Latour’s Où suis-je?: Summary of Chapter 3

See here for short summaries of chapters one and two. Here is the third chapter, entitled: ‘Terre’ est un nom propre. Please remember: these posts are intended as nothing more than short summaries of the content of the book for those who do not read the French. I will endeavour to post more substantive analysis in due course.

The Samsa Family

At the beginning of this chapter, we pick up again the story of The Metamorphosis. Think about way Gregor and his family occupy space – differently. Gregor’s family (the mother, the father, and to a lesser extent the sister) are portrayed by Kafka as wire sculptures (“silhouettes de fil de fer”, 27), without material substance, skeletal. These physical descriptions echo their spatial existences. They are enclosed, isolated, shut in on themselves (“claquemurés”, 27) in their too-large apartment, struggling to pay for it, frightened by what lies outside the walls.

Gregor in his insect for of course is confined to a yet smaller space: his room. And yet, he can connect with so more things than them (“se relier à bien plus de choses qu’eux”, 27). He is linked in ways that the amortised family could never conceive. Moreover, as Kafka describes, Gregor’s movements around his room increasingly delineate or map out a freedom to occupy space in new ways: “as he moves around his room, he is able quite freely to elaborate niches, domes, bubbles, atmospheres, in short, interiors” (27-28). Latour’s language here is highly inflected by a Sloterdijkian register of course.

Thus we see the contrast: it is the family who are confined; Gregor who is free.

Think for a moment about the surveillance of the planet Earth that is conducted by Google satellites. From a computer located in Silicon Valley, we could localise upon the Samsa household by zooming in. And yet, were we to do so, these characters would represent mere pixels on a screen, none more distinct than any other.

But what is viewed from afar (“le point de vue de Sirius”, the view from nowhere, as Latour never tires of reminding us) is always pixellated in relation to the real image. For Gregor in his insect form has become “terrestre” (29, this is the crucial codeword of the whole book). And so he signifies something quite different from his family (“il se repère tout autrement que ses parents”, 29). Disgusting as it might seem, his footprint is now given by the things he has eaten, digested and left behind as he slithers around his territory (“des choses qu’il a digérées et laisées dans son sillage”, 29). Gregor cannot be so easily reduced to the form of a pixel when viewed from above: “aucune force ne peut l’aplatir ou le réduire à un pixel” (30). No, he truly occupies space. In its full multi-dimensionality. We read the story and seek to understand why we should sympathise with Gregor. But we are getting it the wrong way round: it is his parents and family that becomes insignificant for him, vanishing into nothingness.

It is as if Gregor and his family do not occupy the same Earth: “nous ne vivons plus, littéralement, dans le même monde” (30).

Lockdown

The before-and-after of the pandemic-induced lockdown corresponds to the (let us call them) different generations of characters represented in Kafka’s novel.

• Most of us believe we are encapsulated and complete selves (as Latour puts it: “leur moi riquiqui”, 30). With this awareness safely in the bag, we then venture out into the world and seek to add to ourselves a material frame, composed of a bundle of inert things.
• In the experience of lockdown, however, as we were literally confined to our rooms, we began to understand that this never was the case, that subjectivity never was constituted this way, “que personne n’a jamais eu l’expérience de recontrer des ‘choses inertes’” in the way described above (30). We began to realise that everything is arranged, maintained and given meaning by agency configurations (“puissances d’agir”, 31, another crucial but untranslatable Latourian term).

Subsistance

For those inspired by Gregor (if “inspired” is the correct term) all is alive, “tout est vivant” (32), in the sense not only of individuated living beings like termites, but also in the sense of the termitary itself, “en ce sens que, sans les termites, tout cet amas de boue ne serait pas ainsi agencé” (32). We know this because the termites themselves would not survive for one moment outside its confines.

What term can encompass this range of living beings? “Bioclastique? Biogénique” (33). Or “artificiel” (33)?

None of those terms suffice of course. Following on from his ontological nomenclature in the Inquiry, Latour specifies that the correct tern is “subsistence”: “la liaison, l’association, la superposition, la combinaison de tous ceux qui ont des soucis de subsistance et d’engendrement” (34). Subsistence comprises a branching from a predecessor to a successor (hence, it is an issue of “engendrement”, 35), each time via a small hiatus, thereby allowing a “généalogie” (35) to be traced to its origin like a salmon moving upstream. The present moment owes its form to this genealogy; we are “terrestre” in the sense that we owe our existence to those who came before us who created the conditions of habitation that we now enjoy.

Even in lockdown, when other work is denied to us, when we may feel restricted and thwarted by conditions imposed upon us from the outside, we can trace these genealogies. And thus we are free. Like Gregor was. For we may have been shut in, but we cannot be truly confined: “confines, oui, mais chez vous” (36).