1. Wonderful to be able to read this latest book by @BrunoLatourAIME in English.

The first chapter begins with the image of our surfacing-to-air after a period of enforced confinement, just as we all experienced during the pandemic lockdowns. We search for our bearings …
@BrunoLatourAIME 2. But as our eyes accustom again to the light we find a changed world. This is not renaissance, but new awareness of guilt. We cannot bear to gaze upon nature – trees, rivers, the sky – because we are freshly conscious of the damage human activity has imposed upon it.
@BrunoLatourAIME 3. Instead, the best we can do is gaze at the moon. Why? Because the moon represents the "closest" object in the universe that is nevertheless “outside” our sphere of influence, and for which we do not (as it were) bear responsibility. The sub-lunar world is tainted.
@BrunoLatourAIME 4. Latour represents for us the alteration in our moral psychology that has been caused by the awareness of the zoonotic origin of COVID, which is merely one instance of the damage caused by human hegemony over nature in the Anthropocene.
@BrunoLatourAIME 5. Our awakening from slumber (lockdown) is like that of G. Samsa. We too have undergone a metamorphosis, & are now grimly aware of the monstrous bodily form we now inhabit. We sense a new difficulty in inhabiting the world in the way we did before.
@BrunoLatourAIME 6. Previously, like Gregor, we occupied our own bodies naively & without self-awareness.
But now, we cannot.
We are newly conscious of the contamination of the virus we spread in the air.
And our COVID aerosols are like the trail of atmospheric emissions we carry behind us.
@BrunoLatourAIME 7. In lockdown, our agency-consequences have been made so much more apparent to us. We even have to take responsibility for how close we stand, for fear of transmitting Covid.
Brave new world!
@BrunoLatourAIME 8. Thinking of Gregor, who became an insect, we are reminded of termites. Why? Because these insects inhabit a world that they create: the colony. We too have been forced to occupy a space "indoors" and "alone" for many months. We have had an insect existence during lockdown.
@BrunoLatourAIME 9. But look at the termites ... they are restricted to the space of the termitary, yes, but they can extend themselves further as they build outwards; the termitary thus becomes a type of exoskeleton or extended body. The world is an extension of their own being.
@BrunoLatourAIME 10. “Kafkaesque” implies a vision of the entrapment of individuals within a system. But perhaps we need to revisit what the adjective means: for here, the system is integrated as an extension of being. Perhaps we could even imagine the termite/ Gregor as being “happy” (Camus).
@BrunoLatourAIME 11. Latour wants us to understand & embrace our termite-being. For humans too are those who construct and extend outwards the interior of their habitable space.
@BrunoLatourAIME 12. Like Gregor, we may have been tempted to lounge in our bedrooms during lockdown. But Gregor can show us the way! For his insect consciousness recognises the joy of constructing a habitable space ... painstakingly, progressively, & in collaboration with others (the colony).
@BrunoLatourAIME 13. In fact, insect-Gregor is the true human! It is the miserable others in Kafka's story (the parents, the sister, the company boss) who have refused to become human, as they seek to force him out in conformity; they should opine who they are & what they have become, not Gregor!
@BrunoLatourAIME 14. This first chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book: Latour calls us to the self-regulating construction of a habitable space, as an antidote to the deadening forces of modernity, which can do nothing but present a "utopia" that cannot be endured.

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More from @AimeTim

14 Oct
1. This is a very important new interview with Bruno Latour, detailing his understanding of his own writing practices, the relevance of genre & form, and the importance of the idea of non-identical repetition.

academia.edu/56388837/An_In… Image
2. It reminds us of the importance of the work of early French poet Charles Péguy to his though, (“I don’t put anyone above Péguy”), esp. his retrieval & description of non-modern temporalities & the technique of non-identical repetition. This is consistent through Latour's work.
3. Quote from the interview: “this repetition is precisely a part of what has always interested me, that is, how does a formal repetition allow us to capture beings that are otherwise inaccessible?”
Read 12 tweets
7 Oct
1/ The intellectual context in which @BrunoLatourAIME was operating in the mid to late 1970s is crucial for an understanding of his later work.
@BrunoLatourAIME 2/ Back then, French epistemology of science was dominated by the school known as ‘l’épistémologie historique’, as represented by the work of Koyré, Cavaillès, Bachelard, Canguilhem & others.
@BrunoLatourAIME 3/ Central to its explanation of how science functioned was the concept of “la rupture épistémologique”, the progress of scientific knowledge in terms of sudden leaps & paradigm shifts, each time breaking with the previous order by means of a total negation of that which is past.
Read 13 tweets
5 Oct
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. Image
2. Schmitt argues that concept of the political is encoded in the power of personalist representation.

Both terms matter. "Representation" here 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 apersonal, banal presentation of reality made to us in the economic/ technical thinking of modernity.
Read 7 tweets
22 Sep
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).
Read 13 tweets
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

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