從行動者-網絡到寄食者-客體: 對Michel Serres的非策略式詮釋

From Actor-Network to Parasite-Object : A Non-Strategic Interpretation of Michel Serres

陳榮泰(Rong-Tai Chen)

指導教授 ： 傅大為 ； 林文源

國立清華大學/人文社會學院/歷史研究所/碩士(2010年)

摘要

法國哲學家與科學史家米歇爾．瑟爾關於科技與社會的論題為本文核心。瑟爾從通訊的問題出發，發展出一套關係的哲學，並藉以探索科學與人文之間幽微曲折的通道。此路線的思考對科技研究之一支「行動者網絡理論」頗有影響，本文以行動者網絡理論為參考點，指出瑟爾的哲學不只有助於思考科技與社會的建構過程，他對傳訊者或訊息的載體可能引起系統或社會失能的問題的思考，亦可為科技與社會研究引出道德的向度。
瑟爾構想「寄食者」的角色，目的在於探索傳訊者如何成為訊息的阻礙。相較於行動者網絡理論有時依賴軍事策略的概念說明科技集體的構築過程，本文試圖說明在瑟爾的作品裡，策略與傳訊存在有顯著的差別。成功的策略家未必能導致成功的溝通。由於通訊者引起的失能可能引發出惡的問題，瑟爾構想一種客體的哲學，以契約之客體的概念取代人與其認識物之間策略的關係。本文將討論瑟爾重新提出的科學的客體性，但卻是為了適應當代人類與自然面臨的新關係。

關鍵字

瑟爾 ； 行動者網絡理論 ； 寄食者 ； 客體性 ； 自然契約

並列摘要

As a French philosopher and historian of sciences, Michel Serres is known for his writings which marvelously bridge diverse topics ordinarily considered distant or even irrelevant. Since 1960s, his philosophical meditation upon communication and mediation had provided a new way of thinking about the sciences and their problems nowadays. For him today the sciences are more about message-transmitting than about commodity-producing, more of relation than of being. Following this line of thinking, Serres also deeply influenced some science and technology students such as Michel Callon and Bruno Latour as well as the now influential “actor-network theory”.
What I am trying to do in this paper is to trace some of his main themes about the relation between science and society. In the era of information, what is the role of science in the course of assembling the collective, and conversely, how can we do sciences collectively? This is a standard question of actor-network theory (ANT). By using ANT as a reference point for comparison, I’d like to point out that whilst ANT is sometimes seen as a mere tool for describing scientific practices and thus may be (unfairly) accused of being amoral, Serres indeed takes the moral dimension seriously. By inventing the character of the parasite (which in some sense is an equivalent of the actor in ANT) and high-lighting the paradoxical situation of messenger, Serres asks how parasites or actors with successful strategies may make their collective malfunction and do something mal (evil). There is an eminent difference between successful militant actions and successful communications.
This problem leads Serres to conceive a philosophy of object. For him object is not only outside but the precondition of the collective. It transcends the collective and is what its “social contract” refers to. No society can do without some object. Science once played the role of referring to this objectivity but the ever-expanding collective had made it worn-out: everything seems inside now. Whereas we inhabitants of the Earth now face the malfunction of our old collective and the crisis of the old objectivity, Serres suggests we conceive a global object and make a contractual rather than strategic relation with it.

並列關鍵字

Michel Serres ； actor-network theory ； parasite ； objectivity ； natural contract

參考文獻

林文源. (2007). 〈論行動者網絡理論的行動本體論〉 《科技、醫療與社會 》(4), 頁 65-108.

Assad, L.Maria. (2000). "Language, Nonlinearity, and the Problem of Evil." Configurations (8): 271-283.

Brown, D. Steven. (2002). "Michel Serres: Science, Translation and the Logic of the Parasite." Theory, Culture & Society, 19 (3): 1-27.

Callon, Michel. (1986). "Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay." In Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge, ed. John Law, 196-233. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Crawford, Hugh T. (1993). "An Interview with Bruno Latour." Configurations, 1 (2): 247-268.