Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology

13. Transcendence

13 Transcendence Characterizing the principle of irreduction in terms of resistant availability also allows us to retrofit the notion of transcendence for use in an experimental metaphysics. Transcendence, rather than naming a single, definitive, supernatural difference between this world and another higher, more original, and unconditioned one, names instead the multitude of diffuse, localized, non-supernatural transcendences that constitute the resistance of each object as such. And, for Latour, it is important to note that among these transcendences, no transcendence is different in principle from any other. There are a multitude of others, but no other is Wholly Other. At this point, it is not hard to predict the objections of those intent on defending what they take to be the divine rights proper to their metaphysical royalty. ‘‘By all means,’’ Latour imagines these reductionists objecting, we must ‘‘not mix up heaven and earth, the global stage and the local 41 scene, the human and the nonhuman’’ (WM 3). Their objections to this experiment are noted, but if Latour’s approach is good for anything, it is precisely this. The principle of irreduction is nothing if not an industrial grade blender that emulsifies heaven and earth, the global and the local, the human and the nonhuman, into a single, messy, metaphysical pulp. It yields, as a metaphysical prerequisite, ‘‘a single proliferation of transcendences’’ (WM 129). Latour’s emulsification of transcendence leads him to describe his metaphysics as an ‘‘exploration of a transcendence without a contrary’’ (WM 129). ‘‘Who told us,’’ he asks, ‘‘that transcendence had to have a contrary?’’ (WM 128) Moreover, who told us that transcendence had to be both rare and vertical? On Latour’s account, rather than marking a ‘‘huge vertical gap,’’ transcendence marks the ‘‘many small differences between horizontal paths of reference— themselves conceived as series of progressive and traceable transformations’’ (PH 141). In the absence of any one de- fining difference, transcendence names the irreducible but conditioned resistance proper to every object, a resistance that requires the negotiated but progressive transformation of all the parties involved. In general, ‘‘resistant availability’’ names that watershed where the relative, multiple, and mobile lines of resistant transcendence and immanent availability constitutive of an object both meet and part ways. In one sense, Latour’s transcendence without a contrary resembles ‘‘a completely ad hoc sort of activity that is neither transcendent nor immanent but more closely resembles a fermentation’’ where each object or network of objects is ‘‘never exactly in accordance with itself, and never led or commanded or directed from above’’ (PH 247). In an experimental metaphysics, the objects are always brewing, always fomenting, always 42 Transcendence bubbling over. Here, the model for a diffuse, localized transcendence is fermentation. In an experimental theology, ‘‘fermentation’’ might well be taken as a technical, theological term of central importance. In addition, transcendence, understood as a kind of fermentation , must also be uncoupled from the notion of ‘‘purity .’’ Transcendence still marks difference, distance, and resistance, but because it marks them only locally, relatively , and provisionally, it parts ways with purity. If the gods exist in Latour’s pluriverse, they are not pure, unconditioned , or exceptional. They are not free from the necessity of translation, negotiation, and compromise. Nor are they free from a need for techniques, instruments, technologies , calculations, and metrologies. The gods too, like every other object, must receive the resistant availability of the proliferating multitude as the gift that it is. Latour has no patience for those who, in the name of purity, think that our ‘‘poor world is devoid of soul’’ or that ‘‘the tawdriest hand-carved clog has more being than a tin can’’ (PF 208). Such metaphysical elitists hold that ‘‘everywhere there is desert,’’ that ‘‘the gods cannot reside in technology ,’’ that ‘‘they are not to be sought in science,’’ or that ‘‘they are absent from politics, sociology, psychology, anthropology , history’’ (WM 65). On the contrary, Latour declares: ‘‘here too the gods are present’’ (WM 66). Having banned conspiracy theories, nothing is left to check in advance the proliferation of transcendences. The gods are present ‘‘in a hydroelectric plant on the banks of the Rhine, in subatomic particles, in Adidas shoes as well as in wooden clogs hollowed out by hand, in agribusiness as well as in timeworn landscapes, in shopkeeper’s calculations as well as in Hölderlin’s heartrending verse’’ (WM 66). Transcendence isn’t lost when the One is...