.

Simon Jenkins, don't quit the day job

Richard Murphy tears into Simon Jenkins' article encouraging the further neoliberalisation of academic research.  Jenkins argues that:

If I were an academic I would stop pretending I was “investing in the nation’s future”. I would stop using such language. I would try to give students what they want for their money, usually a well-rounded education and a mild sense of obligation to society, and tuck my research into my spare time.

Murphy rightly points out that education can't be reduced to 'knowledge transfer'; it is also about teaching critical thinking skills.

But even if the purpose of education is ‘knowledge’ instead of critical thinking (which, I agree, is a mindset that could use a lesson in critical thought) then where the hell is this knowledge meant to come from? Is it magicked out of thin air? Maybe, as a columnist, Jenkins confuses knowledge with opinion. When he wants to write on a subject he’ll spend some time on Google, maybe with some books, and then, armed with that ‘knowledge,’ pontificate away.

But that isn’t knowledge. Knowledge isn’t something that can just be picked up from books (and especially not from the Internet!). Knowledge itself presupposes a whole critical process of production, critique and reproduction. It’s that entire infrastructure that is captured in the name ‘Research’ and that is the infrastructure that is under attack.

No more research, no more knowledge (of any quality, anyway).

All in all, Simon Jenkins needs to go back to school.

Conservatism, Capitalism and Fallen Man

Richard Murphy points to Aditya Chakrabortty's recent article on the loneliness created by neoliberal capitalism.

The flipside of economic individualism is loneliness.

It’s been a fundamental contradiction in conservative ideology for a very long time: the very capitalist system that they worship destroys the ways of life that they would have conserved. This is why the ‘fall of man’ narrative is always so appealing to conservatives – bad people do bad things because they’re bad (i.e. for no rational reason) and the only solution to their evil and fecklessness is admonishment and discipline. There’s no social or political prelude to bad people doing bad things, there’s no causality. There’s just a rot, a pox that’s somehow ‘in their bones’ – particular to them as individuals – and needs to be beaten out of them. (See the response to the London riots, for example.)

The whole ideology is really one big exercise in having their cake and eating it too – fueling a system that is fundamentally socially transformational and expecting the same old ‘family values’ to persevere unchanged. It’s as violent as it is irrational.

Religious transcendence: Bug or Feature?; Secular [REL]?; [REL] is an amalgam?

I just finished reading chapter 11 of An Inquiry into Modes of Existence.  Wow, it was hard work!  (And I started his book Rejoicing today too - no rest for the wicked...)  There's a huge amount to say about the chapter but I think the main thing to ask is this: is religious transcendence a bug or a feature?  That's what it comes down to.

Latour insists that it is the former, that what religion (or Christian religion, anyway) is 'really about' is the immanent process of proselytisation, of converting others by translating the Good News, thus bringing them closer together and thus making them into 'persons.'  This process is intrinsically transformational both in terms of the words used and the subjects involved.  If either words or subjects fail to be transformed then REL atrophies and its institution is gradually lured into 'belief in belief' - the apparently crazy supposition that religion is a set of tenets that its believers 'hold' (and hold still, static); referential beliefs about how reality is (i.e. 'there is a God; homosexuality is a sin', etc.); doxa qua ontology.  The idea that prior to the scientific revolution the declarations of plump religious authority figures were all people had as reference to the far away (and that reference wasn't superimposed on something else as a category mistake but was simply outcompeted by a far better model) isn't considered.

The suggestion is that Jesus was put on the Earth to do this work (or kick start it) and at some unspecified point in the past (presumably beginning from some time shortly after the year 0 and extending an unknown number of years) there was a Golden Age where this is what the institution set up to nourish this value - namely, the Church - did: proselytise, immanently and without reference or belief.  I'm not an expert on the history - I'm not even really an amateur on the subject - but this strikes me as largely bullshit.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

Here's the thing: Latour's philosophical nemesis, the godfather of the Moderns died a full four centuries before Jesus was even born.  Yes, Socrates.  It seems to me that he pretty much is 'Double Click' [DC].  Moreover, the Church has had strong Platonic influences from its very beginning.  So when was this age when the values were nourished and the oh so obviously false allure of transcendence was kept at arms' length?  This 'empiricist' philosophy has no answers.

The other major issue is the fact that, taken at an analytical level, at the level of technicalities, the institutions of religion do not seem to 'own' the REL mode.  A couple's assurances of love constitute 'personification' in a sense that Latour articulates and then uses to define the REL trajectory - acts of REL personify similarly; REL is love writ large is the suggestion (but only that).

So, on that level it seems perfectly possible that while religion may typify REL - that is, Christian proselytisation may be the archetypical, classic instantiation of the mode - it does not own it; that secular religious talk, secular personification is possible.  However, the entirety of the rest of the argument utterly buries this possibility.  The whole mode is constructed out of purely Christian (and largely Catholic) words and concepts (even though, allegedly, REL must be reproduced always using new words! it must never stay the same!...).  No further mention of any kind of REL outside of religion is given.  By the end the idea seems entirely implausible.

There are two possibilities: either (a) secular REL exists or (b) it doesn't.  If (a) then why not mention it?  Why build the entire mode out of one institution's iteration of it (and an institution that is admitted to have done a very bad job of looking after it over the years).  That would be a monumental failure of diplomacy.  But then if it's (b) then there are two further possibilities; either (1) the non-religious, since they don't participate in the rituals, don't get to be people, or (2) the non-religious are personified by REL without knowing it, somehow.  The latter is seemingly impossible for any Latourian metaphysic; the former is either a tremendous insult to the non-religious or becoming a 'person' isn't all that important after all.

None of those options seem like especially good ones.  Are some humans deprived of personhood?  And if so how come nobody noticed until now?  Does it even matter?  And if not why take up such a large chunk of my Sunday making me read all about it?  (Why sum up the chapters on REP and REF so wonderfully succinctly and then spend oh so many pages saying basically the same things over and over again on the subject of religion?  Am I meant to be converted out of sheer boredom?  'Yes, please, make it stop, I'll accept Jesus into my heart just stop talking!')  Maybe I'm personified because I was Christened (against my will, naturally) as a small child.  However, I have, in adulthood, distanced myself from all churches as far as possible (I am still regularly accosted by Jehovah's Witnesses in the street but that's seemingly unavoidable), so is personhood a lasting quality?  If so, how?  Nothing else is.  Am I personified by love?  Rather a kitsch idea.  And there are certainly times where my personhood would have scattered like so much dust in the wind were that the case...  I'm sure that I'm not alone in that (at least).  Are orphans who have not experienced romantic or familial love not people?  Certainly they often suffer from self-esteem issues and have difficulty forming relationships but that's not the same thing. I'm clutching at straws, I know, but that's all I'm left with.

All in all, a complete mess.

Regardless of the fact that I wildly disagree with most of it there is far too much packed in to one mode.  What has personification (as Latour describes it) got to do with the eternal?  What has any of that got to do with 'accessing what is close at hand' as opposed to 'far away'?  For a chapter that set out to reach some conclusions that a '7 year old' could understand it must surely be considered a failure (or I'm not as clever as I think I am - that's always a possibility).

It seems to me that REL is an amalgam.  It's a poorly conceived mode.  It seems to come more from wish fulfilment than from any ontological, empirical necessity.  In fact it has to fight bitterly against experience just to get a foot in the door.

I suppose we could say that this chapter isn't really 'for' me - it's for the religious, it's addressed to their needs, their values, their insecurities - but then it isn't much of a 'diplomatic' effort, is it?  I'd quite like to be a person, please.  So I really have to pay attention to this mode, whether I like it or not.

There's one good thing I can think to say about this chapter: I like the idea that there may be values within religion as it was practiced before the scientific revolution that have been lost and not replaced in contemporary, secular society.  That idea is excellent.  However, this articulation of it is terrible.

Yes, I'm a 'tough sell,' for sure.  I can't even begin to understand what the purpose of religion without transcendence is.  It's a deflated balloon, without form or content.  Take away the promise of Transcendence and Truth (and with that Power and Authority) and the churches will empty and fall into disrepair in a matter of weeks.  They'll revert to what they currently are in most British towns and cities: places for Scout troops to meet, yoga lessons to take place and homeless people to sleep.  Oh, and weddings.  A provider of draughty, crumbling local infrastructure.  The Bible would be just another work of literature.

Religious transcendence: it's not a bug, it's a feature.  It's the only reason anyone's ever heard of a Jesus of Nazareth.

Becoming sensitive to things, 'outside' and 'inside' perspectives

In the comments on a previous post I wrote:

[...] We can't step outside our senses and see things 'as they really are' but we can increase our sensitivities and the number of pathways that lead from them. This can lead to qualitatively improved knowledge as well as superior plurality in a political sense. [...] we need to be so sensitive to nuances in our subject matter.

I'm asked:

how does an "increase our sensitivities" make "us more uncertain, more hesitant as to our next step...makes us a little bit more 'lost' in our moment"?

Good question.  Inasmuch as I understand myself, I think the two things - sensitivity and lostness - come together.  Perhaps 'lost' is overstating it.  Given a choice we become temporarily lost, momentarily lost, we're hesitant because a choice has to be made.  We're lost in the sense that things become regularly unfamiliar and there's a pause, a hiatus before we can make them familiar again, if that makes sense.  It's a matter of making our experiences more regularly, rhythmically problematic.

If one has only one metaphysic, one sensitivity, one mode, one discursive frame (or whatever) to choose from (e.g. an ontology of actor-networks) and if that apparatus covers all cases (which, presumably, it must) then there's never a choice to be made as to which apparatus to apply.  There's only one.  Therefore the question of the fitness or unfitness of the apparatus is unlikely to arise - (a) because it's such a broad church that it can accommodate everything pretty much by default and (b) because one becomes unaccustomed to even asking that kind of question.

Contrariwise, if there's more than one then a choice must be made every time: which tool is right for the job?  The fitness/unfitness of the apparatus becomes a regularly worked problem.  The more the choices one has the more difficult the decision becomes because a greater plurality of qualities and nuances present themselves and have to be accounted for before deliberation is closed.  The more these qualities are portioned out and distinguished in multiple frames the more likely they are to clash and contrast with each other when applied to a particular case; thus, the more likely one is to notice the unique specificities of the case (and the inadequacies of the frame) if they do not fit with one's presuppositions (and if they do fit - great!).

Although, having said all of that, the rationalist imposition of a 'frame' or 'mode' from the outside is certainly a limited metaphor and I'm not totally convinced of my own words.  Here's another attempt to make basically the same point - through Plato, believe it or not.  That post reads much more like an anthropologist's method: immersion in a culture, gradually figuring out the contours by slow acculturation.  But the goal is the same: becoming sensitive to a wider range of nuances in the world.

Hartour; Caputo as the proverbial hammer man

Terence Blake has more on Harman on Caputo.  He asks: does Caputo out-Latour Harman?  The answer?  Yes and no.

I'd turn it around a bit and go further.  Harman more or less attempts to out-Latour Latour himself - see the Prince and the Wolf, for example.  When Latour expresses bafflement at Harman's iteration of his ideas Harman is entirely unperturbed.  In that sense isn't Harman's Latour - let's call that Hartour - a very Modern (or perhaps postmodern, small difference) version of those ideas?  The objections of the author qua informant (or author qua authority in the postmodern version) are largely without consequence.  Objections are not the kind of 'objects' that object oriented philosophy is sensitive to (c.f. Latour and his debt to Garfinkel and ethnomethodology).

I'd have no problem whatsoever with Hartour if Harman just admitted that it's his own particular translation/deformation of Latour's work and that it serves as a foil to the development of his own philosophy - which is what the Prince of Networks is all about, the first half sets up Hartour as both a stepping stone and a straw man (a stepping man? a straw stone?) to be ascended and then overturned.  In and of itself there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever.  But Prince of Networks is written and promoted like its an authentic account of the corpus itself, like a quasi-textbook, which is shameless.

On the subject of Caputo, I think that he is certainly right that Latour is not as different from Derrida as he'd like to think ("anxiety of influence", yes; I'd also say 'Oedipal reflex', something that most philosophers are guilty of!), however as philosophical predecessors go I honestly don't think Derrida would crack the top ten (Latour's a well read chap and a bricoleur of the highest quality).  To suggest that Latour's philosophy is basically just Derrida in different words is pretty much BS.  In fact isn't it intrinsic to Latour's philosophy from the very beginning that nothing is contained in anything else in potentia?  From irreductions (as I recall it): 'Nothing is, by itself reducible or irreducible to anything else.  To say something is to say it in other words, that is to translate.'  Even if Caputo was right Latour still needed to do that work of translation.  It can't have been done for him, not in Latour's own terms, anyway.

Of course, Caputo is the proverbial man with a hammer: to him everything looks like a Derrida!  Perhaps the really unacknowledgeable trauma for Caputo is that Derrida wasn't a supremely original ubermenschen either.  Their ideas are similar in some ways but that may have less to do with Latour's massive debt to Derrida than the fact that they both read Nietzsche.

Non-full presence: or, Thank goodness for our liquid world

Some reckon the impossibility of full presence to be a limitation, a tragedy or something to be buried lest the commonfolk find out.  Others (not as dissimilar to the first crowd as they would like) think its absence to be a void towards which we are drawn and that this drawnness is a good thing - the best thing - that the void holds the highest virtues; it is that at which we gaze, necks craned upwards, expectant.  Because of this latter prejudice, no less unbelievable than the former, everything good becomes messianic and we all twiddle our thumbs, awestruck, doing as we're told and waiting...  Or we would if we were really listening.  It's good that we nod at this philosophy and that it travels no deeper into our being than our neck muscles.

No, the absence of full presence is a good thing but not because we are drawn towards the void.  There is a void but it serves a completely different purpose.  Despite the ubiquity of non-full presence - well, that's just it, isn't it?  Presence is ubiquitous.  Were it ever full we wouldn't be able to move.  We do not want for presence, we are swimming in it.  It is liquid.  That is its virtue and its virtuality.  Full presence would be strictly solid, tighter than a diamond.  We would be crushed under its infinite mass, instantly.

Thank goodness that there is enough warmth in our world to keep the absolute away.  And thank goodness that there is enough coolness in our world that it doesn't flee itself, lurching into gas form, scattering particular traces so far apart that they could never be connected again (not by any mortal anyway).  Thank goodness for our liquid world, our world just the right distance from the sun; a world that the slightest orbital perturbation could either freeze or enfurnace.  Thank goodness that absolute presence not only is not here but is not and that its not being leaves not a vacuum, a void, but a liquid, a semi-presence.  Just the right amount of presence for currents to circulate.

Yes, the fact that presence is always also elsewhere and other and beyond and strange and intangible is a good thing but precisely because we are not drawn to it like moths to a flame (we don't need more heat, not that much anyway).  We are drawn from present to present, in the present - concurrently.  Even the 'Absolute' is a presence within the present.  Even the regulative ideals of Truth and Justice are only the following of one present to another, not the stalking of the absolutely absent presence.  What use would such ideals be if their targets were wholly elsewhere or wholly nowhere?  Elsewhere, over the horizon, yes, but not in some other dimension.  Never fully realisable, no, but found in crumb-form, partially assemblable if the collector is fastidious and obsessive enough - that is, if she puts her gloriously opposable thumbs to better use than mere twiddling...

The Duplicity of Diplo-macy: a Genealogy

Diplomats mediate but they are not neutral.  They are ambassadors, representatives 'charged' (in both senses of that word) with the power of their sovereigns.  They are not mere messengers, either; they represent the 'interests' of their dispatcher; they are mediators, not intermediaries.  Diplomats operate in a condition of anarchy - that is, there is no higher power to which they can appeal; they must operate only on the powers with which they have been charged, negotiating only the issues that are 'on the table,' according to the protocols that they have inherited.

The absence of a 'higher power' is why Latour adopts diplomats as the ideal subjects of his political 'negotiations.'  In lieu of a higher, cosmic force along the lines of God or Nature there is no 'trump card' for ontological discussions.  No one can say 'God willed it, thus it is so' or 'but that is just how Nature is, no argument.'  The philosopher qua diplomat has to work with her opponent so as to achieve not unity or unanimity but a settlement, peace.

However, Latour's 'diplomat' is quite a gaunt, ahistorical creature.  There is much more to the diplomat than the simple fact of 'negotiating in the absence of a higher sovereign.'  If this concept is to be taken seriously then it should be investigated much more closely - and broadly.

To that end, the following is an extract from my MSc thesis that I wrote several years ago:

The origin [of the word diplomacy] is usually credited to Edmund Burke who in 1796, spoke of the ‘diplomatic body,’ and used “‘diplomacy’ to mean skill ... in the conduct of international intercourse and negotiations.” In seventeenth-century Italy, diplomatic agents had become known as “orators” and in most of Europe “ambassadors were still legati”. To use ‘diplomacy’ or ‘diplomat’ to refer to events of the seventeenth-century is, therefore, an anachronism, however, diplomacy was not “immaculately conceived in the seventeenth, eighteenth, or any other century” – there are traces of it throughout history. The Ancient Greeks, for instance, engaged in the sending of ambassadors and heralds; however (as with ‘representation’) they had “no single term that conveyed the themes of diplomacy”, nor any equivalent without “supplementary political associations and meanings”. Nevertheless, the word does have Ancient Greek roots. 

The diplo- in ‘diplo-macy’ derives from “the ancient Greek verb diploun (to double), and from the Greek noun diploma” (“diplo = folded in two + suffix ma = object”). ‘Diplomas’ were documents “written on parchment and ... papyrus”, “handed over to heralds [and] carried as evidence of their status and authority.” The word diploma later “came to mean a letter of recommendation,” a passport or “an order enabling a traveller to use the public post.” As diplomas increased in quantity and importance amidst the fractured jurisdictions of the Middle Ages, the accumulation, organisation and authentication of these documents became an imperative for any self-respecting polity. 

"[C]hanceries were set up to handle ‘diplomatic’ affairs. Indeed, in the early years of the Holy Roman Empire, and particularly in the Empire of the Ottos, control of the disposition of diplomas was tantamount to control of the Empire."

The -macy in ‘diplo-macy’ derives, according to Costas Constantinou, from the ceremonial staff or mace carried by the heralds and messengers of the Carolingian dynasty (751–987). These items, which were of symbolic rather than defensive utility, authorised “the agent as an official medium”. These items were presented to messengers (known as ‘missi’) at court ceremonies. Of additional etymological significance is that ‘missus’ was “the name for the royal procurator” of this period, while ‘mace’ also denoted “the scepter of sovereignty”. 

During the seventeenth century, ‘diploma’ became associated with ‘diplomatica’ [the science of authenticating documents], a change that “appears to have started with the charging of ... Daniel Van Papenbroeck, with the examination of ancient monastic diplomas in order to determine their authenticity”, the falsity of which “had been suspected since medieval times.” Papenbroeck “claimed that almost all Merovingian diplomas and other medieval documents were forgeries”. Devastating as these claims were to the archival wealth of his order (not to mention the reputation and integrity of the entire system of political communication of the time), the Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon “worked silently for six years” to refute Papenbroeck’s criticisms. He studied “the form, not the content, of old diplomas” and his forceful critique compelled even Papenbroeck to accept his methods and conclusions. Mabillion’s masterwork ‘De re diplomatica’, first published in 1681, established a new science called ‘diplomatic’ or ‘diplomatics’, which Mabillon defined as: 

"[C]ertain and accurate terms and rules by which authentic instruments can be distinguished from spurious, and certain and genuine ones from uncertain and suspect ones." 

His techniques and his definition remain in use to this day. 

In 1693, Gottfried Leibniz published Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus, a collection “of treaties and other official documents” which attributed “to the adjective diplomatic the meaning of something related to international relations.” Such activities were institutionalised across Europe: shortly after his appointment as English historiographer royal in 1693, Thomas Rymer was directed to compile and “publish all records of alliances and other transactions in which England was concerned with foreign powers from 1101 to the time of publication”. This became the Foedera (“treaties”). 

As Nicolson notes, it was through these works of accumulation and authentication “that the usages of diplomacy as a science based upon precedent and experience came to be established”.  The association of ‘diplomatic’ with the study of archives rather than inter-sovereign representation persisted until relatively recently.  Not until Burke’s accreditation with the origin of the term after 1796 did the meaning shift decisively. However, by the late seventeenth century, the “link of the diplomatic with diplomas and handwriting was increasingly overshadowed by the newly established political theme”  as attention was gradually diverted “away from the form or style of the diploma- document,”  towards “what it actually represented in international relations.”  The meaning of ‘diplomacy’ crossed over from the ‘diplomatic’ verification of documents to the ‘diplomatic’ system of negotiation and communication. 

So goes the story of the word, but what of the practice? 

"Many aspects of the diplomatic organisation of western and central Europe as it existed by the beginning of the Seventeenth century continued with little essential change down to the French Revolution and indeed beyond." 

Change was slow, however diplomacy gradually became more institutionalised in the late seventeenth-century.  According to Mattingly, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, foreign affairs remained in a state of confusion due to the nepotism of feudalism, the multiple actors assigned to each task and the multiple tasks assigned to each actor.  “Everywhere outside of Italy political relationships ... were still personal” and diplomatic organisation, just like the rest of government “was, in 1600 as in 1500, still just the king’s household and his retinue.”  France under Richelieu was foremost among the reformers. In 1626, Richelieu amalgamated the organisation of foreign relations “within the Ministry of External Affairs, over which he himself maintained constant supervision. He thereby secured that the word of command in foreign affairs should be delivered by a single voice only”.  By the end of the century, diplomatic representation had lost “any overtones of religiosity”  and become the prerogative of the sovereign alone.  In this way, the development of diplomacy matches that of political representation as over the century the “undergrowth of quasi- diplomacy”  was cast aside as absolutism centralised political authority within each distinct territory. It is unlikely to be coincidental that “from the advent of Richelieu to power in 1616 until the Revolution more than a hundred and sixty years later, the diplomatic method of France became the model for all of Europe”. 

For an ambassador in the seventeenth-century, “the safeguarding ... of the honour and standing of the monarch” continued to be “the most fundamental of his duties”.  For Mattingly, such duties were characterised by “pointless squabbling”, perceived insults and dangerous symbolic manoeuvres from which physical violence, even war, followed.  However, as Der Derian notes: 

"[I]t is as much the “petty” rituals and ceremonies of power as it is the “great” events of power politics or the famous developments of international law which define diplomacy[.] " 

Particularly as we are interested in the representative function of ambassadors, the ceremonial aspect of their act is of the utmost significance. The seventeenth-century witnessed an increase in the importance, complexity and (most importantly) the sense of representativeness of ceremony. In Italy “symbolic courtesies” and “emphasis on the representative character of the ambassador’s office”  had been of the utmost importance since the 1470s, though it was ahead of its time. By the early 1600s in the rest of Europe "ambassadors began to behave as if injury to their master’s subjects was an insult to his crown, and to intervene to protect their fellow countrymen without waiting for specific instructions to do so."  The role of the ambassador became such that “in the gesture of obedience or condolence or congratulation which the ambassador performed, he acted as if in the person of his prince.”  Ambassadors, therefore, became less authorised communicators and more authorised representatives (as we would understand such today). 

The reasons for this change are too complex to go into, however it is undisputed that, to a large extent, the “emergence of Western diplomacy was driven by the disastrous desolation caused by the Thirty Years’ War“.  The drive to end this war (or, more accurately, these wars) led to the development of large scale conference diplomacy. “The first of these congresses were the linked meetings held at Münster and Osnabrück (1643-8) which resulted in the Peace of Westphalia.”  Although they were novel in format, norms of the time prevailed in the details as, despite their close proximity, the delegations negotiated mostly through correspondence.  The mode of communication thus remained largely textual, paralleling the continued importance of diplomas at this time, although increased physical proximity gradually reduced this dependence. 

Conclusion

Three principle practical developments have been outlined: 

1)  Gradual bureaucratisation and centralisation; 

2)  Increasing ‘representativeness’ of ambassadors in ceremonial and administrative functions; 

3)  Development of conference diplomacy. 

These are complemented by the etymological development of ‘diplo-macy’, both halves of which are related to the authorisation of political communication and the symbolic establishment of sovereign right. The word evolved from its roots in the collection and collation of treaties (e.g. Leibniz, Rymer) and the authentication of such documents (e.g. Mabillon) to the actual engagement with representation and negotiation. 

It took the developments of early modernity to make the diplomat ‘representative’ as we understand that term now. While ambassadors had, in a sense, always embodied the messages of their employers, during this period they began to act on the sovereign’s behalf and eventually would act on the nation-state’s behalf as sovereignty was alienated from the sovereign body. Although, diplomacy in the seventeenth century “was still far from modern”,  there was a shift in the kind of representation practiced – from carrying the voice of another human to ventriloquising that which has none [the abstract sovereign will of Hobbes' Leviathan]...

Here's the pdf version with references, if anyone's interested.  I analysed four concepts in total: representation, diplomacy, public and propaganda, all of which are included in the pdf.  However, I've not included the full thesis because, on the whole, it wasn't very good!

However, this mini-history of diplomacy is very informative for Latour's iteration of the concept.

Firstly, diplomacy as a 'duplicitous' enterprise is inherent in the word itself.  There is a duplicity to the diplomat that is actually baked into the etymology and genealogy of the word itself.  This links into Latour's [POL] mode and its embracing of 'crooked talk.'  It seems to me that his whole book is written in a somewhat duplicitous, diplomatic, political way - particularly with regard to his self-professed empiricism and his confusing definitions of 'the Moderns.'  His diplomatic project is already in motion.

Secondly, and as I argued at the beginning of this post, the diplomat of history is very much a representative, a mediator - not an adjudicator.  A diplomat's vocation is compromise, yes, but only inasmuch as it is necessary to achieve their goals.  There are no giveaways, no freebies in diplomacy (if there ever are this is to achieve something, to build trust and respect).  There is no rationality more instrumental than that of a diplomat.  Acknowledging this fact should help remove the sheen of pacificity and 'beautiful soul-ness' that Latour is wont to impress upon his narrative.  As I've argued previously, Latour's [POL] mode has a very strong undercurrent of realpolitik despite the somewhat cosy, collegial, liberal democratic style with which he expresses it.

Thirdly, the emergence of diplomacy as we understand it today is inextricable from the emergence of the modern state, scientific rationality and the partitioning of religion from both these domains - in other words, diplomacy is part and parcel of the emergence of the Moderns.  This acknowledgement poses numerous problems.  If diplomacy is a Modern institution then how can it be taken so straightforwardly to be the solution to the Modern predicament?  Perhaps diplomacy is the one Modern institution that recognises the unavoidability of composition - that would seem to be the point.  However, diplomacy requires a plurality of diplomats to represent views from multiple sides, not just one.  If diplomacy is a Modern institution then how can non-Modern diplomats exist?  Without a truly heterogeneous multiplicity of diplomatic representatives what use is the whole concept?

And where is the emergence of the State (and, correspondingly, modern international relations) in Latour's narrative?  There can be no diplomacy between equals in Europe - i.e. no diplomacy conducted in the absence of a higher power - until the Holy Roman Empire is defunct and political power is institutionalised on a purely (or largely) territorial basis.  Latour mentions the state in aime but certainly doesn't acknowledge its absolutely pivotal place in this story, nor does he admit that modern diplomacy depends upon the existence of the modern state and states-system - and therefore diplomacy depends upon this geopolitical settlement, too.

While this none of this deals a deathblow to Latour's iteration of diplomacy by any means it certainly shows that it cannot be taken to be a simple, obvious concept that can be asserted without commentary.

Fourth, diplomacy is only possible given the verifiability of representatives.  The entire pre-modern genesis of the word and practice involves the symbolic and material validation of political representation and a whole new science had to be invented in order to validate the Benedictine archives (a fascinating entanglement of modes, by the way!).  How are the diplomatic spokespersons of the Moderns and their Others (if the latter even exist) to be validated as representative of those they claim to speak for?

Fifth, and enlarging on the last point, many argue that diplomacy is only possible given a skein of established, mutually accepted rules - in the presence of what international relations scholars call 'international society.'  This is deeply problematic for Latour because it means that diplomacy presupposes an existing social arrangement.  I'll say more about that in a future post.

Lastly, it seems to me that one can, in light of this history, say that Latour is attempting, on an abstract level, to imitate the genesis of diplomacy-proper and develop a kind of ontological 'conference diplomacy.'  Recall that conference diplomacy emerged out of the Thirty Years War - the war out of which Europe emerged Modern!!  Is Latour's whole bombastic, epochal scenography not built around claim that we are on the cusp, metaphysically speaking at least, of another emergence, this time out of the Modern?  And is this whole participatory Modes project not his attempt to piece together a Münster or Osnabrück of his own?

What ceremonies, what 'petty rituals,' what pomp and circumstance are necessary to make this assembly function?  As Der Derian argues, it is precisely the arbitrary emptiness of these rituals that makes them valuable - they form a kind of social compact between the participants that commits nobody to anything besides negotiation; a social bond but the bare minimum of one.  Perhaps this emptiness is the way out of the impasses that I identified above - a way of joining Modern and non-Modern in negotiation despite their lack of common ground.  So far the aime project's discourse has been throughly rational, thoroughly scholarly - every word so full of meaning!  Evidently, such full blooded rationalism (for that is what it is) alone will not do.

Diplomacy is built upon an elaborate yet empty edifice of rituals and pleasantries.  Reason alone cannot engender diplomacy.