Bruno Latour, Aramis, or the Love of Technology, PDF - Dss-edit.com

An accusation that's so watered down it blames the whole wide worldis even more futile than one that picks a scapegoat.""But you're still not going to claim , are you," I went on in a moreconciliatory tone, "that the protocol Signed is the best possible compromise?Next to you, Pangloss would come off as a pessimist. In anycase, didn't you commit yourself to finding a guilty party, a cause forthe death of Aramis?""If Aramis is dead, which remains to be proved; if it ever lived,which also remains to be proved; and if it was viable, whieh has notyet been demonstrated . . . We don 't have a cause. On the other hand,we have circumstances bv the bucketload. Installation in Paris; choiceJof the Petite Ceinture; support from the RATP; abandonment by Matra,which had other things on its plate after 1985; separation of the mobileunit, which was being perfected, from the system, which was beingdeferred . . ."favor.""But those aren't explanations. They could all turn out in Aramis'"Precisely. They're symmetrical. Failure and success are explainedin the same terms. Every one of Aramis' peculiarities would havedisappeared if the system were working today. They strike you asscandalous and irrational onlv because the system fell on its face. If vouJ J )were looking at VAL or the Airbus, you'd have exactly the sameshambles." *As I felt myself seething with rage once again in the face of these"scientific" explanations capable of explaining away both hot and coldsimultaneously, and because I didn't want to cause the tension to riseany higher, I dropped the subject."You're indignant," continued Norbert, with a coolness that struckme as feigned, "because you want to blame someone; you blame mefor indifference because I blame no one. But no rule has been violatedin this Aramis story. No one has behaved badly. No one would haveknown how to behave better. You wouldn't have known how to do anvJ*See the documents about VAL's political and administrative history collectedin Arthur Notchart, Le Li vre blanc Ju metro (LillI": Communaute Urbaine de LillI",1983).1IIII ____THEI_98 4DEC_I SION