X-morphising: review essay of Bruno Latour's Aramis, or the Love of Technology

Abstract

An extended review is presented of Bruno Latour's book Aramis, or the Love of Technology (Harvard University Press,. 1996). Attention is paid to the textual. style and strategies.in the book, and also to how it fits in with, and exemplifies, many of the more abstract claims central to Latour's actor-network theory. In particular, consideration is given to the provocative arguments in the book about the status of non-human beings in social-scientific research, and to the specific manoeuvre whereby Aramis, this transportation project which never quite made it from being an idea to being a completed object, is accorded agency and even a voice in the text. The 'x-morphising' which underpins Aramis in this respect is examined, and is subsequently criticised for a flattening out of agency which permits humans and nonhumans to be regarded as 'social' equivalents. Although attracted to Latour's radical emancipation of nonhuman things from a social-scientific netherworld, we nonetheless conclude by worrying about the flat and undifferentiated 'spatial imaginary' at the heart of what he is attempting to do for actors of all kinds in Aramis.