Guía de evaluación del módulo Representación gráfica de funciones

‘Causality’, as discussed, describes how things are created or changed. Heidegger used Aristotle’s four causes of the silver chalice to explain this. Latour looks at causality from the perspective of the ‘actors’ of these causes. In particular the products of our technology, like a hammer or a remote control:

anything that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference is an actor – or, if it has no figuration yet an actant. (Latour 2005, 71)

He asks how these ‘actors’ affect causality:

If action is limited a priori to what ‘intentional’, ‘meaningful’ humans do, it is hard to see how a hammer … a mug, a list, or a tag could act. (Latour 2005, 71)

As humans we make decisions and act on them. For example: A sculptor might notice that their angle grinder needs a new grinding disc. To get a new disc involves numerous acts and pieces of

technology e.g. driving car to buy disc, paying for disc via credit card, etc. Latour’s point is that the objects used along the way affect our causality. Without technology we would not even have angle grinders. And without such ‘actors‘ sculptors would not be able to carry out their intentions / actions.

With regards to Aristotle’s silver chalice discussion, Latour argues that the chalice can itself be considered an actor. This is because technology affects our lives so much that its products should also be seen as participants, if not actors. So technology becomes a multitude of objects that become actors within transpiring events. Heidegger, on the other hand, views the essence of technology as a system that reveals or conceals truths but its products are the artefacts of our relationship with technology. If both philosophers considered a hammer being used to remove a lump of coal for a power station, Latour could view the hammer as an actor because it enabled the coal to be removed and changed the course of events (the coal becoming an actor itself).

Heidegger would view the coal as a standing reserve that has been removed by technology to serve technology.

Latour’s causality touches on the encroachment of technology on our lives, as to some extent we are controlled by the objects around us and our causality is both enhanced and curbed by

technology. Latour often uses the example of a speed bump; it helps enforce safe driving speeds but also limits the actions of the driver. Sculptors investing in certain actors e.g. tools (like the grinder) enable their ability to work with certain materials eg. steel. But investing in such specific tools also allows the technology to determine their future direction, which might be considerably limited. This limits our causality and makes our behaviour more predictable, so we might ‘fit’ into the networks of the social and technological more easily. As Heidegger suggests that giving into the essence of technology makes us existentially vulnerable, Latour implies that social and technological structures limit our agency, confining our acts into predictable patterns and giving the forces that have influence over such networks even more control over our lives.

For sociologists of associations… what is new is that objects are suddenly highlighted not only as being full-blown actors, but also as what explains the contrasted landscape we started with, the over-arching powers of society, the huge asymmetries, the crushing exercise of power. (Latour 2005, 72)

Could it be that technology can be used by some as a social mechanism enabling one human to have power over another? Heidegger speaks of the essence of technology as an ethereal parasite existentially feeding off humanity, revealing truths that support further investment and endeavour into technology and concealing other truths that do not. Though the perspectives of Latour and Heidegger differ they both seem to support the statement that: the essence of technology drives humanity to make choices that benefit technology. It’s clear that individuals who can control technology will benefit more than those who cannot, and that people who use technology to work together get even more benefit e.g. comparing the support and ‘success’ of individual inventors against the research and development departments of large corporations. But when the benefits of technology are seen and pursued without pausing to consider other possible truths, Heidegger calls it ‘destining’ and as previously discussed the unchecked actions of those with an enframed view can devastate a resource. When we consider that humans can be one of those resources, or ‘standing reserves’, the power of those who control some technology over those that do not becomes clear.

Technology can create social justice issues, favouring one group of humans more than others. The greatest emerging social justice issue for this century is climate change, which as I have explained is largely a product of technology – or our uncontrolled uses of technology.

So it is perfectly true to say that any given interaction seems to overflow with elements which are already in the situation coming from some other time, some other place, and generated by some other agency. (Latour 2005, 166)

Being aware of the fact that actors, actants and participants within Latour’s ‘actor network’ have a history that can affect the present or the future is important to me, especially as my art is made from materials with long and well-travelled lives. Most people know that plastic is a petroleum product and that such products come from oil. Oil is the product of photosynthesis and time - plants from millions of years ago geologically trapped until recently. The reality is that my art is made with pre-historically stored solar energy. Latour’s point is that every event has actors with a history, and that events don’t just happen spontaneously – they are a confluence of actors in the same space and time. Every decision, chance, action and thought has consequences. For me, this reaffirms that the best possible chance we have to survive climate change is not to avoid

technology but to use it to reveal truths so we can work with the environment rather than against it. We have been releasing this stored solar energy into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. The agency of such actants are the chemical cause of climate change. But through my art I am asking: Are the materials that constitute what we know as fossil fuels only useful for energy, or is there another way?