Back down to Earth: reassembling Latour’s Anthropocenic geopolitics

Abstract

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.

A crack in the facade? Situating Singapore in global flows of electronic waste

“…Here, then, is an opening for future studies to put the geographic literature on territory and the territorialization of markets into further productive conversation with the marketization literature (cf. Christophers, ) as well as with recent Actor Network Theory‐based approaches to territory (see Conway, ). This alternative kind of approach to territory would open up the investigation of it to also include analyses of the qualification of the action from which territory results.…”

Education as a mode of existence: A Latourian inquiry into assessment validity in higher education

“…We do not all get to construct our own 'truths' about what Mont Aiguille is, not least because common sense would render any outlandish statements as nonsensical (Latour, 2013: 59). Rather, we want to be able to agree that Mont Aiguille is what it is: we want to be able to say 'true' and 'accurate' things about it, to create faithful accounts or objective knowledge (Conway, 2016). And we can do this through our inquiry.…”

Ethnographies of Higher Education and Modes of Existence: Using Latour’s Philosophical Anthropology to Construct Faithful Accounts of Higher Education Practice

“…Modes of existence are those social, technical, semiotic and material conglomerations such as politics, or technology or morality, that constitute the empirical multi-realist ontology that Latour has concerned himself with. For the empirical researcherand Latour continues to commit himself to empirical as well as philosophical and metaphysical work (Berliner et al, 2013) the modes constitute a "box of intricate, ontological tools" (Hämäläinen and Lehtonen, 2016: 28 (Conway, 2016;Latour, 2013). Latour does not explicitly address the notion that there might be more (Edward, 2016), but Decuypere and Simons (2016) have proposed academic practice as a mode of existence.…”