Review of Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature

The Communication Review, 2005

Design Philosophy Papers, 2004

Published in Cosmos and History, Vol 6, no. 1 (2010). Bruno Latour’s work, today becoming increasingly influential in philosophical circles, represents a clear challenge to prevailing philosophical accounts of the relation between human subjectivity and the natural world. The ‘political ecology’ which Latour sets out in works such as We Have Never Been Modern (1991) and more extensively in The Politics of Nature (1999) is a call to arms to rethink concepts of nature taken for granted ever since the time of Kant. Yet despite its apparent novelty, and despite its apparent break with post-Kantian continental philosophy, Latour’s thinking often unwittingly reworks philosophical moves made within that tradition, even during Kant’s lifetime, specifically in the movement known as Naturphilosophie. Bringing to light the elective affinities between Latour’s ideas and those of Naturphilosophie, this article suggests that the former unconsciously rehearses key tenets of the latter, in particular the claims made by Schelling against Kant. Moreover, Latour will be seen to succumb to the problems which a subsequent developer of Naturphilosophie – Hegel – would identify in Schelling’s own conception of nature. Finally, whilst Latour offers an apparently compelling alternative to notions of subject and object, free-will and mechanism, along with the conceptual separation of humans from the natural world, his thought often fails to achieve the genuine critique that would be adequate to comprehending these oppositions, and to explaining the ecological crisis in which both humans and nonhumans are caught up.

Studia Philosophiae Christianae

Political ecology is a recent development in contemporary scholarship. Contrary to popular belief, the French philosopher Bruno Latour was not its originator. Some scholars began to recognise that nature and politics were closely connected back to the time of Montesquieu. Nonetheless, Latour’s political ecology is original in that it features new or revamped concepts that lend it new content and meaning. It includes concepts such as ‘mode of existence,’ ‘actor/network,’ ‘humans’ and ‘non-humans,’ ‘terrestrial’ or ‘Earthbound,’ and offers a new interpretation of the concepts of nature and politics. These concepts are the focus of the first and second parts of the article. The final part looks at their practical application, particularly in connection with Latour’s idea of creating a common world fit for life, or at least survival. -------------------------- Received: 24/11/2022. Reviewed: 08/03/2023. Accepted: 30/03/2023.

Social Studies of Science, 2005

This book is about the exhaustion of fossil fuels and the disposal of toxic waste. It is about global warming and rainforest depletion too – even though Bruno Latour never says a word specifically about these environmental controversies. His agenda is to provide a new philosophical foundation for ‘political ecology’. The project is surely ontological, as Latour dispenses with such useless distinctions as things versus humans. It is also epistemological, as Latour knocks scientists off their pedestals as privileged purveyors of truth. The narrow academic world of Science and Technology Studies (STS) – which Latour has done so much to cultivate – is presented here as the foundation on which the survival of the planet precariously rests. He asks nothing less than this: can we ever figure out how to live together in one common world?

Environmental Humanities, 2015

Translator's introduction : At the end of July 2014 there was a week-long workshop held at the Ecole des Mines in Paris, Bruno Latour's former work-place. This was a final workshop, convened by Latour's project, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, which was not only a book, but a website that was an experiment in interactive metaphysics that had been going on for four years. About 30 participants gathered to workshop and rewrite some key contested areas that had been challenged on the site with discussions and counter-examples. One of the round tables working away during the week, occasionally with changes in personnel, was on Nature. Their job (like the other round tables on Politics, Diplomacy, Religion and Economics) was to ‘reboot’ or reinstitute a concept close to the heart of the Moderns. The assumption was that the traditional concept of nature, as developed through modern European history, would no longer be adequate to a future beset by environmental crises. The main people working on a draft were Didier Debaise, Pablo Jensen, Pierre Montebello, Nicolas Prignot, Isabelle Stengers and Aline Wiame. When they finished the draft, I translated it and it was presented, in French and English, in a final two-day public session at Science Po, to a group of seven international scholars designated as “chargés d'affaires,” or “diplomats from the future” whose job was to assess the results of our labours in terms of how they might be met by Gaia, the ur-representative of future planetary crises. The text, originally under the title of Our “Nature,” was as follows. [Stephen Muecke]

Human Studies, 2006

Anthropological Quarterly, 2020

Asymptote, 2021

Emanuele Coccia interviews Bruno Latour at the Maison de la Poésie, original here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK2WEOEx5j0 . "This is the first time that the philosopher, social scientist, 2013 Holberg Prizewinner, and, as of last month, recipient of a Kyoto Prize Bruno Latour has spoken extensively about his writing practices while denying that he is a ‘writer’ in the strictly literary sense. Drawn out sensitively and expertly by Emanuele Coccia, himself a writer on ecologies, we discover much more about Latour, the writer of networks. He has become such an active ‘agent’ in literary and scholarly networks that he is now perhaps this century’s most cited intellectual. There must be something about what and how he writes that attracts citations, that makes people want to repeat what he says, paraphrase it or comment on it, creating in the end a huge literary network in which the author’s name is centrally suspended. It would be too easy to put it down to genius, or to a passionate engagement with ‘matters of concern’. These no doubt are factors, but what he and his friend Emanuele explore here is a different kind of environment for the writer to inhabit and flourish in, a kind of political ecology that is of planetary significance, but one that is nonetheless firmly grounded and practically negotiable." https://www.asymptotejournal.com/interview/an-interview-with-bruno-latour/

Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin, 2020

This article debunks Bruno Latour's seemingly pro-scientific and well-intentioned (in particular, environment-friendly) posture. I briefly summarize Latour's constructivist, relativist, hybridist, and mystic philosophy, insisting on his radicalization in his last two books (Face à Gaïa and Où atterrir?). I show that Latour's conception is akin to "pseudo-profound bullshit" (Frankfurt, Pennycook et al.), inasmuch as he tries to hide his mysticism behind the invocation of scientific facts. I then concentrate on Latour's politicization of climate science, showing that it is: self-contradictory from an epistemological point of view, since it presupposes scientifically established facts (such as anthropogenic climate change) while at the same time undermining their objectivity; counterproductive, and even dangerous, from the political point of view, since it recommends a full politicization of climate science and ignores its harmful effects. I conclude by advocating a distinction between science and politics, and by showing that Latour's philosophy fosters our current post-truth predicament.