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and becoming, that there is nothing paralyzing about it. The more musical
and theatrical students might enjoy playing a Musicolour machine (simulated
on a computer) more than the trombone, say. Do-it-yourself kits for making
tortoiselike robots are relatively cheap, and students could explore their emer-
gent patterns of interaction. One can easily simulate and play with a multiho-
meostat setup. Some sort of quasi-organic architectural design methods might
be more fun than many of the uses computers are conventionally put to in
school. I am in danger of rehearsing the contents of this topic yet again, and,
well, more advanced students could also try reading it.
The more I think about it, the more promising this idea becomes.
18
In
line with my earlier remarks on variety, I am certainly not proposing the
unthinkable, to rid the curriculum of its modern elements. Nothing in this
topic, I repeat, threatens modernity, only its taken-for-granted hegemony and
universality. I am suggesting the inclusion of a series of courses in schools
and universities that would figure prominently in the curriculum, explicitly
conceived as relating to a nonmodern ontology. I teach in a university, not a
school, and I would be prepared to argue for one such course as a requirement
for all freshmen, whatever their field.19
19
I am, in the end, very attracted to this idea of systematically introducing
students to a nonmodern ontology, beginning at an early age. If done right, it
could easily produce a generation that would automatically say “wait a min-
ute” when presented with the next high-modernist project of enframing, who
would immediately see the point of Latour's “politics of nature,” and who
would, moreover, be in just the right position to come up with new projects
that center on revealing rather than enframing. I would enjoy sharing a world
with people like that.