Punctualization: Law and Greimas

There's a great little summary of Actor Network Theory by John Law published in a journal called Systems Practice (which henceforth will be my name for anything I'm up to at the moment: ordering a pizza = systems practice), titled "Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network." I want to turn to it not only because we are turning to Reassembling the Social, but also because he gives us another way to think of the black box, which links things to certain problems the SR and OOP people are trying to figure out. Latour in Science in Action basically has two operations for the black box--that of opening it and closing it. But Law says that this box--or actant--can also be described as a "punctualization" of the network which supports it, or of those transformations or translations of the actant that opening the box makes it possible to trace and retrace. The terminological shift here cues up a host of basic issues that Latour often seems to want to pass by--which is understandable, because bringing them up distracts us from tracing and retracing--but which for me are quite crucial. Law sums these issues up explicitly in a question: "Why is it that the networks which make up the actor come to be deleted, or concealed from view?" (385). In other words, the issue is one of manifestation--and I use this word because it is that of Greimas, who we will turn to in a moment. The box suddenly is less functional, all of a sudden, and becomes more or less apparent. Obviously in an open box you see more--and this is why Latour uses this figure. But your focus is then on what's inside (the other actants), and not on the status, as it were, of that box and how it has altered. Thus Law's question seems to me important.

We sketched out punctualization above, but here's Law's full description of it:

All phenomena are the effect or the product of heterogeneous networks. But in practice we do not cope with endless network ramification. Indeed, much of the time we are not even in a position to detect network complexities. So what is happening? The answer is that if a network acts as a single block, then it disappears, to be replaced by the action itself and the seemingly simple author of that action. At the same time, the way in which the effect is generated is also effaced: for the time being it is neither visible, nor relevant. So it is that something much simpler--a working television, a well-managed bank or a healthy body--comes, for a time, to mask the networks that produce it.


Actor network theorists sometimes talk of such precarious simplificatory effects as punctualizations, and they certainly index an important feature of the networks of the social. Thus, I noted earlier that I refuse an analytical distinction between the macro- and the microsocial. On the other hand, I also noted that some network patterns run wide and deep--that they are much more generally performed than others. Here is the connection: network patterns that are widely performed are often those that can be punctualized. This is because they are network packages--routines--that can, if precariously, be more or less taken for granted in the process of heterogeneous engineering (385).

This is a lot more sociological in orientation, perhaps, than anything in Latour: we don't find much mention of "routines" in quite this way, and we certainly don't get much deconcealing, revealing in Latour, though there is some detective work in Aramis (tellingly, though, it ends up as a detective story without a murderer).

Why? Latour would rather focus on what this deconcealing gives you, to which you are, after you have opened the box or de-punctualized the punctuated, immanent.

This goes back to particular problems having to deal with power and force that I raised last time: Latour sometimes traces actants on the level of power, and other times decomposes them into forces--which makes them actants proper. If there is a bit of confusion, it is for the reason that Law here gives us in these sociological terms: sometimes actants wield a lot of resources (other actants), and so can mobilize them all quicker, such that we see them as punctuations. His example is a corporation or a government: we will suddenly be referring to these actants, rather than to the doers that, according to another view, make these things up.

Now, what is crucial is that for Law, we are right to refer to the actant in this way, or at least are somewhat right. We are recognizing, through our punctuation of the network, that there is a network of such a size behind the actant.

Now, this is for the reasons Latour also gives--and we note how he couches this less in the sphere of routines: the actant is shaping reality itself by recruiting allies. But this takes on a whole new meaning when aligned to what Law is saying: when we talk about powers, or about closed boxes, or about punctuated networks--all three here mean the same thing--we are talking about an actant that has so shaped reality that in referring to it that it seems natural it would be sustained by so many forces, so many of what is inside the box, or the wide and deep network itself. Or rather, that seeming naturalness which allows us to skip over the network in referring to the punctuated is precisely the amount of reality it has achieved through the network.

So, when Latour is talking about powers, or punctuated networks, he is referring to reality as any of us do. That is, it isn't as if he has to switch gears and enter the level of forces only in order to refer to the networks, or actually go about depunctualizing the punctuated in order to refer to that network that is punctuated--though he would encourage us all the time to do so.

But what Latour always stresses is that the situation is the same in reverse: when he refers to forces, he's referring to reality as any of us do, as well. And this is what, I think, confuses me occasionally, because it skips over this whole level where the problem of manifestation is actually opposed to the immanence to the network that ANT gives you.

And it is opposed. We're only making clear here that this opposition is not total. The question then becomes: what is the precise relationship of that manifestation of the network to its immanence with respect to the theorist?

This, however, was long ago answered by A.J. Greimas--who I turn to because, of course, he was fundamental in the development of ANT though not (as far as I've seen) very much discussed (Latour adapts and cites often, but, like Law, never quite explicates or interprets--either because it is all to patently Greimassian, or because we don't want to rehearse the differences)--whose opposition this is, in effect. I say "in effect" because the notion of immanence in this sense was originally formulated by Louis Hjelmslev, in his dense Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, though it has since acquired many valences which may be relevant (mostly through Deleuze). Hjelmslev was saying essentially that an immanent linguistics (glossematics) would not define itself with respect to transcendent elements like physiology or psychology: it would disregard the possibility that the only phonemes produced, say, could be those the human body was shaped to make, and would therefore remain founded only on its own properly linguistic presuppositions, remaining, always, close to them. It's important to note that while this is a structuralist move, this produces a slightly different sense of structure than that of Saussure and (in a certain sense) Lévi-Strauss: structure is here not a word for something like a synchronic logic governing certain elements, but is rather a system that generates these elements out of itself--something more self-consistent. It's no mistake that Hejlmslev was thus able to posit different and more subtle layers of signification with which structuralist analysis then could proceed (indeed, without Hjelmslev, we don't get anything like the discourse of Benveniste): his notion of structure forced him to stop applying the same old categories over and over, and move on to the generation of new terms, out of the old.

Now, Greimas takes over this term and interestingly opposes it to manifestation by saying each is the other's contrary (in the logical sense: that is, they are not in a relationship of contradiction). But what is immanent and what manifests? For Greimas, the structure itself: the immanent level is the one where the deep structures of language lie, and remain self-defined (like the semiotic square itself, which inter-defines its elements), and the manifest is the surface layer, where language moves towards its articulation and encounters the constraints of medium. Obviously, this is a bit weird, given what Hjelmslev meant by "immanence." But this is how Greimas believes we should take the term: "the terms manifestation vs. immanence are borrowed from Hjelmslev, but they can be compared profitably with the categories surface vs. deep in linguistics, manifest vs. latent in psychoanalysis, phenomenal vs. noumenal in philosophy, etc." as he says in "Towards a Theory of Modalities," (in On Meaning, 125) but also many times more elsewhere. One sees that transcendence, to which Hjelmslev opposed immanence, has to become something more like expression itself: thus, manifestation involves not moving beyond what is self-defined, but something more like the subjection of the "structural trunk" to the "specific requirements of the linguistic substance through which it [the trunk] is expressed" ("Elements of a Narrative Grammar," in On Meaning, 64), or the production of closure (as Greimas calls it), the lopping off of the pure possibilities of the deep structure.

So when one moves backwards, from the manifest to the immanent, as we are doing in ANT, what is one doing? The short answer returns us to square (or, rather, box) one, since obviously to move in the other direction than closure would be... opening. But because, as we saw, the manifest and the immanent are contrary, and not contradictory, this move backward can be seen as a more gradual return to the deep structure, the elementary units, out of which the more complicated manifested units are made.

Except in Latour this move back is not towards a deeper structure--and this problematizes everything once more, and confuses the stability of our opposition of the deep and fundamental and the simple qua immanent to the transcending that manifests. Latour tries to clarify all this at the end of We Have Never Been Modern, where he talks about immanent transcendence--one can think of this as his rewriting of Greimas. I'll try and work out this situation in another post. Nevertheless, I wanted to show that the old Greimassian distinction has some relevance, in that it provides the framework in which to think of this punctualization of the network: if we conceive of the relation between punctualized and the network as relation of the manifest to the immanent, or punctualization as the manifestation as the immanent, and conceive this relation correctly, we end up with a less outright contradictory opposition which needs to be overcome. This means that when we become immanent with the network, or de-punctualize the punctualization, we are engaged in an operation that isn't overcoming a massive gap so much as bringing the two levels into a relationship of contrariness. This rehearses, then, on a more technical level, what we were getting at before when we said talking about powers is, in a way, also acknowledging the size of their forces without specifying them.

One way to think about what Latour then does with this Greimassian situation--if I can just sketch out what happens through the massive reversal the desire to open produces--is to look at all of this coming to bear on the famous narrative grammar, and say that Latour narrativizes the deep structures, rather than the other way around. That is, Greimas thought the simplicity and minimal character of the deep structure tended towards narrativization (or the generation of combinations that had to be cut off in closure), and that we always could see, as it were, these simpler structures behind the manifestation (which is what makes possible his amazing narrative grammar). Thus, in Greimas, the actant itself is a simplification or concentration of a complicated textual surface, full of various actors. Latour--and Harman--reverse this: we see the actors (which can also be thought of as accidents or properties of objects) narrativize actants, which are much more complicated, or which do not become more simple. However, we are still, in this maneuver, becoming immanent--the network is self-articulating and self-consistent in these particular ways.

One way to describe many of my objections to Latour is not that manifestation has to work the other way (I like this about both Latour and, even more, about Harman), but that this reversal should turn the relationship of contrariness into a relationship of contradiction (or rather, there should be some similar sort of closure for his type of opening up). This, however, goes against (or maybe it merely refines? I think it refines) my point saying that the great thing about Latour is moving away from a logic of otherness and towards a logic of more.

(On that last point, I will show in my next post on "Morality and Technology: The End of the Means" that Latour himself isn't always so interested in this move, and is quite happy to talk about otherness--further complicating all of this! I think Harman will be clarifying it a bit though for all of us.)

Not razors, boxes!

This will pick up on certain things you say in your second-to-last post (on time and simplicity), and black-box the remarks in your last post (on Heidegger). Actually, let me start very simply: what is a "black box," for Latour? Here's what he says in Science in Action:

“The word black box is used by cyberneticians whenever a piece of machinery or a set of commands is too complex. In its place they draw a little box about which they need to know nothing but its input and output.” (Science in Action, 2-3)

So when I say I'm black-boxing what you say about Heidegger, what I mean is: I see that there's an issue about spatialized time and the differences and similarities between Latour and Heidegger, and I see that you ultimately resolve it to your satisfaction by declaring them compatible, both holding that "representation is dependent … on what reality does, rather than what it is--such that what it does is what it is." And I am content to leave it at that, and not engage you on this issue, either to argue or to agree. If I did work through it, at the cost of a great deal of time and mental energy, I would more than likely find things that I deeply disagree with Heidegger about. Or maybe not; maybe I'd become a Heideggerian (in which case I might stop caring about Latour). But in this particular case, I'm happy to just leave the box black, because I'm not a Heideggerian, and I'm satisfied that you feel the difficulties are mostly resolved. From the standpoint of dialectic, this might seem insulting or unfair, but from the standpoint of "reality" as Latour sees it it's just the way things work: not everybody needs to know everything underlying a particular state of affairs in order to accept that state of affairs as compatible with their own interests.

So I think I see what you mean when you say that "Latour is solving the huge dilemma of historicism that characterizes so much humanities research which bases itself on a scientific model." By showing us the way science actually works (as opposed to the way epistemology and the history of science claim it works), he both shows us that the dilemma is false (we don't need to try to arrive at exact, pure, perfect knowledge of history, because the scientists don't get it of nature either) and gives us a new way to work, one premised on simplicity rather than progression or accumulation. Not "Always historicize!" but "Always simplify!" (Latour — or rather, Norbert — actually says this in Aramis, on page 94. But that's next week's text.) And you're right to link this commitment to simplicity to Latour's concept of temporality, his sense of what it is possible to do with the past:

All of time becomes reversible, and there are no longer theories that get more concrete and "settled" because they are "historical" than newer or more "open" ones”

and

we slim down things by making time reversible, or stop seeing time as some process of accumulating--anything at all (here, knowledge or error).

It seems to me that the black box has great possibilities for historicist work. Because it does away, once and for all, with the “archaeological” metaphors that Foucault et al. espouse. The working assumption, for the New Historicists (and also, I think, Jameson), is always that the actors knew more — even if only unconsciously — than we do; and in order to understand them, we need to reconstruct that knowledge. So we’re always playing catch-up; and this is part of why it’s so easy to criticize, even dismiss, historicist work: well, if you just knew a bit more about X then your interpretation would be better. Your failure to take Y into account invalidates your whole argument. You don’t seem to have realized that Z is a condition of everything you say.

But we can say, with Latour: yes, the actors knew lots of things we didn’t, consciously or unconsciously; but much of what they knew took the form of black boxes which they never thought, or perhaps were unable, to open. And here’s where we have an advantage over the actors we study: we can safely open the black boxes, question their contents [the abstracting move you see, rightly, as the hallmark of “Theory”], and make connections and draw conclusions that the historical actors didn’t or couldn't.* We have nothing to lose by this activity, because it’s all already over: we don’t need the black boxes in the same way the actors did. Their projects are not ours, so we’re free to nitpick, reframe, reconsider, theorize. And I don't think Latour's against this at all. You say:

I can make an idea "open" by somehow plucking it out of time and playing with it. It is this that I think people are talking about when they confusedly call theory "ahistorical." Nevertheless, theory is only taking its cue from a notion of modernity defined by the sciences--or so I imagine Latour saying. Regardless, it is allowing the "opening" of "settled" knowledge precisely by grounding ever more thoroughly the notion that there are "open" and "settled" knowledges.

And I agree with you that BL might see much of “theory” — especially that part of it that descends from Canguilhemian epistemology, by way of Althusser, Foucault and Bourdieu — as ironically “taking its cue from a notion of modernity defined by the sciences.” But it’s important, I think, not to paint him as against theory, even the kind of theoretical maneuvers you’re talking about (which I associate, perhaps naively, with Derrida: “mak[ing] an idea "open" by somehow plucking it out of time and playing with it”). After all, he’s a theorist himself! What Latour adds, I think, is a refreshing reminder of the always provisional and local nature of theorization, and the necessity of it taking an object.

But, also, at the same time as he gives us license to theorize, he gives us license not to theorize. (Here he reminds me of Wittgenstein: "The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to.") Because we can always skip some steps; because we can always leave black boxes black (just not necessarily the same ones as the historical actors did). In fact, we have to do this; if we went into everything, theorized everything, we'd never get anywhere. But it's a relief, this restraint, this simplicity.

And one more thing about Latour's brand of simplicity: it's a proliferative simplicity, because it is — precisely — not a reduction. It is not the boring old medieval logic of Occam's Razor: thou shalt not multiply entities beyond necessity. Quite the contrary: it multiplies entities all over the place, but shuts up most of those entities inside black boxes, until we, the analysts, want to let them out. A way to acknowledge the (Deleuzian?) interconnectedness of everything, while still enabling us to stop doing actor network theory when we want to — what could be better?

But why is this not just warmed-over epistemology — us arrogant post- or even-more-moderns, arriving after all the games are over, playing with the views or beliefs of the ancients (in this case, the modernist ancients) from the standpoint of our superior modernity? In other words, exactly what Latour rails against in We Have Never Been Modern? Because we need to test it against the objects. And this is why, as you correctly say, “the notion rejected … is not that science works with facts, but that there are epistemological breaks, total changes in perspectives that close off not just outdated series of facts, but whole sets of ‘knowledge’-producing outlooks and techniques--all in the name of progress.” There do need to be facts, and there do need to be objects — this is what’s realist about Latour’s method — but there doesn’t need to be progress in our way of viewing them. (This is possibly why Latour's position strikes you as "pro-scientific-(but anti-science? how to describe that)-realism.") We can keep the empiricism of science without the progressivism of the history of science: the moderns’ way of looking without their certainty that they’ve revolutionized everything. Which I think is probably as good a way as any to think about the heritage of historicism, not to mention close reading.

* Some black boxes that literary historical actors have used that we can open: God; technology; race; gender; ideology; “literature”; and, yes, modernity. It’s this last that’s most exciting for my field (modernism/twentieth century poetry): because here, all the actors were so convinced that they were modern/avant-garde/progressive — and much academic criticism of their work has consisted of weighing in on whether they really were or not. (Yes, you were aesthetically modern, but you were politically reactionary! Go to the back of the class!) But if we are free to open the black boxes marked “modernity” and “modernism,” then we can really reread these authors, without being hamstrung by the framework or paradigm or epistème they themselves have brought into being.