Bruno Latour

The present ecological mutation has organized the whole political landscape for the last thirty years. This could explain the deadly cocktail of exploding inequalities, massive deregulation, and conversion of the dream of globalization into a nightmare for most people.What holds these three phenomena together is the conviction, shared by some powerful people, that the ecological threat is real and that the only way for them to survive is to abandon any pretense at sharing a common future with the rest of the world. Hence their flight offshore and their massive investment in climate change denial.The Left has been slow to turn its attention to this new situation. It is still organized along an axis that goes from investment in local values to the hope of globalization and just at the time when, everywhere, people dissatisfied with the ideal of modernity are turning back to the protection of national or even ethnic borders.This is why it is urgent to shift sideways and to define politics as what leads toward the Earth and not toward the global or the national. Belonging to a territory is the phenomenon most in need of rethinking and careful redescription; learning new ways to inhabit the Earth is our biggest challenge. Bringing us down to earth is the task of politics today.

With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith.What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour’s analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming—and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture—and so, between our culture and others, past and present.Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape, We Have Never Been Modern blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.

Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world's leading social theorists to how we understand society and the "social". Bruno Latour's contention is that the word "social" as used by Social Scientists has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become a misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as "wooden" or "steely".Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling: and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why "the social" cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a "social explanation" of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of "the social" to redefine the notion and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the "assemblages" of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a "sociology of associations" has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network-Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents.

Science and technology have immense authority and influence in our society, yet their working remains little understood. The conventional perception of science in Western societies has been modified in recent years by the work of philosophers, sociologists and historians of science. In this book Bruno Latour brings together these different approaches to provide a lively and challenging analysis of science, demonstrating how social context and technical content are both essential to a proper understanding of scientific activity. Emphasizing that science can only be understood through its practice, the author examines science and technology in action: the role of scientific literature, the activities of laboratories, the institutional context of science in the modern world, and the means by which inventions and discoveries become accepted. From the study of scientific practice he develops an analysis of science as the building of networks. Throughout, Bruno Latour shows how a lively and realistic picture of science in action alters our conception of not only the natural sciences but also the social sciences and the sociology of knowledge in general.This stimulating book, drawing on a wealth of examples from a wide range of scientific activities, will interest all philosophers, sociologists and historians of science, scientists and engineers, and students of the philosophy of social science and the sociology of knowledge.

This highly original work presents laboratory science in a deliberately skeptical way: as an anthropological approach to the culture of the scientist. Drawing on recent work in literary criticism, the authors study how the social world of the laboratory produces papers and other “texts,”’ and how the scientific vision of reality becomes that set of statements considered, for the time being, too expensive to change. The book is based on field work done by Bruno Latour in Roger Guillemin’s laboratory at the Salk Institute and provides an important link between the sociology of modern sciences and laboratory studies in the history of science.

Delivered in 2013 in Edinburgh as part of the Gifford Lectures, these lectures attempt to decipher the face of Gaia in order to redistribute the notions that have been packed too tightly into the composite notion of "natural religion."

A scientist friend asked Bruno Latour point-blank: “Do you believe in reality?” Taken aback by this strange query, Latour offers his meticulous response in Pandora’s Hope. It is a remarkable argument for understanding the reality of science in practical terms.In this book, Latour, identified by Richard Rorty as the new “bête noire of the science worshipers,” gives us his most philosophically informed book since Science in Action. Through case studies of scientists in the Amazon analyzing soil and in Pasteur’s lab studying the fermentation of lactic acid, he shows us the myriad steps by which events in the material world are transformed into items of scientific knowledge. Through many examples in the world of technology, we see how the material and human worlds come together and are reciprocally transformed in this process.Why, Latour asks, did the idea of an independent reality, free of human interaction, emerge in the first place? His answer to this question, harking back to the debates between Might and Right narrated by Plato, points to the real stakes in the so-called science wars: the perplexed submission of ordinary people before the warring forces of claimants to the ultimate truth.

El testamento literario de Bruno Latour (1947-2022), referente mundial del pensamiento ecologista contemporáneo. «El filósofo más famoso e incomprendido de Francia, ampliamente reconocido como uno de los pensadores contemporáneos más inventivos e influyentes del mundo.»The New York Times «Hemos perdido la antigua libertad, pero ha sido para ganar otra.» En este ensayo en forma de cuento, inspirado en La metamorfosis de Kafka, Bruno Latour, uno de los pensadores más originales e influyentes del mundo, nos invita a desconfinarnos de ciertas ideas arraigadas de la modernidad, como las de «crecimiento económico», «progreso» o «dominio de la naturaleza». No hay duda de que la crisis le ha dado la razón de manera patente en muchas de las teorías que ha defendido a lo largo de los años. En este libro da cuenta de ello elegantemente. Tras la terrible experiencia del confinamiento, tanto los estados como los individuos buscan la manera de regresar lo más rápido posible al mundo anterior. Pero hay lecciones que aprender de esta experiencia, al menos en beneficio de aquellos a quienes podría llamarse terrestres («cualquiera que acepte vivir en una zona crítica y contribuir a su habitabilidad»), conscientes de que la crisis sanitaria está inmersa en otra crisis mucho más grave, la impuesta por el Nuevo Régimen Climático. El confinamiento nos ha ofrecido una gran oportunidad que debemos aprovechar: la de comprender finalmente dónde vivimos y en qué Tierra podremos desenvolvernos, a falta de la antigua. Tras un aterrizaje sin duda violento, los terrestres deben explorar el suelo donde ahora vivirán y redescubrir el gusto por la libertad y la emancipación, pero en un lugar diferente. Ese es el objeto de este ensayo, que consta de breves capítulos, cada uno de los cuales explora una posible figura de esta metafísica del desconfinamiento a la que nos obliga la extraña época en que vivimos. La crítica ha dicho...«El filósofo más famoso e incomprendido de Francia, ampliamente reconocido como uno de los pensadores contemporáneos más originales e influyentes.»The New York Times «Uno de los pensadores más interesantes de la escena intelectual mundial. Sabe cómo llamar nuestra atención sobre la complejidad de los problemas, manteniendo una claridad expositiva fuera de lo común.»La Stampa «Latour adopta el tono de un cuento filosófico lúdico y erudito a la vez. Lo que escribe Latour nos concierne a todos los seres humanos.»Slate Magazine «Uno de los autores más comentados y citados del mundo. Inspira a generaciones de investigadores en filosofía y ciencias sociales. ¿Dónde estoy?, un ensayo más narrativo, es perfecto para iniciarse en su obra.»Philosophie Magazine «Una invitación a inventar nuevas maneras de vivir.»Le Monde

Die katastrophalen Folgen unseres Handelns für die Natur sind inzwischen bekannt. Doch die Emissionen steigen weiter. Gegen das Mantra vom wirtschaftlichen Wachstum wirken die Kassandrarufe junger Aktivist:innen oft ohnmächtig. Und während sich im Namen von Freiheit und Gleichheit einst Massen mobilisieren ließen, führt der Klimaschutz zu neuen Spaltungen. Man denke nur an die Gelbwestenproteste in Frankreich.Für Bruno Latour und Nikolaj Schultz ist klar: So wie einst die Arbeiterklasse den sozialen Fortschritt erkämpfte, bedarf es heute einer ökologischen Klasse, um den Klimawandel aufzuhalten. Wo Bewegungen wie Fridays For Future und lokale Organisationen oft getrennt agieren, plädieren die Soziologen für eine Politik, die den Schutz unserer Lebensgrundlagen ins Zentrum gemeinsamer Anstrengungen stellt. Die Geschichte der Menschen, hieß es bei Marx und Engels, sei die Geschichte von Klassenkämpfen. Kommt es nicht zur Entstehung einer ökologischen Klasse, so Latour und Schultz, wird die Menschheit keine Zukunft haben.

A guided-transportation system intended for Paris, Aramis represented a major advance in personal rapid transit: it combined the efficiency of a subway with the flexibility of an automobile. But in the end, its electronic couplings proved too complex and expensive, the political will failed, and the project died in 1987. The story of Aramis is told by several different parties, none of which take precedence over any other: a young engineer and his professor, who act as detective to ferret out the reasons for the project's failure; company executives and elected officials; a sociologist; and finally Aramis itself, who delivers a passionate plea: technological innovation has needs and desires, especially a desire to be born, but cannot live without the sustained commitment of those who have created it.

In this new book, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern, a work that interrogated the connections between nature and culture. If not modern, he asked, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? Over the last twenty-five years, Latour has developed a research protocol different from the actor-network theory with which his name is now associated—a research protocol that follows the different types of connectors that provide specific truth conditions. These are the connectors that prompt a climate scientist challenged by a captain of industry to appeal to the institution of science, with its army of researchers and mountains of data, rather than to “capital-S Science” as a higher authority. Such modes of extension—or modes of existence, Latour argues here—account for the many differences between law, science, politics, and other domains of knowledge.Though scientific knowledge corresponds to only one of the many possible modes of existence Latour describes, an unrealistic vision of science has become the arbiter of reality and truth, seducing us into judging all values by a single standard. Latour implores us to recover other modes of existence in order to do justice to the plurality of truth conditions that Moderns have discovered throughout their history. This systematic effort of building a new philosophical anthropology presents a completely different view of what Moderns have been, and provides a new basis for opening diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time when all societies are coping with ecological crisis.

On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods continues the project that the influential anthropologist, philosopher, and science studies theorist Bruno Latour advanced in his book We Have Never Been Modern. There he redescribed the Enlightenment idea of universal scientific truth, arguing that there are no facts separable from their fabrication. In this concise work, Latour delves into the “belief in naive belief,” the suggestion that fetishes—objects invested with mythical powers—are fabricated and that facts are not. Mobilizing his work in the anthropology of science, he uses the notion of “factishes” to explore a way of respecting the objectivity of facts and the power of fetishes without forgetting that both are fabricated. While the fetish-worshipper knows perfectly well that fetishes are man-made, the Modern icon-breaker inevitably erects new icons. Yet Moderns sense no contradiction at the core of their work. Latour pursues his critique of critique, or the possibility of mediating between subject and object, or the fabricated and the real, through the notion of “iconoclash,” making productive comparisons between scientific practice and the worship of visual images and religious icons.

Contra todo pronóstico, afirmar que el final de la modernidad y la catástrofe ecológica son una realidad puede tener más que ver con la esperanza y la vida que con el fracaso y el derrotismo. Se trata, eso sí, de asumir que el reto del pensamiento político actual es el de pensar desde el corazón del drama, hacerlo colectivamente y con el atrevimiento de especular desde la imaginación más radical e imprevista.Este ha sido el propósito de Bruno Latour. Su voz, recogida en las conversaciones del presente libro, nos invita a relacionar la tecnología, el derecho, la ciencia, la filosofía, el arte, la ecología, la religión y la sociología para avanzar juntos por nuevos caminos y hacer habitable la Tierra.

Écrit dans un style alerte, véritable plaidoyer pour la " culture scientifique ", ce bref ouvrage offre la meilleure introduction pour un large public aux recherches d'un auteur traduit, étudié et commenté dans le monde entier. À l'automne 2009, une étudiante allemande fait part à Bruno Latour de son désarroi devant les disputes qui font rage avant le sommet de Copenhague sur le climat. Il lui signale l'existence d'un enseignement qui porte justement sur les liens multiformes entre les sciences, la politique et la nature. Pour diverses raisons, l'étudiante ne peut pas suivre le cours que le professeur est obligé de lui résumer en six lettres. Au fil de l'actualité, que l'étudiante suit de son côté en tenant son " journal de bord ", voilà qu'elle découvre peu à peu comment se repérer dans ces imbroglios créés par le développement même des sciences et des techniques.D'Archimède à Avatar , c'est l'occasion pour le lecteur d'un époustouflant galop dans ce domaine étrange des " humanités scientifiques ". Si la nature est entrée en politique, il faut bien que les sciences et les techniques fassent partie de ce qu'on appelait autrefois les " humanités ". Bruno Latour montre pourquoi il est impossible d'aborder les crises écologiques sans comprendre le caractère collectif et concret de l'acte de penser et de prouver. D'où le passage du cogito - le " je pense " cher à Descartes - à ce cogitamus - " nous pensons " -, parce que " c'est grâce au fait que nous sommes nombreux, soutenus, institués, instrumentés que nous accédons au vrai ".Écrit dans un style alerte, véritable plaidoyer pour la " culture scientifique ", ce bref ouvrage offre la meilleure introduction pour un large public aux recherches d'un auteur traduit, étudié et commenté dans le monde entier.

http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/defa...

Bruno Latour’s long term project is to compare the felicity and infelicity conditions of the different values dearest to the heart of those who have ‘never been modern’. According to him, this is the only way to develop an anthropology of the Moderns. After his work on science, on technology and, more recently, on law, this book explores the truth conditions of religious speech acts.Even though there is no question that religion is one of the values that has been intensely cherished in the course of history, it’s also clear that it has become immensely difficult to tune in to its highly specific mode of enunciation. Every effort to speak in the right key sounds awkward, reactionary, pious or simply empty. Hence the necessity of devising a way of writing that brings to the fore this elusive form of speech to render it audible again. In this highly original book, the author offers a completely different tack on the endless ‘science and religion’ conflict by protecting them both from the confusion with the notion of information. Like The Making of Law, this book is one more attempt at developing this ‘inquiry on modes of existence’ that provides an alternative definition of society.

The Prince and the Wolf contains the transcript of a debate which took place on 5th February 2008 at the London School of Economics (LSE) between the prominent French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Bruno Latour and the Cairo-based American philosopher Graham Harman.

How can economics become genuinely quantitative? This is the question that French sociologist Gabriel Tarde tackled at the end of his career, and in this pamphlet, Bruno Latour and Vincent Antonin Lépinay offer a lively introduction to the work of the forgotten genius of nineteenth-century social thought. Tarde’s solution was in total contradiction to the dominant views of his to quantify the connections between people and goods, you need to grasp “passionate interests.” In Tarde’s view, capitalism is not a system of cold calculations—rather it is a constant amplification in the intensity and reach of passions. In a stunning anticipation of contemporary economic anthropology, Tarde’s work defines an alternative path beyond the two illusions responsible for so much modern the adepts of the Invisible Hand and the devotees of the Visible Hand will learn how to escape the sterility of their fight and recognize the originality of a thinker for whom everything is intersubjective, hence quantifiable. At a time when the regulation of financial markets is the subject of heated debate, Latour and Lépinay provide a valuable historical perspective on the fundamental nature of capitalism.

In this book, Bruno Latour pursues his ethnographic inquiries into the different value systems of modern societies. After science, technology, religion, art, it is now law that is being studied by using the same comparative ethnographic methods. The case study is the daily practice of the French supreme courts, the Conseil d’Etat, specialized in administrative law (the equivalent of the Law Lords in Great Britain). Even though the French legal system is vastly different from the Anglo-American tradition and was created by Napoleon Bonaparte at the same time as the Code-based system, this branch of French law is the result of a home-grown tradition constructed on precedents. Thus, even though highly technical, the cases that form the matter of this book, are not so exotic for an English-speaking audience. What makes this study an important contribution to the social studies of law is that, because of an unprecedented access to the collective discussions of judges, Latour has been able to reconstruct in detail the weaving of legal it is clearly not the social that explains the law, but the legal ties that alter what it is to be associated together. It is thus a major contribution to Latour’s social theory since it is now possible to compare the ways legal ties build up associations with the other types of connection that he has studied in other fields of activity. His project of an alternative interpretation of the very notion of society has never been made clearer than in this work. To reuse the title of his first book, this book is in effect the 'Laboratory Life of Law'.

Porte-clefs, ralentisseurs, ceintures de sécurité, chatières, grooms de porte, nous entrons tous les jours en relation avec des dispositifs que l'on ne peut sans dommage réduire réduire à leur simple fonction d'objets techniques. Molécules, formules chimiques, cartes, diagrammes, microbes et galaxies, nous nous trouvons quotidiennement confrontés à des ensembles que l'on ne peut réduire sans risque à de simples faits scientifiques. Décidément, la connaissance est une affaire trop sérieuse pour être laissée aux seuls savants. Amateur de science (comme on dit « amateur d'art »), Bruno Latour nous invite à « goûter » avec lui les techniques et les sciences, à en apprécier les forces et les faiblesses, à en critiquer la forme et le facture. Dans ce recueil de chroniques, il nous promène du bureau de Gaston Lagaffe, nouvel Archimède, aux anges du paradis, an passant par Berlin, les sols d'Amazonie, le fonctionnement du rein, et les cornéliens dilemmes d'une ceinture de sécurité... Dans un style allègre, il nous fait partager sa jubilation devant des objets et des faits qui mêlent toujours plus intimement les choses et les gens. Conçues pour un large public, ces leçons s'adressent à tous ceux qui ne peuvent se résigner à réserver le nom de culture aux seules oeuvres d'art, et qui cherchent à se former le goût pour les faits avérés comme pour les techniques efficaces.

En la tradición del fulgurante Manifiesto Comunista, los autores de este libro afirman que un espectro acecha al mundo: el ecologismo. Sin embargo, a diferencia de lo que sucedía hace más de un siglo, ese fantasma no convoca multitudes orgullosas detrás de eslóganes inspiradores. Las preocupaciones ecológicas el clima, la energía, el acceso al agua, la biodiversidad están en todas partes y voces de alarma nos taladran la cabeza desde hace décadas anunciando la catástrofe inminente. Pero en vez de traducirse en entusiasmo y movilización, generan angustia, vergüenza, culpabilidad, o incluso irritación frente a lo que se percibe como una ecología punitiva que objeta el crecimiento y, por eso, parece pura limitación o retroceso. Sería fácil explicar esta parálisis invocando las campañas de desinformación, el poder de los lobbies, la inercia de las mentalidades, aunque nada de eso impidió nunca que millones de activistas se lanzaran con energía a sus causas. Con gran potencia conceptual, programática y literaria, Bruno Latour y Nikolaj Schultz sostienen que la falta de reacción obedece a razones más profundas. ¿Cómo podría la ecología política pretender movilizar a las multitudes hacia adelante, fiel a las tradiciones progresistas, cuando lo que cuestiona es justamente el progreso y el imaginario de la producción a cualquier costo? ¿Cómo persuadir de un proyecto que tiene en su centro las condiciones de habitabilidad del planeta si nuestro aparato mental, moral, organizacional, jurídico, está asociado al desarrollo? Para esa tarea, llaman a constituir una nueva clase ecológica, un sujeto colectivo capaz de articular luchas hoy dispersas y dar, desde cero, la batalla cultural por la hegemonía. El enorme desafío es buscar e instalar una narrativa que, en vez de sembrar pánico y hacer bostezar de aburrimiento, configure a un horizonte común y a un futuro posible.

I denne korte tekst, bestående af 76 diskussionspunkter, argumenterer den verdenskendte franske tænker, Bruno Latour, og den danske sociolog, Nikolaj Schultz for, at hvis den økologiske bevægelse skal opnå ideologisk sammenhæng og autonomi, skal den tilbyde en politisk fortælling, der anerkender, favner og effektivt repræsenterer sit projekt i forhold til sociale konflikter. Politisk økologi må dermed acceptere, at den også medfører splittelse. Den skal give en overbevisende kortlægning over de konflikter, den genererer, og på baggrund heraf skal den definere en fælles horisont for kollektiv handling. For at repræsentere og beskrive disse konflikter foreslår Latour og Schultz at den gamle forestilling om 'klasse' og 'klassekamp' genbruges, omend tilført en ny betydning i tråd med de økologiske bekymringer i vores nye klimaregime.'

Bruno Latour is best known for his work in the cultural study of science. In this pamphlet he turns his attention to another worthy the project of peace. As one might expect, Latour gives us a radically different picture of this project than Kant or the philosophes , asserting that the West has been in a constant state of war both with other cultures and its own—although unwittingly so. Read through the lens of his trademark take on "the modern," his arguments are original, thoughtful, and, as usual, provocative.

Ми живемо в часи шостого масового вимирання, коли антропоцентричний світ більше не видається надійною формою співіснування — для людей, тварин, рослин і не-людей. Водночас «важко постати перед виборцями з програмою, яка передбачає можливість їхнього зникнення на користь “конгресу тварин”, які навіть не голосують і не платять податки!».У збірці про екологію, політику та архітектуру французький соціолог, антрополог і філософ Брюно Латур і нідерландський архітектор і теоретик Рем Колгас говорять про те, як прийняти апокаліпсис за нагальний стан сьогодення й заразом далі спрямовувати питання в майбутнє. Де пролягає розрив між теорією та практикою політичної екології? Чи можливі «вищі цінності» та форми надлюдського співіснування? Наскільки рухливими є будівлі? Які запитання ставить архітектор, щоб привести нас за місто? Чому майбутнє чекає на нас у сільській місцевості? Автори й авторки збірки говорять про це за круглим столом, у статтях, есеях і коміксах.

Paris se donne si facilement au regard des peintres et des touristes, on l’a si souvent photographiée, on a publié sur la Ville Lumière tellement de beaux livres, qu’on oublie les difficultés des milliers d’ingénieurs, de techniciens, de fonctionnaires, d’habitants et de commerçants, pour la rendre visible. Ce petit livre voudrait, par le texte et par l’image, cheminer à travers la ville en explorant quelques unes des raisons qui empêchent de l’embrasser facilement d’un seul coup d’oeil. L’enquête photographique nous fait d’abord visiter des lieux, habituellement fermés au passant, où s’élaborent les innombrables techniques qui rendent la vie possible aux parisiens (service des eaux, Préfecture de police, périphérique —“panoptiques” divers d’où l’on voit Paris tout entier). Il nous permet ensuite de saisir l’importance des objets ordinaires, de ce mobilier urbain qui forme le cadre de notre vie quotidienne et qui, par son accumulation, offre aux habitants les moyens de parcourir la ville sans s’y perdre aussitôt. Enfin, il nous rend attentif aux problèmes pratiques que pose la coexistence d’un si grand nombre de gens sur une si petite surface. Tous ces cheminements inattendus permettront peut-être, en fin de compte, de reposer une question plus théorique sur la nature du lien social et sur les façons bien particulières qu’a la société de rester insaisissable. On oppose souvent le réel et le virtuel, la dure réalité urbaine et les utopies électroniques. Cet ouvrage cherche à montrer que les villes réelles ressemblent aux “Villes invisibles” d’Italo Calvino. Aussi encombrée, saturée, asphyxiée qu’elle soit, dans Paris ville invisible on se met à respirer plus à l’aise.

In a series of televised interviews broadcast in spring 2022, Bruno Latour explained, in clear and straightforward terms, how humans have changed the planet and why environmental disasters are an intrinsic part of modern life. We have now come to realize that all life depends on a thin skin of our planet that is only few kilometres thick – what scientists call the ‘critical zone’. Our capacity to continue to live on a planet we are transforming is now at risk and if we wish to survive as a species, we must put an end to the mechanisms of destruction, rethink our connection to living beings, and face head-on the confrontation between the extractivists who are exploiting the Earth’s resources and the ecologists. This poignant reflection on the greatest challenge of our time was also an opportunity for Latour to explain the underlying thread that guided his work throughout his career, from his pathbreaking research on the social construction of scientific knowledge to his last writings on the Anthropocene.

Contra tot pronòstic, afirmar que el final de la modernitat i la catàstrofe ecològica són una realitat pot tenir més a veure amb l’esperança i la vida que amb la fallida i el derrotisme. Es tracta, això sí, d’assumir que el repte del pensament polític actual és el de reflexionar des del cor del drama, de fer-ho col·lectivament i de gosar especular des de la imaginació més radical i imprevista. Aquest ha estat el propòsit de Bruno Latour. La seva veu, recollida en les converses d’aquest llibre, ens convida a posar en relació la tecnologia, el dret, la ciència, la filosofia, l’art, l’ecologia, la religió i la sociologia per avançar junts per nous camins i fer habitable la Terra.