The Critical Zone of Science and Politics: Steve Paulson interviews Bruno Latour
BRUNO LATOUR HAS
NEVER been easy to pin down. He straddles disciplines, from sociology to
philosophy, and for the last four decades has been a formidable intellectual
presence around the world. Now, in what would seem to be his third - or is it
fourth? - incarnation, Latour is marshaling his critical firepower to warn us
about the environmental and political consequences of climate change. His new
book, Facing Gaia: Eight
Lectures on the New Climatic Regime (published in France in 2015 and
just released in English translation), digs deeply into debates about nature,
culture, and the Anthropocene. Latour first made
his name nearly 40 years ago by chastising scientists for their hubris and
naïveté. He helped launch the discipline of science and technology studies
(STS), arguing that the social dimensions of how scientists work can’t be
separated from the truth claims they make. As a result, Latour was accused of
undermining the credibility of science. His critics lumped him into the same
camp as postmodern relativists — a label he denies. Still, he wonders if his
earlier efforts to question the authority of scientists led unwittingly to
climate change skepticism. As he pondered in a 2003 article, “Was I wrong to
participate in the invention of the field known as science studies?
[…] Why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact
whether you like it or not?”
Latour then waded
into cultural debates about modernity. Declaring (in the title of a celebrated
1991 volume) “we have never been modern,” he claimed that it was wrong to
believe that human culture had ever really separated from the nonhuman world.
More recently, Latour has plunged into the fight against climate change and the
larger intellectual project of the Anthropocene. And he’s done this by
embracing the Gaia theory advanced in the 1970s by maverick British scientist
James Lovelock. In 2013, Latour gave the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, which
he turned into Facing
Gaia. At times, harkening
back to his days as a PhD student in theology, Latour invokes the language of
religion to warn about an impending “apocalypse.” What’s not commonly known
about Latour is that he is a practicing Catholic who reads the Bible devotedly
— not exactly the image of a man famous for questioning universal truths.
Now 70, Latour
recently retired from his job running the Sciences Po Medialab in Paris, but he shows no signs of
slowing down. In addition to his ongoing scientific investigations, he has
written plays and is collaborating on various projects that bring together
science and art. In one ongoing project, he’s considering whether the life of
Lovelock could be fodder for a play in the same way that Brecht once wrote
about Galileo.
I met Latour in
October 2017 in Chicago, where he was teaching a workshop and giving a series
of lectures. Our interview ranged widely over his life and interests. We talked
about environmental politics in the age of Trump, his abiding fascination with
religion, and his experience growing up in a family of renowned wine growers.
After decades of academic jousting with the scientific community, Latour has
emerged as something of an éminence
grise. Now scientists are asking him to help make their case for the
validity of climate change research. The irony is hard to miss.
STEVE
PAULSON: Facing Gaia has positioned you prominently among
scholars and intellectuals speaking out about climate change. Has this issue
been a longtime concern of yours?
BRUNO LATOUR: I’ve been interested in the politics of nature
for 30 years. I’m not a naturalist. I don’t follow bugs and spiders and
animals. I’m not like many other people who got into this cause because of
their interest in nature. My interest is in the way science works. I’ve read
Lovelock very carefully for many years, and when debates about the Anthropocene
became common in intellectual circles, I was surprised that Lovelock and [Lynn]
Margulis’s argument was not being discussed by philosophers and even not very
much by ecologists.
I think a lot of
scientists wonder if the Gaia theory is real science or some kind of
pseudoscience.
They hesitate when
they are coming from biology, but not when they come from earth systems
science. Lovelock has been very instrumental in the development of this
discipline. It’s the people who are interested in biology and ethology who are
most suspicious of Lovelock because he arrived during the dawning of the New
Age movement. That was to his detriment, but in fact the theory is extremely
important and interesting.
Many people who
aren’t scientists have adopted Lovelock’s idea of Gaia as a way
of thinking that the Earth is alive.
Yes, but that’s a big
misunderstanding precisely because for Lovelock the Earth is not itself an
organism. That would not be so interesting scientifically but would be terrible
politically. It would resurrect all sorts of natural theology arguments and
ideas about the cosmic universe. My interpretation of Gaia, which is based on a
close reading of Lovelock and also a lot of interactions with scientists, is
about the chemistry of the Earth’s surface being modified or transformed by the
activity of lifeforms. It’s like a termite mound. The termite mound is dead,
but it’s only there because of the activity of the termites. And so with the
gases in the atmosphere. It’s like a biofilm. It’s just the skin of the Earth.
That’s why it’s so interesting.
My aim is to
contribute to a precise definition of Gaia as a political entity. Of course,
this is a very difficult thing to do. What sort of entity are we dealing
with? Does it impose sovereignty on nation-states? And then there is a very
interesting connection between Gaia and the Anthropocene, which is one small
moment in the history of Gaia but is of course very important for us as a
species.
Is the Anthropocene
a useful concept? Does it help us understand this historic period in a way we
hadn’t really before?
Unlike many of my colleagues in the humanities and social sciences, I
think the Anthropocene is very useful. It’s basically an alternative to the
idea of modernity... read more:https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-critical-zone-of-science-and-politics-an-interview-with-bruno-latour/#!
see also
BRUNO LATOUR - The Enlightenment Without the Critique: A Word on Michel Serres' Philosophy
Hiroshima
(is) the only date in history that he takes as a real turning-point; the earth
has been shaking ever since. His rupture with epistemology... comes from this
realization: all these eminent gentlemen are deaf to the noise made by the
atomic bomb; they go on as if physics was business as usual; as if the
emergence of thanatocrat - his word for the black triad made by
scientists politicians and industrialists- had not reshuffled for ever the
relations between society and the sciences… The mob in a state of crisis
cannot agree on anything but on a victim, a scapegoat, a sacrifice. Beneath any
boundary is buried a sacrificial victim..
