{"id":13022,"date":"2022-10-09T15:48:02","date_gmt":"2022-10-09T20:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=13022"},"modified":"2022-10-09T16:01:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T21:01:37","slug":"r-i-p-bruno-latour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/10\/09\/r-i-p-bruno-latour\/","title":{"rendered":"R.i.p., Bruno Latour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hearing the announcement of Bruno Latour<\/a>‘s death earlier today, I remembered his visit to the Feverish World<\/a> symposium, which I co-organized in 2018 in Burlington, Vermont. Despite his health (which was turning for the worse at the time), he participated gracefully in this strange mixture of conference, festival, and street event, and gave a great closing keynote speech. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until his death, Latour<\/a> was one of the most widely cited living social scientists and philosophers in the world. He was often all too casually dismissed as a “social constructionist,” despite the fact that he took science more seriously than almost anyone (he devoted his life to understanding it), and that if there was anything he de<\/em>constructed, it was the social<\/a><\/em>. Instead, he was a “constructionist” in the best sense<\/a> of the word (the Whiteheadian<\/a> sense): he believed that every thing is constructed — that is, shaped and fabricated — by the labor of all of the relational elements that went into producing it. He believed that “facts” and “fetishes” were not necessarily opposed to each other, but that all things were on a spectrum between the two — “factishes<\/a>” that were real yet invested with different degrees of mythical power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But all of that was preamble to the work of restoring genuine dialogue between the realms “the moderns” have separated: especially between the arts, religion, and the sciences, and especially around those things — like climate change<\/a> and looming ecological catastrophe — that our world seems least equipped to deal with despite<\/em> having created them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this, to my mind, is best represented by the exhibitions he co-curated: “Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art<\/a>” (2002), “Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy<\/a>” (2005), “Reset Modernity!<\/a>” (2016), and “Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth<\/a>” (2020-21), which in their combined impact — as Latourian actor networks made up of artists, scientists, philosophers, and many objects of various kinds — have altered the landscape of contemporary thought more than anyone I can think of in the post-1988 climate change era (since the first major pronouncement<\/a> of the reality of anthropogenic climate change).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rest in peace, Bruno. All the debates and polemics you elicited were so very necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here he is with Rebecca Schwarz<\/a> and me at Burlington’s Hen of the Wood restaurant:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hearing the announcement of Bruno Latour‘s death earlier today, I remembered his visit to the Feverish World symposium, which I co-organized in 2018 in Burlington, Vermont. Despite his health (which was turning for the worse at the time), he participated gracefully in this strange mixture of conference, festival, and street event, and gave a great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4415],"tags":[123519,17873,4414,520540,455065],"class_list":["post-13022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecophilosophy","tag-bruno-latour","tag-constructionism","tag-deconstruction","tag-feverish-world","tag-social-constructionism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-3o2","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3810,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/05\/02\/more-on-constructions-gun-hammer-or-scaffold\/","url_meta":{"origin":13022,"position":0},"title":"More on constructions: gun, hammer, or scaffold?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The comments on this previous post resulted in my doing a bit of quick research (methodology: googling) on how often the terms \"constructivism\" and \"constructionism\" get used in relation to certain theorists and theoretical terms. Here are the results. I've put the \"winning\" terms in bold: Berger Luckmann + constructionism\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9678,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/05\/25\/welcome-to-the-feverish-world-cfp\/","url_meta":{"origin":13022,"position":1},"title":"Welcome to the Feverish World (CFP)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 25, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Please circulate widely... FEVERISH WORLD 2018-2068:\u00a0ARTS & SCIENCES OF COLLECTIVE SURVIVAL\u00a0 A Symposium and Convergence in Burlington, Vermont, October 20-22, 2018 Fifty years after the widespread international protests of 1968 challenged institutional norms, and some sixty years after C. P. Snow lamented the gap between academia\u2019s \u201ctwo cultures,\u201d those of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9881,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/10\/28\/latours-terrestrial-project\/","url_meta":{"origin":13022,"position":2},"title":"Latour’s terrestrial project","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 28, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Review of Bruno Latour,\u00a0Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime,\u00a0Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2018. Down to Earth is in significant part a restatement of Bruno Latour\u2019s theorizing over the last few decades, made more incisive in the light of Trumpism (and other illiberal populisms) and brought to bear\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2018\/10\/51U4aOdufeL._SX317_BO1204203200_-176x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6722,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/06\/19\/aar-panel-on-latours-gifford-lectures\/","url_meta":{"origin":13022,"position":3},"title":"AAR panel on Latour’s Gifford Lectures","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The AAR panel responding to 2013 Holberg Prize winner Bruno Latour's Gifford Lectures has now been scheduled. Information is as follows. QUERYING NATURAL RELIGION: IMMANENCE, GAIA, & THE PARLIAMENT OF LIVELY THINGS Session A23-203 (Co-sponsors: Social Theory & Religion Cluster and Religion & Ecology Group) Saturday November 23 - 1:00\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"http:\/\/lh5.ggpht.com\/--xAfcTWGDjA\/S7Vkj9ggieI\/AAAAAAAFu-4\/tPWceZDV1UI\/Bosch%25252C%252520Garden%252520of%252520Earthly%252520Delights%2525201510.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lh5.ggpht.com\/--xAfcTWGDjA\/S7Vkj9ggieI\/AAAAAAAFu-4\/tPWceZDV1UI\/Bosch%25252C%252520Garden%252520of%252520Earthly%252520Delights%2525201510.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8278,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/06\/09\/harmans-reply\/","url_meta":{"origin":13022,"position":4},"title":"Harman’s reply","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Graham Harman's reply to my critical response to his book Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political, which appeared as part of\u00a0a book symposium in\u00a0Global Discourse\u00a0earlier this year, is readable\u00a0online,\u00a0here.\u00a0 I won't address the details of that\u00a0reply here. Some of them relate to our divergent\u00a0interpretations of Latour, and since Harman has\u00a0now written\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6306,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/10\/30\/latour-on-gaia-natural-religion\/","url_meta":{"origin":13022,"position":5},"title":"Latour on Gaia & Natural Religion","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Bruno Latour's upcoming Gifford Lectures sound remarkable.\u00a0See ANTHEM for the details. There could be no better theme for a lecture series on natural religion than that of Gaia, this puzzling figure that has emerged recently in public discourse from Earth science as well as from many activist and spiritual movements.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13022"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13028,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13022\/revisions\/13028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}