Bruno Latour’s Realism: mummies, bacteria, and sciences war against postmodernity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/isegoria.2021.65.10Keywords:
Bruno Latour, Circulating reference, Construction of facts, Realism, ConstructivismAbstract
Bruno Latour have been included among the ranks of social constructivism since the 1990’s. In this paper, we analyze one of Latour’s most cited -and criticized- papers, in which he sustained that to say that Ramses II died because of tuberculosis was a nonsense, as ridiculous as to say the he died “of machine gun fire”. To do that, we will contextualize his text in its historical period of production, we will identify Latour’s ontological commitments, and we will introduce his theory on the construction of facts and what he calls circulating reference. We will conclude that Latour was right, neither Ramses II died because of tuberculosis, nor he is a social constructivist.
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Funding data
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
Grant numbers PID2019-108988GB-I00
Universidad de Murcia
Grant numbers RG2020-004UM
