1/ And so I continue my reading of @BrunoLatourAIME’s new book, "où suis-je?". The fifth chapter, entitled ‘Troubles d’engendrement en cascade’, asks what have been the diagnostic effects of lockdown. What have we learnt from this dreadful experience?
2/ No doubt we all agree that lockdown has prompted a sort of generalised concern, “une angoisse partagée par tous”, with respect to the terms of our shared existence with others & how this needs to stay the same or change in the future.
3/ In the political realm, it has exacerbated the tenor of certain existential questions: how to prevent the collapse of the modes of life we had come to rely on? (hence the discourse of “extinction” in XR & other movements, as charted by Danowski & Viveiros de Castro) ... 
4/ … and to enquire what it means to occupy a nation-state with “frontières” & “limites” in a global society where these are constantly undermined by the work of "Economy"?
5/ Quote: "chaque Etat délinéé par ses frontières est oblige par definition de mentir sur ce qui lui permet de vivre, puisque, s’il est riche et développé, il doit s’étendre en douce sur d’autres territoires dont pourtant il ne se reconnaît aucunement responsable”
6/ (I have written about the idea of "borders" myself here: williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/blog-defining-…. It is true that this is a key theme in Latour's work, deriving from important findings of ANT and of the crossing NET:PRE in the Inquiry).
7/ Politics reflects questions that have long been posed in the biological realm, which struggles with taxonomical definitions that try to segregate different species & forms of life, “ou l’on ne cesse de mesurer la difficulté de tenir les existants distincts les uns des autres”.
8/ That is, lockdown has clamped down on false conceptions of ourselves as autotrophic organisms – “se considérer comme autonomones, authchtones, et bel et bien délimités par une frontière” - & has reminded us that we are heterotrophic, entirely dependent on a chain of existence.
9/ Latour goes on to argue that there is no “natural law” in the sense of “se revendiquer d’un privilège de propriété exclusive”. This can be nuanced by @johnmilbank3’s recent study of the modern liberal account of rights & their relation to “nature”: canopyforum.org/2021/02/24/on-…
10/ In summary, lockdown has had mixed effects. A. it reveals a mode of "modernist" universality that supposes we are autotrophic; B. it prompts us to consider how to reinstate our heterotrophic existences afterwards, to become more "Earthbound" as we must if we are to survive.
11/ And so what is to follow? For Latour, global pandemic is a world-historical event that breaks the flight of the "arrow" of modernist progress: "nous avons ressenti une suspicion généralisée sur l’intérêt de repartir comme avant sur la voie du progrès".
12/ In French, the return from lockdown is referred to as “reprise”. Latour reminds us that we must be concerned not just with a return-to-normal, but with the “reprise” of terrestrial existence, nurturing care & attention for the entanglements that came to light during lockdown.
13/ Latour appeals to us to take hold of what the global pandemic has offered us, by returning to a new, post-lockdown concern or supervision for Gaian entangelemnts, “la réproduction des conditions d’habitabilité” for all.
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