latour space.of.controversies

8/6/2019 Latour Space.of.Controversies

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New Geographies: We would l ike to discuss some of the dis tinctions andseparat ions between the human and the nonhuman, and between the bui ltand the unbui lt , inview ofhow we have come tosee the cityin these dis tinc-t ions between the "urban" and the "envi ronmental. " We inhabit an urbanworld in ways that stretch beyond the boundaries ofthe city, so can we makethese distinctions between nature and culture?

Bruno Latour: Ifthe argument isabout human and nonhuman architecture,then urbanism isa good case to show the inani ty ofmaking the dis tinctionbecause no architect has ever made a clear distinction about people movingthrough things and things that make people move; architectural practice hasalways been atthis intersection. Now the theory ofarchitecture, like all mod-

; R AN IA _ K J N l" E R Y lE W _ W J IH _ B B U _ H O _ _L .AtoUR _f_L_1: Iern theories, saysexactly the opposite. But as itis usually the case with archi -tects , they are interes ted in pract ice and not so interes ted in the theory ofwhat they do. That i s the problem with archi tect s, in my connect ion withthem. The practice is extremely interesting and the theory is sometimes verysuperficial, and it changes very fast. More exactly, the practice of buildingseems to me more interesting.

Sowhat would a non-modern building be? I have no idea. Rem Koolhaasuses the term "hypermodern." Architects are going to use a different theoryeveryday .They ea t a t h~or b reakf as t and t hen goand get anot he r one, soit is very difficult to venture into a theoretical discussion with architects.

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NG: Can you elaborate on this- research on the pract ice ofarchitecture asopposed to research in architectural theory?

BL: I t i sa problem with theory, and i t isp rec isely fol lowing the idea of themodern, It isverydifficult to work with a theory that accepts a huge disconnectwith the modernist movement, which is supposed to increase the distinctionbetween the human and the nonhuman, and the practice, which has alwaysdone the opposite. So it is quite paradoxical. The city isa good case. There arestill people who talk about human-centered social theory, while in reality thereare gigantic cit ies that are built and bounded-"spheres of gigantic propor-tion," as Peter Sioterdijk says.So ifyou follow the theory, or ifyou conceive of


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the c ityas being in the c ity l ike the "flaneur" or the loi te re r, i t i s veryoddbecause it is so contradictory to what the practice ofbuilding cities isabout.Thewhole construction and building of a material world is much more inter-esting than anything related to the loiterer or the "flaneur," so again the theo-ry,because of a weakness in philosophical reasoning and the lack of inquiry,never captures what is so interesting inthe field of urbanism: the practicalconnection between the large scale and the modification ofhuman and non-human connections. Urbantheorists talk about it,but apart from fewclassicslike Lewis Mumford or William Cronon's book on Chicago, it is very rare.Theoryis verystrange toolto envision modernism, which iswhat weare dis-

~cussing here.

_!e~s ~o (managing projects, landscaping, re-landscaping, re-shaping, makingbui ld ings, e tc .) a re pol it ical in the sense tha t they represent an evolvingissue-that is, a!l_the_!takeholders can change their minds according~change ofthe moving_obj~gs.__Ibatjs_wbatJcallobject-oriented Rolitics.,-----The practical and visualizing tools of architects are extremeJ1-im.podan.t_ - . . kand eng~_eroje~_~.! :1~about a rchi tectural design in this veryques-tion ofinhabiting the space ofcontroversies. Architecture as a practical andvisualizing tool, and the 1 I ! _ ' 9 Jt i~s~~ated J! ! a panorama oftechniques fortb~politics ofthings is very important. Itis central, because it has som~_toolsthatc : : b pol it ical language does not have-that is, v isua lizi ;~ ; :; ;; :e d ig ital iza-tion age h"3Sbeen transforming architecture from a fixed space and moving /people toward a mobile image of people and things. The digital age bringsforth the notion of "foj;t~nd not object, which was verydifficultto articulateC.7~'before, when peoplewere stilltalking about buildings as beingstatic, contrast-ed with moving things-like people. Ithink, from what Ifeel from talking toarchitects or reading architect theorists such as AlbenaYaneva,that this notion

NG:Youdiscuss politics asabout things. "It's not a sphere, a profession, anoccupation only, but mainly a concern for things which are brought to theattention of a public."! Can you elaborate on your understanding of politicsin relation to space? Ii

is radicallychanging, because nowthe notion of buildings as fixed elements(and that something else moves) is actuallydisappearing. Nowyoucan actual-lyarticulate the movement ofthe building through digital tools. Forthe archi-tec t, a bui ld ing is a project , not an.object, I t is easie r to art iculate now..~Architecture isnow about the building as a contentious object. In many ways- - - - -etaphors of politics are moving into metaphors of architecture, largelybecause ofthe ecological crisis. Youhave to redo the architecture ofspace: a"crystal palace," as Sioterdijk uses the metaphor. Weare allinhabiting a '~-tal palace" ofsome sort. ,

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BL: For a phi losopher , space is a series ofcoexistence or cohabitat ions. Imade the argument that wearemovingfrom the t ime of t ime to the t ime ofspace. So inthe t ime oft ime , which was rea lly the modernist dream, youdestroy the past and then you have something else. And even moretoday,wearedoing the work of levelingdown everything. Butnow weare.in the ti,!!ll! f..space inthe sense that cohabitation ofallofthe things that were supposed to___r--- -be past are now simultaneously present. Ithink that is a verybigchange for~ designers-in the large sense ofthe word-because now you have to createthe conditions ofcohabitation, of building a completely newspace where youhave to breathe. Areyou aware ofSloterdijk's work?Sioterdijkis the thinker ofarchitecture. That answers the first part.

~' 4 The second part isthat design is ideallyp-Iacedto deal withobject-orient-l\

ed politics~Iam talking about politicaltheory as being about procedures: legal \organizations, representation, modes of representation, etc. Butifyou look atwhat people actually feelabout politics, itis always about things; it isaboutwhat Icall"matters ofconcern." It is always about subways, houses, land-scapes, pollution, industries. Politics is always connected to spatial issues,and politicaltheory is alwaysabout humans representing these issues, buttheissue itselfis difficultto represent. Andofcourse design, the things that archi-

~BL: Bridges arevery interesting. In Making Things Public,we have a chapterabout bridges byBojidarYanev,who is the head of New Yorkpublic bridges."Bridges are actually one ofthe oldest "things" inthe literal sense ofthe word"thing." Theoriginalnotion of"thing" is actuallya bridge.Weare increasinglyunder the influenceof allthis literature about the legaldesign, political assembling of bridges-seen byCiceroas "remparts" orwalls

NG:What about if we a re to t hink at t~ Our practice deals withbuildings as enti ties , but a lso with the city and the larger landscape , andtransport infrastructures like bridges and highways.


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ofa city (see the paper byOleg Kharkodinin Making Things Public 3). Sothewhole political role is object-oriented, and has always been object-oriented,turning around things. Architects knowthat, but they knowand they do not, itis alwaysthe problem, just the way wethink about building as projects, thewhole question ofthe aesthetics of architectural visualization is extremely", interesting. When I worked with Domus, the architecture magazine, for sever-a lyears, there was ini tial ly an effort to be innovat ive in the way we pho-tographed the building space. Atfirst, when Stefano Boeri was there, theytried innovative ways of preciselyshowing simultaneously the city,the build-ing, the people, the project, and movement. I enjoyed talking with studioarchitects, because they have more dynamic and symmetric (in myunder-standing ofthe word)waysof dealing with contentious issues.

Iwas in a very good architecture studio in Houston recently, where theyare practicallydoing science studies, but they arejust givingit another name.They were working on redesigning part ofthe Florida coast. Science studieswith much better skills than we have, because they know how to visualize,they knowhowto gather masses ofdata, andthey knowhowto simulate alter-nat ive scenarios, which is very interesting . This is why my project on"Mapping Controversies" includes architects from the Architecture School ofManchester, because wewant to bring inthe skills ofvisualization, to visualizecontroversies-space, controversies-web space.+Wealso include geographersfrom lausanne. There are two work packages: one work package isto inte-grate geography and architecture, and a second package is to use visualizingskills ofboth disciplines to visualize space inwhich controversies (Imeanthings and matters ofconcern) are made visible to the people who use theweb, because a space ofcontroversy is a great mystery.We live incontrover-sies and yet wedo notknowhowto spatialize them.

Wecannot think that wearein the time oftime as wedidin the past, andthat things willdisappear behind us as we moveforward, ina great movementofmodernism and modernization. Now wecannot moveforward because ourpast isattached to us, and itis also infront ofus. Ecology,the price ofener-gy-look at what is happening with carbon-neutral buildings; certainly thethings that were behind us are now infront ofus. Now,when wedesign, wehave to think about being politically correct, carbon-neutral, etc. Design ischanging completely-to tie together so manythings and kinds ofthings. Sothe big issue isto represent these matters ofconcern, and the way Isee itis

related to the ancient question of design inthe literal sense of "designo,"which has beenso efficient in architectural history since the sixteenth-century.Weneed those ski lls now, but no longer only the ski lls of drawing a 3-DEuclidian space. It is building inthe controversies-space. What is itto buildacontentious project ina non-Euclidianspace-the space welivenowin?WhenIaskthis to architects, they want to show me CADdesign, but a CADdesign isa sixteenth-century space, invented four centuries ago. So no, it is nota CADdesign. Architecture and geography skillsare verygood at creating the spacewherecontroversy isvisible, but itis not the perspective space, itis somethingcompletely different. Itis a space inhabited bymatters ofconcern, not mattersoffact. So the whole aesthetics of representing buildings and representingcities, the whole idea ofseeing, is inquestion.

Iwas tryingto convince the architect who didthe "Senseable City,"CarloRatti,that itwas veryoddto present a cityfrom above, Imean who isseeingcitiesfrom above? Birds?Inthe virtual book Idid on Paris, I have been tryingto be innovative inthe wayone experiences a city.SOne neveractually sees thecity,which is one ofthe things that Albena Yanevadiscusses in studying abuilding by Koolhaas, that one neversees a building as a whole.6 Youdo notsee i twhen i t is not there , and once i t ismade , you donotsee i tbecause i t isjust opaque. Sothe opacity of a building is a very interesting characteristic.How do you show the opaque buildings? When it is being built? When it isbeingprojected? When itis complete and operating? Allofthese questions arefascinating. What is registered, ofallthose questions, inthe theory ofarchitec-ture? Ido not know,but these are the questions Iam interested indiscussing ~~ #with architects.

NG : Let's discuss issues ofrepresentation. Both in Making Things Public andIconociasn.? you address i ssues ofrepresentat ion. What i s the power of theimage in invigorating a critical project? You seem interested in both repre-senting and inhabiting these controversial spaces. How does that change rep-resentation, and how does representation change that project?

BL : "Critical"is not the sort ofmode inwhich Iam tryingto see these sort ofthings, because "critical" means that youaccept the premise of representa-tion, and you try get some distance orsee behind orgo inthe backdoor, butthis still means that you do not touch the representation proper, and that is


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veryclear incritical science. So"critical" is not the way Iwould put it. This isexactly what I meant before. Can we modifyour representational skills andtools so that we move from the Euclidianspace-by which Imean the implicCl;.tion that whenever one tal s aboutJ,Il.~.teri~ity,one begins to draw.asJn...th.esixteent~entury? And then you are stuck because where do you put time?Where do you put people? Where doyou put decay? Where do you put use?Youdo not know.So then you become criticaland you say this isa bad repre-sentation because wecannot put all ofthe interesting stuff into it, and thenyou start to be the "f1aneur," capturing all the little things and leaving thewhole pot of interesting things alone. So Ithink the common question forarchitects anddesigners is:Howdo yourepresent?

It is very striking how poor, in terms of visualizing ability, innovatlon js,_-- -~ - ---suddenly. It is a great disappointment that Second Lifeis boringly similar to"first life." It is amazing that every sixteenth-century artist was better atdesigning second l ife than we are today. You are just moving with youravatars, but it isverylimited interms ofvisual field.Allthose inventions donotgo beyonda certain dumbed-down version ofthe sixteenth-century treatis-es on spatial 3-Drepresentation. Socan we use these techniques, which areextremely powerful,to explore not a critique of space but a space where con-troversy is rife?Wehave this notion that a building isa project and a movingthing; itis not a space, itis a flowoftime. Sowhyis itso difficultto representinterms ofvisualizing skills? So itis not images ~~ byrepres-:_ntation,_1alwaysmea -art:Science and olitics itis alwaysthe three together inwhich I

Xam interested. Somyattempt isto saythat the web now,inthe relativelyshortperiodthat ithas existed, might beoneof the ways inwhichthese three types

ter offact isbecoming a matter ofconcern. Itis verydifficultnowto find mat-ters offact. Inthe exhibition forMaking Things Public, wewere actually look-ing for a way to do a little installation about what wewould havecalled "thelast matters offact." Wewanted the installation to be about the last matters offact, but wecould not findone. Everytime Iwas proposing one, inthe end, itwas notone! Everysingle factual statement nowbecomes a matter ofconcern.Iam sure that this tea, for instance, isimmediately associated with poor chil-dren in India.So suddenly these poor children in Indiaare attached to your tea.Itis the same with scientific issues; they become more and more contentious.The more science extends, the more contentious it becomes, because it iscoextensive to wholefields of practice.

NG : Perhaps this is a good time to move on to the issues of scale. In.---Reassembl ing the Socia l, you suggest that scale is the actor's ownachiev!!!!"wt.~Rath;r than scale being set up before doing a study, that scalin~:-spacing, and contextualizing-the very framing act iv ity-should be broughtinto the foreground. How doyou see this dynamic relat ionship ofac tor, sca le ,and content-context as a tool to reflect on "New Geographies?"

,of representations can beput alltogether.

BL : Yes,it isa good question, the issue ofrepresentation andthe issue ofscalearethe two bigthings that are interesting to discuss with architects andgeog-raphers. Because youcannot discuss these things with sociologists and socialscientists, as they are absolutely not understandable to them. Scale is builtonthe definition ofsociety itself, so beside the factthat there is a zoomthat youcango from the largescaleto the small scale,one moves into economics, soci-ology,psychology and it is absolutely impossible to move on. But, ofcourse,scale is what is produced, not what you should have as your own meta-lan-guage to describe it. Scale isthe most variable thing to analyze-it is inthehands ofthe actors because they constantly move sca le . This iswhat issoridiculous about the idea that when youare an urbanist yousee everything, asthey say,over a largescale, because younever have a largescale, youjust lookata piece ofpaper ofsome sizeand you havea whole citythere.

Itis much more interesting inarchitecture and urbanism because thereareskillsto produce a wholeseries ofintermediary steps fullof models. Yaneva~did a~ry interesting study of modes ofbuilding inarchitectural studios, pre-ciselythe wayvariation ofscale isachieved, and this isthe case for allsorts of

NG : Doyou mind clarifying "controversies?" Is it connected with the political?

BL : No. "Controversies" is a verygeneral term to describe the fact that wehave moved from matters offact to matters ofconcern. That is linkedto theend of modernism. Inthe modernist project you could stabilize most ofit bysayingthat the matters offact part is essentially solved, andthen wedisagree,but when wedisagree it isabout opinions, political opinions, religions, art,and so on. But the basis, 90 percent ofour world, is matters offact, and ofcourse the problem now isthat the basis has disappeared because every mat-


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practices.9 Itcan be havinga littlecamera inside a scheme model, Photoshopmanipulations, but even when the thing is built, the scale still varies enor-mously. "Localizing the Global" (one of the chapters of Reassembling theSocial) isquite easy to do because everybig space willalways be in-situ. Oncethe whole building is built,however,you stillhaveto visualizethe whole build-

, ingin an office,or inothertechnical elements."Redistributing the Local"(the next chapter inthe same book)is more dif-

ficult, because we see a slightasymmetry. Evenin the book,where Iam tryingto be completely symmetrical on this issue , but i t is not completely true.Distribution on the localis slightly more difficultto trace, but the idea is thatyoureplacethe question ofscalebythe question ofconnection, and itis a con-nection that youfollow.So there are lots of mechanisms that areveryinterest-ing for collaboration between s ocial theory and architecture. Butcontextualizing is slightly more difficultto followwith localized things thanglobal ones. Everytime youspeak about globalthings, youare alwayssome-where, inan office, inside with a visualizing tool inyour hands, the demon-strat ion is easy to make; the other aspec t is tha t every locus is actua llycompletely distributed and coming from a completely different range of bothspace and time. Theformer is counter-intuitive but easy to demonstrate. Thelatter is counter-intuitive and not so easy to demonstrate. But the result, ofcourse, isthat scale becomes what circulates.

Now I am saying this, but unfortunately Google Earth is breaking myargument. InGoogle Earth , people get so used to the idea ofzoom. Theybelievethat they are actuallyzooming as ifthey were God andthey were mov-ing toward or away from Earth. That is unfortunate, because just at a timewhen myargument had a slight chance ofbe ing understood-that sca le isalways local-Google Earth arrives and breaks everything and reinforces theEuclidian metaphors that circulating through space at allscales is possible.And itis not because itis actuallyjust pixels. But itis so powerfuland so welldone that weare going to get another dose ofmodernist theory, precisely atthe wrong time.

inga place is slightly more difficultto demonstrate than localizing the global.Because information technologies areso omnipresent, powerfuland so easy tofollow,you just followthe light. Ifsomeone says: "I have a theory about theEarth being round," i tonly takes fiveminutes to goto the place where theEarth is seen through astronomers or satellite connections.

NG : Does representat ion compl icate this l ink? Doyou think i t i s possible>

BL : Yes,I think it is possible, in large part because of information technology.Onething that isverysimple to do isto visualizecliches, rumors, which beforewere so immaterial that you took them as context. Now you can followthemone byone. Theweb isa powerfultool; one canfollowthe dissemination fromone blogto the other.AsG~el Tarde,myhero ofsocial theory, says: "Wecan-notdo sociologynor study economics ifwecannot followconversations." Nowwecan. Nowwe can easilytrack local connections, so the more informationtechnology we have,the easier this argument I am making is provable,exceptfor Google Earth.

NG : Bu ild ing on t he i ssu es o f s cal e, a nd in t he Po l it i cs o f Na t u re , you proposeto rethink phusis (nature), p5!lis (city), and logos (discourse). IO Can you elabo-rate on that, particularly as it informs design?

NG : Soyou see mater ia li ty asa means to address sca le?

BL : This is a slightlymore abstract version ofwhat wejust discussed, becausethis book is an entirely architectural book. Itis about the architecture ofa par-liament ofthings, but again,Sioterdijkmight be more useful here because it isa problem ofdesign. Where are wewhen the Earth becomes not the environ-ment, but rather what we have to be artificially producing? Itis a matter ofdesign. Ifyouextend design to the idea of producing "biologicalspecies" andplacethem into an entirely re-done "natural park," and so on.The Nobel Prizewas given to these guys onthe climate-it is a shame. The ideathat you haveto bring phusis, cul ture , pol it ics together, this was our argument, but i t isridiculous to make it now because they got the Nobel Peace Prizeand not forsciencellt issuch an ominous geopolitical issue that the Nobel Peace Prizeisactuallygiven to peoplewho organize something to vote on climate change, orat least to vote on the probability ofclimate change. So now the interestingquestion is: Howdo wedo it?What isthe parliament ofthings? Thatwas what

BL : I t is one ofthe things, but there lots ofthings tha t c ircula te other thanmatter, likecliches, opinions. Comparing allthe things that circulatein localiz-


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Iwas tryingto do inthis book, but noone rea lly took i tse riously because i twas too abstract. SoI suggest that people now shift to Sioterdijkbecause itiseasier to absorb, especially with the architecture, though I still think that myargument has some advantage.

On this large quest ion ofdesign, the idea that we have to redesign theEarth isthe big question, and ofcourse, who isthe designer and what are thenew processes produced bydesign are a lso big quest ions. When you hearJames Lovelocksaying that we haveto gofrom 9 billion humans to 500 mil-lion humans, the question ofdesign is not the same! The big political ques-tions are allabout that typeof design. But itgoes atan incrediblespeed. Ifyouthink about the speed a twhich pol it ics is now about things, i t is amazing.Since WeHalle Neller Been Modern," everything has changed, and now myodd argument iscompletely common sense. So interms oftheory,this issueis solved. What is more interesting now is a political question like: Who isdesigning it?

Ofcourse there are many things-like questions for political scientists,forecologists ofcourse, lawyers,architects, itis a very interesting task, butthegeneral idea tha t humans and nonhumans are connected , tha t the div idebetween nature and culture isa verystrange moment inhistory which is past,Iwillnot spend a minute making itagain. This iswhy Iam interested inthesepractical tools because Ithink they are moving much further inthe theory,which Ialso liketodo. Sohow can webuild these verysmall things? How doyou build a web space that is adjusted to matters ofconcerns? Ithink thesequestions are really important, rather than fighting again for the big theorythat nature and culture isone thing.

In open discussions about science popularization, there is an interestingexample:yougo onthe webto an amazingsite calledJOVE[htlp://www.jove.coml1where scientists put visualizations oftheirexperiments. Itis a YouTubeforsci-entists! Sowhywould you have a glossary when you can have a visualizationofthe phenomenon ofwhich you can become virtual witness? Sovirtual wit-nessing is certainly one ofthe many littlethings where you see that now thismedium is reallyoriginal because you cannot do that inpaper ortext. This isthe way Igrade mystudents. Iftheir web site isprintable, itis a bad site. Butifyou use some ofthe manytools-and there are thousands ofthem-in a pro-ductive way,adjustable to intellectual enterprise or controversy, then you beginto produce true weboriginality.

NG : Did you understand the "Paris: Invis ib le City" project as a metaspace andspace of new connections?

B L: I was interested in doing an experiment of printing an impossible-to-readbook, and then doing an impossible-to-read web site, to frustrate traditionalways ofvision, and to forcetelevision. This requires youresist the temptationofGoogle Earth.So Ididthis intwoforms: Idid a printed version that wedidnot manage to sel l, and Iwas interested indoing the same thing onthe web,with the help ofa veryinteresting young artist who did the web site, PatriciaReed. Itis about the unreadiblilityof the book andthe unreadability ofthe website, which are reallyinteresting. I likethe website because itdoes things bet-ter than the printed book. I t is a verysmall experiment tha t forces you to gofrom a step to another step through allof the intermediary steps.

NG : Can you elabora te on your interes t in vir tual space and web space? NG : This leads to our las t quest ion concerning public space . How can we talkofthe politics ofpublic space in transnational geographies?

BL : I amworking onthe assumption tha t i t takes several decades before anewmedium is actuallyused to itspotential, andthat weare stillveryfarfromusing the web inan interesting way.Sofar,it isjust moreof the same. Itis likethe firsttrain, when ittook us almost thirtyyears to realizethat wecould havecoaches and corridors, so I havethe same feelings with the web. Presently,itisjust pages after pages; things are the same as realspace. Somy argumentis:Canweuse these tools so that they actuallyachieve what they are good at,which might not be reproducing pages but a llowing for something e lse tocome up?

BL : What are transnational geographies?

NG : Geographies where itis difficult to identify traditional borders. How can wetalk about a public space , ora common ground, when things are borderless?

BL : Arethey borderless or do they have lots ofdifferent borders at differentplaces? These aredifferenttopics. Myfeeling isthat things are not borderless.


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Waters do not have the same borders as f ish, c it ies, commerce, and everycommerce has a different border. On the contrary, I think that public space isnow becoming a central topic.

Geographers have always been good at being transnational in a way, andinventing varying scales and layers of representat ion. That isa great thingabout geography: it is physical and human. So you have physical geographyand human geography inthe same department, which never happened withsociology. Unfortunately there is no "physical sociology," and that iswhy soci-o logy isso poor because i t never actua lly had a counter-part in the samedepartment. Geography isthe physical sociology, soto speak.

I think what is really interesting isthat ifyou now take rivers, the manycomplex it ies o f how to represent an angry r iver . Every r iver is a pol it icalagency. In my research consort ium we have a friend, Cordulla Kropp, who dida Ph.D. onthe river that goesthrough Munich, and how it changes kilometerbyk i lometer. So there isa modernist r iver for hal f o f Mun ich, but then thesame river isalso a post-modernist river. I t isso post-modernized that everyelement isredone: recreational space, replanting oftrees, etc. It isin the cen-ter of Munich, but isst il l allowed to meander, which isa post-modernist ges-ture for a river, right? Atthe same time, rivers sti ll need to produce electricity,soit goes straight. How you represent a river asan agent isa very interestingquesti on. I do not know any r iver now that is not a contenti ous i ssue . I nFrance, we even have a law to represent rivers polit ically. We actually have aninstitutional organ for river representat ion. But when you go to this parlia-ment of rivers, which isthe literal word they use, the representat ional toolsfrom hydrography and geography are extremely disconnected with this ques-t ion. Soyou have masses of maps in a traditional sense, which are criticallyinformative but not necessarily what is needed to represent river in this politi-calriver assembly, and that isprecisely where allthese questions ofcontrover-sy mapping comes f rom. In the phrase "cont roversy mapping ," the word"mapping" isnot metaphorical but l iteral. We want to beable to help the cit i-zens of this new parliament of things to have the representational skills thatare at the level of the issues. That isvery much something that iscommonamong geographers and architects.

NOTES

I. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel , Making ThingsPublic:Atmospheres of Democracy (MIT Press,Cambridge, 2005).2 Boj idar Yaney , "Who i sMind ing t he Bri dges ," i nIbid., 548-553.3 Oleg Kha rkhord in , "Th ings a sRe s pub li ca e, " i nIbid., 280-289.4 MACOSPOL , see http://www.demoscience.org.5 Paris: Invisible City, http://www.bruno-latour.fr/virtual/EN/index.html.6. Albena Yaneva, "Scaling Up and Down: ExtractionTrials in Architectural Design," Social Studies ofScience 6: 35(2005): 867-894.

7Bruno Latour, and Peter Weibel . Iconoclash:Beyond theImage Wars in Science, Religion andArt(MIT Press: Cambridge, 2002).8. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: AnIntroduction toActorNetwark-Theory (OxfordUniversi ty Press, Oxford, 2005).9 Yaneva , "Sc al ing Up and Down."ro. Bruno, Latour, Poli t ics ofNature: How toBring theSciences into Democracy, t ranslated by CatherinePorter (Harvard Universi ty Press, Cambridge,2004).II. Bruno Latour, WeHave Never Been Modern(Harvard Universi ty Press, Cambridge, 1993).
http://www.demoscience.org./http://www.demoscience.org./

latour space.of.controversies

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