Bruno Latour: Aramis, or The Love of Technology (1993/1996)

Bruno Latour has written a unique and wonderful tale of a technological dream gone wrong. As the young engineer and professor follow Aramis’ trail–conducting interviews, analyzing documents, assessing the evidence–perspectives keep shifting: the truth is revealed as multilayered, unascertainable, comprising an array of possibilities worthy of Rashomon. The reader is eventually led to see the project from the point of view of Aramis, and along the way gains insight into the relationship between human beings and their technological creations. This charming and profound book, part novel and part sociological study, is Latour at his thought-provoking best.

Translated by Catherine Porter
Published by Harvard University Press
April 1996
ISBN 0674043227, 9780674043220
336 pages

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Graham Harman: Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics (2009)

Prince of Networks is the first treatment of Bruno Latour specifically as a philosopher. It has been eagerly awaited by readers of both Latour and Harman since their public discussion at the London School of Economics in February 2008.

Part One covers four key works that display Latour’s underrated contributions to metaphysics: Irreductions, Science in Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Pandora’s Hope. Harman contends that Latour is one of the central figures of contemporary philosophy, with a highly original ontology centered in four key concepts: actants, irreduction, translation, and alliance.

In Part Two, Harman summarizes Latour’s most important philosophical insights, including his status as the first “secular occasionalist.” The problem of translation between entities is no longer solved by the fiat of God (Malebranche) or habit (Hume), but by local mediators. Working from his own “object-oriented” perspective, Harman also criticizes the Latourian focus on the relational character of actors at the expense of their cryptic autonomous reality.

This book forms a remarkable interface between Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and the Speculative Realism of Harman and his confederates. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with the emergence of new trends in the humanities following the long postmodernist interval.

Publisher: Re.press, June 2009
Anamnesis series
ISBN-13: 978-0-9805440-6-0
ISBN-ebook: 978-0-9806665-2-6
258 pages

This book is Open Access. This work is not simply an electronic book; it is the open access version of a work that exists in a number of forms, the traditional printed form being one of them.

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Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005–) [EN, ES]

“Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world’s leading social theorists to how we understand society and the ‘social’. Bruno Latour’s contention is that the word ‘social’ as used by social scientists has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become a misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as ‘wooden’ or ‘steely’. Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling: and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why ‘the social’ cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a ‘social explanation’ of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of ‘the social’ to redefine the notion and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the ‘assemblages’ of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a ‘sociology of associations’ has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network-Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents.”

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2005
ISBN 0199256047, 9780199256044
301 pages

Reassembling the Social (English, updated on 2012-7-17)
Reensamblar lo social (Spanish, trans. Gabriel Zadunaisky, 9 MB, added 2016-1-13)