How to Talk About the Body? the Normative Dimension of Science Studies
Abstract
Science studies has often been against the normative dimension of epistemology, which made a naturalistic study of science impossible. But this is not to say that a new type of normativity cannot be detected at work inscience studies. This is especially true in the second wave of studies dealing with the body, which has aimed at criticizing the physicalization of the body without falling into the various traps of a phenomenology simply added to a physical substrate. This article explores the work of Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret in that respect, and shows how it can be used to rethink the articulation between the various levels that make up a body.
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This article was first written for a symposium organized by Akrich and Berg in Paris, September 1999, ‘Theorizing the Body’; it was revised in January 2000, November 2002, October 2003.
1. Gabriel Tarde was older than Durkheim and defined an alternative sociology which has barely survived (see Tarde, edited by Clark, 1969), but is now revived because it connects much more closely with biology than those of his more traditional counterparts. For an introduction, see Latour (2002).
2. Isabelle Stengers (1996, 1997a, 1998), who trained as a chemist, has become one of the most important philosophers of science in the French-speaking world. Currently a professor in Brussels, she has worked extensively with Ilya Prigogine and has developed a very original philosophy, first of physics, then of biology and what she calls ‘cosmopolitics’. She has recently written a masterpiece on A.N. Whitehead (2002). Vinciane Despret (1996, 1999, 2002) trained as a psychologist, she isa professor of philosophy in Liège, also in Belgium, and has put to good empirical use many of Stengers’ insights, as well as developing a marvellous series of studies on psychology and ethology.
3. The whole work of Ilya Prigogine – with and without Stengers – has been devoted to understanding what changes physics should undergo when time – that is process – is reintroduced into it, instead of being considered as a completely reversible dimension as has been customary since at least Newton.
4. Milgram’s experiment, conducted in the wake of the discovery of the horrors committed by the Nazis, consisted in finding out whether or not obedience to authority could make average Americans behave in the same way as their German counterparts (Milgram, 1974). Subjects were instructed to inflict electric shocks on a student, whom they were supposed to teach various things. To the great horror of Milgram, students did not stop inflicting extreme torture in the name of pedagogy, invoking the orders they had received to justify their action. Along with several others, Stengers and Despret have redone this experiment, showing that it is the design itself which is horrific.
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