ASYMMETRIES OF BRUNO LATOUR’S SYMMETRIC ANTHROPOLOGY

Bruno Latour provides one of the most interesting critical accounts of modernity. His basic assumption consists in equally regarding humans and non-humans, dealing with society, nature, and discourse in a radically symmetric way. This paper evaluates if symmetry can be preserved in the light of four critical issues: the actor-network is actually a discursive device, in which the observer distributes, in his narrative, the role of humans and non-humans; the dynamics between signs and things is technologically biased by the concept of black-boxing; the ontological pluralism of different modes of existence does not prevent the survival of a latent social differentiation, in terms of traditional sociology; and, finally, while technique, science and law are demystified by the anthropology of the moderns, politics remains idealized and distant from the political practices of everyday.

Bruno Latour; Actor-network theory; Symmetric anthropology; Discourse theory