1/ In the fourth chapter of "Ou Suis-Je?" (2021), Bruno Latour takes us back to the central organising trope of the entire book: this strange celebration of the “insect-being” of Kafka’s metamorphized character Gregor Samsa. 
2/ Contrary to what we might assume, Latour will not let us suppose that Gregor is reduced, de-animated or demonised by his transformation; on the contrary, he is the most free person, because he embodies a “terrestrial” existence.
3/ Locked in his room, Gregor finds he no longer exists in "res extensa" - regulated & co-ordinated space, external to his being. Rather, Gregor understands that he must compose the environment in which he then subsists: “il construit cet espace de proche en proche” (p.39).
4/ Gregor’s insect-like, creeping & crawling movements within the room may appear unhuman, but like a spider he is actually spinning a web of habitation, creating “un miniscule tunnel nous permettant de ramper en toute sécurité quelques millimètres plus loin” (p.39).
5/ It is the same with us. As Modern people, we assume we can move freely anywhere we wish. But we do so only by means of a constructed apparatus that trails behind us, and upon which we are dependent.
6/ This is what it means to be one of “les terrestres”, to live in the Critical Zone, to be children of Gaia. We find out that we are restricted to “une couche miniscule” (p.41) & that we cannot step one inch outside this zone by means of some magic, artificial transporter.
7/ Quote: “Les terrestres peuvent se déplacer, mais seulement aussi loin que la nappe, le biofilm, le courant, le flux, la marée montante des vivants nommés Terre ou Gaia a réussi a créer pour les suivants des conditions d’habitabilité quelque peu durables” (p.40)
8/ To live in the Critical Zone is to be cognisant of a form of morality. This is what in the Inquiry Latour calls “care” or “attention” to the other. “C’est apprendre a durer un peu plus longtemps, sans mettre en peril l’habitabilité des formes de vie qui vont venir a la suite”.
9/ We could call this "neighbourliness": in this chapter, Latour refers to it as “proximité critique” (p.41) or “consistence des relations” (p.42). He explores it in a recent paper called « Adam où es-tu ? » Prêcher à l’époque de l’Anthropocène, with A.S Breitwiller & F. Louzeau
10/ Fortunately, we live in a propitious moment to explore life in the Critical Zone & the form of (religious) morality that must necessarily accompany it. Lockdown has confined us to our rooms. We have had to learn the same “insect-being” as Gregor …
11/ … lockdown has reminded us that our lives depend on a multitude of agents, some of whom we had forgotten or who had become nearly invisible to us: supermarket workers, rubbish collectors, stressed homeschooling mothers, etc. We have learnt to appreciate our neighbours again.
12/ Once again, Latour entreats us to use a world-historical moment to learn lessons for philosophy. This is the form of all his books (the fall of Berlin Wall; Gilets Jaunes protests, Paris Climate Agreement, COVID, etc). Lockdown teaches us to make the world *habitable* again.
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