Emma Cooke                                                                 Approximately 150 words

erc8@geneseo.edu

INTD 105 Science Writing

“We Have Never Been Modern”

Bruno Latour’s essay “We Have Never Been Modern” focuses on the way in which knowledge is shared in our modern world. “By all means, they seem to say, let us not mix up knowledge, interest, justice and power lead us not mix up having an earth, the global stage and the local scene, the human and the nonhuman” (Latour 3). According to Latour there are three distinct approaches to discussing our world: “naturalization, socialization and deconstruction”. Throughout he speaks of modernity and how the way in which certain groups of people think change how they choose to compartmentalize information. His hypothesis surrounds this idea, that there are those who practice “translation” and mix beings, creating hybrids and those who practice “purification” creating zones of human and nonhuman which are distinctly different.

This can be connected to Sturges Hall in the way that people look at it differently. Some view the hall as a hybrid between human and nonhuman, with its ivy covered walls, while others view it as a human construct, and see the careful grooming of the ivy around the windows as another separation between human and nonhuman.