The Berlin Key Or How To Do Words With Things -- Bruno Latour Full Citation and Summary Latour, Bruno. `The Berlin Key or How to Do Things with Words'. Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture. Ed. Paul Graves-Brown. London: Routledge, 2000. 10 - 21. Print. This article is the first in an edited book collecting various disciplinary approaches to materiality: through philosophy, science studies, archaeology, and others. This article is the first after the introduction, setting up the rest of the book's content. It was, however, published previously in French by La Decouverte in Latour's edited volume La Clef de Berlin et autres Lecons d'un Amateur de Sciences (1993). The French version includes an additional paragraph which ties it into the larger work. -Notes - Main argument: That there are neither subjects nor objects but only relations in motion (pp. 10) - Setting up the condition by presenting and refining existing generalities (pp. 10) - Society -- technology social -- material subject -- object as generalities that are not accurate too vague more than the binary (pp. 10) - The state of "the dialectic," applicable only if subject-object binary is fundamentally done away-with so we can deal with operations beyond contradiction; "Circulations, sequences, transfers, translations, displacements, crystallizations..." - Presenting the Berlin Key as a kind of weird device (Carelman) (pp. 10) - Objects vs. associations (pp. 10-12) - Why there are no objects - Objects = inert, calcified, kept outside the realm of people (Latour uses the example of - - Archaeological artefacts before they're dug up and crap in someone's attic) (pp. 11) - Under the gaze of the Archaeologist, the closest we get to philosophical "objects" (pp. 10) - No one else sees these kinds of "objects" but "...plans, actions, behaviours, arrangements, habits, heuristics, abilities, collections of practices..." (pp. 10) - "Objects" are always just about to cease being objects by "rejoining the world of people" by their very contact with people (pp. 11) - At the point of uncovering, when they become visible and active, objects cease to be objects, they start working (pp. 11) - So, we should consider that only "chains of associations" exist (pp. 11-12) - Presentation of chains (pp. 11) - Looking at chains of associations, one cannot understand the elements outside of their relations (pp. 12) - Chains of associations can help us derive the conceptual relations as opposed to applying existing concepts (here the relation between social and technical)(pp. 12) - Starts with the key on its own and what it looks like (p. 12-13) - Then adds the lock to tech equation (pp. 14) - Of interest: starting from "common sense" movements, then to "unhabitual" movements that must be demonstrated through directions (pp. 14) - Of interest: the kinds of frameworks that could discover the movement: maths (topology), local (Berliner), and archaeologist (who does not presuppose but works from material to concepts) (pp. 14) - The archaeologist's gaze as "...devoted to the harsh constraints and exigencies of objects." - Three modes of discovering use/gesture: being shown by someone, reading directions, groping about (pp. 15) - Programmes and anti-programmes - "script" of a device = "program of action" (Akrich 1992) (pp. 17) - For the key, its programme is put into words through discourse (pp. 17-18) - The key sits between symbolic expression and social relations; in and out of the world of technology at the same time (material stuff and know-how) (pp. 18) - "anti-programmes" which resist the programme of the device (pp. 18) - "...from the point of view of our dedicated concierge..." [anti-programmes are only so from a specific point of view while programmes operate nevertheless] (pp. 18) - Intermediary or mediator (pp. 18-19) - Since the key, lock, and concierge are all in the business of regulating access and control, the key mediates social relations (pp. 18) - Mediation as an "intermediary" - In this model, the key does nothing in itself but carry, transfer, enact its script (pp. 18) - The key and discourse are interchangeable here, the content carried by the key is what matters and its own operation counts for nothing (pp. 18) - Mediation as "mediator" - The content ("meaning") is no longer just transported, it is in part constituted, modified, betrayed even by the device (pp. 19) - Without the material device, the discourse is itself impossible, the content is impossible (pp. 19) - "It is because the social cannot be constructed with the social, that it needs keys and locks." (pp. 19) - "Meaning does not antecede technological devices... the mediator becomes at once means and end." (pp. 19) - Devices not just alterior, but also extremely fragile and constantly being undermined by other devices; the example of the key being modified by a person with a file (pp. 19) - Ends off with the intrinsic flip-flop of "social" and "material"; you need to see both to understand either and they cannot be understood on their own (pp. 20-21) - "Consider things and you will have humans. Consider humans and you are by that very act interested in things." (pp. 20) - [how "attention" changes the state of the condition you are looking at; looking directly at people brings things to the fore and vice versa] (pp. 20) - There is no avoiding having to deal with both social and technological since they are together in mediators (pp. 20) - Chains of mediators are networks (pp. 21)