Latour, Bruno. "Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together." Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture and Present, 6 (1986): 1-40
Citational Chain: Manovich cites Latour's work when discussing image-instruments and telecommunications in The Language of New Media (167, 169). In turn, Latour situates his own work in relation to that of Elizabeth Eisenstein, Michel Foucault, and, notably, Leroi-Gourhan.
Focus: Focusing primarily on perspective/scale, shifts in temporality/spatiality, and issues of persuasion and resistance, Latour discusses a number of key moments of innovation that contribute to the increasing mobilization of textual and imagistic technologies.
Logic: Latour provides a counter-history of technology, describing a number of key developments contributing to the mobilization of images and texts.
Characteristics of Text/Technology
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new theory of the text |
| Theories of the text/technology are often overloaded by the tendency to account for every historical (4-5) and economic development (2) |
The history of text/technology should take as its referent "a few specific inventions in writing and imaging" (4), and not the entirety of human practice from primitive man to modem computers. Contemporary work in New Media theory might benefit from an approach more akin to that of Elizabeth Eisenstein than Leroi-Gourhan or Michel Foucault. |
| The technology of "optical consistency" allows us to displace "cities, landscapes, and natives," and to travel a "two-way avenue" between the text and its referent |
This opens up the potential for movement and the possibility for utopia (8). We can reach "saints," "heavens," and "dreams" by following the text's path to its origin |
| The printing press allows the user to make many identical properties, thus insuring the text's "immutability" (10) |
The links between different places in time and space are completely modified by this development (10). The text begins moving in all directions |
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Implications: Latour reconceptualizes the historical evolution of technological development, shifting focus away from (a) "materialist" explanations that focus primarily on advancements in hardware/software and issues of access, and (b) "mentalist" mediations that, in his terms, exaggerate the role of the mind and the primacy of the human body in explanations of technological adaptation and assimilation. In place of these two problematic theories of development, Latour focuses on a number of innovations that accelerate and intensify the processes associated with technological "mobilization." From a rhetorical perspective, Latour is invested in a theory that accounts for how image and text copies persuade audiences in different, often disparate, geographical locales. Those invested in issues of digital literacy will likely find Latour's refusal of materialist and mentalist theories a bit challenging. If the tendency to characterize technological development from these perspectives might be considered, as Latour suggests, "racist," how does this challenge the contemporary emphasis on restorative/redemptive efforts or practices as they relate to the problem of a "digital divide"? Is there, in Latour's terms, room for work that accentuates issues of race in technological practice, if the real issue is not access but how, when, and where the copy persuades its audience? What would it mean to begin thinking in terms of a history of inscriptions that considers their geographical paths? Does this notion of movement disturb the tendency, in contemporary scholarship, to think of literacy as situated or immutable?
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