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Unruly Objects: The Consequences of Reflexivity – Scott Lash

‘In place of the old social structures of the manufacturing order is a configuration of flows: flows of signs, media, migrants, technology and money. To a great extent these flows are comprised of objects, though these are themselves often in the form of information and communications. This suggests a certain ‘disinformation’ involved in the information society, that we have a disinformed information society. The contradiction here suggests itself as a sequence of unintended consequences. That is, that an increasingly information-rich and intelligent production process has as its consequences such anti-knowledge effects as information overload, ephemerality, ‘dumbing down’ and the like.’

‘In reflective judgement it is impossible to subsume the object under a concept for the subject. Aesthetic judgements are for Kant a matter of reflective judgement. Here the subject is no longer able to subsume the object under a concept or a pre-given rule. Subjectivity must instead find the rule. Here, the object as a thing-in-itself is never grasped directly, it becomes inaccessible to the subject. It is instead only perceived as if through a glass, darkly, via ‘empirical’ experience with nature, art, or other cultural objects. What Kant is saying is that in enlightment the object tend to more or less escape from the grasp of the subject. It tends to take on a greater or lesser autonomy, not of the subject but of the object.’

Enlightment as more than just coming to grips with the anarchy of the object, enlightment as recognition of the past, of tradition, of memory, of history of the political and the good.

Latour understands modernity in terms of what he calls a ‘constitution’ with three central ‘guarantees’. The first is that nature or the object is ‘transcendent’, that is, it is something we don’t construct, but discover. The second is to understand society (the subject, the state) as immanent. That is, citizens are free to construct themselves and society (and the state) as it were, ‘artificially’. And the third is to assure this separation of powers. This modern dualism, he argues, has always been a myth. Nature (i.e. things, technologies) has always also been immanent, through its construction by communities of scientists, but most importantly through its mobilizations by societies and states. Societies and states have enrolled – as they modernize- ever nmore non-humans. Societies for their part are not just immanent but also transcendent.

What is called modernity, which Latour dates back to the 18th century, has carried out a work of purification denying the existence of impure quasi objects and quasi-subjects and purifying them into the dual poles of society (culture) and nature, of subject and object.