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8/11/2019 Bould - Learning From the Little Engine
1/21
SF TH Inc
Learning from the Little Engines That Couldn't: Transported by Gernsback, Wells, and LatourAuthor(s): Mark Bould and Sherryl VintSource: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, Technoculture and Science Fiction (Mar., 2006),pp. 129-148Published by: SF-TH IncStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241412.
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2/21
TRANSPORTED
BY
GERNSBACK, WELLS,
AND
LATOUR
129
Mark Bould and
Sherryl
Vint
Learning from
the
Little
Engines
That
Couldn't:
Transported
by Gernsback, Wells,
and Latour
Everyone knows
that,
until one
wins
one,
all awards are travesties.
Even
so,
there is something
unseemly
about the fact
that
Bruno Latour'sAramis
or
The
Love of
Technology was
not nominated for
a
single
sf
award. Published
in
French
in
1993
and in
English
in
1996,
this novel
occupies simultaneously
he
very center and thevery edges of thegenre. Itoffers ways for us to rethinkwhat
sf
can do,
and to reconsider our
relationships
to
technology
and
the conse-
quences
of that for both
subjects
and
objects.
It
is
also a
page-turner,
a
gripping
whodunit,
a
cyborg
and
hybrid manifesto,
and a
profound
meditationon the
relationships inking
science,
science
studies,
and
science fiction. It shouldhave
swept
the
board.
Aramis startsby
announcing
Latour'saim of
restoring
"to
literature
he vast
territories t shouldnever have
given up-namely,
science and
technology"(vii),
while at
the
same time
showing
"technicians
hat
they
cannot conceive of
a
technologicalobject withouttakingintoaccountthe massof humanbeings with
all
their
passions
and
politics
and
pitiful
calculations"
viii).
At the
nexus
of
the
two
cultures,
this
rapprochement
s
attempted hrough
a novel about
a
technolog-
ical research
project-the development
of the
eponymous
publictransport ystem
in
Paris1-that is also
an academicwork investigating he
failure
of
this project.
It
moves between "science and technology"
and
the "passions
and politics" of
human beings,
combining fictional characters(a professor, Norbert, more or
less based
on Latour,
and
his nameless
student/assistant)
with "real-life
interviews"
conducted by Latour, "genuine documents" collected in his
fieldwork,
and other
"mysterious voices,"
including passages
from
Mary
Shelley's
Frankenstein,
or The Modem
Prometheus
1818)
and
even
the
voice
of Aramis
itself
(x).
For
his
"hybrid ask,"
Latour
creates
the
"hybridgenre"
of
"scientifiction,"
nsisting
that its various
"discursivemodes have to be
kept
separate" x),
distinguishedby
their
presentation
n
clearly-headed ections and
different
typefaces.
One
shouldnot mistake such
separations
as an
insistence on
monadicpurity,
however. Latour's
method here, as elsewhere, is more
dialectical. In We Have
Never Been
Modem
(1991),
he
argues thatourunderstanding f science and the
social world is based
on
a
"modernConstitution"
hat separatespolitics from
nature, subjects from objects, humans from
nonhumans.For him, this is not
only politically
damaging
but
also
just plain wrong.
Tracing
the
emergence of
these dichotomies to
the seventeenth
century,
he
observes that
At first
sight
... it
seems that
Hobbes and his disciplescreated he chief resources
that
are
available o
us
for
speaking
about
power ("representation,
"
sovereign,
"
"contract,"
"property,""citizens"),
while
Boyle and
his
successors
developed
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130 SCIENCE FICTION
STUDIES,
VOLUME
33 (2006)
one of the
major
repertoires
for
speaking
about nature
("experiment," "fact,"
"evidence,"
"colleagues").
It
should thus seem also clear thatwe are
dealing
not
with two
separate
nventions
but
with
only one,
a division
of
power
between
the
two protagonists,to Hobbes, the politics and to Boyle, the sciences. (WeHave
Never
24-25)
From this
divide flows the
modem
epistemology,
with
its
belief in
progressive
humanism,
iberal
democracy,
capitalism,
andscientific
empiricism,
that
Latour
aims to
revolutionize.
He
denies thathis
work
about "the
social constructionof
science.
"
Although
he
insists
upon the
vitality
of
the
"social" world of
human
politics
and
personalities
in
the
production
of
science,
he is
equally
insistent
upon
a
"real
world" with which
these
people interact. He is as
critical of
postmodernism's
linguistic
idealism, which
places
the material
world
beyond
human
reach,
as he
is of the
modem drive toward
separation
and
purification.
His
vision
of
science
(and
politics)
is
about
shifting networks of
connection,
the
building
of collec-
tives.
Latour defines
this
replacement
(of
the
modern/postmodem
divide
between
natureand
society
with the
notion of
the
collective)
as nonmodem.
Latour's concepts of
"translation"
and
"inscription"
distinguish
his work
from more
idealist
or
purely constructivist
versions of
science
studies. These
terms fill
in
the
space left
empty
between
subject and
object
when the
material
and thelinguistic aredeemedseparaterealms.His objectof study s the frequent
traffic
across this
fictitious
divide.
Pandora's
Hope:
Essays
on the
Reality of
Science Studies
(1999) providesa detailed
case
study
of how
the
heterogeneous
world
of things is
translated
nto
systems of
signification
hrough
a
studyof how
soil
samples
begin
as
physical
collections
of
earth
and
are translated
nto tables
and
graphs
representing eaturesof
soil acrossa
territory.These
processes
trace
a
move from
the
concrete
to
the
abstract,
one
that
at
each
stage
"allow[s]
new
translations
and
articulationswhile
keeping
some
relations
intact"
(Pandora's
Hope
54).
Latour
insists,
however,
that,
although
these
processes
do
involve
social shaping, the resulting signification is not separate from the material
world.
Rather,the
chain of
translation
s
always
reversible-we can
move along
it in
either
direction,
toward
the
abstractor
the
concrete.
Translation
refers to
more
thanjust
the
modifications
and
mediations
that
connect the
material
world to its
representation.
For
technology,
translation
lso
refers
to
the
process by
which a
project
"takes on
reality, or loses
it,
by
degrees"
(Aramis
85) by
"enrolling"
various
parties
(machines,
politicians,
money,
politics,
"natural"
bjects) nto its
own
goals.
This
process of
translation
requires
negotiationand
compromise.The
"feasible"
project s not
the
onebased
on the most "true"science but ratherthe one best able to form a rhizomatic
network
of
connections with
other
human
and
nonhuman
actants. Aramis,
a
detailed
llustrationof
this
argument,
demonstrates
how
what
Aramis "is"
shifts
over
the
course of
its "life"
depending
uponthe
connectionswith
other
actants
that it
develops,
maintains,or loses.2
Far
beyond our
understanding f the
practiceof
science
and the
relationship
between
the
material
world and
language,
Latour's
concern
thatscience
and
the
social
not
be
separated
has
deeply
political
consequences
and
mplications
or the
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TRANSPORTED
Y
GERNSBACK,
WELLS,
AND LATOUR
131
practiceof
democracy.
At the end
of WeHave Never Been
Modem,
Latour
calls
for a new
nonmodem
Constitution hat
will
move
beyond
the modem
separation
of human
andNature
o embrace he common
production
of societies
and
natures
and the
existence of
hybrids
who
do not fall
clearly
into
any
of the
epistemo-
logical
separations that structure modem
thought.
Latour's
rejection
of
the
modem Constitution s
political as
well
as
epistemological
because,
as
long
as
we do
not
recognize the role
of
translation
n
the
production
of
science,
the
modem
divide will
always
preserve
a
space
of "truth"
outside
human
struggles
over
meaning.
PerhapsLatour's
most
controversial dea-as well
as
the
most
intriguing
or
sf-is his
insistence
in
Politics
of
Nature: How
to
Bring
the
Sciences
into
Democracy
(1999) thatwe need
to
"adda series of
new
voices to the
discussion
...
the
voices
of
nonhumans"
69).
In
this vision
of
a
new
collective,
Latour
refuses
the
subject/objectdivide and
insteadenvisions a
space
in
which
humans
and
nonhumansare
networked
together,
all
expressing
desires and
goals,
all
thought
of as
having agency.
The
genuine
documents
collected
in
Aramis
repeatedly
apply
terms
like
"supervise" or "allow" or
"notify"
or
"vote"
to
Aramis's
machine
components.
Another
voice-perhaps
the
author's-urges that
we
"not jump too
quickly to
conclusions as to
whether these terms
are
metaphorical,
exaggerated,
anthropomorphic,
or
technical"
(Aramis
61).
Instead,allpossibilities mustremain nplay, andwe must refuse to "purify"our
sense of
the
languageand
assign
it
(and
these
entities)
to
one realm or the
other,
real or
literary.
By
following this
example
and
engaging
in
the play
between
science
fact,
science
fiction,
and
scientifiction,
this
essay
engages with
Aramis
to
explore
what
Latour
might contribute o
the
study
of sf
and
what sf
might
contribute
o
our
understanding of
Latour. We
wonder
whether sf's
commodity form
suppresses he
possibilitiesthat
ie between
the
literal and
the
literary.
We
worry
about
commodity fetishism and the
tendency
in
Latour's
concept of
actants(in
which humans and nonhumans are elevated or reduced to the same stat-
us-equivalized-in the
new
collective)
to
reducehumans
n
technology
to
labor
power.
Aramis
itself
speaks
in
Aramis,just as
many
nonhuman
others
speakin
other
sf,
and so
we
weigh this
speaking
of
the other
in
narrative,
the
speaking
for
the
other
that it
inevitably
entails and
what it
suggests
about
the politics
of
Latour'snew
collective.
Sf
is one of the
actants
hat "real ife"
technology
might
enroll, and
Latour gives
us new
tools
to think
about
this
relationship
between
science
and
technology;
understanding
Latour
maychange our
understanding
f
both
science and
sf.
At one point in Aramis,Norberttries to calm his student/assistant,who has
lost
patiencewith
the
relativism
of their
taskof
discovering"who
killed
Aramis"
(2).
The
student
wants a
"real"
answerabout
Aramis's
technological
feasibility,
not a lot
of
fuzzy
speculation
about
politics and
passions. Norbert
tells
him that
"
s]tudying
a
technologicalproject
sn't
any harder
han
doing
literary
criticism.
Aramis
is one
long
sentence
in
which
the
words
graduallychange
in
response
to
intemal
contradictions
mposed by
the
meaning.
It's only a
text, a
fabric"
(102). Norbert's "isn't
any
harder than"is
somewhat
ambiguous,
but we
will
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132
SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES,
VOLUME
33
(2006)
nonetheless treat Aramis as Latour treats
Aramis,
as
a
literary
text to
be
criticized, as well as
quintessential
sf. Our
first
step
is to release
Latour's
scientifiction into
dialogue
with the version
proposed
by Hugo
Gernsback.
Discussing
the
polytemporality
of
"every
contemporary
assembly,"
Latour
suggests
that "Time is not a
general
frameworkbut
a
provisional
result
of
the
connection between entities"
(We
Have Never
74).
He then
turns
to an
image
familiarto
anyone
who has read more than a
handfulof the rationales ound in
time-travelstories-the
idea
of
time
as a
spiral:
Let us
suppose
...
that
we
are
going
to
regroup
he
contemporary
lements
along
a
spiral
ratherthan a line. We do have a
future and a
past,
but
the
future
takes
the form of a circle
expanding
n
all
directions,
and the
past
is not
surpassed
but
revisited, repeated, surrounded, protected, recombined, reinterpretedand
reshuffled.
Elements that appear
remote
if
we
follow
the
spiral
may
turn out to
be
quite
nearby
if
we
compare
loops.
Conversely,
elements that are
quite
contemporary,
if
we
judge
by
the
line,
become
quite
remote
if
we
traverse
a
spoke.
Such a
temporality
does not
oblige
us to use the labels
"archaic"
or
"advanced,"
since
every
cohort of
contemporary
lements
may
bring together
elements from all
times.
(75)
At several
points, Aramisalludes to
Shelley's
Frankenstein nd Samuel
Butler's
Erewhon,
or
Over the
Range
(1872),
texts
brought
close
by
the
polytemporality
of spiral-time.The more provocativebringing-together,however, is Latour's
coinage
of
"scientifiction,"unawareas he
seems to be
of
the
earlier term
used
to
describe
the kinds of
fiction published
n
AmazingStories. While
Gernsback
defined
scientifiction as
"the Jules
Verne,
H.G. Wells, and
Edgar Allan Poe
type
of
story-a
charming romance
intermingled with
scientific fact and
prophetic
vision"
(qtd
in
Westfahl
70), Latour,
deeming science
fiction
"inadequate, incesuch
writing
usually draws
upon
technologyfor
setting
rather
than
plot"
(Aramis
viii), ponders
what
genre would
be
capable of
"bringing
about
this fusion of
two so
clearly separated
universes,
that of culture
and that
of technology, as well as the fusion of threeentirelydistinct iterarygenres-the
novel, the
bureaucratic ossier,
and
the
sociological
commentary"
viii); he thus
devises his
hybrid
scientifiction.
Coined
nearly
seventy yearsapart, these
scientifictions
are
proximate.Both
postulate
hybrid
monstrosities
and conjure
allies
(Verne, Wells,
Poe;
Shelley,
Butler). Both
fuse
separate realms
(fiction/science;
culture/technology) and
distinct
genres
(romance, fact,
vision;
novel,
bureaucratic
dossier,
sociological
commentary).
Moreover,
these
not-exactly
synonymous
terms do
overlap.
Latour's "novel" s
more sophisticated
han
Gernsback's
"romance,"
certainly,
butboth areprose fictions. And if Gernsback's"'scientific fact' meantlengthy
and
detailed
explanations of current
scientific
knowledge and
discoveries,
equivalent
o those
found
in
science
textbooks and articles"
(Westfahl 39), the
discursive
register
of
this
component
has clear
affinities
with Latour's
bureaucratic
dossier.
Furthermore,
while
Gernsback s
prophetic
visions-"descriptions
and
explanationsof
hypothetical nventions
and
scientific
processes"
(Westfahl
39)-might coincide
with
sociological
commentary
itself
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TRANSPORTED
Y
GERNSBACK,
WELLS,
AND LATOUR
133
hypothetical
and,
at
least,
scientistic),
Westfahl's
exegesis
of the term
also
describes Latour's
project
in
Aramis:
prophecy ... itself combines fact and fiction in that, on the one hand, a
scientifically grounded
prediction
of a future
discovery
might
be
substantive
enough
to warrant
a
patent,
so that
[Gernsback]
once
spoke
of "true
or
prophetic
science" as
if both accounts
of current informationand informed
speculations
about the future could be considered
types
of science. On the other
hand,
a
predicted
invention, even
if
logical
or
inevitable,
cannot be a fact
until it
is
realized;
in
a
different sense
of
the
word,
such a
description
s
a
"fiction."
(39-
40)
Latour
argues
that
"by
definition,
a
technological
project
s a
fiction,
since at
the
outset it does not exist" (Aramis23), and thattheprojectwill gainor lose reality
depending
on whether it is
capable
of
recruiting
sufficient and
suitable
actors
into its network
and
retaining
hem.
Aramis,
like
all such
projects,
is a
"fiction
seeking
to come true"
(18-9).
There
is
a clear sense of
Germsbackian
rophecy
in
the
descriptionof Aramis's
"inventors":
They
invent
a
means
of
transportation hat does not
exist,
paper
passengers,
opportunities
hat have to
be
created, places
to be
designed (often
from
scratch),
component
ndustries,
echnological
revolutions.
They're
novelists.
With
ust
one
difference: their
project-which
is
at first
indistinguishable
rom a novel-will
graduallyveer in one directionor another.Either it will remain a projectin the
file
drawers
...
or else it will
be
transformed nto
an
object. (24)
Finally, both
scientifictionsretain
their
hybridity.
Aramis's
prefacenot
only
describes the
various elements of
which
the book is
composed
but also
insists on
their
clear
demarcation,
while
Westfahl
argues
hat
Gernsback's
"intermingling"
did not
go
so far
as to
integrate
"scientific fact"
seamlessly into the
narrative
flow
but rather
kept
them
as distinct
passages.
Theseshiftsof
discursive
register
are evident
in
Germsback's wn
novel
Ralph
124C 41+: A
Romance
of
the
Year
2660 (1911-12; revisedfixup 1925); as aneditor "hespokeof informationbeing
'contained'
n
the
narrative
..
and their
separability
rom the
narrative
ext was
indicated
in
his
'opinion'
that 'the
ideal
proportion of
a
scientifiction
story
should
be
seventy-five
per
cent
literature
nterwoven
with
twenty-fiveper
cent
science"'
(Westfahl,
quoting
Germsback, 9). The
Heinlein/Campbell
evolution
sought
to
purify
Gernsbackian
scientifiction by
homogenizing its
discursive
mode and
driving out
lengthy
passages
of
exposition,
which were
condemned
as
infodumps.
Ironically
enough,
this move
created
hardsf, a hybrid
orm
retaining
as
one of
its
components
an
expository
discursive mode
that it
must also
always
tryto expunge,as well as suchhybridsas science fantasy,fantasy,and,although
it
could
never
then
admit
t, hegemonic
sf
itself.
Just as
slipstreamand
the New
Weird (and
gap
fiction,
interstitial
fiction,
post-genre
sf, etc.)
recover
the
hybrids
created by
generic
purification(see
Bould), so
Latour's
scientifiction
recuperates,
albeit
unwittingly,
he hybrid
orm hat
Gernsback
titched
ogether.
But
while the
circling of
spiral-time
brings these
scientifictions
closer,
linear
time
drives them
apart.
Nowhere is
this clearer
than in
the different
ways
in
which
Ralph and
Aramis
conceive of
and
represent
technology. In
Aramis's
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134 SCIENCE FICTION
STUDIES, VOLUME
33
(2006)
Epilogue,
Norbert
proposes
a still more radical
book than
Latour's, telling
his
student hat
"I'd like to do a book in which there's no metalanguage,no masterdiscourse,
where you
wouldn't
know
which is
strongest,
the
sociological theory
or
the
documents
or the interviews or the literature
or the
fiction,
where all
these
genres or
regimes
would be at the same
level,
each one
interpreting
he others
without
anybodybeing
able to
say
which
is
judging
what."
(Aramis298)
Admittedly,
it
could be
argued
that
this is
precisely
what Aramis
does,
and that
to see
Norbert's
commentary
on
the
investigation,documents,
and interviews
as
the
text's
metalanguage
s to
misread
it. Yet
Latour's ambition to
reconcile
humanistsand
technologiststhrough
a
conceptualization
f
technology
as
fully
a partof the humansocial realm indicates a vision of the scientifictional ext as
one
in
which all
discursive
elements are held
in
flux,
complexly, dynamically,
and
irresolvably
interacting.
This is in
stark contrast to
Gernsback's
scientifiction,
in
which
the text alternates
statically
amongromance,
scientific
fact,
and
prophetic
vision. In
Ralph,
this
alternation follows a
generally
straightforward
attern.
Ralph
and Alice tour future
New York
(vision), Ralph
explains
the
science behind the marvels
(fact),
and
they
are
linked
by
this odd
courtship
and the
abductionsand rescues it
prompts
(romance).
Such textual
discontinuamake
Gernsback's scientifiction a
clumsy
collision of
"scientific"'
and"fiction,"even as the absenceof visual
markings
o
separate
hese
elements
opens
the
door
to the
Campbell/Heinlein
hegemonization
of
narrativediscourse.
In
contrast, Latour'smarked
discontinua
end
to
keep
in
play
the
elements
thus
separated,
not
least
because
of the
tension
created between the
reader's desire
to
hierarchizeand subsume the
elements into a
single discourse and
to
discern
and order the textual
elements
in
relation to
the text's
metalanguage.
The
very
artificiality
of
Aramis's
separations
einforces
Latour's
nsistencethatthe social
is
always
already
in the
science, thatthey
cannotbe
separatedout into 75 %
to
25 %
proportions,
n
fiction any more than in life.
Campbellian
sf
writers
do
what the
scientist cannot
do, namely
"explor[e]
the
'consequences'
of
scientific
innovations
n
human
society,
"
thusshiftingsf's
function from
inspiration
to
criticism,
providing a "valuable
independent
outlook"
that could be "an
important
factor
in
improving-and control-
ling-scientific
progress"
(Westafhl 194,
195).
Campbell ascribed a dual
function
to sf-"to
indicatewrong
answers,
and why they're
wrong, as well as
suggesting right
answers and
possibilities"
(195)-making the
Gernsbackian
"romance"
an
engagement with
science
ratherthan the scientific
pill's sugar-
coating.WhileGernsback magined hescientistwho "getsthestimulus romthe
story
and
promptly responds
with
the material
invention" (42),
Campbell
pictured
a
scientist or
policymaker
who "would eagerly
consult
texts, looking
for
ideas
and
ramificationsof ideas that
could shape
research strategies and
policy
decisions"
(277).
Despite
Gernsbackian
resonances, then, Latour's
scientifiction
shareswith
Campbellian f a
foregrounding
f the interconnection
of
science and social
world
through its countering of
the
pernicious modern
epistemological
separation of
fact-based
science and value-based
culture-a
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TRANSPORTED
BY
GERNSBACK,
WELLS,
AND LATOUR
135
separation
whose
goal
is
to
"short-circuit
ny
andall
questioning
as to the
nature
of
the
complex
bonds between the
sciences and societies"
(Latour,
Politics
13;
emphasisin original)
Latour's scientifictional
textuality
enacts his desire
to enable
"scientific
worlds [to] become once
again
what
they
had been:
possible
worlds in
conflict
that move and
shape
one
another"
Aramis
x).
Seeing
the world
as
unfixed
and
in
process
ensures
thatLatour'sscientifictionuses
technology
as
plot
rather
han
mere setting. As
possibilities
fizz
between textual
elements and within them
(as
when the
motor,
the
chip,
the
chassis,
the
optical
sensor,
the
central control
panel, and the base
computer-components
of the
as-yet
unrealized
Aramis-squabble about heir
respective
needs and
priorities),
multiple
versions
of the projectco-exist in the spaces createdby the various actants' differing
ideas of
Aramis, which
constantlychange
over
time and
in
relation to
other
actants. Aramis
emerges-or,
rather,
ultimately
does not
emerge-from
the
plethora of
possible Aramises and the
actants'
negotiations
among
them. As
these
negotiationsknot
and reknot
over
twenty-fouryears,
the
"pure"
Aramis,
the "first
Aramis,
the one that
could do
everything,"
came "to
be
called
nominal, while
the series of
alteredand
compromised
Aramises
is
referred
o as
the
simplified
Aramis,
or
the
degraded
Aramis,
or
the VS
(for
very
simplified)
Aramis" (Aramis
100).
A
footnote remarks
that
"'Nominal' here
means
in
conformity with the original function. The dictionary offers other, more
conventionaldefinitions
hat
fit
Aramis
better-e.g.,
'existing
in
name
only,
not
in
reality"'
(100). The
nominal
Aramis is
then
both the
"one that
could
do
everything"
and the
one that does
not-could
not-exist.
During
the
quarter
century
in
which the
nominal
Aramis
struggles to take on
reality by
enlisting
actants nto its
network,
by
translating,
by
"accumulating
ittle
solidities,
little
durabilities, little
resistances"
(45), it
constantly
flickers
between
differing
identities,
constantly
negotiating,
becoming,
without
essence-like the
train
at
the
end of
China
Mieville's Iron
Council
(2004),
suspended n
that
moment,as
in all moments,between arrivalandnon-arrival,betweensuccessfulrevolution
and
failed
revolution,
between all
thepossible
meaningsof these
terms.
That is
the
moment,
the
incompletion-ever-of
the
project.
The world of
Aramis
is very
different
from that of
Ralph.
The
latter is
essentially
static,
fixed,
non-negotiable. A
solitary
genius,
Ralph's
many
inventions
and
discoveriesare
conjured
n the
absence of
society: "He
had
but
to
ask
and his wish
was
law-if it
did not
interfere
with his
work"
(Gemsback
35).
When he has
to
generate
tremendous
energies and
transmit
hem from
his
tower in
New York
to
Switzerland o
melt
the
avalanche
hreatening
Alice, he
sounds a siren
which
could
be heard
within a
radiusof sixty
miles,
sounding ts
warning
to all
to
keep away from
tall
steel or metal
structures,or, if they
could
not do this, to
insulate
themselves. He
sounded
the siren
twice for
ten seconds,
which
meant
that
he
would
direct his
ultra-power or
at
least twenty
minutes, and
everybody
must
be
on
guard
for this
length
of time.
(Gernsback
22)
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136
SCIENCE
FICTION STUDIES,
VOLUME 33
(2006)
As this
mighty phallic ejaculation
indicates, Ralph's prioritization
is
absolute.
His
interactions
with
the social
are minimized and there is never
any
sense
of
his
work being generated from anywhere other than his own will. Gernsback fails
to
perceive
that
"[a]
technology
isn't
one
single
character;
it's a
city,
it's
a
collective,
it's
countless.
All of
Germany
and Switzerland
together
would have
been
needed to keep Victor
[Frankenstein]'s
awkwardly
stitched
together
creature
in
existence" (Aramis
227).
As
pointedly
demonstrated
by
the
hundreds
of
thousands
of
Ralph's admirers who
gather-virtually-in
his transmission
room to
applaud
his
rescue
of Alice from the
avalanche,
the
people
of 2660
exist
merely
as an audience
for
Ralph's
accomplishments.3
Ralph's asociality manifests the modem Constitution's
separation
of
science
from human struggles, which relates science to a "true" and fixed "house of
nature"
rather than the
fluctuating and relative "house of
politics." Under
this
Constitution,
one
house,
nature,
has
authority
and does not
speak
(separated
from
human
relativism,
nature is "real" and "true"
but unable to
speak
except
through
the
scientist),
while the
other
house,
politics,
has
speech
but
no
authority (humans
can
argue
about
political
arrangements,
but there is no certain
ground upon which
absolutely
to elevate
one
position
over
another).
The
scientist has undue
power
and a voice that
silences others because of
"his"
unique
ability
to
"go back
andforth
from one
world
to the
other no matter what:
the passageway closed to all others is open to him alone" (Latour, Politics 11;
emphasis
in
original),
"render[ing]
all
democracy impossible
by
neutralizing
it"
(14).
"He" can
close down all other voices
participating
in
the
formation
of the
common
world
by invoking
"his"
privileged
knowledge
of
nature. Ralph
is
conceived in this
technocratic mode, and his
world
is
one "whose
furnishings
have been already defined"
(Latour, Politics
47).
When
technological
projects
are described in
Ralph,
they are generally
already accomplished, fixed in
place,
leaving the
world of the novel
unavailable for anything
other than often tedious
description.
It
is not a world in
process. New York is
already paved
over with
perfectly uniform steelonium slabs lined with posts to transmit current to those
skating by
on their
Tele-motor-coasters.
Each
sidewalk was divided into two
parts. On the outside
only people going in
one
direction,
on
the inside
only people going
in
the
opposite direction
could
coast.
Collisions, therefore, were
impossible.
If
a person
rolling on the outside
wished to enter a
store,
it was
necessary to
go
to the
end
of the block, and then
turn
to the
left, which
brought
him
on the inside of the
sidewalk where he
could
roll
up to
his
destination. (Gernsback81)
Leaving
aside the
problem
of
what happens at intersections when lateral traffic
is
encountered, it is
significant that New Yorkers'
behavior is never
less than
orderly.
In
contrast,
Aramis
repeatedly draws
attention to the
distinctions
between
the
"paper" people imagined by
different
actants as the project is being
translated. In an
imaginary 1965 Senate hearing about
a PRT system
for Los
Angeles,
an
engineer describes the
following scenario:
When
ome old
lady-a
housewife, let's say-wants to go
downtown,
shefiddles
with her
keyboard.
The
computer
calculates the best route.
It says, "I'll be
there
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TRANSPORTEDBY
GERNSBACK,
WELLS,
AND LATOUR
137
in two minutes
",
it's like
a
taxi.
But
it's a
collective
taxi,
with no
driver,
and
it's
guided
by
computer.
When t
arrives,
the
old
ladyfinds
it's
carrying
afew of
her
cronies whomthe
computer
has decided
to
put
in the same
cab.
There's
no
need
for
a
second
car.
(Aramis
20; emphasis
in
original)
SenatorWallace
objects:
What f instead
offinding
her
"cronies"
..
in this closed car with
no
driver, your
housewife
runs
into a
couple
of
thugs? (I
didn't
say
"blacks"-be sure to
get
that
straight.)
Thenwhat
does
she
do? What
happens
to
her
then?
...
I'll tell
you
what
happens,
she
gets
raped
And the
rapist
has all
the time in
the
world,
in
this
automatedshell
of
yours
with no doors
and no windows. You
know what
you
've
invented?
You've
nventedthe
rape wagon (Aramis
21;
emphasis
in
original)
Part of Aramis's failure to become real derives from the failure of engineers
(whose
paper
people
would
be
delighted
to
give
up
the relative
privacy
and
safety
of
privately-owned
cars
in
exchange
for
relative
convenience,
less
pollution,
and
no
traffic
ams)
to
negotiate
with,
among
other
things,
the
security
offered
by the
anonymity
of
the
larger
shared
spaces
of
buses
and
trains.
Moreover,
they
fail
to
negotiate
between
the
nominal Aramis
and
a
version
of
it that
is
fool-,
vandal-,
and
little-old-lady-proof.
Equally
as
unconvincing
as
2660's
steelonium-and-skates
olution
to urban
transport
s
Gernsback's
Packet-Post
Conveyor,
an
absurdly
omplicated,
mostly
subterranean,
utomatic
deliverysystem
interconnecting
usinesses
and
homes,
which
seems to
have been
constructed
without
any disturbance o
the
smooth
running
of
the
city.
In
short,
in
contrastto
the
world
in
which
Aramis
flickers
between
nominalities,
Ralph's
world
is not
dynamically
becoming
but
already
become,
completed,
done.4
Nominal
systems
have
always
already
concretized,
their
essence
somehow
preceding
their
existence.S But
"[t]o
translate
is to
betray":
If
all
the
actors had
to
agree
unambiguouslyon
the
definition of
what was to
be
done, then the probabilityof carryingout a projectwould be very slight indeed,
for
reality remains
polymorphous for
a
very long
time....
The
only
way to
increase a
project's reality
is
to
compromise, to
accept
sociotechnological
compromises.
(Aramis
48,
99).
Even
Aramis
itself is
prepared o
compromise, to
become
something
other
than
the
nominal
Aramis in
exchange
for
not
being
merely
nominal:
"I
would
have
been
happy
to
be
something,
in
the
end,
anything
at all"
(294;
emphasis
in
original).
Ralph,
however, is
beyond
compromise.
Moreover,
as
Roger
Luckhurst
has
suggested
of
Thomas
Edison's
carefully
fostered
image, the
genius-inventor s an ideologicaldisplacementof the real-worldreplacementof
artisan-inventors
y
the mass
productionof
commodity-innovations,
with
Ralph
indicative
of
"a
much
more
messianic
role
[being]
imagined
for
the
engineer"
(61),
a
role
later
modulated
through
technocratic
discourses
of
expertise,
such
as
those
championed in
Heinlein's
"The
Roads
Must
Roll"
(1940; see
Mendlesohn).
The
conservatism
of
technocratic
f is
ultimatelyas
much
about
the
terror
of
innovation
as
those
countless
gadget
stories
from
the first
half of the
twentieth
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138
SCIENCE
FICTION STUDIES,
VOLUME
33
(2006)
century
n
which a
solitarygenius
creates a marvelous
device that s
nonetheless
destroyed
before it can have social
consequences.
Indeed,
this conservatism
s
intrinsic
to the
extrapolative
method
of
those kinds of sf that
postulate
an
innovationand
attempt
o think
hrough
ts
consequences
ceteris
paribus,
as
well
as to the even
more numeroussf texts that use sf
furniture
but leave
contempo-
rary social
relations
ntact, from the
priggish inhabitants f the final
Everytown
in
the
film
Things
to
Come
(1936)
and the
newspapermen
of Asimov's
"Nightfall"
1941)
to the
corporate
yes-men
and
team-players
of Star Trek:The
Next Generation
1987-94)
and the
drearily suburban
amily
of A.I.
-Artificial
Intelligence
(2001).
A
particularly nstructive ext
in
this
regard
was
published
exactly
a
century
before Aramisfinally died: H.G. Wells's first story, "A Tale of the Twentieth
Century
for Advanced
Thinkers."
Published
n
the Science
Schools Journal
in
May
1887,
it
begins by killing
off the
solitary genius:
"The
Inventorhad died
in
a garret. Too
proud to receive
parish
relief,
he
had eaten
every
article of
clothing he
possessed, scraped
off and
assimilated
every
scrap
of
plaster
on the
walls of his wretched
apartment, gnawed his
finger
nails
down the
quick,
and-died"
(697).
Isolated rom
his
fellows,
his
garret
ooking
backwards o the
artisan-inventor,
he
consumes what little
he has and then
himself,
but
"though
the
Inventorwas
dead,
the
Thoughtwas not"
(697).
Among
his
pawned
patents
is the design for a revolutionary ocomotive, and a limitedcompanyis formed
to
exploit it.
Unlike
Germsback,
who
fantasizes a
heroic
technocrat, Wells
establishes he
autonomous
xistence of the
thought
as
something
divorced from
its
inventor, something
operating
in
the social
realm,
negotiatinghuman
and
nonhuman
actants into
the network
necessary for
its own
realization.
Its first
recruit is
the
Inventor's
pawnbroker,
who "took
the
underground ailway, the
idea,
numerous
influential
persons, and a
prospectus, and
mixed
them up
judiciously,
so that
he influential
personsbecame identified
with the
prospectus.
Scrip
was then
issued,
and the
whole
conception crystallized out as a
definite
tangiblething"(697). Aramis'sscientifically-trained raduate tudentstruggles
with the
proposition
hat
a scientific
project's
feasibility
is
not an attribute
f the
"Thought" tself
but is
contingent on
such
"external"
political
and economic
factors. Reluctant
o look
beyond
the
technological
reports, he
complainsthat,
"I
wasn't used to
making
subtle distinctions
between technical
feasibility and
'official
versions' of
what is
feasible or not"
(Aramis
6).
In
contrast to his
student
(and
Gernsback),the
Wellsian
Norbert
nsists that
Aramis's
death also
has
something o
do with the
French
election of
1986 and
with a former
general
inspector
of
finance's
replacementof
an
expert
in
marketingand
public
relations
as the presidentof RATP (7-8).
6
In
Wells's
story,
a
banquet s held on
July
19, 1999 to
celebrate
he "definite
tangible"
new
Metropolitan
and District
Line:
There were 19
Bishops
in
evening dress, 4
Princes
and their
interpreters,
12
Dukes,
A
Strong-Minded
Female,
the
PRA,
14
popular professors,
1
learned
ditto,
70
Deans
(assorted),
the
Presidentof
the
Materialistic
Religious
Society,
a
popular
low
comedian,
1604
eminent
wholesale
and retail
drapers,
hatters,
grocers,
and tea
dealers,
a
reformed
working
man MP, and
honorarydirectors
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TRANSPORTED
BY
GERNSBACK,
WELLS,
AND LATOUR
139
of well
nigh
the
universe,
203
stockbrokers,
1 Earl
(in
a
prominent
place),
who
had once said a
remarkably
mart
thing,
9
purely
Piccadilly
Earls,
13
sporting
Earls,
17
trading
ditto,
113
bankers,
a
forger,
1
doctor,
12
theatrical
managers,
Bludsole the mammothnovelist, 1 electrician(from Paris), a multitudeno man
could number
of electrical
company
directors,
their
sons and their
sons'
sons,
their
cousins,
their
nephews,
their
uncles,
their
parents,
and
their
friends, the
leading
legal
stars,
2
advertisement
ontractors,
41
patent
medicine manufactur-
ers,
Lords, Senators,
a
Spirit
Raiser,
a
Soothsayer,
foreign
Musicians,
Officers,
Captains,
Guards,
&c.
(698)
As this
company dine,
the
"representative
assengers"
entrain:
There were an
August
person,
his
keeper,
the
Premier,
two
Bishops,
several
popular
actresses, four
generals
(home
department),
various
exotics,
a
person
apparently
onnected with
the
navy,
the Education
Minister,
124
public
service
parasites,
an
idiot, the President of
the Board of
Trade,
a suit
of
clothes,
bankers,
another
diot,
shopkeepers,
forgers,
scene
painters,
still
another
diot,
directors,
&c.
(as per
previous
sample).
(699)
The
mild social
satire
of
these
comic
catalogues,
which
comprise
an
eighth
of
the
story,
might
leave
1880s
society
unchanged
a
century
later but
they
also
demonstrate
wo
things:
Wells not
only conceived of
technology
as
happening
within
a social
milieu,
but
also
acknowledged
ome
very specific
actants-politi-
cians, bankers, and so on-beyond the realm of nature with which the
technological
project
must
negotiate.
These
are not the
only actants
nvolved
in
the
realizationof
the new
tube
line.
Later, "the
scientific
manager(a small and
voluble
mechanism)"
explains
that
the
componentsof the
train
are "of
English
manufacture,"made
by
"the
great
firm
of
Schulz
and Brown
of
Pekin
(they
removed
there
in
1920
in
order
to
obtain
cheap
labour)"
(699),
extending
the
train's network
of
actants o
include
unemployed
British
engineering
workers
as
well
as the
cheaper
Chinese
labor that
has
replaced
them and
the
global
communications
and
transportation
systems
necessary for
their
profitable
exploitation.Althoughtheirrelationships o the trainmight seem as tenuousas
those of the
listed
attendees,
they
indicate,
whether
present
or
absent,the
extent
to
which a
technological
projectmust
negotiateand
recruit
actants nto
a
network
in
order to
become
real.
Regarding
his
complex
interlocking
of
disparate
nterests,
Norbert
observes
that,
[i]f
you
map
out
all the
interests nvolved
in a
project, the
vague or even
reticent
interests
of
those
who are
pursuing
some
other
Aramis have
to
be counted
as
well.
They
are
allies.
Obviously, such
allies are
neither
very
convinced
norvery
convincing.... The full difficulty of innovation becomes apparentwhen we
recognize
that
it
brings
together, in one
place,
on a joint
undertaking,a
number
of
interested
people, a
good
half of
whom
are
prepared
o jump
ship,
and an
array
of
things,
most of
which are
about
to
break down.
(Aramis 49,
58)
The
negotiations
hat
transform
he
nominal
"locomotiveof
a
new type"
(Wells
697)
into the
revolutionary
Metropolitan
nd
District
Line
train,
however,
have
inevitably
altered
its
design-and now it
cannot be
stopped.
It
"whirls[s]
round
the
circle
with
ever-increasing
velocity"
until it
eventually leaves
the
rails,
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140
SCIENCE
ICTION
TUDIES,
VOLUME 3
(2006)
crashes,
and explodes: "Most
of
the
passengers
were
utterly destroyed.
The
august
person,
however,
came down all
right
in
Germany.
The
commercial
speculators descended
in
foreign regions
in
the
form
of
blight" (Wells
700).
Catastrophe
brings
innovation o an end before it can have
consequences
for
the
world,
a conservatism
attested
to
by
a
punchline
that, although
pleasing,
reinstates
an unchanged
world.
While
this
conclusion is tied to the form and
brevity
of
Wells's
tale,
those
formal constraints
(which
are
equally
commercial
ones)
are
nonetheless
instructive
about
sf's
general failure
to
represent
he
complexity
of
innovation.
The
thriller format
that
predominates
in sf
tales of
technological
projects
requires
the
reduction of
complex networks of actants to
various
readily
identifiable-and usuallyhuman-heroes, villains, bureaucratsandpoliticians,
place-holdersand
talking
heads,
whose
relative
ack of
depth
ends
to leave
them
incapableof
acting
as
either realistic or
representative
actants.
This
happens
to
a
significant
degree
even
in
that most
accomplished
story
of a
complex,
innovatory
echnological
project,
Kim
StanleyRobinson's
MARs
rilogy (1992-
1996)-although
it does at times
come
close
to
Latour's
model,
tracing
negotiationsabout
terraforming
nd
political
systems
as
they
develop,
intermin-
gle, and
compromise; and,
more
significantly,
allowing
the
very
landscape
to
become a
powerful
actantwith
which all others must
negotiate.
The overtly political and ecological concerns in which Robinson embeds
Martian
erraforming esonate
strongly with Latour's
determination
o rethink
the modern
relationship
between science and
society
so as to
remove the
scientist's
undue
ability
to limit
debate
through
"his"
privileged
knowledge
of
nature. For
Latour,
even
catastrophe
cannot end
innovation before
it has
consequencesbecause the
(inseparable)
practice
of
science and
politics is always
in
the
process of
producinga
changing
world.
Defming
politics as "the
entire
set
of
tasks
that allow
the
progressive
compositionof a
commonworld"
(Politics
53;
emphasis
in
original), his nonmodern
Constitution
argues
for
a
new pair of
houses: ratherthan separatingnature from politics, the house of "taking nto
account"
asks "how
many
are we?"
and the
house of
"putting
nto
order"
asks
"can
we live
together?"
Through
gathering
ogetheractants nto
this
nonmodern
collective,
a new
common
world
will
be
created.
Latour
distinguishes
"collective,
"
which
"refers
not
to
an
already-established
unit
but
to
a
procedure
for
collecting associationsof
humansand
nonhumans,"
from
"society" (a
term
he
rejects),
which
designates an
"already-constituted
whole that
explains human
behavior and
thusmakes
it
possible to
short-circuit
the
political
task
of
composition"
(Politics
238, 249;
emphasis
in original).
Latoursees thenever-completed,open-ended ask of making hecommonworld
as the
shared
practice of
science and
politics,
activitiesno
longer to be
separated
but
which,
under
the
nonmodern
Constitution,
should
ointly
discover how we
"go
about
getting
those in
whose
name we speak
to
speak for
themselves"
(Politics
70;
emphasis
in
original).
Although
Latour
clearly
understands he
problems of
reconcilingthe
concerns
of human
society with
the needs of
other
beings
with
whom we
shareour
planet,
he
struggles o
provide
solutions.
Aramis
shows
how
various
"stakeholders" n
the project
represent
he needs of
human
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TRANSPORTED
BY
GERNSBACK,
WELLS,
AND LATOUR
141
and nonhuman
components
(the
passengers,
the
politicians,
the
switching
mechanism,the
unemployed
ransport
workers),
but it
gives
no
clues as
to
how
the
collective-in-formation establishes
hierarchy
among
its
many
voices
(including
those deemed
external
to
it)
or
transforms
its
fluid
self
into
"institution."
Strong
on
"taking
nto account," it
neglects
"putting
nto order."
Although the collective is never
finished
or
fixed,
Latour
recognizes
that
most
collectives
try
to
present
themselves as such and to
maintain heir current
form. "Institution"s what
"makes
t
possible
to
respond
to the
requirement
of
closure and to
prepare
the re-collection of the
collective as
it
goes
through
the
next
loop" (Politics
243).
Roughly
corresponding
o Antonio
Gramsci's
theory
of
the
political
hegemony
of
the dominant
class,
a
particularly ideological
configurationof reality, it is nonetheless troubledby those interests hatremain
external(ized)
and thus not
counted
in
the
collective's "how
many."
This
comparison
with
Gramsci
reveals a serious
limitation
in
Latour,
whose
participatory-democratic
model,
presuming
a
(non-existent)
equality
of
voices,
lacks
any
theory of
power.
External(ized)
entities
appear
as
"appellants,"
continually
knocking
on
the door of the
current
teration.Latour
considersthese
appellants
o be
relativelypowerfulbecause
if
heard and
then
counted,they
shift
the entire
collective:
"In
the new
Constitution,
what has
been
externalizedcan
appeal
and come
back to
knock
at
the door
of
the
collective to
demand hat it
be
taken ntoaccount-at theprice, of course, of modifications n the list of entities
present,
new
negotiations,
and a
new
definition
of the outside"
(Politics
125;
emphases
in
original).
Yet
the "real"
case
study
of
Aramis
shows
the
struggle
for
hegemony
to
be much
more
powerful
than the
attempt
to
build any
collective:
"The
nterpretations
ffered
by
the
relativistactors
are
performatives.
They prove
themselves
by
transforming
the world in
conformity with
their
perspective
on the
world.
By
stabilizing
their
interpretation, he
actors
end up
creating
a
world-for-others hat
strongly
resembles
an
absolute
world with
fixed
reference
points"
(Aramis
194-95;
emphasis in
original).
These
actors are
uninterested n the appellantsknocking on theirdoors.'
Latour's
metaphors,
drawn from
the
courts
system
and
representative,
bicameral
democracy,
reveal
the
degree to
which
his
thought
remains
trapped
in
bourgeois
assumptionsand
values,
falsely
rendering
equivalentall
people
and
all
things.
He
imagines the
collective
being
formed
among
the
relative
representation
of
various
propositions
enacted by
scientists
(who
measure
and
test
the
material
world), politicians
(who
understand
compromise
and human
factors), economists
(whose
expertise is
valuable
for
calculating
and
modeling),
and
moralists
(who
refuse to let
us
forget those
appellantsat the
door), but he
offers no theoryof how they speakamongthemselvesor negotiate the serious
power
gaps
among
them.
Latour
argues that
he is not
extending "the
formalism of
social
democracy
to
objects" but
rather
the
"consulting"
of
the
material
world that
happens
through he
experimental
procedures
hat
makethe
material
world
speak(see
his
Science in
Action
[1987]
and
LaboratoryLife
[1979]).
He
characterizes such
consultation
as
more
reliable than
the
assumption
of
"survey
specialists,
sociobiologists,
journalists, and
statisticians" hat
becausehumans
are
endowed
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142 SCIENCE
ICTION TUDIES,
VOLUME 3 (2006)
with
speech, "one
can
speak
of them in their
place" (Politics
170).
Consultation
provides "the risky experimental
apparatus
hat would allow
them to
delineate
their own problems hemselves
nsteadof simply
answering
he
questions
asked"
(171; emphasis
in
original).
However,
Latourdoes not
imagine
how one
might
"experiment"
upon
humans
to
find out
such
data
nor that we
might expect
different and more
complex
things
of humans than
of
other
propositions
n the
collective. When Aramis's automated
systems displace
human
drivers,
the
negotiation
results
in
the decision that
"[w]e
won't
keep
the humans'
physical
presence, their uniforms or
their
outspokenness;
but we'll
keep
some of their
knowledge, their abilities, their knowhow"
(Aramis62; emphasis
in
original).
When it comes to
"consulting
with" the natural
world,
Latour envisions
actants'propertiesas relevantonly insofar as they pertain to the questionat
hand, just as human drivers
are
reduced
to
their
knowhow,
their
intellectual
labor power.
The
design
of
Aramis,
for
example,
must
negotiate
the
speeds
at
which
the
cars might collide
with
one
another
as
they
link
up
to form
a
train
with the rate of impact that
the
humanbodies of
passengers
aboard hese cars
can withstand.
The
humanneeds here are
an
obstacle to the efficient
functioning
of the
system
and thus human
needs, although
factored
in,
are not considered
paramount.
nstead,
"humans
are
being
treatedas
objects
thatdo or do not resist
shocks,
while nonhumans are
granted knowledge,
rights,
a
vote,
and even
refreshments"(225). The humans appear to be in place for the system to
demonstratethe brilliance
of
its nonmaterial
couplings
more than the
system
exists
to
supply transportation
o the humans. In this
particular
collective,
humanshave a "voice"
that
is
limited to this capacity
only-they are small
but
not voluble
mechanisms.8
This
reduction
of
humans
to
singular, pertinentcapacities becomes more
distressing
when the
"voice"
of
displaced
workers is
made
equivalent
o that of
the automated
ystem,
which
"is
demanding
as
well-not about retirementand
Social
Security,
but
about distance
sensors,
orders and
counterorders,
f
we
decide to put it on board; abouttransmission, roadmarkers, informationand
speed,
if
we set
it
up
at
the commandcentre"
(62).
The calculations
by
which
the
collective that
produces Aramis
is
configured do not consider human
suffering
as a
consequence
of
excluding workers' voices. The
system's
needs
become
as,
if
not
more, important
because
able to
gainmore allies) than
those
of the workers
it
displaces. By
making
his
visible to us, Aramisallows us to
see
our social
reality
more
clearly-to see thatpoliticians are
more motivatedby
the
"needs"
of a
system
that can be
marketedat world's fairs and fit into their
self-
perception as
modem and
innovative,
and
so on, than they are moved by
the
needs of workers-and thus the book fills an undertheorizedgap in Latour's
more
strictly political
work
by
acknowledginghow many andwhich voices
are
"presented" n
representative
democracy.
Although
Aramis
only
considers the
questionof how a
particular
echnology
fails to
become
real,
this
nonetheless
points to a serious limitation in
Latour's
plan
to use
science studies
as
a
model "to reinvent
shared forms of public
life"
(Politics
18).
The sense
of "how
many are we?" proposed n Politics of
Nature
does
leave
space
for a
wider
considerationof human
voices, of the
workers'
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TRANSPORTED
Y
GERNSBACK,
WELLS,
AND LATOUR
143
families,
their
suffering beyond just
loss
of
income,
the rise in crime
that
accompanies
poverty,
and so on. Yet
beyondurging
thatwe take as
many
voices
as are "relevant" ntoaccount,Latouroffers no suggestionsas to how to do so
or
even how-or
by
whom-"relevance" is to be
adjudicated.
Ever in
the
process of becoming,
this model
of
politics
has
no
ideal-such
as human
freedom-toward
which to direct
its
configuration;
and there
is no
provision
for
human
needs to be
automatically
considered
a
goal
of
whatever
collective
emerges.
This has
serious
implications
for its
efficacy
as a
politics.
In
every
collective,
there
must be
criteria
for
the
"putting
nto
order,"
but all that
Latour
suggests
is "from the friendliest to the most hostile"
(177). By
refusing
to
privilege
human
happiness,
or
anythingelse,
as the
goal by
which
the collective
might be ordered,Latourrenders such assessments mpossible.
When
a new
entity
knocks
at
the
collective's
door, "[t]he
entire collective
has to ask itself whether it can cohabit
with
so-and-so,
and
at
what
price;
the
entire collective
has to
enquire
nto the trials that
will
allow it to decide
whether
it
is
right or
wrong to carry
out that addition or subtraction"
Politics
196).
Although Latour's political
theory
offers
no
model of
how this
might happen,
he is confidentthat "the miracle
[can be] produced
and the
impossible
harmony
among incommensurables
canbe]
discovered-not because the
right
compro-
mise
has been
made,
but because
the nature
of the
'we' with
which each one had
chosen to identify has been changed" (176). Aramis fails to live, however,
because,
as
it
says
to
those
with whom it
negotiated
its
existence, "you
didn't
love me. You oved me as an
idea.
You
loved me as
long
as
I
was
vague.
The
proof
is that
you
didn't
even
agree
as to whether
I
am
possible
in
principle,
whether
my
essence does
or
does not
implymy
existence"
(Aramis294; emphasis
in
original).
If
those actants could not arrive at an
inclusive "we," what
hope
does a
larger political
collective have of
doing
so?9
Aramis's failure
to exist and Latour's to offer
sufficiently concrete
models
of how collectives
underthe new
constitutionmight
"ensure hat the number
of
voices thatparticipate n thearticulationofpropositions has not beenarbitrarily
short-circuited"
Politics 106;
emphasis
in
original) suggests a place
where sf
might contribute to our
understandingof Latour. In his scientifiction,
the
processes of "putting nto
order" are negotiatedand
the role of power is made
visible-setting
the
criteria for
hierarchization, determining which
voices
become
appellants
to
rather
than members of the collective-as
Aramis
demonstrates hat all ceteris
paribus
assumptions
are fallacious, that all other
things
are not
equal when voices appeal to the
collective. Latoursuggests
that
"
t]o
limit
the
discussionto
humans, heir interests,their subjectivities,and
their
rights, will appearas strangea few years from now as having denied the right
to
vote of
slaves, poor people,
or women" (Politics 69). Althoughour
sense of
the
common
world
must
extend beyond only human interests, it is
nonetheless
disturbing
o
find that the
voices of women, the impoverished,and slaves
count
for
nothing
more
than those of innovative motors
and automated
switching
relays.
In
Aramis, the
relative power of those
representing their respective
voices meansthat the
automated ystem is to
participate n the collective world-
with-Aramis in a
way that
the workers who once drove the trains are
not.
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17/21
144 SCIENCE FICTION
STUDIES, VOLUME 33
(2006)
Without
understandingpower,
the
nonmodern
Constitution,
the
open
and
always-becoming
and
goal-less collective,
does
not offer
possibilities
for
a
sufficiently
better
future.
0
The idea of the nonmodern
Constitution,however,
combinedwith
Aramis's
narrativemode, does enable
us
better
o understand he
limitations
of
the
modem
Constitution,
to
think
about
ways
that our
politics might
take account
of
nonhuman
voices,
and
also to see the
potential
consequences
of
lacking
a
clear
vision
of what
we
value
in
our
collective. Latour outlines how the
complex
material world is translated nto
representational
units that
codify
it and
shape
a
particular
way
of
understanding
t. As with
political
representation,
this
scientific
representationproduces
a
map
that
is