“Method or hyphen, those are soft bridges;
viaduct or bridge, those are hard unions or methods.
Watch: I am constructing a new footbridge;
moving from matter to the sign and from the abstract
to the concrete, I am bridging the hard and the soft. Whether of one
or the other kind, I find bridges everywhere.
Examples: the method of translation mobilises two grammars
and a bilingual dictionary, it bridges languages;
the method
for producing
living mutation
moves through
genetic
manipulations;
it bridges
organisms
and soon species;
the method
for transmuting
elements passes
through radioactive
decay;
it bridges inert bodies.
Bridging, respectively, languages,
living beings and elements, we bridge, transversely,
the soft empire of signs with the hard realms of physics and biology…
First labour, to build bridges in the hard;
second work, to think of soft bridges. To launch oneself between
the second and the first, the final enterprise. Bridging, in general, becomes
an activity so large that it coincides perhaps with the whole human project, in that
our very body bridges flesh and word.
Homo pontifex.”
– Serres, M. (2006: 77) L’art des ponts. Paris: Éditions Le Pommier.
Traducido por http://stevenconnor.com/hardsoft.htm
