from mitpress.mit.edu

Last year a friend of mine asked me about what would be a proper translation into Spanish for a Latour quote appearing in http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles/article/084.html. As well as what did I understand from it. The quote:

“We are digging for the origin of an absolute –not a relative– distinction between truth and falsity, between a pure world, absolutely emptied of human-made intermediaries and a disgusting world composed of impure but fascinating human-made mediators. What is iconoclash? Or ¿ there is a world beyond the image wars?” (Latour, 2001)

Well, the translation is not important anyway, but still, the idea behind the iconoclash exhibit might be useful as another example of “not postulating two different ontological realms and then build bridges between them”. Which is something ANT has ever since tried to avoid (although I am not sure if ANT has stressed this point so much, but still, it is a crucial one and should be noticed more often, IMHO).

Here follows my answer. Spanish written at the time and spanish written now (see  warnings at the end of about section for any harmful interference language switching may cause…)

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Te diré que se trata de mostrar como, a pesar de la existencia de una línea divisoria que quisiera dirimir las imágenes como siendo “verdaderas” o “falsas”, en realidad, todas (“falsas” y “verdaderas”) necesitan de mediaciones para lograr re-presentar aquello que re-presentan. Es decir, no hay acceso a la naturaleza, la religión o el arte sin “mediaciones”. Sin imágenes (en este caso) que procuran “plasmar” la cosa-en-si pero al hacerlo, cabe considerar que esa misma imágen añade algo a lo que supone re-presentar.

Iconoclash se refiere, en parte, a la imposibilidad o paradoja que, al “destruir” una imágen, no puedes evitar crear otra. Es decir, si los nazis tachan la estrella de David, tachan la estrella de david pero hacen surgir esa imagen de la estrella tachada a su vez. No se si me explico.

Entonces, la exposicón de iconoclash vendria a ser la búsqueda (la arqueología) de cuando surge esa distinción, cuando surge esa división que hace pensar que seria posible tener, de un lado, las imágenes inmaculadas y de otro las impuras o falseadas. Para Latour, como digo, ambas son hechas por la mano del hombre; manufacturadas, fabricadas. De ahí el interés por saber como y porqué se introduce esta distinción o se atorga un status a una u otra imágen.

“Is it manipulated or is real?” be heard. It is as if, again, the work of the hands, the careful manipulation, the human made mediation had to be put in one column, and truth, exactitude, mimesis, faithful representation into another. As if everything that was added to the credit in one column had to be deducted from the other. Strange accounting! – that would make politics as well as religion, science, and art, utterly impossible”

Haraway, por ejemplo, habla de este tipo de semiotico-materialidad de la imágen creo, con las representaciones que hacen los científicos del Virus o del ADN.

ahora, si te refieres a la traducción, yo diría que es algo así:

“Estamos escavando para conocer el orígen de una distinción absoluta -no relativa- entre verdad y falsedad, entre un mundo puro, absolutamente vaciado de intermediarios hechos por los humanos y un mundo asqueroso compuesto de impuros pero fascinantes mediadores hechos por los humanos. ¿Qué es iconoclash? o ¿Hay un mundo más allá dela guerra de las imágenes?”

RAX!

At the beginning I was sort of careless about this “trial”, but, after having passed through two of them, now I think it is indeed a very good idea. As, finally, it is not that easy to find readers for your work (not at all). And, plus, it helps you go back and forth in your text again and again according to different suggestions that, quite often, you did not have the time to realize or consider. So these “trials” do increase the possibility of facing a reduced form of a tribunal many times before facing THE tribunal. And thus, gives you the possibility of committing more errors and solve them.

Back in ‘83:

” ‘Accumulated knowledge’ people say with admiration, but this acceleration is made possible by a change of scale, which in turn makes possible the multiplication of trials and errors. Certainty does not increase in a laboratory because people in it are more honest, more rigorous, or more ‘falsificationist’. It is simply that they can make as many mistakes as they wish or simply more mistakes than the others ‘outside’ who cannot master the changes scale. Each of mistake is in turn archived, saved,recorded, and made easily readable again,whatever the specific field or topic may be.” (Latour, 1983)

One is to believe that our department is lab-like becoming day by day (Still, it remains doubtful the extent to which it could raise the world…).

I do not know the date yet, but arguably at the end of September I should be doing this accountable exercise called “panel”. On previous panels I received great feedback from prof. Luz Ma. Martínez (UAB), Jenny Cubells (UAB) and Pep Vivas (UOC).  And also, belonging to FIC research group, I also got feedback from them. It is great to have them as readers ! ¿How do yo u sign in readers for your work? M?

RAX!

“The engineer substitutes for the signs he writes the things that he has mobilized; he attaches them to each so they’ll hold up; then he withdraws a little, delegating to another self, in the form of a chip, a sensor, or an automatic device, the task of watching over the connection. And this delegating allows him to withdraw even further – as if there were an object.” (Latour, 1996: 81) -as seen in MacKenzie, A.(2003) SSS, 2003, 33.

schematic from free hardware project ronja.twibright.com