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

nicipal officials, public employees, and engineers large and small. Atthe center of this big circle, I am the deep well into which they aretossing their wishes, their hopes, and their curses. Blessed, cursed.Loved, hated. Indifferent, passionate. Plural, singular, masculine, feminine,neutral. I am waiting for them all to grant me being. What is aself? The intersection of all the sets of acts carried out in its name. Butis that intersection fu ll or empty? I exist if they agree, I die if theyquarrel. But if they agree on a misunderstanding, how could I manageto exist? How can I keep the Communists in the government? Howcan I keep the drivers' unions under control? How can I diminish thethreat of wholesale automation in Paris while being the first whollyautomated metro in Paris? How can I hold onto the region and itsenormous, irritable, impatient crowds who have to be transportedthroughout the southern suburbs of Paris and who see me merely as ametro like any other? How can I hold on to Matra, who loves only myolder brother, VAL, and who loves me only as another VA L? How, inspite of everything, can I hold on to the tuned-in engineers of the worldof transportation who love me because I'm crazy, bold, and beautiful,but only on the condition that I transport no one, and especially on thecondition that I do not resemble VA L, which is already passe, old hat.Some love me assembled and rigid like a metro; others love me scattered,dispersed, experimental like a research project. How can I keepabout me, in agreement about me, those who think that I am aninfeasible system, that I am stillborn, that I am an idea from the past,an idea from the Sixties, that I am, consubstantially, a fa ilure, but thatfrom my erratic behavior one may draw interesting results, perhaps atleast a variable-reluctance motor, guidance software? . .. As if I werea motor, a casing, a program! A heap of separate parts! As if I couldexist without being assembled. I'm quite willing to satisfy any one ofthem; I'd like to satisfy them all. But they'll have to come to agreementabout me. How can I become a being, an object, a thing-finally a self,yes, a full set, saturated with being-without them, without their agreement,without their coming to terms (since I myself am made fromthem, flesh of their flesh, a rib extracted from theirs), without theiracknowledgment that I am transports, displacements of human beings?How can I interest them all in me when they all love me differently? Ican give them only what they have giuen me. I can hold them assembledtogether only if they keep me assembled. The "J" that humans receiueat birth-that is precisely what has to be created fo r me. I am in aprebirth state. I do not yet have a body. The dismemberment humansencounter in the tomb is my condition even before the cradle. Reverse___ r I I E . q 8 Ll I) - CI S I 0 ,N.: _ _