The Body Multiple Quotes

“The reference to Latour that helps to introduce some of the background of the present study is to his We Have Never Been Modern (Latour 1993). In that book, Latour seeks ways out of the nature-culture divide —just like Barker, Strathern, Haraway, and many others whom I have not mentioned. Latour doesn’t follow the way this divide was framed and institutionalized in the twentieth century, but, in a wider gesture, links it up with modernity. All modern thinkers, he claims, glorify their ability to distinguish between natural and social phenomena, disqualifying those who are ‘‘unable’’ to do so as premoderns. Meanwhile, however, or so Latour argues, in the practices of the so-called modern world the natural and the social are as intertwined as they are in so-called premodern thinking. This implies that there are clashes between the knowledge articulated in technoscience societies and the knowledges embedded in their practices. While the importance of a clear-cut distinction was loudly proclaimed, it wasn’t converted into action. Therefore, modernity is a state we have never been in, for only our theories make modern divides. Our practices do not. (pp. 30-31)”
― Annemarie Mol, The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice

“The reference to Latour that helps to introduce some of the background of the present study is to his We Have Never Been Modern (Latour 1993). In that book, Latour seeks ways out of the nature-culture divide —just like Barker, Strathern, Haraway, and many others whom I have not mentioned. Latour doesn’t follow the way this divide was framed and institutionalized in the
twentieth century, but, in a wider gesture, links it up with modernity. All modern thinkers, he claims, glorify their ability to distinguish between natural and social
phenomena, disqualifying those who are ‘‘unable’’ to do so as premoderns. Meanwhile, however, or so Latour argues, in the practices of the so-called modern world the natural and the social are as intertwined as
they are in so-called premodern thinking. This implies that there are clashes between the knowledge articulated in technoscience societies and the knowledges embedded in their practices. While the importance of a clear-cut distinction was loudly proclaimed, it wasn’t converted into action. Therefore, modernity is a state we have never been in, for only our theories make modern divides. Our practices do not. (pp. 30-31)”
― Annemarie Mol, The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice