We Have Never Been Modern

Introduction

Latour, a sociologist of science, published this essay in French in 1991 (English 1993). He describes a “modern constitution” that strictly separates nature, the domain of science, from society, the domain of politics; behind this division the moderns produce ever more hybrids – the ozone hole, frozen embryos, AIDS – that are natural and social at once. Because the separation was never really carried out, “we have never been modern”. Latour rejects both modernism and postmodernism and proposes a “parliament of things” in which non-humans are represented too. The book extends actor-network theory into a diagnosis of modernity and prepares his later work on ecology and politics.

Connections

Criticizes

• Critique of Pure Reason1781 · Immanuel Kant

Taken up in

• Cosmopolitics1997 · Isabelle Stengers