Modern Cults

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In On the modern cult of the factish godsBruno Latour explores what the religiousimage is capable of achieving Religiousimages are not truth claims but serve tobring forth a transformation in us Te book

seemingly commences as a continuationof the critique of modern culture thatLatour started in earlier works like Sciencein action (1987 ) and We have never beenmodern (1993) Science in action showedhow perceived objective scienti1047297c factsare actually inseparably connected to thesocial practices in which they are producedWe have never been modern showed howmodernity is constituted by the illusionarydistinction between the natural and the

social and the consequent removal of Godfrom any explanation of either nature orsociety It is this distancing of God that Latourfurther engages with in On the modern cultof the factish gods However the work isnot just another rehearsal of the earliercritiques Instead it is a positive inquiry intothe construction of the subject It seems tobe for this reason that this charming littlebook is written in an even more literary

style than before While the style may repelsome readers nonetheless the book is ofconsiderable value in interpreting Latourrsquosother works

Te preface of the book depicts thesculptor of La Fontainersquos fable who is sud-denly captured by Jupiter that is at oncea god and a marble statue to which thesculptor had himself given the last touchof the chisel on the day before How cana human being be ruled by something hehas made with his own hands Seeking the

Bruno Latour On the Modern Cult of the Factish GodsDuke University Press DurhamLondon 2010 x + 158 pages

answer in the 1047297rst chapter (there are threechapters in total) Latour compares his-torical Western explorers and aboriginalbelievers Te former mock the idols of thelatter since something man-made surely

cannot hold divine powers By a move ofsymmetrisation that should not come as asurprise to readers of Latourrsquos earlier workthe author shows that indeed fetishesare man-made but so are facts and evenmore so than fetishes A lot of human workis needed to create a distance betweenfacts and the practices in which they mat-ter Once they are fabricated well they

will appear as autonomous and an origi-nal source of action A continuity exists

between scienti1047297c facts aboriginal beliefin fetishes and the Western cult of adoringicons of the Virgin Mary Terefore Latoursubsumes them under the neologism of factish

While much of Latourrsquos earlier work hasbeen interpreted as a negative debunk-ing of the objectivity of truth practices(and falsely so cf Latourrsquos article lsquoCom-ing out as a philosopherrsquo 2010) the author

here takes on a more positive angle andinvestigates what those practices actuallyachieve Investigating visual artefacts thebook juxtaposes icons and idols scienti1047297cinscriptions and contemporary art Teyare not representations of eternal truthsbut they invite to move forward to the nextimage By this perpetuation of a continu-ous 1047298ow images produce a transforma-tion in the beholder Scienti1047297c inscriptionsdiffer from icons and idols by achievingstronger mediations producing a better

Book Reviews

8122019 Modern Cults

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Science Studies 12012

72

distancing and disconnection betweenapparent truths and the practice in whichthose truths are fabricated Religiousimages in contrast cultivate this connec-

tion and ndash according to Latour ndash abstainfrom making claims about transcendenttruths Yet the most honest form of imageryis identi1047297ed by Latour in contemporary artit neither denies that it is man-made nordoes it hide its essential purpose of makinga difference in the real world

If this making a difference is whatimagery is about then virtue consists ofcaring for the perpetuation of the 1047298ow of

images more than of caring for the indi- vidual image itself Where iconoclasm isthe historically situated act of abolishingsuch individual images ndash now an obsoleteconcept once the factish is put in place ndashthe new concept of iconoclash is needed toidentify the act of interrupting this 1047298ow ofimages As the horrors of 911 make clearthis clash may ultimately concern our-selves we are now the potential objects ofannihilation and fanaticism (p 97)

Tis pivotal example marks the shiftof attention from the deconstruction ofobjectivity towards the construction ofsubjectivity (cf Latour 2010) It is wherereligion enters the book in Chapter 3 Sci-ence and religion are modes of speech notrepresentations of any objective truthsLaudably consistent Latour walks the talka narrative exploration from his own sub-

jective position is the only thing that is left

after the deconstruction of objective truthclaims Latour seeks convincing power inhis argument by mimicking love talk it isnot the truthfulness or even the originalityof the words lsquoI love yoursquo that matters butlsquothe transformation it generates in the lis-tenerrsquo (p 102) By similar transformationsreligious images direct attention to thehere-and-now and this is what Latour triesto achieve in the reader Contrastingly

scienti1047297c images direct attention towards

the far-away and pursue disconnectionbetween (hence transcendent) truths andour reality It is for this reason that criticiz-ing religion for its (scienti1047297cally) unten-

able transcendent claims is a hypocriticalstraw-man argument

A small point of crit icism is due at thispoint for the reader familiar with SSnotably including Latourrsquos own earlier

work the conception of science is strik-ingly singular (pp 74-5) Te idea of sci-ence as a chain of mediating inscriptionsshould be familiar from Science in action and We have never been modern However

in On the modern cult of the factish godsLatour seems to leap to the conclusion thatsuch chains are always successful thusignoring all that is controversial in scienceone need only think of climate scienceLatourrsquos conception of religion is equallyparticular but fair enough Chapter 3 ispermeated by remarks that show aware-ness of the parochialism of any discussionof religion One consequence though isthat the opposition between science asmaking claims to distant truths and reli-gion as producing local transformationsdoes not entirely convince Sometimesscience does produce a local transforma-tion rather than a connection to an eternaltruth and sometimes religion utterly failsto produce such local transformationsConsequently the immunity of religion toscienti1047297c scrutiny only holds under spe-ci1047297c presumptions Te chapter quite suc-

cessfully makes a transformation in thereader and yet it remains doubtful whetherthere is anything particularly religious toit

Much like in Science in action and Wehave never been modern the 1047297rst chaptersof On the modern cult of the factish gods serve well as a lsquolure for feelings food forthoughtrsquo as Latour quotes Whitehead inhis acclaim of the existence of different

epistemic practices (p 66) Tese chapters

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offer a good read for those who are inter-ested in Latourrsquos critique of modernityTey contain interesting positive elabora-tions but not radically new perspectives

Yet ultimately the book is about the poten-tial of religious images to produce a trans-formation Working towards this idea thelast chapter offers an entertaining insightinto the mode of operation of the authorDespite some parochialism it is in its elo-quence highly informative of the subjec-tivity from which he operates in perhapseven a better way than a biography couldever achieve

Latour B (1987) Science in action how tofollow scientists and engineers throughsociety (Cambridge MA HarvardUniversity Press)

Latour B (1993) We have never beenmodern (Cambridge MA HarvardUniversity Press)

Latour B (2010) lsquoComing out as aphilosopherrsquo Social Studies of Science40(4) 599-608

Govert ValkenburgZuyd University of Applied SciencesMaastricht

acgovertvalkenburgnl

Book Reviews