The principal intuition of this article is that Bruno Latour's explicitly or implicitly 'geopolitical' works -strewn as they are across many years and innumerable textshave not yet been coherently assembled in such a way that their critical interrogation relative to contemporary debates in political geography can gainfully proceed. Such a reassembly must consider 'earlier,' 'later' and whatever other Latours. Although 'politics' per se has, in his more recent works, become just one 'mode of existence' among others, every aspect of Latour's thought has political ramifications. Consequently, his works must be read 'anthropologically' -that is to say, in cognisance of the interimplicatedness of every typological strand of 'the social' taken altogether. In short, this article attempts not only to read Latour's works more interconnectedly than have other readers, but, furthermore, to read Latour's 'geopolitical' writings in a more joined-up fashion than he has himself written them. To this end, it (1) introduces the major elements of Latour's political philosophy, highlighting the importance of geopolitical issues and concepts from his early works onwards;(2) précises his 15 'modes of existence,' laying out the philosophical resources that will be subsequently rewoven; (3) examines six key allies with whom he rearticulates first geo (James Lovelock, Peter Sloterdijk) and politics (Walter Lippmann, John Dewey) separately and then geopolitics (Michel Serres, Carl Schmitt) itself; and, finally, (4) details his Anthropocenic geopolitics conceptually by speculatively intertwining the above with his recent Gifford Lectures. The reassembly attemptedor, rather, initiated -herein is, therefore, neither disinterested nor definitive. It is a working through of the possibilities internal to a specific, albeit sprawling, bundle of texts. It presents a reading both constructive and 'charitable' -not in order to obviate critical interrogations but in the hope of provoking a more incisive debate concerning Latour's works in relation to political geography.
Between the affirmative and the negative, the compositional and the oppositional, we need to rethink the difference between difference and contradiction. In this regard, the concept of ‘diplomacy’, as developed by Isabelle Stengers, is of particular significance. Whereas many adherents of an affirmative ontology of difference reduce contradiction to a caveat – ‘of course, antagonism is inevitable, but …’ – diplomacy makes contradiction its fundamental concern. This article explicates the significance of such a conception, via close readings of Stengers’ work in relation to that of Gilles Deleuze, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. However, it also develops diplomacy in new directions, particularly relating the diplomatic ‘fold’ to the sovereign ‘cut’. The fold of coexistence, then, is achieved through diplomacy as a ‘labour of difference’, against ‘facile pluralism’, which takes worldly cohabitation as given. A diplomatic political ontology is neither bellicose nor pacific; rather, it dramatizes the possibility of peace from within a coercive historical reality.
From climatic chaos to mass extinction, from ‘geoengineering’ to unprecedented urbanisation, world politics has, in recent decades, become inescapably planetary. Recent discussions concerning ‘Planet Politics’ are, therefore, timely. However, the debate, to date, has been limited by a number of conceptual and political problems. In particular, an apparent disinclination to address serious differences as regards the authority of natural scientific knowledge with respect to collective ontologies raises the question of what is truly political in planetary politics. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s concept of ‘planetarity’ and Isabelle Stengers’ ‘cosmopolitics’, this intervention consists of a diagnosis, a method and an alternative. The diagnosis is that this debate has yet to constitute a workable starting point for the very thought processes, and political processes, that those involved demand. The method is simultaneously ‘forensic’ and ‘diplomatic’ – that is, it focuses on bringing undisclosed and semi-disclosed conflicts into the open while, furthermore, ‘thinking through the middle’ of established polemical positions, enabling new possibilities. The alternative, then, proposes to distinguish a cosmo politan agenda of global connectedness from a cosmo political process of situated coordination. Finally, it is argued that adding ‘planetary’ to our politics aptly, if counterintuitively, encapsulates the condition of ‘political multiplicity’. However, rather than lending weight to disciplinary consolidation, this encapsulation should serve to forge connections with problems of multiplicity of all sorts. That is, the purpose of planetary politics, as conceived herein, would be that of inventing speculative practices that maintain the possibility of unlikely alliances between disparate powers, and not only those of the nation state.
The epithet ‘critical’ has become both coveted and contested. A long-established lodestone of personal, political, and professional commitment within academia, its meanings are multiple, and its histories are poorly understood. This article reconstructs an interdisciplinary history of debates concerning what it is to ‘be critical’, beginning in the 1930s but focusing on the late 1960s to the late 1990s. It argues the significance of the category ‘critical’ to be that it can connote political radicalism while allowing for a degree of professional respectability. Furthermore, the article shows that claims and counterclaims upon the parameters of criticality have privileged certain thought traditions. In particular, while contemporary discourses of ‘anti-wokeness’ caricature critical academics as being prepossessed with issues of coloniality and race, traditions of thought dealing with these issues have, until recently, been rather marginalised. The enduring ‘colour line’ of critical thought is not only unjust but also deleterious to political imagination.
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