“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Why Latour Litanies Don't Use Adjectives (in case you were wondering)

An adjective, such as “flimsy,” describes someone's access to a thing, such as “argument.”

But that's just that someone's access. It may be accurate. But it's theirs nevertheless.

“Hard stone” is how a squirrel experiences a stone (I bet). But stones are very soft for gamma rays.

In a novel, I can use an adjective such as “offensive” and add it to a noun such as “moron” if I want to qualify what someone's experience of the noun is...

But in a Latour Litany, where I'm trying to show that objects transcend how we appropriate them, I'm not going to be using adjectives. Salt. Blood. Black hole. Fire. Idiot.

So that's why we don't use adjectives.

Not because we're Nazis with pathological sexualities.

Just putting that out there. :)

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