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It may indeed seem that while the late 1970s and early 1980s were the period when theory was successfully established in western academic discourse, we have now entered an era "after theory" in which not only 'cultural theory' has come to an end but also a specific culture of theory has vanished from our seminars, departments, and universities: a culture of reflection, abstraction, and self-referentiality that had been at the heart of the humanities from the very beginning. And yet, theory is not so easily abolished but rather stored and maintained within each individual reading of a literary text in spite of empirical trends such as DH or pessimistic manifestos. Therefore, in what follows, Nicolas Pethes is interested in an additional aspect of the textual resistance of theory against the institutional resistance to theory: the relation between theory and practice, that is: the question whether acting is also one of the many languages of theory.
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.
Gegenwärtige Geländebestimmungen zum Verhältnis zwischen Mensch und Natur sind durch eine Wiederkehr antiker Mythen geprägt. Dies ist kein Zufall. Offenbar hat der zunehmende Einfluss des Menschen auf die Atmosphäre, auf Ozeane, Eismassen, Wälder, Flüsse, Tiere und Pflanzen einen Punkt erreicht, an dem nicht mehr allein die materielle Beschaffenheit der Umwelt, sondern dieser Begriff selbst, die Logik eines vom menschlichen Zentrum zu unterscheidenden Hintergrunds in Frage steht. Die Natur ist unheimlich geworden.
"Wir wissen nichts vom Sozialen, was nicht durch unser Wissen vom Natürlichen definiert wäre und umgekehrt." Was Bruno Latour für die Soziologie der modernen Wissenschaften formuliert, gilt, seit ihren Anfängen, für die von Übertragungen und Analogieschlüssen bestimmte Begriffsgeschichte der Naturlehre überhaupt: Die 'Ordnung der Dinge' in der Natur und gemäß ihrer jeweiligen Natur entspringt dem Ordnungsdenken sozialer Wesen, die ihre eigenen Belange in Orientierung an Konzeptionen der Natur zu regeln versuchen. Ein solches Denken der menschlichen in Analogie oder Kontrast zu den nichtmenschlichen Dingen setzt die kategoriale Geschiedenheit zweier Sphären voraus, deren Ordnungsmuster einander nun wechselseitig konturieren und stabilisieren.