Category Archives: latour

Latour and “Delegation”

I’m researching Latour’s views on Christianity for a revise and resubmit and came along this passage near the end of We Have Never Been Modern. I don’t know how many times I have read this book, but I never recognized … Continue reading

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Levinas and the Sophistic Virtue of “Deception”

I’m reading this passage across Latour’s insistence upon chains of translations (Pandora’s Hope) and Susan Jarratt’s explication of Gorgias notion of Apate (deception) as virtue); Levinas, from his interview with Philippe Nemo: A radical reflection, obstinate about itself, a cogito … Continue reading

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Latour, Levinas, Vitanza, a Rhetoric of Obligation

A quick threading of my last few posts: Levinas, from the later essay “God and Philosophy” (a rather remarkable essay that integrates so much of Levinas’s career–the discussion of insomnia from Time and the Other, the insistence upon (un)saying the … Continue reading

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Davis on Derrida; What Levinas Offers Latour

Via Blogora, a video lecture by D. Diane Davis on Derrida, deconstruction, gratitude, and debt: Derrida and gratitude: thinking always has a debt. “The image of the trail blazing subject, self sufficient and completely independent is, of course, a metaphysical … Continue reading

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Addition not Subtraction

Latour: The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles. (“Why Critique Has Run Out of Steam” 246)

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Latour and Risk

From Pandora’s Hope:: Speech implies by definition the risk of misunderstanding across the huge gaps between different species. If scientists want to bridge the two-culture divide for good, they will have to get used to a lot of noise, and, … Continue reading

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Walking Notes: Latour on Heidegger

I was thinking today about Latour’s move to Heidegger in “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam”. He notes that it might strike many as odd, a hyper-realist turning to one among the most speculative of phenomenologists. But Heidegger’s fourfold … Continue reading

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Zakaria and Political Reality

I missed a post yesterday, so two posts today. First, a brief comment on Zakarias’ article “How Conservatism Has Lost Touch with Reality. A friend has a rather scathing response to Zakarias over at his blog, arguing that Zakarias is … Continue reading

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What is Rhetoric?

Our FYC program writes and publishes their own textbook every year. This year, they asked me to write a short introduction addressing what rhetoric is and why one might study it. Here’s my answer (probably rife with errors, it could … Continue reading

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Latour, Gorgias, and Levinas Take 15

This article keeps beating me up–every time I think I know what I am doing, it runs away. I believe I am finally whipping it in to shape, but I want to make sure the following paragraphs make sense to … Continue reading

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