Introduction

Abstract

Classifying knowledge always inevitably implies the opportunity to exercise power. In an era where academia is increasingly anchored to a distinction between human and social sciences, to a rigid separation between disciplines presumed to safeguard their relevance, it is no small matter to recognize that there are still scholars whose work systematically eludes a fixed placement, sometimes ending up challenging a series of conventions that are anything but given or harmless. This is certainly the case for a great intellectual like Bruno Latour, forced to grapple with the reactions provoked by his body of research—so decidedly mutable and situated at the intersection of traditionally distinct disciplinary fields such as sociology, philosophy, anthropology, semiotics—to the point of resorting to the autobiographical form to describe the trajectory of an intellectual adventure made of encounters, deviations, recoveries, and circular paths.

Classifying knowledge always inevitably implies the opportunity to exercise power. In an era where academia is increasingly anchored to a distinction between human and social sciences, to a rigid separation between disciplines presumed to safeguard their relevance, it is no small matter to recognize that there are still scholars whose work systematically eludes a fixed placement, sometimes ending up challenging a series of conventions that are anything but given or harmless. This is certainly the case for a great intellectual like Bruno Latour, forced to grapple with the reactions provoked by his body of research—so decidedly mutable and situated at the intersection of traditionally distinct disciplinary fields such as sociology, philosophy, anthropology, semiotics—to the point of resorting to the autobiographical form to describe the trajectory of an intellectual adventure made of encounters, deviations, recoveries, and circular paths.

When readers fail to understand why I have continually changed fields, and when they do not see the overall logic of my research—which leads them to look for my books in different aisles of bookstores (if they find them, that is, if they look for them!)—their comments amuse me, for I know of no other author who has so stubbornly pursued the same research project for twenty-five years, day after day, while filling up the same files in response to the same sets of questions (Latour, 2013: 2)

The rhetoric of scientific discourse, the environmental crisis, ecological thinking, the paradoxes of a modernity that incessantly produces hybrids to which it stubbornly refuses to recognize roles and rights, the need to overcome the anthropocentric prejudice that separates subjects and objects in a contemporaneity in which artifacts take up an ever-increasing space in our lives, making decisions for us and about us (just think of the advent of artificial intelligence) inevitably outline an intellectual path as original as it is challenging, multifaceted, certainly, but far from lacking a consistent logic of research. At the foundation of an “unusual form of philosophical anthropology”, developed to investigate the aporias of a modernity that still stubbornly separate nature and culture, there is in fact a constant perspective of investigation, marked by the inevitably heated dialogue between human and social sciences, by the ability to tackle complex phenomena by rigorously and lucidly selecting and using notions and perspectives that common sense would consider irreconcilable, providing an analytical perspective that has often proved to be well ahead of its time. Consider the unprecedented choice of analysing, over 40 years ago (1977), together with the well-known semiologist Paolo Fabbri, the relationship between scientific discourse and power, employing the theory of literature in an innovative way showing how a laboratory experiment and its academic report are an agonistic terrain, the space of a confrontation between multiple actors.

Or the resolution in the choice to combine phenomenological ethnomethodology (Garfinkel) and structural semiotics (Greimas) to meticulously describe the tangle of scientists, instruments, institutions, funding, companies, politics at work in the laboratories on the forefront of scientific innovation. How then to deal “with a timeless intellectual, in the double sense of the term, both of another time and no time at all: scholar, sociologist, semiologist, philosopher, but above all inflexible analyst of our current socio-cultural condition, of the connections as deadly as they are cunning between science and politics in our so-called modernity” (my translation; Marrone, 2022)? Anyone who wants to engage in the near future in a philological project on his work will have to deal with a mountain of volumes, articles, contributions, interviews on multiple but inevitably intertwined themes.¹

This book, therefore, cannot and does not claim to be a philological work on the scholar who has contributed to defining and popularizing—in fields from sociology of science to management studies, from marketing to political science—the famous actor-network theory. This work rather arises from the need to highlight the relevance of an unbroken link with the semiotic perspective on social phenomena, trying to identify, connect and relaunch the reasons for a dialogue as heated as it is fruitful and yet still today, after many years, apparently little recognized, primarily in the field of social sciences. A kind of “removal” that appears even more curious and let’s say, suspicious, if we consider the various occasions on which Latour has explicitly recognized the importance of semiotics in the development of his research path. How is it possible, despite a personal history that sees a young Latour attending Greimas’ semiotics seminar in Paris together with a scientist with an equally original profile like Françoise Bastide, that the fruitful relationship with semiotics has so far only sporadically been recognized in the numerous and multidisciplinary contributions that take shape from his work, primarily within the perimeter of sociological studies?

How can we not recognize the fruitful bond of mutual esteem with Paolo Fabbri, co-author of the seminal article on the rhetoric of scientific discourse, cited in the opening? A contribution that today, during a pandemic, appears even premonitory, if we consider the logics of conflicts and negotiations on which the intertwining of science, economics, politics, information system has become manifest? The hypothesis from which this book starts is that the resistance to recognize and value the reasons and opportunities of this bond is the result of a double, presumed “outdatedness”. On the one hand, that of a discipline, structuralist-oriented semiotics, whose destiny, rather singular, has been to see the key concepts of its theoretical framework “overflow”, “circulate”, often successfully, in the social sciences “without citing its genealogy, without recognizing the paternity of those who put them into circulation” (my trans.; Fabbri, 2021a: 34). On the other hand, that of a decidedly original scholar, inclined to explore social phenomena with a multiperspective approach and to extend the scope of some key notions of the study of signification beyond the consolidated forms of narrative.

Despite Latour himself having repeatedly highlighted the role of semiotics in the development of the actor-network theory and his personal investigation into the paradoxes of modernity,² recognizing the decisive role played by notions such as that of actant, actor and enunciation, finding support in the interest shown by Paolo Fabbri (2023, 2021b) in the study of the inextricable relationships between humans and artefacts, the contribution of semiotics is still scarcely recognized in the social sciences. A proof of this attitude, as deeply rooted as it is ambiguous, is the tendency to consider at most the study of signification as a “toolbox” for actor-network theory, ignoring or pretending not to recognize the link between a non-anthropomorphic theory of social action and structuralist-oriented semiotics.³

The situation appears somewhat different in the field of semiotic studies, where, if on the one hand in recent years, parallel to the expansion of the field of analysis of social phenomena, there have been multiplied signs of a renewed interest in Latour’s work,⁴ on the other hand there remains a rather widespread resistance to recognize the legitimacy of the use, in his studies, of terms such as actant, enunciation, hybrid, a scepticism that manifests the fear of reducing the theoretical relevance of key notions of the discipline. Thus, though the original critique of contemporaneity advanced by Latour has aroused increasing interest in the field of semiotics it has not failed to generate critical reactions. These often focus on a recourse to the theory of signification considered by some to be extemporaneous, or on the simplified use of central notions in the theoretical framework of the discipline, with the risk of impoverishing its complexity.⁵ In short, one might say Latour was not a sufficiently experienced semiologist to be considered a privileged interlocutor.

In the construction of this intricate scenario, one must recognize some not entirely foreign criticisms advanced over time and on several occasions by Bruno Latour himself against semiotics. These amount to a series of critiques that sometimes fail to account for a significant evolution of the discipline, both in terms of theory and methods for investigating meaning, retaining the image of a research field still anchored to an exclusively linguistic perspective on signification, stubbornly focused on the study of signs and the analysis of narrativity in its most consolidated forms, such as the literary text. Like the openly critical position according to which sociosemiotics would be a pleonasm, since the study of meaning can only be social, a perspective that fails to recognize a significant turn within the studies on signification. Or again, the criticism that semiotics is excessively textualist because it is centred on the model of the language considered unsuitable to account for the narrative dimension inherent in the functioning of the real world.

Misunderstanding, mutual distancing? It doesn’t matter, as semioticians what concerns us is certainly not to venture into the reconstruction of individual motivations that can determine the choice to legitimately assume critical positions towards the perspective from which one decides to analyse social phenomena. Rather, we prefer to explore the interpretative path of a misalignment of trajectories in the exploration of meaning, a deviation that in some points reveals itself to be less marked than it appears at first sight, betting on a differentiation that does not so much affect the epistemological plane, but rather the methodological side. In short, between those who read Latour philosophically as a theorist of science, of relationalism, of ‘flat ontology’, of the Parliament of Things, and those who in the semiotic field still refuse to grasp the innovative, undoubtedly provocative, scope of his positions on the meaning at stake in the real world, we point to the presence of a further space for reflection, that of a never dormant dialectic with the study of signification, a dialogue that is anything but episodic, weak or marginal. In other words, if it is undeniable that semiotics has played a crucial role in shaping Latour’ work, we aim to demonstrate the presence and the productivity of a reverse movement, concerning the relevance of Latour’s work for contemporary semiotics. A body of work which is extremely valuable for advancing semiotic reflection on the way meaning is articulated and manifested in a contemporaneity increasingly marked by a multiplicity of relations between human and non-human actors, confirming itself as an opportunity for comparison and inspiration on a multiplicity of planes: epistemological, theoretical, methodological-empirical. It is therefore in the open space between these two symmetrical perspectives that this book is situated, in the conviction that semiotics has not only played an important role in the famous Latourian inquiry into the networks of meaning at stake in contemporaneity, but can still sustain it, recollecting today the legacy of a timeless intellectual, that is, taking up the challenge of rethinking his own tools of investigation into meaning and opening up to a constructive confrontation, without which a real turning-point⁶ of the discipline seriously risks losing effectiveness.

With this goal, the volume opens with a first chapter dedicated to the beginnings of the dialogue with semiotics, a central phase in the start of Bruno Latour’s scientific adventure, a period marked by the encounter with Greimas’ semiotics, resulting in the highly innovative project of analysing the logics of manipulation and power underlying scientific discourse. Re-reading today the positions of Latour, Fabbri, and Bastide on the role played by languages (verbal certainly, but also visual, think of diagrams, tables, images of technical instruments) in the construction of argumentative and ultimately pragmatic effectiveness of frontier sciences, still causes astonishment. Not only for the originality of the scientific enterprise which, it is worth emphasizing, would not have been possible at all, except through an intense dialogue between different disciplines, but above all, given the evolution of knowledge and methodologies of analysis, for its timeliness. Just think of the time we all spent confronting the scientific discourse that, with the pandemic, definitively came out into the open, spilled well beyond the spaces that common sense assigns to professionals and specialists. What to say indeed about the unstoppable proliferation of technical jargon, scientific images, disputes centred on the competences deemed essential to account for the causes of a dramatic event, in short, about a politics of science and, at the same time, a science—virology—that has forcefully entered the political arena? Following the reflection on the morphology of scientific narrative, Latour’s attitude to test semiotic theory against seemingly unconventional “objects”, such as the scientific image, whose status raises anything but trivial questions, emerges from the beginning.

The second chapter aims to demonstrate how semiotics is deeply involved in the subsequent developments of Latour’s research, starting from the common adherence to a relational and differential principle at the foundation of signification (meaning can only be given in relation) and the adoption of a non-anthropomorphic perspective on action. This position, indebted to the theory of narrativity, clearly shows how narrative roles can be distributed and circulate among a multitude of actors, human and non-human. Contrary to the position that minimizes the role of semiotics in the development of actor-network theory, in addition to the notion of actant, the centrality of the concept of “narrative program” is highlighted, used as a starting point to develop a theory of “action programs” according to which the meaning of social phenomena takes shape in the assembly between multiple actors, whether they are human or non-human, endowed with materiality, like technical objects—even the most common ones like an automatic door—or abstract. The chapter also clearly reveals a point of friction between the radically networked perspective of actor-network theory, which conceives the social as an association of multifaceted entities that cannot be hierarchized in principle, and the perspective of Greimas’ semiotics on signification, focused rather on a multiplicity of levels interconnected according to a logical criterion of relevance.

The third chapter focuses on the conceptual category that more than any other has been the subject of philosophical investigation by Latour, giving rise to a stimulating comparison for semiotic studies: enunciation. The questions from which Latour’s reflection takes shape, as usual, come from the preliminary choice not to circumscribe the field of analysis, but instead to move from scientific practice to its account, from the fieldwork of scientists to its representations, in search of the trajectories of meaning. So: what do the diagrams and tables of a scientific article refer to? Isn’t it inevitable to rely on an external referent as the only guarantee of their verifiability? And if this external referent exists, how is it possible to account for the seemingly insurmountable distance between the two ontological domains of language and nature? The innovative thesis is that there is no constitutive and insurmountable gap between things and signs, rather the link between nature and its representations is the result of a complex logic of mediation, where the conditions of possibility to be able to talk about nature must be sought in a series of interconnected translation operations, in a process of “circulation” of meaning that proceeds by small shifts, involving multiple entities. Following a team of scientists in the field thus shapes an original perspective on enunciation as mediation. Humans, instruments, examined material samples, and visualization devices are entities involved in a reversible process between that which is observed and its representation, whose salient feature is the ability to trace the entire chain of transformations, to keep track of all the steps taken to try to demonstrate a phenomenon. Gradually, the idea of enunciation as a process of delegation-mediation takes hold and consolidates, finding its most original expression in a small essay destined to arouse great interest in semiotic studies: Petite philosophie de l’énonciation (1999). In this work, Latour explicitly proposes to extend the reflection on the modes of production of meaning beyond the boundaries defined by Benveniste’s linguistic theory and structuralist semiotic theory, carefully avoiding both the language system and the social context to instead explore a much wider territory, that of existence and the various ways in which it forms and manifests itself, in a journey that would have materialized with the publication of a famous work, Inquiry into Modes of Existence. An Anthropology of the Moderns (2013).

In the last chapter, finally, the perspective is reversed to make Latour the object of reflection by contemporary semiotics, with the aim of demonstrating the outcomes and fruitful research perspectives that have emerged and can still emerge from the examination of his work. Here, three major areas of research clearly emerge.

The first concerns the debate around an extended theory of enunciation, developed in parallel to the expansion of the phenomena of signification explored by contemporary semiotic research.

A second direction starts from the overcoming of the nature/culture dichotomy and revolves around the rethinking of the relationship between semiotics and cultural anthropology, recognizing the need to investigate contemporary phenomena in light of notions such as multinaturalism and internaturality.

The third area finally takes shape from the urgency to deal with a “new society of objects”, in which increasingly extensive and complex assemblages of humans and non-humans give shape to ever more pervasive devices, as clearly emerges from the growing diffusion of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence in everyday life.

These research strands, which, taken individually, define a decidedly extensive field of analysis, also lend themselves to being explored in the set of their correlations, foreseeing very promising developments for a semiotics interested in putting the primacy of empiricism back at the centre of the study of social phenomena. As emerges, for example, if one dares to rethink common technological artifacts as presences that are as non-human as apparently “natural”. Practicing, in short, a symmetric anthropology as solicited by Latour himself, an anthropological practice of everyday life capable of overcoming the anthropocentric prejudice still dominant in Western society.

A few years ago, for example, an interesting study commissioned by the non-profit association BookTrust, revealed that in the United Kingdom an increasing number of parents have taken up the habit of entrusting smart devices, increasingly widespread in the spaces of everyday life, with the reading of bedtime stories to their children. A behaviour that, significantly, was prefigured by the ad campaign launching Amazon Echo, a smart speaker, whose artificial intelligence helped a father entertain his preteen daughter, in the absence of the mother, by reading her a story, before turning off the lights responding to a simple voice command.

More recently, Rohit Prasad—Amazon’s vice-president and the scientist in charge of developing the artificial intelligence that enables the operation of a large family of smart objects—during an important event dedicated to presenting the new skills of Alexa, showed how the voice assistant, using just one minute of recorded audio as input, is now able to faithfully reproduce the voice of a human being, simulating his/her presence. To illustrate the applications of this new skill acquired by the popular device, the scientist stated that in the near future Alexa “will be able to read a story to a child with the same voice of a grandmother who has passed away”. The numerous reactions of disgust and alarm triggered by these episodes signal how the growing cohabitation of humans and non-humans is a process as dizzying in its expansion and intensity as it is still to be explored, a social phenomenon that challenges a series of beliefs rooted in modern thought that clearly separate facts from discourses, nature from culture, subjects from artifacts.

The reference to the global brand that has redesigned the scenarios of commerce perhaps invites us to recognize that there is nothing more serious than consumerism, as is indeed suggested by the naturalness with which we have long been accustomed to transfer a personal pronoun to a smartphone, watch or personal computer. How many of us, in conscience, would feel in full possession of our ability to act, of our autonomy if suddenly deprived of prosthetic devices like the sophisticated technological artifacts, heirs of the mobile phone that not only entertain us but promise today to potentially save our lives? Incidentally, as we write this introduction, the latest update of Apple’s famous iPhone, now features the ability to detect a traffic accident by identifying the extreme sound levels caused by a collision, aiding in the rescue of the victims.

The proliferation of artificial intelligence thus forces us to look at ourselves in the mirror, prompting us to reflect on the meaning of the word “anthropomorphic”, whose etymology, as Bruno Latour reminds us, refers to two different and at the same time interrelated meanings: that which has a human form and that which gives (new) form to human beings. Our increasingly numerous non-human life companions are then anthropomorphic according to three meanings: they were conceived by us, they replace our actions by delegation, returning in the form of services what we give them in the form of skills (personal data, ability to perform actions autonomously), and finally, they contribute to give new shape to our ordinary life, defining a set of rules and routines that end up modifying our behaviors.

Multinationals, products, brands, protection of personal data, algorithms, artificial intelligence, humans, simulacra … the reader will have noticed how, following Latour, the list of elements involved starting from a simple reflection on the meaning of a common technological artifact inexorably lengthens, forcing us to deal with the cohabitation of multiple human and non-human entities, material and immaterial, just think of copyright or the regulation on user profiling. From this perspective, seeking the meaning of a social phenomenon requires dealing with a network of different agents, an assemblage of heterogeneous elements as pervasive as it is apparently obvious, ordinary, in which the function of use and symbolic value are closely linked, to the point of seemingly resolving without interruption into each other. And what about the exercise of power that inevitably takes shape in the sequence of delegations on which the functioning of a concatenation of heterogeneous actors is based? The last part of the volume attempts to answer some of these questions and to outline the maneuvering space of a sociosemiotics of collectives, in the belief that the trajectory to be followed is long and anything but linear but at the same time prefigures precious opportunities for a turn in the study of signification whose outcomes have yet to fully manifest themselves.