Latour, a sociologist and historian of science (who in recent years has developed something of a curatorial practice, collaborating with Peter Weibel on the exhibition Iconoclash. Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art at ZKM, Karlsruhe in 2002, for example) considers the question ‘What makes us modern?’ from a philosophical and political as well as scientific perspective, and concludes that, as the title suggest, we have never been modern. He proposes a reconsideration of the notion of modernity, arguing that ‘modernness’ has been instrumentalized by states to justify repressive politics and foreign interventions.