I am re-reading the extraordinary book "Rejoicing" as part of my preparation for a monograph on the political theology of @BrunoLatourAIME.
Here are twelve summary statements about Latour’s understanding of religion, later defined as [REL].
One tweet for each.
@BrunoLatourAIME 1. True religion is shown by the example of lovers’ speech, which becomes a sort of “experimental site" or "prefiguring” (118) of what religion is & should be in the world. When it really connects, romantic speech encodes religion's "value" (every mode has its own empirical site)
@BrunoLatourAIME 2. The sweet whisperings of those in love is not referential to a state of affairs in the world.
And neither is religious speech. A religious proposition contains “zero informational content” (32).
@BrunoLatourAIME 3. Thus, religious speech is a person-forming, not a propositional, message. Religious speech “changes those it addresses” (32); it “transforms interlocutors” (35); it “forges someone anew” (40). In fact, this is its "Pentecost function" no less (42).
@BrunoLatourAIME 4. How? Religious speech does not describe the world in the mode of reference; this only leads to detachment, objectification, reification, etc.
Rather, religious speech generates a powerful sense of attentiveness to the present moment. Latour calls this "phatic" communication.
@BrunoLatourAIME 5. Time itself alters. Consider: when romantic words “connect”, everything changes. The past lines up in a new way (“that argument now makes sense, I can see what he meant”) & the future takes on a new form ("I will be with him for ever"). Religion does this on existential scale.
@BrunoLatourAIME 6. Lovers’ speech is presumably one-to-one.
But religious speech creates communities;it produces “unity, unification, the universal” (48); “a holy nation”, not “an aggregate of strangers that nothing can bring together” (57).
No other contemp. philosopher would talk this way.
@BrunoLatourAIME 7. Religion is thus entirely immanent, “a spiritual way of speaking in this world” (31).
“There is no aspiration to the beyond that is of religious inspiration” (33).
Religion has nothing to contribute to metaphysics.
@BrunoLatourAIME 8. The function of religion is not “to carve out a bit of transcendence in a world that’s too full” (33), but to enchant the world through recognition of the preciousness of the present order, its networks, its complexity, *which you too can enter if you engage it with love*.
@BrunoLatourAIME 9. Religion has a tradition: Scripture, rites, liturgy. But this should not drive squabbles over historical meaning. Religious sensitivity = “the revival, always recommenced, always deepened, always broadened, of a decisive message” (51). What counts is *the way you repeat it*.
@BrunoLatourAIME 10. For Latour, the value encoded in religion is best described by the word “reprise”, the taking-up-again & insertion of oneself into an existing configuration, taking it forward by your presence, but in the most delicate, careful & integrated fashion.
@BrunoLatourAIME 11. Dogmatic content is less important than the “rhythm” of the Scriptures, the demonstration they make of “reprise” in the flow of their own stories: “we can certainly say that such texts ‘save’ since, in their movement, they imitate what they talk about” (82).
@BrunoLatourAIME 12. If this is so, religion must not take the form of an interior quietism or Schleiermachian pietism; no, religion must be part of the public realm; it is “essential to civilized life” no less (51).
Conclusion: Latour’s work can be understood as a form of political theology.

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More from @AimeTim

27 Aug
1/ Serres’ 1983 ‘Détachment: Apologue' is an important “bridge” work in that very important sequences of books in the 1980s from ‘Genesis’ to ‘The Natural Contract’.
2/ It does have an obscure English translation, I believe, which I have never got hold of. There is also a useful chapter in Maria Assad’s book on Serres & Time.
3/ The opening scenario of 'Détachment' depicts a Chinese agricultural landscape filled & saturated with cultivation: “tout est consommé” .
Read 12 tweets
27 Aug
1. Carl Schmitt's 1923 essay "Roman Catholicism and Political Form" is essential for understanding the political theological roots of his juridical thought, & how this has been misused in contemporary integralist thought.
2. Schmitt argues that concept of the political is encoded in the power of personalist representation. Representation refers to the function of representing a value or concept of importance, of staking a claim, of claiming something that is meaningful.
3. Representation must be "personal" or "personalist" for Schmitt because it demands a sort of moral stake on behalf of the human: this contrasts with the sort of banal presentation of reality made to us in the economic/ technical thinking of modernity.
Read 6 tweets
17 Aug
1. Via the work of Bloch, Bauman & Mannheim, and as vividly depicted in Jacob Taubes’ work on “occidental eschatology”, the concept of utopia went through a seismic conceptual re-appropriation in the 20th century.
2. That is to say, the concept of “utopia” became positively re-deployed as a framework for literary & artistic production, and as a tool to relate social theory to social praxis.
3. A good example is “Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World” catalogue of 2001, & Ruth Levinas’ sociological work on “Utopia as Method”.
Read 11 tweets
2 Apr
1/ The tenth chapter of @BrunoLatourAIME’s Où suis-je? pivots from how the pandemic has challenged the ideological structures of modernity (the Economy, the object, Nature), to the way it has caused us to rethink the intimate & apparently subjective site of the human body itself. Image
2/ Latour rejects simple dichotomies of objective materiality to which is added “mon corps vécu de l’intérieur, celui de ma subjectivité” (p.120).
3/ Crucially, & poignantly, Latour explains that he has been reminded of this by his own, very sad experience of cancer over the last two years, that I know he has faced with dignity and good faith.
Read 18 tweets
16 Mar
1/ I am continuing my chapter-by-chapter summary of @BrunoLatourAIME’s new book, où suis-je. Here, we come to the ninth chapter. For previous chapter threads, do scroll down on my feed. Image
2/ Latour begins by recounting his participation in a piece of performance art designed by architect & urban planner Soheil Hajmirbaba that visualises attachments & dependences in a group by means of a compass diagram drawn on the floor that is traversed. s-o-c.fr/index.php/abou…
3/ This highlights the artificiality & brutality of any art that interrupts movement in order to fix it on a wall. For Latour, this is quintessentially represented by the “white cube” gallery aesthetic characterised by its square shape, white walls & elevated light source. Image
Read 11 tweets
7 Mar
1/ Continuing my threads on Où suis-je? (see previous threads) – chapter 6 provides an example of @BrunoLatourAIME’s constructive interpretation of Christianity as a religion that can inculcate forms of attentiveness & responsibility with respect to our Gaian interconnectedness. Image
2/ Lockdown has been interesting for “les âmes religieuses”: after all, these people normally have their eyes fixed on the hereafter, & yet lockdown has forced them to appreciate the significance of the “ici-bas”, for a while at least! (p.66).
3/ The religious “above” was never intended to indicate a topography or spatiality; rather, “l’envol vers un au-delà de paix, de recompense et de salut” (p.67) was intended to inspire forms of sympathy, co-belligerence & peace for those who live down here, the poor & downtrodden.
Read 15 tweets

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