Issues with Engendering
Traduction par Stephen Muecke of ‘Troubles dans l’engendrement’, Bruno Latour interviewed by Carolina Miranda. Revue du crieur N° 14, La Découverte/Mediapart, 2019. Carolina Miranda could be a Chilean ethnologist and documentary filmmaker. They might have met on the 10th of June 2019 in Chatelperron. The form of the spoken language has been retained as much as possible. (unpublished in English but available on Academia)
CM — This time I’d like to talk to you about politics, rather than about your philosophy or anthropology. You will appreciate the importance of this, for me, coming from Latin America, especially after the publication of Down to Earth. We are all bursting with questions.
BL—How do you mean, ‘we’?
CM —Lots of people were surprised by this, your first really political book, very committed even, even left wing, and I’m acting as a go-between for a fair number of political groups, activists, not just academics. A lot of people back home are reading you in Spanish.
BL —And yet The Politics of Nature came out in 1999, and politics plays an essential role in Inquiry into the Modes of Existence. And if you type ‘politics’ into my webpage, it is the most common word after ‘science.’ Are your friends just finding out that I’m interested in politics? For thirty years I have been worried about the danger of it disappearing as a fundamental practice, and as a unique mode of expression.
CM — I know, I know. I hope we will have time to talk about it. But still, you wrote Down to Earth differently and for a different audience. And isn’t it the first time you have drawn connections in such a clear way with classical leftist ideas?
BL — They are just more explicit, and yes, in another style.
