On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods 9780822348252

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On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods Bruno Latour

First chapter translated by Catherine Porter and Heather Maclean

Science and Cultural Theory A Series Edited by Barbara Herrnstein Smith and E. Roy Weintraub

Duke University Press Durham and London 2010

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Preface

Devereux in Paris. I wanted to check the vast literature on fetishism and . __anti:fe_tishism.against-the-actual-praetiee-0f-a-real-practitioner; The first chapter of the present book is the translation of the pamphlet I pub­ lished on this experience.1 Then, for four years, I had the good fortune of preparing the exhibition Iconoclash for which I was curator, with several friends, and which opened in 2002. If the notion offactish allows one to suspend the belief of belief, that of iconoclash aims at suspending icono­ clastic gestures. Instead of another iconoclastic exhibition, we wanted to do an exhibition about iconoclasm, transforming this notion from a resource to a topic. The sumptuous catalog being out of print, it seemed a good idea to republish its introduction.2 Since the question of the right way to consider images and more generally mediations is at the core of all the issues of fetishism and iconoclasm, I have added a third chapter in which I compare religious images to those ofscientific practice, so as to propose another take on the science and religion debate.3 The book thus composed requires nothing more from the reader than the suspension, no doubt momentary, of beliefs in belief and in critique. It is, in my experience, the only way to focus on the creations of our hands, and to pay one's exact dues ·to creator and to creatures alike. "Iconoclash," Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. Copyright 2005, z�·I Zentrum for Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany and The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. All rights reserved. "Thou Shall Not Freeze-Frame," from Science, Religion and the Human Ex­ perience, ed. James Proctor, 27-48. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

CHAPTER ONE

On the Cult of the Factish Gods

"The light-skinned peoples living in the northern reaches of the Atlantic are said to have a peculiar way of worshipping the gods. They go on expeditions to other na­ tions, seize statues of their gods, and destroy them in huge ban.fires, insulting them with cries of'Fetish! Fetish!' -a word that in their barbaric language seems to mean '.forgery, nonsense, lie.' �ough they ins{st that they have nofetishes, and that it was their own idea tofree other nationsfrom such things, they seem to have very power­ ful gods. Indeed, their expeditions frighten and Jill with dread the peoples who are. attacked in this way by rival gods, who these peoples call'Moh Dun,' and whose power appears as mysterious as it is invincible. It seems that in their own lands they have built many temples, and the way they worship inside them is as strange,frightening, and barbaric as it is outside. During great ceremonies repeated from generation to generation, they smash their .idols to pieces with hammers. They seem to benejit sig­ ngicantlyfrom these ceremonies,for once they havefreed themselvesfrom their gods they can do whatever they please. They can mingle the forces of the Four Elements with those of the Six Kingdoms and the Thirty-Six Hells, without feeling at all responsible for the violence they unleash. Once these orgies have ended, these people are said to fall into deep despair. At thefeet of their shattered statues they cannot help but hold them­ selves responsible for everything that happens, which they call 'human' or '.free-will subject' - or else they believe, on the contrary, that they are responsible for nothing at all, and that they are entirely produced by what they call 'nature' or 'causal objects' (the terms are hard to translate into our language). Then, as if terrgied by their own daring, and in order to put an end to their despair, they repair the Moh Dun gods they , have just broken, making countless offerings and sacrgices; they put their gods back up at the crossroads, holding them together by iron hooping as we do for barrel staves. They are also said to have created a god in their own image� in other words, onejust like themselves, sometimes absolute master of all he does, and sometimes completely nonexistent. These barbaric peoples do not seem to understand what it means'to act.'" -Reported by Counselor De-Bru-Osh, emissary to China from the Korean Royal Court in the mid-eighteenth century

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Part One ---t-