On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (review)

The book's title highlights, in this collection of Latour's writings, the long-awaited translation of Petite réflexion sur le culte moderne des dieux faitiches, whereby, in 1996, Latour made his "coming out" as a "realist," or rather as an "anti-antirealist" (with no dialectical aufhebung implied). The crucial question, he argues, about claimants to reality should not be, "Can it escape the accusation of having been fabricated?" but "Is it well-fabricated?"—and this last question, a full-blown, demanding pragmatic one, may apply to entities as different as the lactic ferment in Pasteur's laboratory or a djinn possessing a migrant in Tobie Nathan's Centre Devereux (a new item for readers of the corresponding ninth chapter of Pandora's Hope). The urge not to take (some caricature of) scientific reference as a general standard of reality, or as the par excellence target of critique, is evident again in the other two texts comprising this volume: the reedited introduction to the catalogue of "Iconoclash"—an exhibition Latour organized in 2002 in Karlsruhe—and a written "speech act" cursing the way that scientific and religious truths are usually contrasted.