What Is A Quasi-Object?

In his work, We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour proposes a theory that society encompasses exactly what the book title suggests—a lack of modernism. He writes of an illusion, a misread, on behalf of the people, and he introduces ideas of connectedness and change. For this blog post, I’d like to focus specifically on section 3.2, What Is a Quasi-Object?, and highlight some of the key ideas I believe Latour puts forth. Within this section, Latour locates his previously discussed hybrids, associates his thoughts with those of French philosopher Michael Serres, and ultimately concludes that society must be built, created.

Latour takes issue with two forms of social science: he writes of the “naturalization” belief system and then too of “ordinary people[s]” beliefs “that they are free and that they can modify their own desires” (52). Latour labels these two forms as a double contradictory and writes:

“When the two critical resources are put together we now understand why it is so difficult for social scientists to reach agreement on objects. They, too, ‘see double.’ In the first denunciation objects count for nothing; they are just there to be used as the white screen on to which society projects its cinema. But in the second, they are so powerful that they shape the human society, while the social construction of the sciences that have produced them remains invisible. Objects, things, consumer goods, works of art are either too weak or too strong” (53).

Latour continues his argument and suggests that it is here where the ultimate contradictory lies. He then writes of the opposing lists—“the ‘soft’ list of the nature pole” and “the ‘hard’ list of all the sciences” (53). Interestingly, Latour comments, is that the soft list features items social scientists despise, whereas the hard list features those which they hold belief.

It is this connection that floods Latour with questions:

“And if religion, arts, or styles are necessary to ‘reflect’, ‘reify’, ‘materialize’, ‘embody’ society — to use some of the social theorists’ favourite verbs — then are objects not, in the end, its co-producers? Is not society built literally — not metaphorically — of gods, machines, sciences, arts, and styles?... Maybe social scientists have simple forgotten that before projecting itself on to things society has to be made, built, constructed? And out of what material could it be built if not out of nonsocial, non-human resources?” (54).

Latour seems to be just as much on the fence as the two contradictory forces. Does he agree with them both? He offers great detail on the quasi-objects and locates them “between and below the two poles, at the very place around which dualism and dialectics had turned endlessly without being able to come to terms with them” (55). Latour believes quasi-objects are the missing links that connects nonhuman item and person.

In Serres’ work, he provides an example of a quasi-object — a soccer ball. He argues that it is a person that brings the ball to life, kicks it, throws it, and shoots it in one direction or another (in combination with laws of physics). Without the human counterpart, Serres believes, the ball just sits on the field as an object of matter. The ball participates in the human actions and is a factor in the relationship between quasi-object (nonhuman item) and person. I’d like to propose another example: Could this same principle be applied to a pen, pencil, or any power tool? Because these items are man-made, does it take a human to define their use? Are these items similar to the quasi-objects Serres and Latour write of? If so, where does agency fit in the relationship?  

Sources:

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993.