The anthropologist of the modern world, Bruno Latour, who died in the night between Saturday and Sunday at the age of 75, had developed a brilliant reflection on the ecological crisis and how humanity can deal with it.
Well known in the United States, Bruno Latour, also a sociologist and philosopher of science, was an unclassifiable intellectual, rooted in his time, interested in field research and observation.
A “creative, humorous and unpredictable” spirit.
He was considered “creative, fun and unpredictable,” according to the jury of the Norwegian Holberg Prize for Social Sciences, which he received in 2013.
This pillar of Sciences-Po, author of several essays published in English before being published in France, has long been interested in the management and organization of research and, more generally, in the way in which society produces values and truths.
He is the author (alone or in collaboration) of works such as “La fabrique du droit. An ethnography of the State Council ”,“ Life in the laboratory ”,“ We have never been modern ”,“ Les Microbes. War and Peace ”(about Louis Pasteur) and the last“ Where am I? “Written in the middle of the Covid emergency.
For him, the crises of climate change and the pandemic have brutally revealed a struggle between “geosocial classes”. “Capitalism has dug its own grave. Now is the time to fix it. “ he confided in 2021 to the AFP.
Thinker of the “new climate regime”
He summarized his work for the general public in “Little Lessons in Sociology of Science” and “Cogitamus: Six Letters on the Humanities” and expanded his audience with a book like “Where to land? How to orient yourself in politics? (2017) .
In this essay he defends the hypothesis that “We have not understood anything about political positions for fifty years, if we do not give a central place to the climate question and its denial”.
“It is as if a significant portion of the ruling classes had come to the conclusion that there would be no more space on Earth for them and the rest of its inhabitants. This would explain the explosion of inequalities, the extent of deregulation, the critique of globalization and, above all, the panicked desire to return to the old protections of the nation state.In his opinion.
Last January, on the occasion of the release of his memo Memo on the new ecological class published by La Découverte, Bruno Latour gave us a very long interview that we invite you to rediscover below.
Bruno Latour: “Ecology requires a clear definition of who friends and enemies are”
Bruno Latour, influenced by the philosopher who died in 2019, Michel Serres, had also analyzed the “yellow vests” movement which he described as “internal migrants left behind by their country”.
Invited to Harvard
He was one of the designers of the theory, new in sociology, of the “network-actor” which takes into account, in addition to human beings, objects (or “non-human”) and discourses, the latter also considered as “actors”.
Born on 22 June 1947 in Beaune (Côte d’Or) to a family of wine merchants from Burgundy, Bruno Latour passed an aggregation in philosophy and then trained in anthropology in the Ivory Coast.
He then taught in engineering schools, at the École des Mines (where he was responsible for the course “Description of scientific controversies”) and at the Center for the sociology of innovation.
The most famous philosopher of France
From 2006 to 2017 he was professor at Sciences-Po Paris, where he directed research activities for a long time. He contributed to the creation, within the school, of the innovative SPEAP master (Science-Po program of experimentation in the arts and politics).
Author of two plays, Bruno Latour has also taught abroad, particularly in Germany and the United States, where he was a visiting professor at Harvard.
He enjoys a solid reputation in English-speaking academia, having arrived at the New York Times to qualify him in 2018 as “the most famous philosopher in France”.
