Introduction: Latour and Eighteenth-Century Literary Studies

Bruno Latour’s formulation of modernity as a particular intertwining of persons and things has shaped recent efforts to rethink the legacy of the Enlightenment. What is more, Latour has often reverted to the eighteenth century as a site of origins—whether it is for the sort of practices that characterize the modern laboratory, the social formations that are the objects of Actor-Network Theory generally, and the kinds of false conceptual breaks that obscure the nature of these very formations and practices. Scholars studying the literature and arts of the long eighteenth century are therefore uniquely positioned to evaluate and engage with Latour’s most important contributions to modern thought. This introduction to a special issue of The Eighteenth Century discusses the development of Latour’s formulation of modernity, indicating its special relevance to eighteenth-century thought (and vice versa).