Name Sayan Das Gupta

RLST 494: Rethinking Secularism

3.19.14
On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods

The process of Freeze-Framing as demonstrated through Iconoclasm

In On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods, Bruno Latour applies the concept of freezeframing to demonstrate the erroneous actions of iconoclasts where they distinguish religious
icons into the ones made by humans and the ones that are transcendental. To them, divinity
cannot be attributed to man-made objects, they are merely fetish objects. Similarly, the
modernists also insist on wrongfully representing scientific images to mean a form of isolated,
socially unconstructed and independent body of objective truth instead of being part of a
referential chain of existence.
The first half of this paper will define the idea of freeze-framing and how it is a category
mistake if we do not distinguish between the two different modes of existence of religion and
science. The second half of the paper will apply the concept of freeze-framing to both religion
and science to demonstrate how iconoclasts, in their act of religious icon-smashing as well as
scientific icon-making, are freeze-framing religion and science. Thus, the two disciplines are
actually very similar in the process of finding their respective truth values.
Let us start with exploring the idea of category mistake. In the modern notion, science is
regarded as the vehicle for truth production. It helps us view the world of 'here and now', a world
full of close, tangible objects. On the other hand, we believe that religious representations are our
link to a distant and transcendent world. Latour points out that in reality, both domains serve the
very opposite purpose: Neither religion nor science are much interested in the visible: it is
science that grasps the far and the distant; as to religion, it does not even try to grasp anything
(110). Religion does not attempt to explore the unknown; in fact it discourages thoughts that
drive our attention to the distant and absent otherworld. Meanwhile, scientific knowledge opens
the door for the far and distant (like the knowledge of distant stars and meteorites in our infinite
universe). Science and technology is focused around the transportation of information, while
religion establishes a solid connection to the tangible, present world through personal
transformation:
Belief is a caricature of religion exactly as knowledge is a caricature of science. Belief is
patterned after a false idea of science, as if it were possible to raise the question 'Do you believe
in God?' in the same way as 'Do you believe in global warming?' except the first question does
not possess any of the instruments that would allow the reference to move on, and that the
second is leading the interlocutor to a phenomenon even more invisible to the naked eye than

God, since to reach it we have to travel through satellite imaging, computer simulation, theories
of earth atmospheric instability, or high stratosphere chemistry. Belief is not a quasi-knowledge
question plus a leap of faith to reach even further away; knowledge is not a quasi-belief question
that would be answerable by looking directly at things close to hand. (121-122).
The initial dichotomy of religion and science is often ignored due to what Latour calls a
category mistake. Religion and science have distinct modes of existence with separate pathways
and functional values. Hence trying to question the validity of one domain by applying the rules
of the other is futile. Scientific referential questions are meaningless when dealing with religious
icons and speech, as they are inherently non-referential. Instead, religious representations are
meant to invoke an emotional connection to bring us together. Religion is not meant to answer
quantitative scientific questions and serve as a transporting vehicle of information. It is defined
by its transformative function.
To understand what transformative function of religious speech really is, we can look at
a quintessential speech between lovers. Latour points out that questions like, Do you love me?,
if answered through scientific reference, will provide a banal proof of intent. For example,
Latour narrates a story of the other lover playing a tape-recorder of him saying I love you to
demonstrate proof of love! And herein lies the fallacy of categorizing functions of love (and
similarly, religion) in scientific terms.
In reality, the question is not assessed by the originality of the sentence, but by the
transformation it manifests in the listener. It was asked specifically to assert an experience of
shared proximity and bonding. The question does not deal with information (knowledge of love),
but rather transformation (a mutual feeling of being loved). Religious speech also deals with the
container itself, not simply with the content of the message. It transforms the messenger through
irreversible commitment. Religious speech engages in person-making. This is what Latour refers
to as the performative ability of religious speech. Double-click questions like this force us to
abandon present time and direct our attention away from a venerable story. To drive this point
across, Latour gives a religious example of category mistake. This is similar to imagining
whether Mother Mary was really a Virgin and trying to determine quantitative scientific ways of
impregnating her through artificial sperm-transfer! Finding a quantitative solution to this
question completely undermines the referential chain of Christian faith and isolates a singular
incident to provide its individual meaning. This is the process of freeze-framing.

We will now validate the fallacy of freeze-framing through iconoclasm: Latour

exemplifies the disastrous consequences shared by both religion and science when they are
interpreted as absolute facts, independent of their frame of reference, in the second chapter,
Iconoclasm. He points out the similarity behind the equally fallible rationale of religious iconsmashing and scientific icon-smashing/icon-making in the modern world.

Firstly, we will look at religion. In the Modernist interpretation of religion, there is no

room for sacredness within a human-constructed object. The work of a human hand cannot be
bestowed with the virtue of sanctity. Once it comes into play, the human element is supposed to
eliminate the objects power and sanctity. If you say it is man-made you nullify the
transcendence of the divinities, you empty the claims of a salvation from above (71). Latour
claims that the Modernists are handicapped by their myopic attitude that propagates the great
divide between divinity and visible human creation. Religious icons that are heaven-sent are
sacred, to demonstrate their origin at the hands of a mere human is to desecrate their force. This
of course, completely ignores the paradoxical nature of religious images.
This attitude is demonstrated in the first chapter of the book through the attitude of the
Portuguese towards the natives of the Gold-coast due to them attaching religious value to manmade objects. The modern colonialists accuse the natives of Guinea of fetishism because of their
worship of man-made objects. The Modernist worldview did not allow any scope for the double
agency of construction. They had a clear distinction between objects that are made and 'real'
objects that always existed in nature. To attach purity to human construction was not possible in
this system. Hence they ridiculed the natives of naive fetishism, while having no problems
adorning Christian amulets which they saw as transcendental.They would rationalize this
dichotomy by stating that the natives were worshipping idols of their own creation as divine,
whereas their Christian images were mere representation of heaven-sent divinity. This notion is
established because the Modernists were programmed to strictly choose between latry and dulia,
both could not possibly be divine. Thus they attached sanctity to their own amulets as if they fell
from the sky, while destroying the idols of the natives for being fetishes! Their actions, of course,
completely ignored the paradoxical nature of images :Whites begin once again to produce the
same sort of uncertain beings the Blacks produced, and it is impossible to tell whether these
beings are constructed or collected, immanent or transcendent (8). The natives of the Gold
Coast were not bound by a one-sided origin of power and simply refused to differentiate between
the legitimacy and lack thereof of their objects of belief. They impudently admit to being the
creators of their objects of worship. To them, it is exactly the power of human labor which gives
the object its power also.
As we have distinguished previously in the paper, science belongs in a different category
of objectivity from religion. However, similar to religion, science is also misinterpreted by the
Modernists in their quest to attach a direct, in artificial, universal truth to scientific objectivity. In
reality, scientific objectivity does not exist in isolation; it is also a product of humanconstruction, often existing in artificial conditions of a laboratory and is dependent on multiple,
indirect layers of a chain of mediation to assert its objectivity.
Hence, we have to ask why the Modernists insist on creating an overarching scientific

truth. Latour states that this attempt is to protect science from accusation of fabrications, not
unlike the Modernist accusation of a human-made object of worship. Instead of icon-smashing,
this process becomes a process of icon-making: If you show the hand at work in the human
fabric of science, you are accused of sullying the sanctity of objectivity, of ruining its
transcendence, of forbidding any claim to truth, of putting to the torch the only source of
enlightenment we may have (71). Latour goes on to deconstruct this Modernist notion.
A scientific truth derives its meaning from a plethora of other images. Latour terms this as
a cascade of images. An isolated scientific image has no individual point of reference. Latour
talks about the step-by-step procedure of neuron extraction from a rat in a laboratory in Paris to
exhibit the futility of isolating individual scientific facts from its cascade of images: There is
no doubt that the reference is accurate, yet this accuracy is not obtained by any two things
mimetically resembling one another, but on the contrary, through the whole chains of artificial
and highly skilled transformations (114). What Latour means by this is that there is no
overarching-scientific objectivity. The objectivity is created within the artificial confines of a
laboratory through a contradictory, multi-layered, artificial path of human instrumentation. The
entire chain of reference is what enables us to calculate the truth-value of this objectivity.
Isolated, the scientific image has no truth-value. This is freeze-framing. We can come to the
conclusion that science is not comprised of set-in-stone facts. Much like religious symbolism,
scientific truths are also undeniably human constructions.
In conclusion, this paper establishes that both religious and scientific iconoclasts are
responsible for freeze-framing images, giving them solitary meanings beyond their frame of
reference and construction. Ironically, this misguided attempt at destroying the fetish or iconsmashing (in case of religion) and creating an absolute basis of fact or icon-making (in case of
science) only provide the images with their own separate meaning and power outside their chain
of representation. So the images can no longer be considered fetishes, but rather become
factishes existing within their own isolated framework and acquiring the power to proliferate due
to them now possessing individual meanings. Latour is of the opinion that Modernists have
grossly misinterpreted the first commandment: it does not forbid the worship of images as an
anti-fetishist measure, but rather warns us against freeze-framing of factishes, which are neither
independent reality based on scientific truth, nor are they manifestation of religious divinity
within inert objects. Factishes are comprehended through the interaction of human and nonhuman functions in an experiment setting, through a chain of events which provide meaning to
each other and are doomed if interpreted through isolated freeze-framing.

Citation:
Latour, Bruno. On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods. Duke University Press: 2010.