Demi Mancini Blog #5: Modernity and Post-modernity II

What are fundamental dichotomies underlying modern thought according to Latour? How does the existence of those dichotomies raise questions about the legitimacy of modernity?
According to Latour the fundamental dichotomies underlying modern thought are more so spiritual, nature and society. Latour believed that god has made everything (spiritual and nature) while people have created everything underneath god (society). The process of partitioning was accompanied by a coherent and continuous front of radical revolutions in science, technology, administration, economy and religion, a veritable bulldozer operation behind which the past disappeared for ever, but in front of which, at least, the future opened up (448). While some socialists believe there was pre-modernity, modernity and post-modernity, Latour believed that we are never really modern. But before long they will have achieved modernization, they will have liquidated those islands, and we shall all inhibit the same planet; we shall all be equally modern, all equally capable of profiting from what, alone, forever escapes the tyranny of social interest: economic rationality, scientific truth, technological efficiency (449). In the following dichotomies named, time has made them advance, but not necessarily become modern. Latour describes modernism as two main dichotomies: purification of nonhuman nature and human culture (these two things are seen as separate) and translation, which creates mixtures between entirely new types of beings, hybrids of nature and culture. In my opinion, Latour sees modernism as letting society believe what they want in a sense of letting society believe they create the things around us in life, but in reality and rationally, society did not. These creations include nature and society, in which god has created both but interferes in neither. Latour believed that being a non-modern guaranteed four things for society by the constitution of non-modernism. 1. Nature is transcendent dimension by making it distinct from the fabric of society. 2. Society its immanent dimension by rendering citizens totally free to reconstruct it artificially. 3. Assurance that the separation of powers, the two branches of government being kept in separate, watertight compartments....nature will remain without relation to society (and vice versa). 4. God made it possible to stabilize this dualist and asymmetrical mechanism by ensuring a function of arbitration, but one without presence or power... (455-456). To my understanding all modernists will follow the opposite of the non-modern constitution to obtain the modern constitution. As we have been discovering throughout this essay, the official representation is effective; that representation is what is allowed, under the old constitution, the exploration and proliferation of hybrids. Modernism was not an illusion, but an active performing (460). Modernism in the eyes of Latour seems to be more of a blueprint of how society sees not only its self but the world around it and seems to try to take credit for god's work. It is as if Latour does not see modernism as legit, but as a way of society to see themselves (that Latour does not agree with, hence his beliefs in constitutions for non-modernists and modernists). Latour is very confusing in my opinion but makes valid points on life (such as spirit and creation, which mostly makes sense depending on one's religion) and different viewpoints on modernism.