How did microbes ascend from an uncertain existence into the forefront of french scientific and political culture? In 1870 that microbes might exist at all was a tenuous proposition, yet by 1920 no reasonable scientist (or Frenchman) would hazard to contest not only the existence of microbes, but indeed their social import - surely ridicule would dog the steps of anyone who tried. Yet this seeming history of scientific discovery and subsequent social transformation would have been far from obvious to the contemporary observer; it is only after-the-fact that an asymmetrical narrative of success and failure can be attributed.In The Pasteurization of France Bruno Latour looks at the formation (and transformation) of a microbial society. Refusing to sentence science to the narrow realm of experimentation, or bar the world from the laboratory, Latour endeavors upon a synthetic analysis in which trials of strength and weakness contest in a unified arena. Refusing to juxtapose reason and force, Latour shows how action rarely follows pathways of intention; that translations occur between actors. That a society exists for trials to take place in is far from a given, rather the social is made (and remade) continuously. If microbes cannot be dominated in the laboratory, Pasteur will be unable to perform his demonstrations; he will surely become a laughingstock and lose credibility. It is by the enrollment through transformation of different actors that society is intelligible in the first place. Latour has endeavored to made (and unmake and remake) sociology less as a point of departure, and more as an event of arrival.
At its core, Latour's work is an investigation into whether or not we are justified in separating context from content (one could suppose this extends to the divide between subject and object). Whether it is possible to separate the substance of analysis from the world of its existence, and where the critical cleavage point can occur, can never be known beforehand. Things must be allowed to speak for themselves, via trials of strength before we can know how they might be translated. If he is correct in saying that the real is where resistance occurs, then work must be done to manipulate and speak meaningfully about the world. Our arenas of analysis, our theories and disciplines, are contingent; they are able to surround us inasmuch as work is done to ensure their survival. In this transformed world is it any wonder that a new society is able to arise?
