In this article, “An Unexpected Journey A few lessons from Sciences Po médialab’s experience” Tommaso Venturini, Mathieu Jacomy, Axel Meunier, Bruno Latour Big Data & Society July–December 2017: 1–11 accessible on line, we present a few lessons we learnt in the establishment of the Sciences Po médialab. As an interdisciplinary laboratory associating social scientists, code developers and information designers, the me ́dialab is not one...
Archives
July 4, 2017
Four years after the Gifford lectures, the book is finally available in English at Polit. It is of course an entirely different text (with two more lectures) after having been translated in French, rewritten and then excellently translated by Cathy Porter.
April 27, 2017
It is clear that there is a contradiction between the goal of universal development associated with modernization and what could now be called the state of the planet. Earth scientists have recently developed the notion of Anthropocene, referring to a new era of history in which humans are regarded as a geological force, able to durably modify Earth’s ecology; though it remains controversial, it offers a convenient word to designate the tension between human development and the material...
April 10, 2017
A San Giorgio Dialog at the invitation of the Cini Foundation, in Venice, 12th-15th of September 2017
with Didier Debaise, Scott Gilbert, Bruno Karsenti, Bruno Latour, Tim Lenton, Mike Lynch, Kyle McGee, Tim Mitchell, Isabelle Stengers, Simon Schaffer, Shirley Strum, David Western
Do you remember the Aesopian Fable of the Belly and the Members, or the letter of Paul to the Corinthians about the Body and the Church, of The Fable of the Bees by Mandeville, or the somewhat dangerous association of pests and foreigners, or the more recent attempts to think of the Earth as a giant...
January 22, 2017
What is SPEAP?
The Experimental Programme in Political Arts (SPEAP) is a one-year Master's programme at the School of Public Affairs for mid-career professionals with at least 4 years of professional experience. This full-time programme brings together architects, designers, academics, public servants, managers, researchers, administrators, activists and curators who wish to enhance their skills, develop inventive tools and give a new momentum to their career.
This multidisciplinary...
January 22, 2017
Europe alone—only Europe
Bruno Latour
Translated by Stephen Muecke
I begin with the simple idea that climate change and its denial have been organising all contemporary politics at least for the last three decades. Climate change plays the same role that social questions and the class struggle played over the two preceding centuries.
We can understand nothing about the way inequalities have exploded for forty years, and the accompanying movement towards massive deregulation, if we don’t admit that a good part of the globalised elite had perfectly understood what...
November 13, 2016
Translation by Clara Soudan & Jaeyoon Park of a piece in Le Monde 12-12-16 publié par la Los Angeles Review of Book
The question is now whether the tragedy of the 8.11, following after the Brexit one, can help us avoid what happens next. Can we get away from both utopias, that of the global just as well as that of the return to an old soil? For this we should attempt to land on a slightly more solid, realist and durable earth. For the moment unfortunately the...
November 7, 2016
A special issue of the Journal New Literary History directed by Rita Felski with many papers by Dipesh Chakrbarty, Yves Citton, Steven Connor, Francis Halball, Graham Harman, Antoine Hennion, Patrice Maniglier, Stephen Muecke, Barbara Herrstein Smith, Nigel hrift & Michael Witmore, and a response by BL.
September 16, 2016
Gerard de Vries' presentation of BL's work has been launched during a meeting organized by CRASSH Cambridge. The book is published by Polity.
June 6, 2016
A lecture at Aarhus University in the Future series which takes up the Berlin Mosse lecture in a much more vivid form through diagrams and improvisations and followed by discussion with Isabelle Stengers and Danish anthropologists.
April 18, 2016
Warning: after 6 years SPEAP continues with a new formula:
Admission Procedure 2016-17
What is SPEAP?
The Experimental Program in Political Arts (SPEAP) is a one-year Master of the School of Public Affairs for mi-career professionals with at least 4 year of professional experience. The program is a full-time curriculum designed for young professionals (artists, architects, designers, academics, public servants, managers, researchers, administrators, activists, curators…) who wish to enhance their skills, to deepen their education or to give a new momentum to their...
April 12, 2016
The AIME team and the students of SPEAP make a special effort for the week to organize a virtual visit of Reset Modernity! and the other shows at ZKM through the twitter links.
March 2, 2016
With special permission of professor Zheltova-Eberle, this is a translation of a piece aboout the use of Tolstoy' War and Peace in BL's treatment of Pasteur. Translated from Russian and unpublished in English.
"In 2015 «Pasteur: guerre et paix des microbes suivi de Irréductions» by Bruno Latour came out in Russian language . The title of the book evidently contains the name of the famous Tolstoy’s novel “War and peace” and the numerous references in the book prove that “War and peace” has been important for Latour’s thinking. But what particular thoughts of Tolstoy are valuable for...
February 6, 2016
After Iconoclash in 2002 and Making Things Public in 2005, Reset Modernity! an exhibition that continues the AIME project (An Inquiry into Modes of Existence) will open in Karlsruhe, at the ZKM.
February 3, 2016
Created seven years ago, the médialab of Sciences Po is a very lively and innovative research group that is specialized in crossing the boundary between social theory (at the beginning mainly ANT and Tarde inspired social research) and the new abundance of digital traces.
January 10, 2016
Formerly, we used to enjoy ‘splendid weather’ or put up with a ‘lousy climate’. But in recent months we’ve found ourselves on the receiving end of some ‘awfully splendid’ weather. What is true of the weather is also true of politics. Is it possible tro draw a triangle which opens up another vector to orient ourselves. (the piece in French -Le Monde 13-01-2016- has been kindly translated by Timothy Howles and Terence Blake)
...
November 22, 2015
What is so discouraging about the terrorist acts is that our discussion of what motivated the operations is as insane as the acts themselves. With each attack of this nature, we restage the grand war drama, the nation in peril and the protector-state purporting to rise up against barbarity. This is what states do, we say: we should have a basic expectation of security, and the state should have the means to provide it. End of story.
But what makes the current situation so much more dismaying is that the crimes committed on 13 November have occurred within a few days of another event...
November 7, 2015
The simulation of the COP-21 done in Sciences Po in May 2015 in the Amandiers theatre in Nanterre near Paris had mobilized 200 students from many universities around the world and has explored a very original procedure, one that tried to approximate the "Parliament of Things" that has been the object of many studies over the year. This innovation in political theory and international relations, is now visible as a film realized by David Borstein and Les films de l'air. It is now available in English as a video on demand on the...
September 13, 2015
Some explanation on the fate of the Gifford Lectures given in February 2013. I had put the text of the lecture on the web thinking it could be published soon with Polity. However, I had a lot of work to do with AIME and many new thoughts on the question of Gaia. In the meantime, I had them translated in French. When I started to prepare the French publication, I rewrote them entirely and added two new lectures. The argument is, I hope, much better and more focused and sharp, but now only in French. It will be issued in October by La Découverte. So now I have to ask the remarkable...
June 25, 2015
There is one thing more difficult than to tell good from evil, it is to decide which time we are in, which epoch, and on which land we have our feet on. I was reminded of that difficulty Saturday at the border when the police officer, after having asked me what research I was doing, and on learning that I work en environment with a special interest for the drought, retorted: “Drought, which drought? Have you not read the Bible, it is all there, 7 years dry, 7 years wet, I have been in California for forty years, it’s always like this, it never fails. So don’t believe environmentalists,...
March 20, 2015
In the simulation of the COP21 Climate conference organized by the students of Sciences Po and other universities, the key innovation to break the deadlock of nation states trying to negotiate CO2 emission instead of the causes is to modify the list of parties. This is what has been done. Now, the key exciting moment is to see how students will become able to represent those cross cutting entities against the self interest of nation-states.
You might be interested to participate or to send one of your friends to...
February 14, 2015
Confronted with hideous crimes, the first temptation is to portray the perpetrators as archaic bloodthirsty fanatics who have no place in our midst and that should be uprooted and forever eliminated. It’s especially tempting to say that we are at war with them, since they themselves claim to be at war with us. However, we begin to have second thoughts when we learn that they have been educated in the same schools as our children and that until the moment when they started to be, as it is said, “radicalized”, they were fully “assimilated” to our “secular culture”. The more we learn about...
February 1, 2015
A powerpoint presentation of the project 'theater of negotiations' to be held in a theater in Paris in May 2015 as a simulation of the real COP21, Paris December 2015. Inscriptions for proposing or being in a delegation are closed, but lot's of volunteers are still welcome. See the site of Make it Work
January 19, 2015
Kindly translated by Timothy Howles (and slightly abridged in Le Monde)
Sometimes artists supply the key to current events before they happen. I’m not referring to the novel of a certain Michel Houellebecq , but rather to the film Timbuktu (directed by Abderrahmane Sissako). In that film we find a local imam resisting jihadists who have come from outside the country. Is this Islam against Islam? No, what we have here is a very ancient Islam confronted by foreigners who show themselves incapable of understanding the history and values of the country on which they have laid...
January 16, 2015
The MOOC on Scientific Humanities starts again at the following adress It covers a basic approach to the field of science and technology studies and is based on lectures and various exercises. It is monitored by English speaking tutors to help students navigate through the class and complete the exercises.
January 14, 2015
Lecture by Bruno Latour on Thursday the 12th and the play written by Pierre Daubigny on the 14th of February at the occasion of an important meeting launching the Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability 2015: ‘Anthropological Visions of Sustainable Futures’ at Department of Anthropology University College London.
January 3, 2015
Ulrich Beck had deeply transformed the social science, the very notion of the modernist project and was also a good friend. We were contemplating together, less than three weeks ago, all the projects we had in common. It is a tragedy. I published many times on his work, including an imaginary dialog for his 60th birtday, and we had a long dispute around ...
December 10, 2014
What an amazing gift! Sure it might be poisonous. But how silly it would be not to try to peek through the wrapping to take a glimpse of what is in store. (Read text of the lecture here)
December 10, 2014
Last week, in Berlin, an event took place that was as modest as it was decisive: for the first time, the Working Group of the Sub-Commission on Quarternary Stratigraphy met under the chairmanship of an English geologist, Dr Jan Zalasiewicz. Hardly headline news, is it? That’s where you’re wrong. To begin with, these geologists were meeting in connection with, and at the invitation of, a cultural institution (the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, located a stone’s throw from the Reichstag). Already that’s something of an oddity. But, more than that, they were meeting for our benefit, by which I...
November 24, 2014
An original enterprise organized in a theater (Les Amandiers, Nanterre) with students of various universities at the initiative of Laurence Tubiana and of Sciences Po, run by students from Sciences Po and from SPEAP and directed by Frédérique Ait-Touati and Bruno Latour plus many different professors.
Here is how to be part of the delegations that will be chosen by the negociation.
...
November 23, 2014
Camila Marambio, a former SPEAP student, and a remarkable artist from Chile, did this interview of BL in Rio which is a good and quick way to review some of the links with arts and sciences and connect with the various artistic projects of the year - especially the simulation of the climate conference that will be run in the Amandiers theatre in the outskirts of Paris in May 2015. The article is published in the Miami Rail.
November 16, 2014
Graham Harman's new book: Bruno Latour. Reassembling the Political (Modern European Thinkers) London: Pluto Press, 2014, reorders a lot of often contradictory and incoherent arguments made over forty years on political theory. It will be of great use first to the commented author and to many readers who were at a loss to define whether or not there was a political philosophy in such a body of work.
November 1, 2014
Words of thanks to the BJS board from the authors of the paper on Tarde using digital tools:
"We are very honoured by your award especially because this is the first technical paper in English coming out of the médialab we created five years ago to connect social theory and what is now called "big data" but that should really be called "smart data". The médialab had been conceived...
October 22, 2014
Henning Schmidgen has done an amazing work had reconstructing, Bruno Latour's trajectory, in Bruno Latour in Pieces. An Intellectual Biography (Translated by Gloria Custance). Fordham University Press, 2014. (The image chosen for the cover is a puzzle).
October 17, 2014
(132) « Another way to compose the common world », The Ontological Turn in French Philosophical Anthropology, An Executive Session of the AAA Annual Meeting, Chicago, November 23, 2013 (panel with Philippe Descola and Marshall Sahlins), in 2014 | Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 (1): 301–307.
(P-167) « Technical does not mean material » (...
September 2, 2014
In 2016, the International Commission on Stratigraphy will examine the existence of a new geological period, the Anthropocene. "Anthropocene Monument", the conference-performance has opened the exhibition of the same name by a time of reflection gathering researchers, historians, artists and the public around key questions: are we in the Anthropocene ? and what are the possible forms of a monument to the Anthropocene?
Combining academics lectures, performances, happenings and guided tours in the exhibition, the symposium-performance, led by Bruno Latour and Bronislaw Szerszynski,...
September 2, 2014
Gaia Global Circus the play written by the collective GGC led by BL has been played for three nights at the Kitchen in New York the 23rd, 24th and 25th of September. See details here. It has been accompanied by a lecture by BL at Columbia and several seminars.
September 2, 2014
No no no the AIME project is not finished. We got an extension from the ERC to redo the software that is behind the site -after many criticisme from users and designers- so that it is made more durable, fast and users's friendly. In the meantime the principle of edited contributions continue as before - we will be slower in answering since the staff is much reduced - and anyway the mass of documents already in line is enough to keep readers busy for quite a while. What will not resume are the face to face encounters that we have organized over the last two years for which there is no money...
September 2, 2014
From the 15th to the 19th of September an important symposium will gather people who have worked on the politics of the Anthropocene. The symposium is being curated by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Deborah Danowski - who are also the authors of a very important paper (in fact a small book) on the different versions of the end of the world... The program and the évents may be visited at this site
July 29, 2014
The diplomatic encounter between the different tiers of co-inquirers, "chargés d'affaires" and public (including the public present through the video stream) has taken place as scheduled, marking the provisional end of the collective part of the AIME project (the site will continue and the software behind will be entirely rewritten over the next months). As to the book it will be rewritten also but only in 2016 under the form of a catalog for the exhibition Modernity Reset at ZKM, Karlsruhe.
June 4, 2014
In English:
(128) « Agency at the time of the Anthropocene », in New Literary History Vol. 45, pp. 1-18, 2014. Publication of the lecture : « Which Language Should we Talk with Gaia », prepared for the Holberg Prize Symposium 2013: “From Economics to Ecology”, Bergen, June 4th.
(130) « War and Peace in an Age of Ecological...
June 4, 2014
From the 21st to the 25th of July we (AIME team with mediators and some privileged rewriters!) will sketch all the changes, additions, transformations and novelties that have been accumulated over the three years of the project (well in fact one year for the English and two for the French). At the end, we will have a short "spec book" that will summarize the most important points of agreements and disagreements. Then on the 28th and 29th we will deliver this "spec book" to a group of people (a sort of "authority") that will evaluate, allocate, criticize,...
March 30, 2014
March 6, 2014
March 4, 2014
On Monday the 24th of February 2014, the Copenhagen Business School has been kind enough to organize a public lecture during which we have been able to present, for the first time, the complete project in its content and procedure as well as in its diplomatic goals. After a brief presentation by B. Latour, we have the philosophy of design presented by D. Ricci, then a visit of the site by C. Leclercq and P. Juan de la Fuentes, followed by a description of the contribution process by P-L. Boulanger and finally the diplomatic philosophy by P. Maniglier. A complete video is accessible...
February 28, 2014
For they academic year 2014-2015, SPEAP wishes to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the Climate Conference COP21, to be held in Paris in December 2015. Working on the urgent and necessary questions raised, and on new forms of debate and modes of representation for the climate problem. Participants will form multi-disciplinary groups mobilized around commissions generated by this global event.
It is not necessary to be a specialist on climate questions, eco-politics or geo-politics, or even to have worked on such subjects, however, readiness to contribute your skills and...
January 16, 2014
In a recent paper Edwin Sayes. "Actor–Network Theory and Methodology: Just what does it mean to say that nonhumans have agency?" Social Studies of Science (2013): 1-16, offers a very balanced and extremely interesting review of a topic that has created some light and a lot of obscurity.
January 10, 2014
The experiment done in 2010 in Venice at the Cinni Foundation to try to connect theology and ecology is now out through an edited book by Pasquale Gagliardi, Anne Marie Reijnen, and Philipp Valentini. Protecting Nature, Saving Cretion. Ecological Conflicts, Religious Passions and Political Quandaries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. The second part which is made of the reactions of the authors to the experiment will be of great interest to all who try to work on the interface between the two concepts of Nature and Creation.
...
December 8, 2013
Kosmokoloss. Eine Tragikomödie über das Klima und den Erdball
Mit Wolfgang Pregler, Gabriel Raab, Marie Seiser, Kathrin von Steinburg, Steven Scharf, Helmut Stange, Hans Kremer, Wolfgang Hinze, Stefan Hunstein, Sylvana Krappatsch
Trompete: Micha Acher
Übersetzung aus dem Französischen: Margit Rosen
Komposition: Saam Schlamminger
Regie: Ulrich Lampen
One of the outcomes of the theatrical workshop...
November 2, 2013
Kyle McGee is a lawyer who is simultaneously a practitioner and a legal philosopher. His book about the "normativity of networks" puts to the trial the argument that Law is a mode of existence [LAW] the specificity of which can be characterized in an empirical way. But since his knowledge of law and of the philosophy of law is much larger and much deeper, his book goes much further in showing what could be drawn from an inquiry in terms of modes of existence.
October 1, 2013
The digital platform is now fully active including the fourth column! Congratulations to the AIME team of engineer, designers and organizers who worked to beat the September deadline. As of October 24th, we consider that the digital functions are completed (of course they need a lot of further work) and that we can concentrate our attention fully to the process of the inquiry.
In addition to the text, the platform includes the index/glossary/vocabulary,...
September 6, 2013
The play "Gaia Global Circus" has been played in French in Toulouse over the week end of September 27 to 29 with great success.
In addition many activities (in French and in English) will occur during the two weeks until October 11. This includes a very interesting evening, on Monday the 7th with lectures by Clive Hamilton and Oliver Morton "the time of controversies".
Those lectures will complete a day devoted to the "Controversies mapping award' that mobilizes the consortium called...
July 23, 2013
The paper book is now on sale in the US.
The digital platform is now fully active (except for the fourth column -contribution- coming soon).
In addition to the text, the platform includes the index/glossary/vocabulary, a large documentation including of course what is traditionally present in footnotes (quotations and bibliographies) but vastly augmented by films, artist galleries, special works commissioned for the platform and of...
July 23, 2013
Miller, A. S. 2013 Speculative Grace. Bruno Latour and Object Oriented Theology (foreword by Levi R. Bryant), new York: Fordham University Press.
Although this short book deals with theology, it is, in effect a quite remarquable presentation of BL's metaphysics from Irreduction to more recent analysis of religious speech act.
June 25, 2013
Translated by Julie Rose and published by Polity, this book explores through a specific type of writing, the conditions of felicity - and of infecility - of religion speech act. It is part of the larger inquiry on modes of existence.
June 25, 2013
The French paper version of the inquiry has been printed and has "hit the stores" in september 2012. The paper and digital version of the English edition will be released during the summer 2013 at the same time.
Face to face meeting have been held in French for the whole year 2012-2013 feeding the content already.
A first "diplomatic encounter" meeting has been held in Weimar around the beings of fiction in June.
You may want to follow the twitter feed @AIMEproject
The...
June 9, 2013
The 5th of June in Bergen Bruno Latour has received the Holberg Memorial International Prize during a ceremony presided by the Minister of Education.
April 3, 2013
What is SPEAP for ?
SPEAP is a post-graduate programme aimed at young international professionals. It seeks to recruit academics, social scientists, artists (in the broadest possible meaning, including designers and architects), as well as professionals working in the arts and politics. online application procedure. Deadline 22nd of April.
March 13, 2013
Founded in 2004, The Holberg Prize can be and has been compared to the Nobel Prize of humanities, arts, social sciences and theology. Bruno Latour is the 10th recipient and the second French. It's the second time a specialist of 'science studies' receives the award since Ian Hacking in 2009. The announcement may be watched on the Holberg Memorial Prize site.
March 2, 2013
Bruno Latour has given the six Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion for 2013, under the title: Facing Gaia, Six Lectures on the Political Theology of Nature.
Those six lectures in ‘natural religion’ explore what it could mean to live at the epoch of the Anthropocene when what was until now a mere décor for human history is becoming the principal actor. They confront head on the controversial figure of Gaia, that is, the Earth understood not as system but as what has a history, what mobilizes everything in the same geostory. Gaia is not Nature, nor is it a deity. In...
October 29, 2012
In the framework of the Gifford Lectures, BL will give six lectures on what the new entity called Gaia - a complex mixture of mythical, spiritual and scientific characters - does to the political philosophy of nature and how its strange set of characters could shift the conversation of "science and religion" toward new territory.
August 30, 2012
The French paper version of the inquiry has been printed and has "hit the stores" in september 2012. The paper and digital version of the English edition will be released during the summer 2013. You may want to follow the twitter feed @AIMEproject
The augmented publication with the full glossary, footnotes, associated documents and pdfs will begin to be accessible in the French version about the same date.
For a presentation in English of the project, see the video on the link ...
March 26, 2012
Organized by Gilles Verniers from Sciences Po, Delhi, a workshop has assembled around 20 students from India around the mapping controversies principles with lectures in the morning and practical exercises in the afternoon led by Pierre Jullian de la Fuente from the Sciences Po médialab and hosted by professor Srinivasan director of the Divecha Centre for Climate Change.
December 19, 2011
Founded on initiative of Bruno Latour at Sciences Po in 2010, and inspired by the pragmatist tradition (Dewey, James, Lippmann and others), SPEAP is a multidisciplinary programme for scientific, artistic and pedagogical experimentation. Here, young professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds bring their knowledge and methods to bear on concrete societal and political issues, put their convictions to the test through exchange, inquiry, workshops, real-world issues, and think through the consequences of their interventions. SPEAP’s aim is to collectively observe, explain, and explore...
December 13, 2011
(P-158) The more manipulations the better A note for a book edited by Catelijne Coopmans, Michael Lynch, Janet Vertesi & Steve Woolgar, NEW REPRESENTATION IN SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE.
(124) « Waiting for Gaia. Composing the common world through art and politics », a lecture at the French Institute for the lauching of SPEAP in London, November 2011.
(107) edited and shortened version “Love your monsters” in...
October 27, 2011
Translated from Danish a book on BL's work insisting especially on the different areas of research and followed by an interview.
October 26, 2011
This book offers a rather complete view of BL's work with special emphasis on the authors and sources of many of BL's concepts..
October 24, 2011
An anthropology of the Moderns
The history of modernity is based on the shared feeling that there exists an arrow of time that thrusts forward, thus defining a front line that differentiates an archaic past from a more advanced future —good or bad depending on the versions. This moving frontier is largely based on a certain idea of scientific inquiry which may be summed up by the sentence: “yesterday we were still mixing up our ideas about the world and what the world is really like, tomorrow we will no longer confuse these, we will know for sure the...
October 8, 2011
“The Whole is Always Smaller Than Its Parts” —How Digital Navigation May Modify Social Theory (with Pablo Jensen, Tommaso Venturini, Sébastian Grauwin and Dominique Boullier).
In this paper we argue that one has the social theory of its datascapes. When it is impossible, or cumbersome, or simply slow to assemble and to navigate through lengthy profiles for each item, it makes sense to treat data (no matter what sort of human or non-human entity it comes from) by defining two levels: one for the element, the other for the aggregates. But when it is feasible to provide, for each item...
October 8, 2011
Blok, Anders and Jensen Torben Elgaard (2011) Bruno Latour Hybrid thoughts in a hybrid world, London, Routledge a translation of their earlier work in Danish.
September 8, 2011
Bruno Latour has been awarded a grant from The European Research Council (Erc-Senior) for an Inquiry Into Modes Of Existence (Aime) for the period 2011-2014.
This project crossing anthropology and pragmatist philosophy will use an original digital set up to give a positive meaning to the claim that "we have never been modern" allowing for a collective negotiation over the meanings of the various modes of existence uncovered in the course of European history.
July 26, 2011
The official application period has begun for the Masters in Arts & Politiques from Sceinces Po, Paris. Please visit the website for detials. Site de SPEAP
July 26, 2011
Nam June Paik Art Center Prize, an international yearly award, has been awarded to Bruno Latour, 2010, in Seoul. Visit: Nam June Paik Art Center for more details.
