Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 18:11:51 +0100
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com>
Subject: [Fwd: Re : deleuze latour and serres]


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This from the d&g list see the glossary quotes below...

steve

Paul Bains wrote:

>
> You say that you're writing an article on 'Les Politiques de la Nature [PN]
> and the refoundation of ecology' and would like some further clarification
> on Latour's use of the Whiteheadian inspired concepts of events and
> propositions.
>
> >Etant en train d'crire un article sur " politiques de la nature  et la
> >refondation de l'cologie "  je suis trs intress par vos propos " they
> >provide fascinating tools  for  "political ecology" or Cosmopolitics  that
> >really could have consequences on the sreet "  j'aimerai que vous les
> >explicitiez un peu plus notamment concernant les conceppts de Whitehead
> >d'"'vnements" et de "propositions".
>
> I can't spend much time on this now (I have a serious time disease) but I
> think the terms are quite well presented in PN, altho perhaps more clearly
> in Pandora's Hope.
>
> I quote from the Glossary in Pandora:
>
> 'Event: A term borrowed from Whitehead to replace the notion of discovery
> and its very implausible philosophy of history (in which the object remains
> immobile while the human historicity of the discoverers receives all the
> attention). Defining an experiment as an event has consequences for the
> historicity* of all the ingredients, including nonhumans, that are the
> circumstances of that experiment (see concrescence).
>
> 'Concrescence" A term employed by Whitehead to designate an event without
> using the Kantian idiom of the phenomenon*. Concrescence is not an act of
> knowledge applying human categories to indifferent stuff out there but a
> modification of all the components or circumstances of the event.'
>
> 'Historicity: A term borrowed from the history of philosophy to refer not
> just to the passage of time - 1999 after 1998 - but to the fact that
> something happens in time, that history  not only passes but transforms,
> that it is not only made of dates but events*,....
>
> 'Proposition: I do not use the term in the epistemological sense of a
> sentence that is judged to be true or false  (for this I reserve the word
> "statement") but in the ontological sense of what an actor offers to other
> actors. The claim is that the price of gaining analytical clarity - words
> severed from world and then reconnected by reference and judgement - is
> greater and produces, in the end, more obscurity than granting entities the
> capacity to connect to one another through events. The ontological meaning
> of the word has been elaborated by Whitehead.'
>
> 'Propositions are not statements or things, or an sort of intermediary
> between the two. They are, first of all, actants*. Pasteur, the lactic acid
> ferment, the laboratory are all propositions. What distinguishes
> propositions from one anothe is not a _single_ vertical abyss between words
> and the world but the _many_ differences btween them, without anyone
> knowing _in advance_ if these differences are big or small, provisional or
> definitive, reducible or irreducible. This is precisely what word
> "pro-positions" suggests. They are not positions, things, substances, or
> essences pertaining to a nature* made up of mute objects facing a talkative
> human mind, but _occasions_ given to different entities to modify their
> definitions over the course of an event...'(Pandora's Hope, 141)
>
> Hope this helps a little. All I wanted to suggest was that such an approach
> or conceptual toolkit provides what Latour sometimes calls a 'realistic
> realism' that embraces relations or 'articulations' (the more articulated
> the better). Does this ring a bell?
> It could 'make a difference' because these concepts are 'more realistic' or
> 'useful' than the polemical positions of 'subject' and 'object' or
> nature/culture.
> Latour's creative use of Whitehead (et al) is accessible and applicable 'on
> the street'. In other words it can be easily taken up by 'non-philosophers'
> who 'have a philosophical becoming all the more for not being philosophers'
> (roughly what Deleuze said of Guattari).
> The ecology movement in all its shades could only benefit from an encounter
> with these concepts (which are ontological experiences!).
>
> 'The word "collective" itself at last finds its meaning: it is that which
> _collects us all_ in the cosmopolitics envisaged by Isabelle Stengers.'
>
> Not two powers, nature and politics, but _two different task in the same
> collective_.
> 1. How many humans and nonhumans are to be taken into account?
> 2. Are you ready, and at the price of what sacrifice, to live the good life
> together?
> Latour stresses that this question used to be asked for _humans only_
> without the nonhumans that make them up. (Pandora's Hope, p.297).
>
> J'espere que ca t'aides un peu - il faut que je me casse.....
>
> mes salutations distinguees,
> PBains.
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Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 10:12:19 +0800
To: deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
From: Paul Bains <P.Bains-AT-murdoch.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Re : deleuze latour and serres
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Cher Emmanuel,
Can't really do justice to your questions but I'm sure others would be
interested in them. Any chance of you writing in English.. or Franglais?

Interestingly you made me realize that 'Pandora's hope' has not yet been
translated into French (Latour wrote the essays in English) and
consequently Les Politiques de la Nature (written in French) has appeared
first in France altho it is the sequel to Pandora... 

Also you seemed to think I was suggesting they were the same book which i
didn't mean at all!
You also claim that FG was v. unpleasant when Latour gave a talk on 'We
have never been Modern' at FG's seminar and that this is why the dialogue
or encounter that Stengers refers to _never took place_. 

Was G. upset about something in particular? - perhaps he had a hang-over.

You say that you're writing an article on 'Les Politiques de la Nature [PN]
and the refoundation of ecology' and would like some further clarification
on Latour's use of the Whiteheadian inspired concepts of events and
propositions.

>Etant en train d'crire un article sur " politiques de la nature  et la
>refondation de l'cologie "  je suis trs intress par vos propos " they
>provide fascinating tools  for  "political ecology" or Cosmopolitics  that
>really could have consequences on the sreet "  j'aimerai que vous les
>explicitiez un peu plus notamment concernant les conceppts de Whitehead
>d'"'vnements" et de "propositions".

I can't spend much time on this now (I have a serious time disease) but I
think the terms are quite well presented in PN, altho perhaps more clearly
in Pandora's Hope.

I quote from the Glossary in Pandora:

'Event: A term borrowed from Whitehead to replace the notion of discovery
and its very implausible philosophy of history (in which the object remains
immobile while the human historicity of the discoverers receives all the
attention). Defining an experiment as an event has consequences for the
historicity* of all the ingredients, including nonhumans, that are the
circumstances of that experiment (see concrescence).

'Concrescence" A term employed by Whitehead to designate an event without
using the Kantian idiom of the phenomenon*. Concrescence is not an act of
knowledge applying human categories to indifferent stuff out there but a
modification of all the components or circumstances of the event.'

'Historicity: A term borrowed from the history of philosophy to refer not
just to the passage of time - 1999 after 1998 - but to the fact that
something happens in time, that history  not only passes but transforms,
that it is not only made of dates but events*,....

'Proposition: I do not use the term in the epistemological sense of a
sentence that is judged to be true or false  (for this I reserve the word
"statement") but in the ontological sense of what an actor offers to other
actors. The claim is that the price of gaining analytical clarity - words
severed from world and then reconnected by reference and judgement - is
greater and produces, in the end, more obscurity than granting entities the
capacity to connect to one another through events. The ontological meaning
of the word has been elaborated by Whitehead.'

'Propositions are not statements or things, or an sort of intermediary
between the two. They are, first of all, actants*. Pasteur, the lactic acid
ferment, the laboratory are all propositions. What distinguishes
propositions from one anothe is not a _single_ vertical abyss between words
and the world but the _many_ differences btween them, without anyone
knowing _in advance_ if these differences are big or small, provisional or
definitive, reducible or irreducible. This is precisely what word
"pro-positions" suggests. They are not positions, things, substances, or
essences pertaining to a nature* made up of mute objects facing a talkative
human mind, but _occasions_ given to different entities to modify their
definitions over the course of an event...'(Pandora's Hope, 141)


Hope this helps a little. All I wanted to suggest was that such an approach
or conceptual toolkit provides what Latour sometimes calls a 'realistic
realism' that embraces relations or 'articulations' (the more articulated
the better). Does this ring a bell?
It could 'make a difference' because these concepts are 'more realistic' or
'useful' than the polemical positions of 'subject' and 'object' or
nature/culture. 
Latour's creative use of Whitehead (et al) is accessible and applicable 'on
the street'. In other words it can be easily taken up by 'non-philosophers'
who 'have a philosophical becoming all the more for not being philosophers'
(roughly what Deleuze said of Guattari).
The ecology movement in all its shades could only benefit from an encounter
with these concepts (which are ontological experiences!).

'The word "collective" itself at last finds its meaning: it is that which
_collects us all_ in the cosmopolitics envisaged by Isabelle Stengers.'

Not two powers, nature and politics, but _two different task in the same
collective_.
1. How many humans and nonhumans are to be taken into account?
2. Are you ready, and at the price of what sacrifice, to live the good life
together?
Latour stresses that this question used to be asked for _humans only_
without the nonhumans that make them up. (Pandora's Hope, p.297).

J'espere que ca t'aides un peu - il faut que je me casse.....

mes salutations distinguees,
PBains.




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