The other day, I mentioned to a group that Latour may be responding to Lacan’s notion of ‘the real’ in the following sentence:
The real is not remote; rather, it is accessible in all the objects mobilized throughout the world. Doesn’t external reality abound right here among us? (1993: 90)
Someone quite correctly mentioned that Latour and Lacan use ‘the real’ very differently, and I would need to address that before suggesting a connection. I have, therefore, asked Anthopic’s Claude and Open AI’s Chat GPT 3.5 and 4 to first explain both versions clearly, and then to consider whether Latour might be responding to Lacan in the above sentence (which despite the different uses seemed likely to me). Interestingly, ChatGPT could not see the connection, maintaining both used ‘the real’ differently. But Claude congratulated me on the connection. So is Claude merely massaging my ego and hallucinating, or is it a more flexible ‘thinker’ than ChatGPT? (And by the way, should I be using ‘calculator’ instead of ‘thinker’ and might that be all any of us are doing when we think? I guess it depends on what metaphorical model of reality one is embedded in!)
Below is a screenshot of Claude’s response and I have added links to the ChatGPTs’.
Interestingly, ChatGPT 3.5 responds cautiously but more flexibly than ChatGPT 4.
Suffice to say, reading Latour is slow-going because I keep having to stop and look things up and then do things like this.
Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern (C. Porter, Trans.). Harvard University Press.