This is the way to present something truly new. Latour, from Reassembling the Social:

In what follows I am not interested in refutation — proving that the other social theories are wrong — but in proposition. How far can one go by suspending the common sense hypothesis that the existence of a social realm offers a legitimate frame of reference for the social sciences? If physicists at the beginning of the previous century were able to do away with the common sense solution of an absolutely rigid and indefinitely plastic ether, can sociologists discover new traveling possibilities by abandoning the notion of a social substance as a ‘superfluous hypothesis’? This position is so marginal, its chance of success so slim, that I see no reason to be fair and thorough with the perfectly reasonable alternatives that could, at any point, smash it into pieces. So, I will be opinionated and often partial in order to demonstrate clearly the contrast between the two viewpoints. In exchange for this breach of fairness, I will try to be as coherent as possible in drawing the most extreme conclusions from the position I have chosen to experiment with. My test will be to see how many new questions can be brought to light by sticking firmly, even blindly, to all the obligations that this new departure point is forcing us to obey. The final test will be to check, at the end of this book, if the sociology of associations has been able to take up the relay of the sociology of the social by following different types of new and more active connections, and if it has been able to inherit all that was legitimate in the ambition of a science of the social. As usual, the result of whether this has been successful or not will be up to the reader.

The reason this jumped out for me is that it reminds me of my “policy” for responsible productive ideation:

First: inform your intuition. Second: leap forward recklessly. Third: test backwards scrupulously.

Latour, however, is using this same move, not for ideation, but for presenting an argument.

And really, if you are attempting to present a new vision, this is the only way to do it. Here is why: those who are committed to an old competing vision are able to scuttle the alternative way to see the problem, not by asserting conflicting arguments, but by simply asking old questions and requiring answers, which requires assumption of the old perspective. But what is at issue is precisely how the questions are asked. (This is a principle Gadamer called the hermeneutic priority of the question.)

Questioning in alien terms midway through a presentation constitutes an attack on an alien perspective, disguised as inquiry. And it is effective. If the presenter is stupid enough —  or powerless enough — to consent to interruption and to attempt to answer before the presentation is finished, he will find himself entirely unable to make his points to the satisfaction of the inquisitor. He has to go all the way to the end of his idea and make it understood.  If he stops short of the goal and turns around,  his truth will be paralyzed or lost in limbo.

*

Think about torture and interrogation. Torture advocates  usually present torture as supporting the goals of interrogation as a means of getting the interrogator the answers he needs.

But interrogation actually might be the very kernel of torture. After the prisoner is physically degraded and put in a state of fear and exhaustion, he is subjected to interrogation from an alien perspective to make him forget his perspective and to annihilate his faith.

It seems likely that the confession extracted is probably the only truth the confessor knows after his mind has been razed to the level of his interrogators.

*

I think we need to rethink our notions of tenacity and belief: It is the newest, best and highest truths that are most vulnerable to interrogation. It is these kinds of truths that leave a person when he is discouraged, tired or preoccupied at the end of a long day. It is the kind of truths prayer recalls.

This notion that the truer a truth is, the more a man will cling to it under duress is pure nonsense.

This allows the most brutal intellects to pass themselves off as the most godly.

This is the exact opposite of the truth.

*

It is advantageous to have a belief system rooted in brute group loyalty rather than in truth if one finds himself captured.