The first half of Harman's work is a keen review of Latour's formative works and he ably reviews not only the nuance and insight, but more crucially, the implications of Latour's philosophies. Casting a laudatory eye upon Latour's notions of absolute concreteness and the actor as composite of its relations, Harman helps to illuminate how every actor is also a medium of relations. As a reviewer he helps to tease out such complications of Latour's work that unquestionably assist in aiding with our understanding of it.
The second half of the work introduces Harman's own positions, building towards what he terms an "Object-Oriented Philosophy." In preparation for this he places Latour in a position of philosophical success - to better uncover the implications, and thus critique Latour's claimed shortcomings as a metaphysicist. While Harman claims that Latour's work provides a foundational understanding his own efforts, the philosophy Harman develops seems not only to depart from Latour's at crucial junctures, but to run contrary to the whole enterprise. Though he identifies numerous problems with Latour's positions, which he attempts to rectify, central to his critique is Latour's inability to account for an object's future, and his failure to allow for a real identity outside of the relationships which articulate it. To correct this shortcoming Harman re-introduces a four-fold model whereby substance and occasion rule (though he has attempted to update the vocabulary). Though he goes to great lengths to show how his positions are similar to Latour's he cannot overcome the contradictions between the two - contradictions so central that one is left wondering how they can be said to agree. While yes, it does seem to ring true that objects exceed their constituent relations, this does not, as Harman argues, necessarily imply a pre-existence of substance to such relationships (this is one possible explanation). Though he has identified issues in Latour's philosophy in need of further clarification (which are partially given space in Reassembling the Social ) Harman's own responses are greatly lacking. While we may experience different manifestations of the same thing, we need some ground with which to identify it as the same over time. That identity is more settled in our eyes requires an explanation; it is not simply sufficient to say that it must be more settled. How anything comes to be emergent, to seemingly transcend its constituent parts, is where our interrogation ought to lie (if we are to critique Latour). This crucial realm Harman sidesteps entirely, thus dooming his response.
