Racheal Devine                                                      About 150 words

INTD Science Writing

rmd20@geneseo.edu

Response to “We Have Never Been Modern”

Taking worlds issues and major events Bruno Latour starts his essay about modernism and the meaning of being modern. He says, “The word ‘modern’ designates two sets of entirely different practices which must remain distinct if they are to remain effective, but have recently begun to be confused.” One being translation, as in new beings or hybrids and the other purification, with two groups human and non humans. Each not being able to work correctly without the other. This dichotomy between the human culture and nonhuman nature of purification and then again between the purification and translation is what makes us modern when they are kept separate. He states that if we pay attention to both then “we immediately stop being wholly modern” and that then our past would change also. Then leaving us with a final question, what we are going to become if they are not separate, and his response is that we will have to slow down, regulate the proliferation and represent the monster’s existence.

I don’t really see this connection back to my mini essay.