Index des articles | Article index Index 014: A nouveaux territoires, nouveau Sénat 013: 12 thèses pour sauver les Verts... 012: José Bové est-il un vandale? 011: On the two cultures 010: Le problème des experts 009: La sagesse des vaches folles 008: Prenons garde au principe... 007: Repenser la République 006: Sloterdijk, l'insupportable 005: La gauche a-t-elle besoin... 004: Sur l'affaire Sokal 003: Du bon usage de l'ethnopsychiatrie 002: La fin de la modernité 001: Un nouveau délit d'opinion Is there a non-modern Style Bruno Latour, Domus January 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Can there be a non-modern style? Bruno Latour, column for Domus, new series, January 2004 The question of style may be roughly put as follows: should we show an object with all of the attachments that make it possible? Or should we delineate the object to such an extent that it shines like a brightly lit foreground over a shadowy background? In the first case, we are dealing with things in the old etymological sense of issues, matters of concern, that which forces people to assemble around what they disagree about and what they nevertheless have in common. In the second case, we are dealing with objects – with what is out there, unquestionable, mastered, known, that which can be taken as a matter of fact. This is a choice of philosophy, of politics, but also of art and of design. Thus it’s a problem of civilization. The German sociologist Ulrich Beck has distinguished what he calls a ‘first modernization’, populated mainly with objects, and a ‘second modernization’, which is more and more invaded by things, what he calls ‘risky’ objects. This does not simply mean that we, in our opulent societies, are living more dangerous lives than before, but that that all objects have taken on another quality: they no longer remain inside the narrow boundaries in which modernism wanted to keep them. They overflow their limits. To speak like an economist, nobody is able to ‘externalize’ for long that which threatens the inside definition of objects as they once did —as they tried to do— during the modernist period; objects now have unwanted consequences that are visible even though they do not yet exist. For instance, the whole of Europe speaks of the dangers of genetically modified organisms, though they have not killed anyone yet. This is not proof of irrationality but rather of the new status of the object. No one any longer seems able to imagine a neatly defined object that might later have indirect effects. Long in advance, while the disputed thing is being designed, invented, tested, tried out, all of its legal, medical, agricultural and economic ramifications are being argued publicly. The ‘bald’ objects of the recent past have become dishevelled, hairy, networky ‘things’. Everywhere, matters of fact are slowly graduating to the new status of matters of concern: the site in Southern Italy that should store radioactive waste, the proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, how to restore Michelangelo’s David… This tide change in civilization has an interesting retrospective consequence on how we assess the so-called modern styles. Everyone agrees that they have offered powerful tools for eliminating decoration, for getting rid of the influence of regionalism and nationalism, for shaking the stifling remnants of mythologies long dead. But it’s also clear that they were never simply about architecture or design: they always offered a philosophy of objectivity. Such a connection has never been clearer than in the Bauhaus movement, which explicitly aimed to invent a philosophy of science, a theory of art as well as principles of education, economics and politics. The search for such coherence was at the heart of the civilizing effects of the modern style, opposing the dramatic resurgence of what they called ‘archaism’ and ‘irrationality’. Thus, if we are correct in saying that this general philosophy of objectivity is now changing, that we have never been modern, that a second modernization is underway that transforms all objects into things, all matters of fact into matters of concern, then what does it mean for modern styles? From the present vantage point, we can now see that they have always rejected, externalized and ignored all of the attachments that enabled the efficiency, efficacy, elegance and functionality of which they have always been so proud. In effect, the battle with decoration dissimulated another fight against entanglement. It’s one thing to offer the functional shape of a modernist skyscraper against the horrible doodles of a disgusting past, but it’s quite another to design a shape that ignores all of the ingredients that make a neighbourhood alive. It’s one thing to invent a pure and uncontaminated scientific vocabulary against the horrible vagueness of past metaphysics, but it’s quite another to absorb the many impure languages that allow real sciences to be empirical for good. The adjective ‘modern’ can be understood in two ways: what is contemporary or what breaks with the past. A suspicion now arises: what if the various modernist styles had never been contemporary of themselves? Their obsession with the past (if only to break with it) would have blinded them to their own lack of inscription in the present. In the word ‘emancipation’ there is a reserve of freedom that is still captive and that modernism has not really liberated. It is a word that now requires square quotes around it. Everything happens as if the fight against the shackles of the past had always hidden a much more demanding task: the selection of good from bad attachments confused with an impossible choice between attachment and no attachment. Hence the question I want to raise: what is a style – in the largest civilizing sense of the word – that would at last be contemporary in and of itself? That is, a style in the philosophy of science, in architecture, in politics, in economics, in design, in art that would internalize that which the modern styles had always externalized, so hurried were they to ‘get rid of’ the externalities? Contrary to what postmodernists imply, modernism is not something of the past that should be overcome, deconstructed or simply abandoned. The problem of the first modernism is its obsession with the past. It might be time to consider, at last, the future. Provided that it can catch up with its time —obviously the most difficult task for modernists.