The Berlin key or how to do words with things

tags
Bruno Latour

Notes

Ethnologists, anthropologists, folklorists, economists, engineers, consumers and users never see objects. They see only plans, actions, behaviours, arrangements, habits, heuristics, abilities, collections of practices of which certain portions seem a little more durable and others a little more transient, though one can never say which one, steel or memory, things or words, stones or laws, guarantees the longer duration.

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Without underestimating our archaeologist’s mathematical aptitudes, we can bet that she might remain standing at the door of her building the whole night through before learning how to get in. Without a human being, without a demonstration, without directions, she would certainly have an attack of hysterics.

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In Berlin, this steel kev performs mechanically the same function as is performed electronically in Paris by the door codes.

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the Prussian Locksmith obliged all the inhabitants of Berlin to contorm to a strict collective discipline,

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her colleague from the Tlissenshaft Zentrm took from his pocket a Berlin key trom which he had carefully filed away the grooves!

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if it was a question of words, or notices, or howls of "Lock the door!” or placards, we would merely be in the world of signs.

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Regulative vs Constitutive

authorisation. The Berlin key, the door and the concierge are engaged in a bitter struggle for control and access.

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am I not dealing with social relations, with morality, with Laws? Of course, but made of steel.

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Which is more fragile, "45—68E" (my door code) or the handsome steel key? Which is more technological, the steel or the little counting-rhyme “end of the war, May 68, Europe”

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