Bruno Latour

French philosopher / sociologist of science (1947–2022). Foundational figure in actor-network theory; author of We Have Never Been Modern (1991), Reassembling the Social (2005), An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (2013), and many other works on the symmetrisation of human and non-human "actants." Morin reads Latour's epistemological-shift autobiography in "Biography of an Inquiry" (2013) as a parallel to Nancy's redeployment of conatus as engagement.

Key Points

  • The Gothenburg rock-touching scene ("Biography of an Inquiry," Social Studies of Science 43.2 [2013]: 297–8): Latour recounts being on a Swedish island in August, "stretched out in the sun . . . I couldn't stop running my fingers over the rough red surface of the rocks as if to find out whether Whitehead could have been right." The catalyst was Isabelle Stengers relaying Whitehead's claim about "the risk taken by rocks — yes, rocks — in order to keep on existing" (most likely The Concept of Nature 167, the Cleopatra's Needle passage).
  • Conclusion of the scene: "There exists a completely autonomous mode of existence that is very inadequately encompassed by the notions of nature, material world, exteriority, object. This world shares one crucial feature with all the others: the risk taken in order to keep on existing. Thus the hiatus that I had detected very early on . . . was here as well, here in the first place, in the apparent continuity of being-here."
  • The hiatus: even inert beings — apparently effortless continuants — contain a hiatus between iterations; persistence is "an inventive act of repossession by the actor equipped with his own micromethods." Nancy reads this hiatus as écart / spacing (per Morin Ch 6 §3).
  • Actor-network theory: human and non-human actants are placed on a symmetrical footing for analytic purposes — this is the framework against which Morin reads the partes extra partes analogue.

Connections

  • parallels jean-luc-nancy's conatus-as-engagement reading — Latour's "risk to keep on existing" + Stengers / Whitehead chain is the contemporary anthropological-philosophical anchor for Nancy's engagement.
  • parallels tim-ingold's fetch-a-stone exercise — same gesture (touching the rock, the epistemological shift that ensues).
  • contrasted with graham-harman's OOO — Latour's actants are relational through-and-through; Harman's objects withdraw.
  • cited by jane-bennett — vitalist materialism takes Latour's actants as one of its anchors.

Open Questions

  • Is Latour's "hiatus" identical to Nancy's écart or only structurally analogous? Morin reads the parallel as illuminating but not as identity.
  • Did Latour's mature modes of existence framework (2013) move beyond actor-network theory toward something closer to Nancean ontology? The "Biography" essay is a late-career retrospective; the trajectory is worth tracking.

Sources