I was arguing against Systems Theory today (a necessary evil when you live in Germany) which prompted the thought of searching for the conjunction of Bruno Latour and Niklas Luhmann. That led me to this gem.

To speak thus is to use the aesthetic as an anesthetic.

As of right now I’m frightfully behind on my Latour MOOC. What I have been doing instead is reading up old articles in my Instapaper. One such is this interview with Dutch sociologist/philosopher Willem Schinkel in Vrij Nederland. It’s good to read a fresh Dutch thinker who seems to understand things (and who also is in with Latour). Calling Geert Wilders a proto-fascist and the Netherlands a museum are only a couple of the ringers in there.