Widok On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus PK XIV/1 2012

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(1)Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis No 3425. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1 Wrocław 2012. Ewa Kwiatkowska University of Wrocław. On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus. We start in the middle of things, in medias res, pressed by our fellow colleagues, pushed by fellowships, starved for money, strangled by deadlines. And most of the things we have been studying we have ignored or misunderstood. B. Latour, Reassembling the Social, p. 123.. The assumption inscribed in the phrase “nature is the border of culture” provokes a significant methodological question: Is it possible in a single research procedure to cross or at least step upon this border? Do the humanities have sufficient cognitive instruments to give at least some account of that borderline (i.e. indeterminate, heterogeneous, uncertain) area between nature and culture, which science has either tried to negate by some forms of reductionism or cut out methodologically? Perhaps this transgression will continue to be the domain of philosophical reflection? Another question arises: who established this boundary and what are consequences of this? It seems that if we examined this boundary by means of anthropological tools (as the most appropriate tools here, for humans are for themselves its crucial point), we would have to say that everything that concerns it is by definition liminal and mediating and, at the same time, indeterminate, heterogeneous, uncertain (especially ontologically). A methodological consequence of such a state of affairs is a lack of well-developed proposals for studying this liminal area. Our reflection in this matter may focus, for example, on the concept of habitus, which in Pierre Bourdieu’s view was to transgress the boundaries within social sciences and the alternatives set by them. Can we interpret this category in such a way that will make it useful in explaining the phenomena in this “no man’s. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 1. 2014-06-26 08:58:10.

(2) 2. Ewa Kwiatkowska. land”? The basis for such and interpretation can be the acknowledgement that attitude to the body is the fundamental dimension of habitus. In its scope constituted by the bodily hexis, habitus could highlight the culture-nature relation. However, is there anything more to it than just a declaration? The question about the applicability of the category of habitus to a description of the nature-culture relation will be the main subject of my reflections, the direction of which is associated with the emergence in the so-called post-humanist paradigm of premises for its reinterpretation in a way that will make it a category describing the links of hybrid nature-cultures. When considering possible answers to these questions, I will examine the following issues: 1. conceptualisation of the boundary between nature and culture; 2. habitus in Pierre Bourdieu’s concept; 3. constructivist image of the category of habitus; 4. interpretation of the habitus category inspired by the actor-network theory (ANT).. Nature-culture boundary We are dealing with a borderline area – methodologically mined on both sides by reductionisms, and anthropologically made familiar by the rites of passage. For many years, when describing this boundary, we had at our disposal the alternative of naturalism or culturalism, both being forms of reductionism and, in the case of the ontological version, also of dualism. What the humanities find difficult to accept in particular are forms of naturalism like sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and perhaps also cognitive science, disciplines encroaching on fields that humanists have regarded as their own. But where has this boundary come from? Mythical thinking does not establish it at all (or in any case does not have to establish it), with a reconstruction of such categories as “culture” or “nature” in mythical thinking constituting a difficulty each time, for this thinking does not use discursive notions, i.e. we cannot directly “translate” mythical thinking into conceptual thinking (they are two different modes). In their article “On Some Primitive Forms of Classification” Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss point out that myth-based classification systems with social origins do not establish the boundary between the individual and his or her totem, the sign and the object, the name and the person; humans, animals and objects may be regarded here as equal1. 1 See É. Durkheim, M. Mauss, “De quelques formes primitives de classification”, Polish translation by J. Szacki, [in:] M. Mauss, Socjologia i antropologia, Warsaw 2001. I wrote about mythical thinking as the basis of classification systems in the article “Mit zbiorowy, społeczny, indywidualny? Kilka uwag o możliwości pojęcia mitu indywidualnego w socjologii”, Prace Kulturoznawcze 11, 2010, pp. 166–168.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 2. 2014-06-26 08:58:10.

(3) . On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus. 3. A similar conclusion can be drawn from Pierre Bourdieu’s observation concerning the “mythical reason” as based on practical logic, dealing in uncertain abstractions, using analogies, characterised by polysemy and establishing an affinity of all objects in distinguished universes as well as homologies between e.g. cultural practices and the vegetative cycle or meteorological phenomena2. The boundary between nature and culture is not constituted but, rather, abolished by constructivism and, more radically, by Bruno Latour maintaining an ambivalent though strong link to social constructivism3. From the constructivist point of view the boundary between both nature and culture, and between scientific disciplines has been established arbitrarily, for the concepts of “culture” and “nature” are constructs, elements of the philosophical and scientific discourses. With respect to the nature-culture relations, what is important in particular is the opposition of constructivism to essentialism, realism and objectivism. In the light of social and epistemological constructivism, “nature” is always (and only) within the boundaries of culture. For constructivism, cognition, both in the humanities and in natural sciences, is an intra-cultural enterprise; unlike e.g. objectivism, it uses a consensual-coherent concept of truth4. In the light of such an approach, legitimacy of the aforementioned boundary by essentialism is unsustainable. It can be said that, interestingly, “nature” and “culture” in various reflections (philosophical and even scientific) exchange connotations, with “nature” on some occasions presenting itself as ordered, as a model for “culture” (with natural sciences being a methodological model for cultural sciences), and on others as a state of chaos and disorder that is put in order only by the order of culture. Interestingly, both David Bloor, an influential representative of the strong programme of sociology of knowledge sometimes regarded as a precursor of constructivism5, and Latour refer to the fundamental, as it turns out, study Primitive Classification, mentioned above6. Both stress, each in his own way, the idea of the 2 See P. Bourdieu, Le Sens pratique, Polish translation M. Falski, Kraków 2008, book 1, ch. 5. “La logique de la pratique”, pp. 110–134, book 2, ch. 3. “Le démon de l’analogie”, pp. 267–351. 3 Olga Amsterdamska considers Latour to be a constructivist (eadem, “Odmiany konstruktywizmu w socjologii nauki”, [in:] Pogranicza epistemologii, ed. J. Niżnik, Warszawa 1992, pp. 149–154), while Ewa Bińczyk points to the originality of Latour’s concepts and the supercifiality of its interpretation as a version of social constructivism; she also presents the platforms of the dispute between Latour and the strong programme of sociology of knowledge (eadem, Obraz, który nas zniewala. Współczesne ujęcia języka wobec esencjalizmu i problemu referencji, Kraków 2007, pp. 95, 238, 248). See also B. Tuchańska, “Natura i kultura w kulturalizmie hermeneutycznym” in the present volume. 4 See A. Zybertowicz, “Konstruktywizm jako orientacja metodologiczna w badaniach społecznych”, Kultura i Historia 2001, no. 1. 5 O. Amsterdamska, op. cit., p. 140. 6 See D. Bloor, “Durkheim and Mauss revisited: classification and the sociology of knowledge”, Polish translation by M. Tempczyk, [in:] B. Barnes, D. Bloor, Mocny program socjologii wiedzy,. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 3. 2014-06-26 08:58:10.

(4) 4. Ewa Kwiatkowska. social origin of the division into nature and culture (society). Bloor indicates that Durkheim and Mauss formulated one of the central propositions of the sociology of knowledge: classification of things replicates classification of people. Durkheim was aware of the problem posed by such a statement in his contemporary theoretical context and explained himself in the spirit of the period: how it was possible that concepts modelled on social structures refer to nature – for society is “part of nature”. Bloor presents different arguments: Durkheim’s “categories” as collective representations are parts of the network of laws stabilised by coherence conditions, are the superior parts of the system of knowledge, providing a backbone for it; they cannot be built only on the basis of experience, on the contrary – experience is mediated through a network of laws; social message contains one of the coherence conditions7, while the negotiating nature of the network provides methods for aligning these demands with the contribution of experience8, which encourages us to reject the assumption that nature and society are polar opposites9. Latour is more categorical; in any case he criticises the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge also for not respecting the principle of symmetry in explanation10. It is no coincidence that Latour’s book We Have Never Been Modern is subtitled Essays in Symmetrical Anthropology. Adopting the principle of generalised symmetry11, this anthropology studies the simultaneous production of humans and non-humans, i.e. rejects the division into nature and society (culture) created by “the modern”. From the point of view of “the modern”, “the pre-modern” do not make a distinction between humans and non-humans, do not separate the sign from the object, nature from society12. “The modern” came up with transcendental, extra-human nature and with it there emerged an asymmetry between pre-modern cultures and modern culture. However, if we treat these two kinds of cultures symmetrically, we can abandon their distinction, for it turns out that both perform translations, i.e. produce hybrids of nature and culture, but “the modern” also purifying them, i.e. creating separate ontologies for them. We were modern as Warsaw 1993; B. Latour, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes - essai d’anthropologie symétrique, Polish translation by M. Gdula, Warsaw 2011, p. 145. 7 Coherence conditions are conditions imposed upon a network of laws without being laws themselves; Bloor of course refers here to socially generated coherence conditions, see idem, op. cit., p. 146. 8 Ibidem, p. 157. 9 See ibidem, pp. 128, 140, 157–161. 10 B. Latour, op. cit., pp. 136–137; see also E. Bińczyk, op. cit., pp. 195, 197. 11 For more on the principle of symmetry, see B. Latour, op. cit., pp. 132–138. 12 See: ibidem, pp. 142–143. It could be said that Latour implicitly re-evaluates mythical thinking or in any case one of its aspects, i.e. one that allows all beings to become actants. It can be emphasised that Latour owes the very notion of actant to Algirdas Greimas; he even acknowledges that ANT is half Greimas given its relational approach to actants and posing the key question: what makes the actor act (See B. Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, Oxford University Press 2007, pp. 54–55).. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 4. 2014-06-26 08:58:10.

(5) On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus. 5. long as translation and purification remained separate13. According to Latour, the very notion of culture is an artefact created by putting nature in brackets14. There are only nature-cultures; they are all similar, though they differ in how they divide beings, what qualities they ascribe to them, what forms of mobilisation they accept. Nature-cultures are produced in the process of translation, relation between mediators, which does not transfer causality, but encourages two mediators to coexist; that which has been traced by means of these translations is referred to here as the network15. The anti-essentionalism, anti-reductionism and agnosticism of Latour’s concept make it perhaps the only empirical proposition today consistently ignoring the dualism of nature and culture, while its unique interobjectivism (though not only it) succeeds in distinguishing it from social constructivism. Without going into the details, which have been precisely examined elsewhere, we can follow non-classic sociology of knowledge, Latour and also the constructivist-textual movement in pointing out that the conceptualisation of the culture-nature boundary, differently defined as it is, is in fact political (sensu largo and sensu stricto) – just like the legitimacy of cognition from which it follows. Consequently, it is sociology and not philosophy that gives us the recognition of this boundary. Latour even argues that it was the separation of the state from the laboratory that became the foundation of modernity and draws political conclusions concerning nature-cultures – should objects or, rather, non-humans, be allowed into democracy16. When we become aware of the common roots of science and politics, power and knowledge, epistemology and social order, what is revealed is the legitimacy of such seemingly different phenomena as, for instance, biopower and its manifestations (medicalisation of the body, eugenic practices, “collective body of the populace” as a resource, also reproductive resource, heteronorm – objects of control and politics) as well as the domination of the so-called “hard” sciences over “soft” sciences, with the latter being given natural sciences as a role model.. Human beings as the boundary between nature and culture As Barbara Tuchańska points out, the culture-nature opposition may be regarded as a contemporary equivalent of the juxtaposition of the soul and the body, 13 . See B. Latour, Nous n’avons jamais…, pp. 22, 63, 141–142. Just as what is regarded as social in traditional sociology is, in Latour’s view, an artefact created by a misconstrued notion of causality, see idem, Reassembling the social..., p. 109. 15 Ibidem, pp. 107; for more about the network, see especially pp. 141–159. 16 See B. Latour, Nous n’avons jamais…, pp. 61–71; idem, Politiques de la nature. Comment faire entrer les sciences en démocratie, Polish translation by A. Czarnacka, Warsaw 2009. 14 . Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 5. 2014-06-26 08:58:10.

(6) 6. Ewa Kwiatkowska. mental and corporeal substance, the ideal element and the material element. Ultimately, they refer to humans, trying to separate what is naturalist in them from what is not17. Pre-modern cultures – to use a conventional and broad term – did not set a clear boundary between culture and nature, though they did make it familiar by the rites of passage. We can ponder over the consequences of this dualism of culture and nature, subject and object, body and soul in modern and postmodern culture, in which the separation of the body and a lack of an overarching, meaningful ritual structure18, replaced, as Anthony Giddens would have it, by “open experience thresholds”19have succeeded in separating our cultural selves from our natural selves, especially in the two most critical situations – sex and death. The process is paradoxically manifested in the sexualisation of culture on the one hand, and denial of death on the other. The separation of the body (associated with the process of separating experience) is accompanied by the “overpresence of the body”20 in culture, which corresponds to a boom in studies into the body. However, the studies do not go beyond the dualist alternative of naturalism-culturalism or, in the case of the constructivist-textual paradigm – beyond culturalism21. The explanation of the symbolic (textual, communicative, narrative, discursive, etc.) dimension of the body is far insufficient here, for it supports reductionism and epistemological rupture. However, is there a possibility of crossing this methodologically constituted boundary between culture and nature? Do we have any cognitive categories the potential of which allows us to do so?. The category of habitus in Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts (and its consequences) (Habitus [Lat.] – attitude, external appearance, clothing, property, state, condition, situation, disposition) The habitus category seems to be particularly interesting here owing to its link to the concept of practice. For instance, Bourdieu criticises structuralism for its 17 . See B. Tuchańska, op. cit. See C. Shilling, The Body and Social Theory, Polish translation by M. Skowrońska, Warsaw 2010, p. 208. 19 A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Polity Press 1991, p. 148. 20 The expression “overpresence of the body” was used by E. Banaszak and P. Czajkowski in the Introduction to book they edited, entitled Corpus delicti. Rozkoszne ciało, Warsaw 2010, p. 8. 21 On Foucault’s approach to the body, see C. Shilling, op. cit., pp. 57–58. 18 . Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 6. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(7) On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus. 7. negative attitude to practice. In his view, structuralist anthropologists did not notice all the consequences of creating a homology between two oppositions: langue and parole, as well as culture and behaviour or its products. In Saussurean linguistics, langue becomes a precondition for understanding parole, it guarantees mutual understanding between the sender and the receiver, thus it favours the structure of the system of signs over their practical functions. The shift from the structure of language to its functions suggests that the knowledge of the code alone makes it possible to master real linguistic interactions in a very imperfect manner, because the meaning of a given element depends equally on linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Linguistic and ethnological structuralism is incapable of including in the theory that what depends on performance; it looks at performance as a negative side-effect and not as practice22. This last category is what distinguishes (at least potentially) the perspective outlined by Bourdieu from a purely textual perspective. Habituses are systems of permanent dispositions, principles generating and structuring practices as well as ideas that may be objectively adapted to the purpose, not requiring conscious focusing on it at the same time. Different conditions of life generate different habituses organising practices and their perception. Within one class of conditions of existence and social determinants we can observe a uniformity of habituses, which makes practices and works instantly comprehensible and predictable23. The word disposition in the context of Bourdieu’s concept expresses a result of organising action; it also denotes a way of life, habitual state (especially of the body), particularly a predisposition, a tendency or an inclination24. Bourdie intended the category of habitus to rise above the alternatives of determinism and freedom, determination and creation, awareness and unawareness, individual and society. However, it failed to do so owing to too strong an emphasis being placed on determination, inertia, unawareness and impact of the social structure (in this sense the status of subject and freedom was by no means raised in Bourdieu’s theoretical practice). A special dimension of his concept is social transformation of history into nature – effects of a long, collective process of socialising the biological and biologising the social25. The author of La domination masculine attached a lot of weight to deconstructing the embodiment of social relations of inequality and 22 . See P. Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, Polish translation by W. Kroker, Kęty 2007, pp. 180–186. 23 See P. Bourdieu, La Distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, Polish translation by P. Biłos, Warsaw 2005, pp. 216–219; in addition idem, Raisons pratiques, Polish translation by M. Falski, Kraków 2008, pp. 72–73, 77–79; idem, Esquisse d’une théorie …, p. 193. 24 See P. Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, p. 193. 25 P. Bourdieu, La domination masculine, Polish translation by L. Kopciewicz, Warsaw 2004, p. 10.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 7. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(8) 8. Ewa Kwiatkowska. power (e.g. the myth of the division between the sexes). Thus, habitus is embodied history that has become nature and, as a result, has been forgotten. To sum up, in Bourdieu’s concept, the category of habitus, associated with cultural practices, assumes unconscious agency, reflectiveness, it contains the notion of “something acquired” and does not go beyond culturalist dualism. For Bourdieu, the limitations of the habitus category include sociologism and, as in the case of textualists, reductionism. From the perspective of his anthropology-sociology, the human body is unfinished, it is an effect of cultural practices that form it, while habitus makes up the second cultural nature. However, the scholar did not draw any ultimate anthropological conclusions from this category, with regard to the nature-culture relation. As a result, he did not formulate a vision of “complete man” which Marcel Mauss called for, considering the concept of habitus. In no way did Bourdieu cross the traditionally conceptualised boundary between culture and nature; he only showed that culture and its special manifestation called social structure was embodied and projected the body. However, we may ask a question about the anthropological and perhaps not only cultural-anthropological meaning of this category. Can we even think of an interpretation whereby we can use it to describe some phenomena of non-dualistically defined man? Is it possible to define habitus as a system of permanent dispositions, a principle generating and structuring practices and ideas, which not only transform social history into “nature”, but also biologically change the human body (including the brain) by means of these practices (e.g. communicative, meditative, religious therapeutic, eating and sexual practices)? To say that the body is socially constructed, that it is a social project is not enough, for when we assume such a position, we still remain on one (culturalist) side of the barricade. To formulate the problem in the right way means to construct such a research procedure that will effectively indicate whether and to what extent cultural practices and permanent habits influence the biological aspect of the body, and perhaps will even reply in the affirmative to Mauss’ call for a vision of “complete man”. The statement that culture cultivates the body through practices contains the anthropological and transdisciplinary potential of the habitus category. Given both sociological and anthropological aspects of this category, we can ask the following questions: — Is it possible that, contrary to the division into naturalism and culturalism, there will emerge (and, if so, in what conditions) total anthropology?; – Does the category of habitus in the bodily hexis dimension account for the reflectiveness of the culture-nature relation?; – Do humans, by transforming their hexis, also change their biology with cultural practices, i.e. does the creative aspect of habitus reach the biological aspect,. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 8. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(9) On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus. 9. does culture transform nature, is the relation between culture and the body only symbolic (as is the case with the textual approach) or causative (e.g. do communication practices influence various processes in the brain)? Obviously in this context, habitus would be separated from its literal, sociological content included in Bourdieu’s concept, but it would retain its “spirit” of agency and reflectiveness. In this sense habitus could be designed as a kind of trans-category containing various forms of its possible use, among which the one presented by Bourdieu would only be one of many. Answering the question whether and how cultural practices influence the biological aspects of the body is not, of course, within the domain of Bourdieu’s anthropology-sociology, but, if at all, of some trans-anthropology abolishing the barrier between the humanities and natural sciences. However, is such a discipline possible? Does the potential of the habitus category authorise its expansion in the methodological (or, more broadly, epistemological) direction in a way that poses a question about its usefulness for a description of mutual relations between the biological and the cultural aspect of humans, while its trans-disciplinary potential could concern the construction of a bridge not only between disciplines within the humanities (sociology and anthropology), but also between the humanities and natural sciences? The problem is how to operationalise such a trans-category, given the order of scientific disciplines in accordance with the established boundary between nature and culture. Perhaps its negation is possible only in a philosophical project, and, in order to cross it, we should use a complete new language of description. Constructivism rejects the opposition between the real (natural) and conventional (cultural), and owing to cultural relativity of all classifications, it redefines the traditional boundaries of disciplines. There are no obstacles in epistemological constructivism to creating a transdisciplinary research programme in which habitus would become a supradisciplinary category. However, it would be difficult to imagine transdisciplinary empirical studies above the division into the humanities and natural sciences we are used to, if only because of the incompatibility of their languages, procedures, visions of the world, etc. It will still be a hybrid of reductionisms. Is there any other, non-reductionist way out? This question leads directly to another attempt to interpret the habitus category, this time based on the actor-network theory (ANT). According to Latour, both these reductionisms are asymmetrical. Thanks to the network model and translation practices we can reconstruct the continuity between beings with different ontological statuses26. 26 . See E. Bińczyk, op. cit., pp. 197, 215.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 9. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(10) 10. Ewa Kwiatkowska. Is there no boundary then? Habitus in the light of sociology of associations Objects take over actions (not only objects but also ideo-, bio- and psychomorphs) Interpreting the habitus category in the spirit of sociology of associations would require painstaking work, but Latour himself gives a lot of suggestions. At the beginning we need to make a distinction: “habitus” is a category of Bourdieu’s concept, but it is not a category of Latour’s concept, though this notion does appear in an important point of his lecture. Thus, interpreting habitus in the light of ANT is justified, all the more so given the fact that the basic sociological concepts and thus “the social” are redefined with reference to it. The latter applies equally to humans and non-humans (humains and non-humains)27; the dichotomy between the object and the subject is replaced by a coupling: human factors/ non-human factors; “the social” does not define an ontic field, only a conceptual difference. Latour points to the constant narrowing down of the notion of “social”28 and follows Tarde’s understanding of “the social”, not as a specific area of reality, but as a principle of associations. The sociology of associations first tries to carefully analyse who and what the participants of actions are, and they can also be non-human factors. Thus habitus may define here the associations between factors of varying, as has been thought so far, “nature”; its participants may include ideo-, psycho-, techno- and bio-morphisms. The inertial aspect of habitus as a system of permanent dispositions (which prevails in Bourdieu’s thinking) may be described here by means of the concept of intermediary, whereas the creative one, predisposition, tendency, inclination, possibility – by means of the concept of mediator. In terms of the sociology of associations, the agency aspect of habitus would belong to sources of uncertainty29. The understanding of habitus in the spirit of ANT cannot be “added” to the one traditionally adopted in sociology, for this would require denying the sociological content of this category. The notion of habitus can be interpreted in the light of the sociology of associations, an attitude inspired by Latour himself, who admitted that this was an excellent notion, if it were only freed from social theory. To support such a possibility, he quoted Mauss’ understanding of habitus, in which he 27 Krzysztof Abriszewski and Aleksandra Derra translated nonhumans (non-humains) as “czynniki pozaludzkie” [nonhuman factors]: for more on these translators’ choice, see K. Abriszewski, “Splatając na nowo ANT.” Wstęp do: B. Latour, Splatając na nowo to, co społeczne, Kraków 2010, p. XXX. 28 B. Latour, Reassembling…, p. 12. 29 For more on the sources of uncertainty, see ibidem, Part I. “How to Deploy Controversies About the Social World”.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 10. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(11) On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus. 11. also noticed Tarde’s way of describing “the social”30. This reinterpretation cannot pretend to be exhaustive, it may even not be literally in accordance with ANT, all the more so given the fact that its nature is theoretical, and the characteristic feature of the ANT concept is a combination of sensitivity to the empirical and a vast philosophical horizon31. We may point to several aspects and layers of both traditional sociology and the sociology of associations, to which the concept of habitus applies. They include, for example, the concepts of social practices or social actions, the concepts of the subject of social actions32, the issues of agency, subjectivity and objectivity, internalisation. To this, we need to add issues characteristic of ANT and formulated in its metalanguage (infralanguage) like the issue of mediators versus intermediaries, locality and globality, clamps, scales or layers which the actor is composed of33. Following Latour, we should adopt a performative definition of habitus. For instance, this scholar defines social aggregates performatively, which in the context of ANT does not mean that they are created by speech acts, but that they must be constantly formed or transformed in a process an inextricable element of which is the research process. What is important here is the cognition movement, in ANT cognition and being become intertwined, there is no distinction between ontology and epistemology34. Coming back for a moment to the problem of inertia of habitus in Bourdieu’s concept, it is worth noting that when defining groups, Latour stresses the difference between groups “endowed with” some inertia and groups the existence of which needs to be sustained with difficulty. Traditional sociology refers to “inertia”, as if there was some supply of associations; in a similar manner it wants to explain the constancy of society, its scope, obligations, membership in it, its stability, reproduction (having previously assumed them, as a result of which it gets into a kind of vicious circle)35. The sociology of associations explains the measures causing such stability with great difficulty, itself becoming one of them. This difficulty is an inherent assumption in this sociology, it constitutes a property that cannot be removed, for associations are kept being negotiated anew, they are not governed by inertia, they are visible only thanks to traces left by attempts to create a new assemblage of elements which in themselves are not “social”36. 30 . Ibidem, pp. 306–307. See K. Abriszewski, op. cit., pp. XVI–XVIII. 32 This requires paying attention to the difference between the subject as subiectum and an acting subject, an agent. For more on the translator’s decisions in this matter, see ibidem, p. XXXII. 33 For more on the composition of the actor, see ibidem. 34 See E. Bińczyk, op. cit., p. 212. 35 Latour does not deny these inert structures and stresses that it is movement and circulation of mediators that ensures their existence (see idem, Reassembling the social..., p. 357). 36 See ibidem, pp. 15, 94. 31 . Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 11. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(12) 12. Ewa Kwiatkowska. Latour introduces a distinction between an ostensive and a performative definition in order to indicate the main difference between the subject matters of these two sociologies and, consequently, subject matters of these two types of definitions. An ostensive definition is to minimise the researcher’s influence, while a performative definition assumes his or her active influence. The subject matter of an ostensive definition is fixed (with some essence being immanently ascribed to it); the subject matter of a performative definition disappears, when it ceases “to be performed”; when it remains in place, this means that other actors are already at work37. As we can see, the controversy between these two sociological concepts starts with the way of defining the social, the type of metalanguage versus infralanguage, the role of researcher in the process of cognition.. Habitus – property, state, position, temperament (mediators, chains of mediators, subscriptions and plug-ins) In the perspective of the sociology of associations, subjectivity, agency (which does not mean causality) is reserved for different beings; their form does not have to be anthropomorphic, but can be ideo-, techno-, psycho-, bio-morphic, etc. That is why habitus can describe here associations between factors of varying, as has hitherto been thought, “nature”. Thus, habitus does not have to, first of all, be the right of what traditional sociology calls (human) subjects, secondly – it is not inherent (even as a principle) in any object. The category of habitus could be used to describe how associations are established, negotiated, formed between actors, if they are mediators, or to describe already established intermediaries38. In ANT downloading the plug-ins is an analogue of habitus. Latour asks: what enables the actors to interpret the system in which they are placed? According to traditional sociology it is either an invisible structure at work (i.e. no one specific acts), or a human subject gives meaning to the world of objects, which in themselves are devoid of any meaning. Between the two approaches there is a methodological gap, a leap caused by the difference between the positivist and interpretative approaches. In order to avoid this gap, ANT uses here the so-called clamp, an artificial measure to keep the topography of a studied area flat39, which 37 . See ibidem, 49–54. For more on the distinction between intermediaries and mediators, see ibidem, pp. 53–65; definition of mediators p. 361. 39 “Flat topography” is one of Latour’s numerous metaphors adopted to denote a methodological necessity of using the trick of flattening the “three-dimensional” projections of traditional sociology. In the latter, the incommensurability of the actor and the context in which the actor is placed makes detecting the carrier of action impossible. In order to capture the shift of action from one area to 38 . Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 12. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(13) . On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus. 13. prevents the chain of mediators from disappearing in the “structure”, “local interaction”, “social context”, etc.40 These clamps include subjectifying, personalising or individualising factors41, the operation of which is described by Latour by means of the metaphor of plug-ins and downloading software. In this perspective, human actors are to be assembled from many overlapping, empirically separate layers. We acquire competence, equipment or (to use exceptionally Bourdieu’s language) dispositions by downloading circulating plug-ins, as a result of which we become locally and temporarily competent. It is possible to analyse the various layers of this competence, to empirically observe the creation or, rather, assembly of an actor (human actor in this case) out of these layers; their offers come from the outside42. In Latour’s concept, an actor (human or non-human) is not a source of action but a “moving target” for entities around it; it is the numerous others that make the actor act and “if any action has to be transported from one site to the next, you now clearly need a conduit and a vehicle”43. For traditional sociology, competence either is inborn or comes from the “social matter”, however we choose to define it. In ANT, competence or dispositions are derived by actors from what flows, swarms outside. In addition to the clamp metaphor, Latour also uses the subscription metaphor. Human actors retain their mental and cognitive competence as long as they are subscribed to them; they do not own them. They can be internalised, but this needs downloading another plug-in; we do not carry our equipment with us, it is not our property. An actor is not treated here as primary subjectivity which sees the objective world of objects, but as dependent on circulating entities; we need to see empirically how a generic body is turned into a person: “the more intense the shower of offers of subjectivities, the more interiority you get”44. To give an example of habitus, we can follow Latour in citing a well-known passage in which Mauss describes the way nurses walk. Although so far we have regarded Mauss as a Durkheimist and Bourdieu’s forerunner45, Latour sees in his description “what is social” in Tarde’s line. In the light of ANT, the nurses have downloaded a plug-in – way of walking from a film! There are various non-social entities circulating around actors; they are not causes, but they do make the actors another, ANT “flattens” the topography, thanks to which it is able to reassemble the social (see ibidem, pp. 240–255). 40 See ibidem, pp. 255, 269, 298. 41 Other types of clamps are, for example, oligoptica and panoramas, see ibidem, pp. 256–278. 42 As Latour writes, “to be an ‘actor’ is [...] a fully artificial and fully traceable gathering”, ibidem, p. 208. 43 Ibidem, p. 174. 44 Ibidem, p. 208. 45 Though Bourdieu, describing his use of the habitus category, does not refer to Mauss but to Erwin Panofsky and his term “local” , see P. Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art, Polish translation by A. Zawadzki, Kraków 2007, p. 273.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 13. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(14) 14. Ewa Kwiatkowska. act. Not making a distinction between human and non-human actors, ANT gives us grounds to see habituses – dispositions or competence that can be downloaded from the environment and having their own “modes of transport”. Let us begin with love. Love in particular, as Latour admits, can be explained as something that comes from the outside. “Even love has to have its vehicle, its conduits, its equipment just as much as a trading room, a headquarters or a factory”46. Have feelings not been given to us? “Doesn’t reading help us to know how to love?”47. What about love talks, are they not conveyors, “subject-carrying” mediators? “Try living without them for a bit and see how fast you will wither away”48. What about poems, songs, images (films!), the objective – as Latour stresses – existence of which must be taken into account? For the less romantic among us, a good example is a supermarket, which makes us consumers, but in order for this to happen, we have to download plug-ins – labels, trademarks, barcodes, adverts, customer journals, etc.49 Here is another example that deserves to be mentioned: Villages appear to dot the landscape haphazardly until an archaeologist excavates the ancient road networks and realizes that all the settlements align perfectly on some ancient causeways simply separated by the mean day march of the Roman legions. Who has created the settlement there? What force has been exerted? How could Caesar still be acting through the present landscape? Is there some other alien agency endowed with the long-lasting subterranean power to make settlers ‘freely choose’ the very place it has allotted them?50. Here the disposition to found settlements comes from the shape of the landscape, partly “natural” and partly prepared in Antiquity by the administration of the Empire. Thus, competence or disposition in sociology of associations are, first of all, interobjective, secondly, they comprise (or can be assembled from in the cognitive process) layers of ontologically different entities. For, according to Latour, the ultimate objective of ANT is to introduce entities, the emergence of which has been hitherto forbidden in social sciences, to introduce various creatures, objects, things, also those invisible ones (such as scallops or God)51. 46 . B. Latour, Reassembling…, p. 212. Ibidem, p. 209. 48 Ibidem, p. 212. 49 See ibidem, p. 210. 50 Ibidem, p. 44. Admittedly, this example was used by Latour to point out that action is taken over by others (italics by Latour), but in my opinion it can also be used to illustrate habitus in the light of ANT. 51 See Ibidem, pp. 265-266. I refer here to the famous article by Michel Callon, in which scallops are presented as mediators (see idem, “Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieux Bay”, [in:] Power, Action, and Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge?, ed. J. Law, New York 1986) and to the treatment of God as an actor-network (see A. Piette, La religion de près: L’activité religieuse en train de se faire, Paris 1999), after: B. Latour, Reassembling…, p. 276. 47 . Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 14. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(15) On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus. 15. Social competence constitutes just one, small subset of ties that make up society; when “society” disappears from view, what emerges is everything that circulates “outside”. Plug-ins provide actors with additional, complementary tools (additional “souls” or psycho-morphs52) we need to interpret a situation. Cognitive abilities, according to Latour, do not reside “in” subjects, but are distributed throughout the formatting setting, comprising localisers as well as competence-building propositions and intellectual technologies (here ANT touches upon the debate about human cognition and the buzzword concept: internalisation). They come from the outside, they travel along their own conduits. Scholars’ task is to empirically reconstruct their path and their history. The fact that they have their own modes of transport means that they come neither from the social context nor from the subjectivity of actors. Only when we give up both the concept of nature and that of society, will we be able to characterise these hitherto elusive paths. The distinction between the “social” and the “psychological” disappears, when the term “outside” is replaced by circulating plug-ins, which do not determine action, but which make someone do something. We are witnessing a renewal of the notion of the “outside”, which in this case neither is a context of social forces, nor “determines” the interior. Latour believes that his approach ignores – ignores and not “overcomes” or “resolves” – the dualism of approaches of traditional sociology stretched between a subordinated object and a free subject, a system and an actor. The difference between ANT and sociology of “the social” is based on a special theory of action disregarding this division. Here the only way to capture how “the inside” is constructed is to multiply the links with “the outside”! In order to become a subject, we need to subscribe to a number of subject-carrying factors; in order to become an individual, we need to download many individualising factors. According to Latour, what comes to the fore here is the most significant sociological issue, namely explanation of what traditional sociology calls relationship (in the strict sense of the word) between the individual and society: We might end up gaining some “intra-psyche”, only if we are entering into a relationship with a lot of “extra-psyches” [...]. If we treat what comes from the outside as mediators offering an occasion to the next agent to behave as a mediator, the whole scene of the inside and outside might be modified for good. [...] We are now at least free from a whole set of discussions considering the relative weight of “relative weight” of “individual freedom” over “structural determination”; every mediator along any chain of action is an individualised event, because it is connected to many other individualised events53.. ANT differs from the traditional theory of action not only and not primarily in that the actors may be non-human, but in that it is focused on mediators making (which does not mean: being the cause of) other mediators do something. In trad52 Psycho-morphs are “subject-carrying” factors circulating outside actors, see B. Latour, Reassembling…, p. 214. 53 Ibidem, p. 216.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 15. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(16) 16. Ewa Kwiatkowska. itional sociology, actor denoted a source of purposeful activity, while the impact of context (“structure”, “culture”, “class”, etc.) was based on a cause-and-effect relationship, on agency factors transferring power by means of passive intermediaries. In this perspective we could choose between the autonomy or captivity of the actor (as in Bourdieu’s concept, in which the subjectivity of individuals and the creative aspect of habitus were treated rather declaratively). In order to maintain autonomy, we had to reduce the number of links to the context. It is the other way round in ANT: we need to multiply the links with the outside, for this is the only chance for capturing how “the inside” is constructed; the more annexes the actor has, the more he exists; the action of an actor-network is liberated by a network of numerous mediators. Latour’s criticism of the concept of society leads consequently to its treatment as a conglomerate of heterogeneous entities, attributing subjectivity to each conglomerate which collects, connects and translates other entities. Thus, the interpretation of the concept of habitus in the light of ANT touches upon crucial points in its dispute with traditional sociology: understanding of “the social”, theory of action, understanding of causality versus agency, the concept of actor. Latour’s ontological pluralism (monism?54) and anti-essentialism make this interpretation treatable as the only possible example, at least for the moment, of the application of the habitus category in a non-reductionist manner. Olga Amsterdamska indicates that Latour’s concept is a result of the adoption of a limited concept of humanity and an even narrower concept of culture55. This is a price for opposing the dualist principle of tertium non datur, a price undoubtedly paid consciously, which can be seen, for example, in the topographic metaphor of “flattening”56. However, Tuchańska notices an objectivist trap in this concept: Latour “treats both non-human and human constituents of the natural-cultural reality as objects. Owing to this objectivist attitude, it lacks an integral ‘mechanism’ of self-critical reference to one’s own prejudgements”57. Obviously, Latour’s philosophical or anti-reductionist project does not seem to have had a stronger influence on the perception of the universal. We can expect that we will continue to be doomed to a sinusoid of culturalisms and naturalisms. However, the problem has been raised and there has been an attempt to describe an undivided world. And, of course, a new language had to be invented first of all, and, secondly – the object of cognition had to be inventively conceptualised. Perhaps such non-reductionist languages will continue to emerge, because we already know that they are possible. 54 . Bińczyk believes that Latour’s position is a pluralism given the heterogeneity of elements of the network, and a monism given its status (eadem, op. cit., pp. 248–249). 55 O. Amsterdamska, op. cit., p. 154. 56 See B. Latour, Reassembling…, pp. 249–250. 57 See B. Tuchańska, op. cit., p. 20.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 16. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

(17) On nature, culture and the potential of the concept of habitus. 17. Regardless of our assessment of the explanatory potential of sociology of associations as well as its philosophical consequences (and these are, undoubtedly, the most interesting ones), it is worth paying careful attention to it, because it raises some problems in a novel and original way. Latour’s charges against traditional sociology are serious: he criticises it for essentialism, a priori definition of “the social”, mixing the explanans with the explanandum, for a too narrow definition of the social world, the dualism of its method (positivism versus interpretative paradigm), for disregarding informants, for the gap (“performative gap”) in the description of the transfer of “power” of society to subjects (lack of description of its translation). These charges need to be deeply thought over, especially with regard to the traditional concept of social action (what makes the actor act?). It is also worth considering the concepts of mediator and intermediary, and the admission of non-human actors. In particular, we should carefully consider the charge of mixing two metalanguages: of the analyst and of the actor, or – even worse – giving no voice whatsoever to actors58. Latour’s concept undermines the traditional and quite well-worn language of sociology, dominated by calques and buzzword categories (such as internalisation, acting subject, rational subject, etc.). A renewal of this language, a renewal of “the social” and, first of all, its reconnection to philosophy are the three main challenges posed to sociology by Bruno Latour’s writings. Conclusions that can be drawn from an examination of the category of habitus from the point of view of the culture-nature relation are twofold. First, despite the attractiveness of the vision of “human completeness”, it is impossible to achieve it through dualist reductionisms. Second, paradoxically, were the interpretation of habitus in the light of the anti-reductionist actor-network theory to be regarded as successful, it would refer equally to humans and non-humans, i.e. it would go beyond the anthropological potential of this category in accordance with the post-humanist logic of ANT. Thus, at the moment we can choose between habitus interpreted by humanist reductionism (culturalism) or by post-humanist anti-reductionism. The prospect of getting to know “complete human actors” does not seem to be getting closer. 58 . See B. Latour, Reassembling…, pp. 43, 52.. Prace Kulturoznawcze XIV/1, 2012 © for this edition by CNS. pk_kwiatkowska-korekta.indd 17. 2014-06-26 08:58:11.

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