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Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
14 (June) 2023
1
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science, 2023 (14): 1-10
ISSN 2526-2270
Belo Horizonte – MG / Brazil
© The Author 2023 – This is an open-access journal
Bruno Latour – Special Issue
Bruno Latour’s Detour:
From Relativist Rhetoric to Realist Philosophy
Andrew R. Van’t Land1 – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3448-8775
Abstract:
In this article, I argue that the work of Bruno Latour has straddled two conflicting intellectual
traditions: the relativism of 20th-century postmodernism (which deconstructed the realist
pretensions of scientism) and the realism of 21st-century New Materialism (which seeks to
sublate the postmodern linguistic turn and embrace science alongside critical theory). I
connect these twin tendencies to their ancient precursors among the Greek sophists and
presocratic philosophers and argue that Latour’s strange position between relativism and
realism recalls the historical tension between the philosophical and rhetorical traditions.
Latour has embodied both of these intellectual currents, shifting only his focus but never his
commitment to deconstructing the distinction between nature and culture. By connecting
the conflicting tendencies of postmodernism and New Materialism back to the ancient
sophists and presocratic philosophers, I argue that Latour effectively ontologizes rhetorical
persuasion as the ‘language’ of every being, human and nonhuman alike.
Keywords:
Latour; Rhetoric; Realism; Postmodernism; New materialism
Received: May 11, 2023. Reviewed: May 24, 2023. Accepted: May 29, 2023.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2023.i14.08
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
____________________________________________________________________________
Introduction
The twin discourses of philosophy and rhetoric share a complex history extending from
antiquity to today’s intellectual culture. As Bruno Latour writes, “The ancient version of this
battle is renewed from one century to the next through formulas, different every time, that
always revive the same split: on one side the indisputable demonstration based on facts that
are themselves indisputable; on the other, eloquence, rhetoric, propaganda,
communication” (Latour 2013, 131). In this article, I will trace the similarities over time
between the postmodernists and the sophists in the rhetorical tradition on the one hand,
and between the New Materialists and the pre-Socratics in the philosophical tradition on the
1 Andrew R. Van’t Land is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Community College of Allegheny
County. Address: West Hall 234 – 808 Ridge Avenue. Pittsburgh, PA 15212. USA.
E-mail: avantland@ccac.edu
Bruno Latour’s Detour:
From Relativist Rhetoric to Realist Philosophy
Andrew R. Van’t Land
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
14 (June) 2023
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other.2 I will conclude by examining the work of Bruno Latour, whose complex figure
straddles both of these intellectual currents and whose highly nuanced project might trouble
the typical distinctions between philosophy and rhetoric.
Postmodern Sophistry and Classical Rhetoric
In the past half-century, post-Kantian Continental philosophy has revealed the deep
connections between power, knowledge, and communication. The postmodernists (like the
more radical sophists in the classical rhetorical tradition) highlight the primacy of nomos or
convention, stressing that the artificial and constructed nature of the human lifeworld(s)
goes ‘all the way down.’ Like scholars in other humanistic disciplines, postmodern
philosophers navigated the ever-accelerating ‘linguistic turn.’ In this paradigm shift,
philosophers came to recognize that language is performative as well as propositional, that
language discloses and delimits a community’s epistemic access to its shared “world”, and
that the differences which carve up reality into an intelligible and navigable matrix are largely
due to distinctions made (not discovered) in and by language (Lafont and Medina 2002, xii).
However, the model of a linguistic turn remains largely descriptive of the nature of
language; I suggest that the term “rhetorical turn” denotes a prescriptive practical dimension
alongside a descriptive theoretical one. It is not only the case that language does
(re)constitute the reality of human lifeworlds, but also that the power of language should be
used in beneficial, peaceful and just ways instead of malevolent, ideological, and unjust ways.
(One need not look even so far as Derrida or Foucault or Butler to observe this phenomenon,
but only to observe the popular-level–although sometimes unpopular–rise of “politically
correct” or “woke” language since the 1970s, which can more charitably be described as a
hope in the constructive use of language’s power to re-construct reality [Andrews 1996,
389]). Thus, the ‘rhetorical turn’ may be a more accurate description than the ‘linguistic turn’
to describe the simultaneity of both descriptions and prescriptions concerning discourse.
Like other postmodern humanities disciplines which partake in Franco-Germanic
literary style and content, continental philosophy can be validly situated within such a
rhetorical turn—a “Third Sophistic” wherein the affect of rhetoric overturned the cultural
dominance of philosophy (particularly its modernist offspring, foundationalist science). This
postmodern “Third Sophistic” echoes the premodern First and Second Sophistics, eras of
oratorical excess fixated on style over content, political praxis over scientific theoria, and
contingent probabilities over necessary certainties. For Victor Vitanza and Michelle Ballif, the
20th century Third Sophistic is both an era and a disposition which not only opposes
foundationalism and totalization, but also stresses that all language is fundamentally
rhetorical, and is therefore fundamentally deceptive and mischievous (Vitanza 1991, 118-9, 131;
Ballif 1998, 59-60). Whereas the ancient Greek First Sophistic and the classical Roman Second
Sophistic were both “political” only insofar as they were particular regions of public
discourse involving the power of the law, the Continental Third Sophistic is “political” insofar
as it (linguistically) turns every type of language into a power-seeking speech-act.
Postmodernists within this Third Sophistic recognized theoretically that the world—and
knowledge of it—is (to a large degree) structured and mediated by the persuasive force of
language (Derrida 1997, 158; Berger and Luckmann 1967, 40-1). Further, such sophistic
postmodernists have participated practically in the ongoing (re)construction of the world by
2 The historiographical risks of drawing parallels through and within intellectual history are clear: there
is always the temptation to hypostatize a tradition out of superficial similarities among thinkers, to
essentialize thinkers as representative of and allied to a given tradition, and to treat thinkers’ concepts
anachronistically or ahistorically. However, this paper undertakes said risks because of the assumption
that the postmodern era (a “Third Sophistic”) has overemphasized difference and disruption to the
exclusion of identity and continuity.
Bruno Latour’s Detour:
From Relativist Rhetoric to Realist Philosophy
Andrew R. Van’t Land
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
14 (June) 2023
3
signifying performatively as well as representationally (Butler 1993, 13), by politicizing
supposedly “unpolitical” discourses (Foucault 2009, 390), by producing novel concepts
(Deleuze and Guattari 1992, 2), and by deconstructing texts in the pursuit of justice (Derrida
2002, 243).
In the final decades of the last millenium, Bruno Latour’s work in science studies
situated itself rather easily among these postmodern literatures. He published a number of
works examining the social construction of scientific facts (which “appear... unconstructed
by anyone”), thereby emphasizing the rhetorical power wielded (however dissimulatively)
by scientists (Latour and Woolgar 1986, 240). Latour likens the tension between scientific
realism and rhetorical constructivism to Janus’s two faces: “On the left side rhetoric is
opposed to science just as authority is opposed to reason; but on the right science is a
rhetoric powerful enough, if we make the count, to allow one man to win over prestigious
authorities” (Latour 1987, 32). The Third Sophistic enveloping Latour and his postmodern
peers highlights the anarchic condition of this rhetorical dimension (that is, the performative,
powerful, and persuasive dimension) of all types of language, including philosophy. To
historically contextualize this Third Sophistic, I will now examine its forebears in the ancient
First Sophistic.
In the fifth-century Greek democracy, Athenian citizens were expected to represent
themselves in court. As anyone familiar with Plato knows, a group of orators known as the
Sophists took it upon themselves to teach citizens how to speak persuasively in political
settings (Kennedy 2009, 15-16). In particular, the sophistic pedagogy of the rhetors
Protagoras, Gorgias, and Isocrates created a theoretical culture which shaped the socio-
political culture of the day (Kennedy 1999, 50-51). Protagoras infamously claimed that “Of all
things the measure is man, of things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that
they are not” (Williams 2009, 53). Gorgias was skeptical about the possibility of reality,
knowledge, and communication, as shown in his hypothetical kettle logic: “[N]othing exists...
even if it exists it is [not] apprehensible to man... even if it is apprehensible, still it is without
a doubt incapable of being expressed or explained to the next man” (Williams 2009, 59). And
Isocrates emphasized the power of language upon ethical and political praxis and theoria: “in
all our actions as well in all our thoughts, speech is our guide” (Isocrates 1968, 257).
Because of the Sophists’ political ability to invert the balance of weak arguments
against strong ones, philosophers have often regarded them as epistemological relativists.
This relativism typically took the form of a de-emphasis of any universal truth claims and a
cynical emphasis on how localized practical claims could both cohere with and manipulate
the endoxa (conventional wisdom) of a particular culture (Kennedy 2009, 7; Williams 2009,
51; Gagarin 2002, 32). Despite this relativism—or perhaps because of it—sophistry presented
itself to Greek culture as a humanism, an anthropocentric discourse which put knowledge to
work in the sphere of human action (Williams 2009, 22). Unlike the cosmological cloud-
headedness of the presocratic natural philosophers, the Sophists concerned themselves first
and foremost with the affairs of human culture. Western intellectual thought, as mediated
through Socrates and Plato, is arced along this anthropocentric turn, which does not reduce
wisdom to knowledge so much as it reduces knowledge to human wisdom. In many ways,
the rhetorical tradition was the historical fountainhead of humanism (literary, pedagogical,
and existential) because of its political functions. Conversely, the philosophical tradition,
despite its reputation for being the love of wisdom, must be characterized primarily by the
love of knowledge: its goals tended toward the theoretical as opposed to the practical, the
world beyond the human rather than the world of and for humanity. The primary
characteristic demarcating the discursive region known as “philosophy” from that of
“rhetoric” is—or perhaps, should be—de-anthropocentric realism. Whereas rhetorical
relativism localizes all knowledge to (all-too-)human correlations, philosophical realism seeks
theoretical knowledge silhouetted by an interpretive horizon wholly unconcerned with
human subjectivity.
Bruno Latour’s Detour:
From Relativist Rhetoric to Realist Philosophy
Andrew R. Van’t Land
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
14 (June) 2023
4
New Materialism and Presocratic Philosophy
Just as the ancient First Sophistic was challenged by the Socratic/Platonic tradition of
philosophy, a recent reaction to such rhetorical Continental anti-realism has been generated
in the form of a ‘new materialism,’ which can be read as a return to philosophy’s metaphysical
speculations. The surprising development of a school of realism within Continental
philosophy itself amounts to a return with a vengeance of the deepest chthonic roots of the
philosophical tradition. Speculative realists such as Ray Brassier, Quentin Meillassoux, and
Graham Harman have sought to rewind the linguistic turn and its attendant politicization,
relativization, and anthropocentrization of every sector of human lifeworlds, over-and-
against “correlationism” or “philosophies of access” which presuppose the interdependence
of human consciousness and worldly material being (Meillassoux 2008, 5; Harman, 8).
Brassier views the nihilism nurtured by de-anthropocentric philosophy as a “speculative
opportunity,” proposing that “[t]hinking has interests that do not coincide with those of
living” (Brassier, xi). Brassier sorts 21st-century philosophers into two varieties: “those who
want to explain science in terms of human experience” and “those who want to explain
human experience in terms of science,” positioning himself in the latter category (Brassier
2009). Meillassoux similarly endows “science” with “the power to decentre thought”
(Meillassoux 2008, 121). For Meillassoux, post-Kantian philosophy has not been a Copernican
revolution, but a Ptolemaic one: far from challenging humanity’s ostensible central role in
the cosmos, Kant and his successors managed to rebuild the cosmos entirely around human
consciousness and language, the “two principal ‘media’ of correlation” (Meillassoux 2008, 6,
119-20). According to Graham Harman, “The mainstream in both analytic and continental
philosophy still regards ‘language’ as the Big Man on Campus... Still, this is not to say that the
linguistic paradigm deserves an infinite lifespan” (Harman 2002, §16). Tracing a constellation
of diverse yet similar philosophies, Harman (along with Nick Srnicek and Levi Bryant)
proposed “‘The Speculative Turn’, as a deliberate counterpoint to the now tiresome
‘Linguistic Turn’” (Bryant, Srnicek, and Harman 2011, 1). Although this term quickly gave way
to the broader concept of a “New Materialism,” the paradigm represents a return with a
vengeance of the realist philosophical tradition over-and-against the relativistic rhetorical
tradition which informed the linguistic twists and turns of the postmodern Third Sophistic.
Latour’s critics among the New Materialists, particularly the speculative realists, have
read his corpus as perpetuating anti-scientific, rhetorical relativism. For instance, Brassier
critiques Latour’s “dissolution of the distinction between logic and rhetoric” (Brassier 2011,
f.n. 12). He charges Latour and his irreductive ilk with sophistry as well as correlationism:
The distinction between philosopher and sophist is already precarious. And it is
precisely the sophist who knows how to stave off his own philosophical identification
as an imitator of wisdom by denying the possibility of distinguishing between the true
and the false, essence, and appearance, philosophy and sophistry. (Brassier 2013, 177)
Harman is likewise aware of philosophy’s complex entanglement with rhetoric, claiming that
“[r]hetoric is the art of the background” and that “philosophy is... the science of the
background” (Harman 2012, 18). And Meillassoux puts their connection most ominously:
“Philosophy is the invention of strange forms of argumentation, necessarily bordering on
sophistry, which remains its dark structural double” (Meillassoux 2008, 76). The New
Materialism of the speculative realists and others amounts to a reversal of the sophistic
humanization of philosophy. This seems to follow Karl Popper’s advice to go “back to the
Pre-Socratics” and their cosmos-centered philosophizing (Popper 1958, 1-7). I suggest that
New Materialism amounts to a retrieval of the philosophical tradition’s original
demythologizing and de-anthropocentric project (especially as exhibited by the Ionian
Bruno Latour’s Detour:
From Relativist Rhetoric to Realist Philosophy
Andrew R. Van’t Land
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
14 (June) 2023
5
presocratic philosophers).
The presocratic philosophers of the Ionian school (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes,
and—arguably—Xenophanes) nurtured an anti-traditional tradition, encouraging not
deference to doctrine (as with the Pythagorean school) but instead applauding critique,
debate, and disagreement with one’s teachers (Popper 1958, 20). Unlike the more mystical
Pythagoreans, the monist materialists of the Ionian school emphasized that the arche (the
basic metaphysical principle or substance underlying all reality) is only matter (McInerny
1963, 18). Of course, as Aristotle records, the precise mode of that matter was up for debate
among the Ionians, and each of the four classical elements (earth, wind, fire, and water) was
in turn, considered for the status of arche (Curd 2011, 15). Thales, one of the Seven Sages of
ancient Greece and (traditionally) the first of the natural philosophers, proposed water as
the fluid principle of origination, preservation, and motion of all things: all of nature flows
like the seas (Curd 2011, 15; McInerny 1963, 18). Later, Anaximenes (who studied under Thales’
student Anaximander) posited air as the basic metaphysical element or arche (Curd 2011, 31).
Proposing that density is the spectrum by which to measure the differences in reality,
Anaximenes suggested that air formed all other physical elements (earth, water, fire, etc.)
by condensing to a greater or lesser degree (Curd 2011, 19-20). Elsewhere in Ionia, the
philosophical poet Xenophanes waged a demythologizing campaign against the
“anthropomorphic and anthropocentric” tendencies of Greek religious culture (Curd and
Graham 2008, 136, 149). In so doing, he proposed yet a third material mode of the arche,
stressing soil as the fundamental “ground” of the cosmos: “For all things are from the earth
and all return to the earth in the end” (Curd 2011, 35). According to Curd and Graham, in
Xenophanes’ examination of natural phenomena, he “did not limit himself to a purely
phenomenological reduction...he provided a comprehensive speculative theory” (Curd and
Graham, 137). The ancient materialists and the New Materialists share not only a propensity
for naturalistic demythologization and metaphysical speculation, but also for a
deanthropocentrizing realism: neither school is as interested in manipulating human
lifeworlds as in speculating about the world’s life beyond the merely human.
Kairos: Bruno Latour’s Timely Shifts and Opportune Alliances
Finally, the time has come to examine kairos, the rhetorical tradition’s virtue of sensing a
persuasive opportunity. The rhetorician Isocrates highlighted the persuasive significance of
kairos, claiming that the “opportune moment must be chosen for a particular treatment of a
theme” (Isocrates 1929, 335-36). On occasion, rhetors and rhetoricians (e.g., Aristotle, Cicero,
and Augustine) have found it necessary to highlight their philosophical dimensions over their
oratorical backgrounds. One branch of the philosophical tradition has responded to such
shifts not by rejecting rhetorical discourse per se, but by sublating the purpose and practice
of rhetorical language in the direction of realism (Cicero 1949, I.xxxi.51; II.iii.9-10; Augustine
1999, IV.ii; IV.vi; Kimball 1986, 27). I propose that such kairotic moves find a contemporary
parallel in the career of Bruno Latour, whose work straddles the (de)constructivist rhetorical
school and the New Materialist philosophical school.
The later (i.e., 21st century) Latour has worried that his earlier research has aided and
abetted a postmodern propensity for conspiracy theories, pseudo-science, and ultimately
anti-scientific skepticism:
While we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the
appearance of objective statements, do we now have to reveal the real objective and
incontrovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices? And yet entire Ph.D.
programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard
way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated,
Bruno Latour’s Detour:
From Relativist Rhetoric to Realist Philosophy
Andrew R. Van’t Land
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
14 (June) 2023
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unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always
speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using
the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that
could save our lives. Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as
science studies? Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said? ...what
were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of
scientific facts?” (Latour 2004, 227)
As Latour reminds his readership, “The question was never to get away from the facts but
closer to them” (Latour 2004, 231). Such a shift in Latour’s persuasive tactics in light of his
audience’s changing social situation can only be regarded as displaying the timely wisdom of
rhetorical kairos. Latour is careful to note, “This does not mean...that we were wrong, but
simply that history changes quickly and that there is no greater intellectual crime than to
address with the equipment of an older period the challenges of the present one” (Latour
2004, 231).
Thus, Latour has not changed his mind so much as his focus from relativism to realism.
After all, even in his earlier work, Latour challenged the easy relativism that characterizes (or
perhaps only caricatures) the postmodernists of the linguistically-turned Third Sophistic: in
the 1980s, he wrote: “If all discourse appears to be equivalent, if there seem to be ‘language
games’ and nothing more, then someone has been unconvincing” (Latour 1988, 69).
Elsewhere, he noted that, “When we are dealing with science and technology it is hard to
imagine for long that we are... a discourse that is speaking all by itself, a play of signifiers
without signifieds” (Latour 1993, 64).3
However, instead of utterly rejecting rhetoric for a philosophical reason (as Brassier
counsels), Latour re-describes “Reason and Rhetoric” as two separate modes of existence,
“two forms of veridiction, each of which misunderstands the other by translating it into its
own terms” (Latour 2013, 136). In his irreductive ontology, he renders rhetoric in the mode
of “Politics” [POL], which is practical and performative “circular” talk, and he renders reason
(philosophical or otherwise) in the mode of “Double-Click” [DC], which is (the pipe dream of)
purely informative “straight” talk (Latour 2013, 132-4). By interpreting rationalistic philosophy
and political rhetoric as two of fifteen unique modes of existence, Latour proposes that the
respective veracity of each discourse is accountable only to its own internally-developed
discursive criteria. Thus, Latour sees some moments as calling for relativism, and others
calling for realism (Latour 1987, 99).4 Therefore, it seems as though Latour might reject the
possibility of describing his entire intellectual project as a hybrid “philosophical rhetoric,”
because he views rational philosophy and political rhetoric as distinct, irreducible modes of
being.
However, I argue that Latour might ultimately agree with such a hybrid
characterization of his project: by describing the act of persuasion as the fundamental
activity of every actor (human and nonhuman) toward other actors, Latour effectively
ontologizes rhetoric as his root metaphysical metaphor. Latour’s actor-network theory
portrays all actors (both human subjects and nonhuman objects) as exhibiting rhetorical
power-plays: not only do actors build rhizomatic connections with other actors and mediately
3 He elaborates that “rhetoric... changed its meaning entirely when it had truth and proof to absorb
instead of conviction and seduction... It is hard to reduce the entire cosmos to a grand narrative, the
physics of subatomic particles to a text, subway systems to rhetorical devices, all social structures to
discourse” (Latour 1993, 64).
4 Latour stresses that he is not talking merely about politics, power structures, or rhetorical discourse,
but actually also referring to things-in-themselves: his project examines (or enacts) a “simultaneous
impact on the nature of things and on the social context, while it is not reducible to the one or the
other” (Latour 1993, 5).
Bruno Latour’s Detour:
From Relativist Rhetoric to Realist Philosophy
Andrew R. Van’t Land
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
14 (June) 2023
7
“translate” existence between them, but they actively create reality-as-relations by exerting
persuasive power on one another. Reality is the reified net effect of the transformations
caused by communication between actors seeking allies for their own projects (Latour 1988,
167; Latour 2005, 129). For Latour, it is precisely the concrete relations between these actors
which constitute the length and breadth of reality, and the actors which can persuade others
to rally as allies in pursuit of goals must be considered more real. The ontological resistance
rallied by such projects allows Latour to be read as a certain type of realist, assuming an
independent reality which transcends the lifeworld of the individual actor (Latour 1988, 159).
Yet I argue that Latour does not thereby oppose the linguistic (or “rhetorical”) turn,
but he actually deepens and widens its implications (that communication is inherently
performative and formative) beyond the human world to the world of nonhuman objects.
Commenting on the Third Sophistic’s problematic “tendency to privilege language,” Latour
laments that figures such as Lacan, Barthes, and Foucault attempted to “reduce all other
forces to the signifier”; however, he stresses that language should not be privileged above
all other kinds of actants populating the cosmos: “Everything that is said of the signifier is
right, but it must also be said of every other kind of entelechy” (Latour 1988, 184-5). Inverting
J.L. Austin, Latour demonstrates “How to do words with things,” and he drives the force of
rhetoric deeper than the anthropic world of verbal language down to the tectonic
fluctuations of his polymodal metaphysics (Latour 1991, 1). By turning the persuasive force of
inter-actor communication into a metaphysical principle, I claim that Latour ontologizes
rhetoric.
Latour’s strange position between relativism and realism recalls and radicalizes the
hybrid discourse of philosophical rhetoric embodied by Aristotle, Cicero, and Augustine. This
stance reinforces his search for a via media – “a good balance” – between relativism and
realism, and it is in line with his exploration of hybridizations between nature and culture
(Latour 1987, 100; Latour 1993, 30). Latour laments modernity’s false dichotomies: “[D]o we
have to pretend that everything is rhetorical, or that everything is natural, or that everything
is socially constructed?” (Latour 1993, 89-90). I interpret this posture as philosophical
rhetoric, an alliance between the realist philosophical and the relativist rhetorical traditions
(Kennedy 1999, 14-15). Latour may be speaking out of both sides of his mouth like the two-
faced god Janus, but perhaps that is because reality itself is always speaking—or perhaps
being spoken—in two rhetorical languages: the human and the beyond-human.
Conclusion
The 21st century has witnessed a resurgence of metaphysical materialism and
epistemological realism, albeit severely chastened by two centuries of continental
philosophy which has stressed how deeply the lifeworld of appearances is conditioned by a
priori structures of thought and language. However, several of the leading philosophers of
this New Materialist wave have explicitly posited a distinction between their own projects
and prior generations of such idealist, phenomenological, and post-structuralist philosophers
whom they associate more with the rhetorical tricks of ancient sophists than with the
presocratic speculations of the ancient Ionian materialists. However, Bruno Latour has
rejected such positioning as a false dichotomy. His own speculated framework of reality is
one in which the human practice of rhetorical persuasion is simply the most visible (or
audible) example of how all types of actors (from cancerous cells to cosmic radiation) inform
and transform each other within networks of concrete communication. The postmodern
insights into the relation between power and discourse remain true, but not because
signification and the thought-world which it conditions transcend and supervene upon
material bodies; rather, signification (which enables persuasion) is one more aspect by which
Bruno Latour’s Detour:
From Relativist Rhetoric to Realist Philosophy
Andrew R. Van’t Land
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
14 (June) 2023
8
entities can relate to one another. And because such networked relationships condition or
even constitute the identities of the actors involved, any realist account of the facts will
functionally be relativist – not only because of the contextual situatedness of the knowing
subject but also because of the contextual situatedness of the knowable object. So, when
global material conditions changed later in Latour’s life (after spending the height of his
career undermining the easy certainties of the technocratic end of history in the eighties and
nineties), he responded to compounding ecological, economic, and epidemiological crises
not by fanning the flames of anti-scientific skepticism but by shifting epistemological tactics.
Emphasizing that one’s truth procedures must be sophisticated even if they are inescapably
sophistic, Latour changed sides in the realism-relativism debate—or rather, he turned a one-
sided truth around to reveal its other side. After all, philosophy and rhetoric have never been
two isolated ways of thought, but they have instead weaved and crisscrossed throughout
intellectual history. And from time to time, one must re-route simply to remain true to one’s
path.
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