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Show 119 ambiguity" (p. 253) and that it means "we are starting form the inequivalence between interests or language games and that the aim of the translation is to render two propositions equivalent" (p. 253; see Callon, 1996; Callon, Law & Rip, 1986). In another passage, he makes the following statements: Nothing is, by itself, the same as or different from anything else. That is, there are no equivalents, only translations. In other words, everything happens only once, and at one place. If there are identities between actants, this is because they have been constructed at great expense. If there are equivalences, this is because they have been built out of bits and pieces with much toil and sweat, and because they are maintained by force. If there are exchanges, these are always unequal and cost a fortune both to establish and to maintain. (p. 162) Considering the ideograph as a process involving translation means that the critic is no longer an interpreter of what ideographs have meant over time. Rather, the critic must assemble the chains of relations that have made the ideograph forceful within particular assemblages. This horizontal perspective admittedly destroys the idea of interpretation, or at least a Hans-Georg Gadamer-inspired "hermeneutics of depth," because the job of the researcher is simply to track the relations that give the ideograph force. Ideographs Are Inscriptions My third point is that the ideograph is an inscription. Both scientists and rhetorical critics use signs and symbols as tools for analyzing their object of study. Knowledge, after all, is constructed, not discovered. Latour calls these devices inscriptions, which "refers to all the types of transformations through which an entity becomes materialized into a sign, an archive, a document, a piece of paper, a trace" (Latour, 1999, p. 306). Inscriptions such as telescopes, maps, pictures, and books are mediators that help researchers translate, transform, and interpret the object under investigation (Latour, 1986). They are instruments that mediate our world, which are always already happening |
