Open Access

Michael Eggers

• Since at least modernity, theory has been marked by prominent efforts to revolutionize or reform its own vocabulary and concepts. [...] One example is the work of Bruno Latour, who undertakes comprehensive redefinitions of an already existing scientific terminology in order to propagate new ways to conceive the relations between subject and object. His proposals have far-reaching epistemological and political consequences, not only for the sciences but also for an everyday understanding of our position in the world. Michael Eggers has chosen Latour's project as the main object of this essay but refrains from any extensive comments on the intentions of his theory, in favour of an investigation into his linguistic and rhetorical approach. [...] Proposing the rhetorical procedures of actor-network-theory (ANT), whose most prominent proponent he undoubtedly is, Latour repeatedly underlines the strong necessity to dispense with the customary vocabulary of the sciences which represents attitudes he wants to overcome. He demonstrates how this might be done by redefining many established terms and using them with their new meaning thereafter. Notwithstanding these continued verbal reinventions of his terminology, it is possible to identify a number of linguistic and stylistic elements in Latour's texts that have a longer history and tradition. This article tries to pair Latour's own rhetorical features with examples from different theoretical contexts, not in order to weaken his argument or to question his intentions but to show that despite his claims to initiate new scientific idioms, he relies on traditional formal devices. It is the basic assumption of this essay that even after the gradual disappearance of classical forms of rhetoric, the ambitions brought forward by many modern thinkers, some of which have been mentioned above, have generated a new and powerful set of recurring stylistic elements that constitute a verbal practice with identifiable effects.