All durability, all solidity, all permanence will have to be paid for
by its mediators. It is this exploration of a transcendence without a
contrary that makes our world so very unmodern, with all those noncios,
mediators, delegates, fetishes, machines, figurines, instruments, representatives,
angels, lieutenants, spokespersons and cherubim. What sort of world is
it that obliges us to take into account, at the same time and in the same
breath, the nature of things, technologies, sciences, fictional beings,
religions large and small, politics, jurisdictions, economies and unconsciousnesses?
Our own, of course. That world ceased to be modern when we replaced all
essences with the mediators, delegates and translators that gave them
meaning.
Bruno Latour We Have Never Been Modern (trans. Catherine Porter)
New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, p. 129
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David Keeling To the Island
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