Quasi-Object Lesson: Latour

In describing the modern situation Latour emphasizes a divide between Culture and Nature. This is the source of the main exigency in modernism—that these two spheres are irreconcilable becomes apparent by attending to just about any contemporary public debate, from global warming to abortion. Latour frequently describes these two camps in terms of their treatment of objects: of objects in culture he states, “They are just there to be used as the white screen on to which society projects its cinema,” while in science “they are so powerful that they shape the human society, while the social construction of sciences that have produced them remains invisible.” The issue of objects’ social construction brings to light the disparity which exists in our understanding of society itself; Latour is thus led to pose a crucial question:

If religion, arts or styles are necessary to ‘reflect’, ‘reify’, ‘materialize’, ‘embody’ society—to use some of the social theorists’ favorite verbs—then are objects not, in the end, its co-producers? Is not society built literally—not metaphorically—of gods, machines, sciences, arts and styles?... Maybe social scientists have simply forgotten that before projecting itself on to things society has to be made, built, constructed? And out of what material could it be built if not out of nonsocial, non-human resources? (Emphasis mine)

These non-human resources are what Latour calls “quasi-objects,” and in my reading I struggled to understand this concept. I must have reread section 3.2, “What Is a Quasi-Object?”, a dozen times and stared at the charts on those pages until my head ached in seeking that answer, to no avail. After Wikipedia failed to supply an article on that subject I simply Googled “quasi object theory” and was pleased when “Theory of the Quasi-Object” by Michael Serres instantly popped up. This PDF offers the amazing example of soccer which I feel clarifies quasi-objects:

A ball is not an ordinary object, for it is what it is only if a subject holds it. Over there, on the ground, it is nothing; it is stupid; it has no meaning, no function, and no value. Ball isn’t played alone. Those who do, those who hog the ball, are bad players and are soon excluded from the game…. Let us consider the one who holds it. If he makes it move around him, he is awkward, a bad player. The ball isn’t there for the body; the exact contrary is true: the body is the object of the ball; the subject moves around this sun. Skill with the ball is recognized in the player who follows the ball and serves it instead of making it follow him and using it…. Playing is nothing else but making oneself the attribute of the ball as a substance. The laws are written for it, defined relative to it, and we bend to these laws… IN most games, the man with the ball is on offense; the whole defense is organized relative to him and his position. The ball is the center of the referential, for the moving game. With few exceptions… the only one who can be tackled is the one who has the ball. This quasi-object designates him. He is marked with the sign of the ball.

Here, the ball is given agency; good soccer players must adjust their behavior according to the non-human nature of the ball, not merely manipulating it but anticipating it. The ball therefore operates a role somewhere between object and subject by actively influencing us while we influence it—thus, “quasi-object.” I am not a sports person so I popped over to Youtube to see if I could recognize this phenomena in action, and indeed, one particularly impressive montage of clips emphasized the beauty and true synergy between player and ball inherent in good teamwork-- keep your eye on the ball:



The soccer ball is a quasi-object around which human activities take form; I think Latour is arguing for us to reexamine the sources of our understandings of human society, which almost certainly reside not entirely in humanity and not entirely in objective forces, but in the interplay between them.