ANT and Psychology Session Science Studies and Psychology

Paper to be presented in the 4S & EASST Meeting August, 25-28, 2004 Ecole des Mines de Paris 60 Bvd Saint-Michel, 75006, Paris, France

Ronald Joo Jacques Arendt

Psychology Institute, Social Psychology Post-graduate Program State University of Rio de Janeiro Rua Sao Francisco Xavier, 524/10. Andar, sala 10019, bloco F 20559-900 Maracana, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil rarendt@uninet.com.br

Following the abstract send to the congress scientific committee, I will try here to expose the efforts of a Brazilian group of researchers to translate to psychology the propositions of Bruno Latours scientific studies. At the State University of Rio de Janeiro, where I work, some colleagues ask me why should I involve myself with such an approach which to use a postmodern expression deconstruct my field of work. The aim of this paper is to argue that, on the contrary, the contributions of science studies are worth considering to psychology. In other words: it is possible to propose a non modern psychology. Originally my argument to answer the question What is the importance for psychology of studying Latours work? would follow five steps. In the first step, I would characterize Latours proposals in contemporary thinking, against the heritage of platonic thinking. In the second step I would summarize some of the impressing concepts developed by SS independently of psychology, for, in the third step argue that it is quite impossible for a good psychologist remain unaffected by concepts like attachment, human and non human actants, the ANT, the concept of domain, the critique of the relationship between nature and society, individual and society, subject and object, first and second qualities, and so on. Here I would expose some of the analyses and results reached by the research group

I coordinate at the Postgraduate Course of Psychology of State University of Rio de Janeiro. In the fourth step I would finally outline Latours conception of psychology. While not a psychologist here and there he sketches a portrait of psychology which is interesting to expose and discuss. This discussion would lead to the fifth and last step: although we have to agree with almost critiques of psychology made by Latour, he is not a psychologist, and that would be the place to some disagreements with his positions and introduce and debate some non modern approaches on psychology. I utilized, in the first paragraph, the conditional tense, because after reading some very important texts I decided to change the structure of my speech. After March (the deadline for sending the abstract to 4S-EASST) I had the opportunity to study Latours paper How to talk about the body. In this impressive article, Latour goes on to theorize about the body as an instance of learning to be affected, meaning effectuated, moved, put into motion by other entities, humans or non humans. To escape from the trap of describing the body as meaning a subject and the world as meaning objects, an accurate manner to describe this learning to be affected is describe to it by the way of articulations. Articulation means being affected by differences. For Latour, there is nothing especially interesting, deep, profound, in a subject by itself: a subject only becomes interesting, deep, profound, worthwhile when it resonates with others, is effected, moved, put into motion by new entities whose differences are registered in new and unexpected ways. The more mediations the better to acquire a body, the more you articulate controversies, the wider the world becomes. Learning to be affected means exactly that: the more you learn, the more differences there exist. If propositions describe what is articulated, to have a body is account for a multiverse of articulate propositions. An alternative normative political epistemology, based on the writings of Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret will

be proposed by Latour to support such a theorizing about the body. It is not the aim of this paper to deepen the analysis of what Latour calls the S-D shibboleth, a series of propositions about science that contrast provocatively with a popperian epistemology. Here scientific is a rare ingredient of science, it means interesting, risky, it looks for recalcitrance in humans and non humans, provides occasions to differ, provides good generalizations, and allows for the construction of a common world. What called my attention was a note in which Latour describes Stengers as one of the most important philosophers of science in French speaking world and Despret as a psychologist who has put to good empirical use many of the insights of Stengers and has developed a marvelous series of studies on psychology and ethology. Decided to read the works of the two Belgian professors, I bought Stengers Cosmopolitiques (2003) and Desprets Ces emotions que nous fabriquent (1999). These extraordinary books permit an entirely new way of facing psychology in a manner perfectly compatible with Latours scientific studies. What follows are my considerations about the psychology that emerges from the reading of those texts. Cosmopolitiques are a series of seven essays about contemporary philosophy of science. The last one (Cosmopolitiques II, Pour en finir avec la tolrance ) is especially relevant for human and social sciences. Tolerance, here, means an Occidental point of view against the other: we are adult, we are capable to face a world deprived of its guarantees and enchantments. We tolerate that others havent reached our understanding of the world. For Stengers this kind of tolerance should be cursed. Applied to human and social sciences, apart from its arrogance, it impedes a researcher to put his practice at risk. The subject of study of such sciences is a human subject, and the problem is how to define a science not demoting the subject. When interrogating someone the researcher submits him to situations

that aim to proof what he wants to proof, but why should the subject suffer those proofs? In psychotherapy, for instance, Stengers compares the works of Georges Devereux and Tobie Nathan, the first a quasi-ally, the second a real ally. Although Devereux allows himself to be perturbed by the other, the last word about human psyche will be a purified psychoanalytic universal human stance. Nathan dont corroborate with this universal postulate. He puts things in another way. Working with emigrant people in Paris and developing a technical thinking of disease and cure, for him a therapy is obliged to decipher hidden intentions by which to fabricate a sick subject capable of interpreting what is arriving to him in real group context where he finds himself and that creates for him specific obligations. How to characterize a thinking fabricated in such a way, actively composed of heterogeneous elements supernatural intentions, objects, words, gestures, familiar groups, different matters, natural and cosmic, ancestors, sorcery attacks, obligations betrayed or ignored? asks Stengers, and she answers: this thinking frightens (in contrast with the psychoanalytic concept of anguish) insert people in real groups in which they acknowledge their belonging. The consequences of such reasoning are striking. If all practices of psychotherapy create the disease that it cures, inscribing it in an operating disposal where words, actions significations fabricate it for to have power to operate upon it, a scientific psychopathology have to address itself to the practices and not to the sick people. But, if we address ourselves to the practices, we cant dismiss, for instance, yorubas sorcerers. With them (and others) a science could be possible, when those practices are put at risk. Leaving the field of psychotherapy and thinking in terms of psychology, again we should address ourselves to the practices of researchers and their relation to the others they interrogate. So, Stengers asks a series of questions. Is it conceivable to make a psychology of the house maid (mnagre), of the adolescent or of the television-

viewer? How, in cases like this, can we affirm that the one to whom psychology addresses itself is capable of put in risk the arguments that take him as a reference? Usually doesnt the researcher make use of the social construction of his practice to assure the difference and stability between the one who interrogates and the one who testimonies by the way of his beliefs, opinions, presuppositions? Should not the practitioner of human science need to encounter other practitioners, humans engaged in practices with its own requirements and obligations? Did not a more assured knowledge about the house maid found its conditions in the example of the feminist practices, with the positioning of the house maid as a problem? Does not a knowledge about drug-addicts find its possible depart in a confrontation with associations of non repentant drug-addicts, who practically question, politically and conceptually, the representations that we constructed with regard to them? Although in an incipient manner, it emerges from this questionings and considerations an outlook of a new kind of psychology, a non modern psychology, whose practitioners aim is to break out the attained difference and stability between the one who interrogates and the one who testimonies, a psychology that puts itself at risk, not tolerant with the other in the sense defined by Stengers. This other women, adolescent, televisionviewer, drug-addict, and so one, questions politically and conceptually the representations constructed with regard to him or her, not being simply the target of influence and persuasion techniques. It is precisely this posture against this other that characterizes Desprets book about emotions, confirming Latour observation that she has put to good empirical use many of the insights of Stengers. In a certain manner Despret answers the questions raised by Stengers. I finish my speech trying to outline her main ideas and to establish its connection with Stengers proposals.

Despret characterizes the other analyzed by Stengers by means of an Arabian tale. An old man, said to his sons: I have eleven camels, I leave half of it to my oldest, a fourth to the second and a sixth to the youngest. Considering it was impossible to make the division, they went to a wise men ask for a suggestion. The suggestion he gave them was to add his old camel to the eleven. The first son got six camels, the second three, the third two and the last camel was returned to the wise man. For Despret the twelfth camel is not exactly a solution, it poses the problem for us of what to do. If an ethno-psychologist develops anthropological studies in a non Occidental place his subjects configure the other as a twelfth camel. What the other are, what they produce as wisdom and passion, allows to think of us in another way, but not how to do this, how to appropriate this heritage turned matter of thinking. Her whole book about emotions follows this proposal: the emotions of other people should force us to rethink our own, but how to do this is related, to talk in Stengers terms, to our non tolerant practices. Desprets lack of tolerance is directed to our traditional Occidental manner of treating the emotions. Our model of emotion, she argues, was conceptualized in a physiological manner. The consequence of this conceptualization is a necessity to separate, in the body, systems of rationality from those of emotions. Passions are inside and escape from our rational control: when they fail, the lower systems assume the power. I cant help loving you says the song. The passivity of emotions are related to its expressiveness: authentic emotions are intimate and true, specially when the individual is alone: articulated to the collective or defined as an effect of it (a cultural effect, for instance), they become inauthentic. Desprets analysis will point out that this model is pervasive not only in the common sense but also in the scientific experimental psychology and social psychology. She will show us how the methodologies utilized in experiences in psychological laboratories maintain the principles of this model. In a remarkable chapter

she will stress the platonic origins of this model - and the platonic heritage of psychoanalysis. It is not here the place to develop this analysis, but I should indicate the compatibility of Desprets argumentation with Latours first chapter of his Politiques de la Nature (1999), in which the origins of the modern scientific thought are related to Platons conception of the cavern. First of all, we should go out of the cavern, was Latours exhortation. Making use (like Stengers) of the concept of fright (in contrast with the psychoanalytic concept of anguish), Despret quotes Nathan: because the essential fright consists in that the trueness of what I perceive, of what I experience, I think it resides in the other. So, she exhorts us to search for another version of the emotions. This other version is based on the emotions conception of William James and its accent will be put on the indetermination that characterizes in general the manner by which social actors describe their emotional experience. Emotion can be at the same time cause and effect, product of changes and vector of modification. In other words, emotions are defined in the double register of what we fabricate and what fabricates us. While in traditional sociology and social psychology the possibility of the subject to resist is very little, this version permits us consider the fact that emotions can be created, that they can propose new definitions of themselves, that they can transgress and resist, but principally that they can be singularly and collectively negotiated and hence participate actively to the creation of the social. The few minutes I have in this presentation impedes a complete description of Jamess conception of emotions. What I can say is that in the standard view of emotions we perceive a fact that is translated to a mental perception of this fact, we have so a mental affection that leads up to a bodily expression. James inverts this movement. For him a perception of an exciting fact produce immediately bodily changes. An emotion will be the feeling of the changes as they occur. The consequences are extraordinary: we become sad

because we cry, we perceive a bear, tremble and have fear. It is in this sense that the social (the fact) and the individual (the bodily changes) are indeterminate. Despret invites us to assume this ambiguity. James theory of emotions she argues, is before all an experience proposition, that, because it makes exist a certain type of knowledge about the emotion, makes exist this emotion, makes exist a new relationship to ourselves and the world. Proposing a new manner of reading our emotions, James induces a new experience of them another manner of being affected and let be affected. James constructs an emotion that, in its turn, constructs us passionate. But the world in which this emotional experience arrives isnt only what is to be known, but makes us know. What the theory of James implies contradict our will of the stability of our practices, it strikes our thinking, manners. So emotions are defined when put at risk in the world. James bet, that Despret assumes, is to make exist, in a scientific discourse, an object that resists to the determinations and transforms this determinations in a series of versions of emotions. Through the study of the emotions in other places (in Japan, between the Ifaluks, the Bedouins or the Eskimos, and so on) those jamesian versions are tested by Despret. Returning to the twelfth camel, what she will consider important, when facing the experiences described by the ethnopsychologists, will be to analyze how the questions we pose concerning ourselves will be similar to those that other people have posed in the context of their practices. The researcher should interrogate himself about the manner certain questions can - or cannot, make sense to other, about what those questions represents in terms of negotiation, change and the possibility of a common world construction. Beyond the alternative normative political epistemology of Stengers and Despret already emphasized by Latour, I would like to stress on the psychology that emerges from the reasoning of both authors. In version they propose, psychology is a field of work

a) that puts itself at risk, their practices being directed not to the individual as a target of influence techniques, but to the practices of researchers, professionals or individuals, while spokesmen of the groups they are involved. b) in which the other assumes a symmetrical importance in relationship to the researcher. in which the relation of the individual with the society is indeterminate, in the sense proposed by James, very near the sense of absence of domain proposed by Latour in the paper Faktura de la notion de rseaux celle dattachement (Latour, 1998). In this paper, starting from a drawing by Quino, the creator of Mafalda where her father is smoking a cigarette, Latour proves the neither the man dominates nor is dominated by the act of smoking (he dominates no more drugs, abortion, the press, the commerce, his tastes, his religion). Acting is a negotiated, political endeavour. In synthesis, the Stengers and Despret psychology is a network-actor theory based psychology. It should be stressed that this version of psychology is polemical and explosive: traditionally our discipline dont put itself at risk, and psychotherapist will not allow friendly yorubas sorcerers as their colleagues. We have not the costume of maximize the recalcitrance of our subjects. In such a version we should as human and social researchers follow the Latours hint in Politiques de la Nature and propose new city sceneries in which to integrate the other without tolerance cursed by Stengers. On the other hand, if they exist responsible drug-addicts, they are a lot that arent, and the agenda of obligations that this responsibility brings about should be the agenda of an ethical acting. Hence, we have to change our postures if we want that such a version of psychology works. The consequence, when we assume a non modern epistemology is to put aside the traditional heritage. It seems to me, reading his observations about psychology, that Latour

faces our field of work this way. Still basing myself in Stengers writings, one could consider non modern theorizing nomadic against the sedentary modern science. Stengers observes that excessive nomadic assumptions dont work; we have to compose them with sedentary propositions. In La Guerre des Sciences (Cosmopolitiques I) she shows this concerning physics and Prigogines propositions. My suggestion is to utilize the same reasoning with psychology: we have to consider the questions raised during the history of psychology and pose them in the context of the political epistemology of social studies. In this sense we have to rethink traditional (and complicate) subjects like learning and perception in the context of these new propositions. This paper is one example of the reflections we develop at Social Psychology Post-graduate Program in State University of Rio de Janeiro. Bibliography

DESPRET, V. (2001). Ces motions qui nous fabriquent. Ethnopsychologie de lauthenticit. Paris, Les Empcheurs de penser en rond. LATOUR, B. (1998) Faktura de la notion de rseaux celle dattachement. www.ensmp.fr/~latour/articles/1998.htm LATOUR, B. (1999). Politiques de la Nature. Comment faire entre les sciences en dmocratie. Paris, La Dcouverte. LATOUR, B. (2002). How to talk about the body. The normative dimension of scientific studies. http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/articles/article/077.html STENGERS, I. (2003). Comopolitiques I. Paris, La Dcouverte. STENGERS, I. (2003). Comopolitiques II. Paris, La Dcouverte.