Quick Update & Facing Gaia

Happy 2018 everyone!

I wanted to post a quick update to say that the development of this site has been a lot slower than I had hoped, principally due to the time constraints of finishing a dissertation and working. As I move back into working more with Latour’s ideas about the Earthbound people and the Anthropocene in his book Facing Gaia, which built on his earlier Gifford Lectures. Latour develops these ideas in his arguments in Lectures 5-8 in particular, where he looks more closely at the idea of a people of Gaia or an Earthbound people.

For those not already familiar with this work, below is a summary of the main contents of the book, and part of the publisher’s promo.

This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name ‘Gaia’ for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence.

In this series of lectures on ‘natural religion,’ Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime.

Introduction

First Lecture: On the Instability of the (Notion of) Nature

A mutation of the relation to the world • Four ways to be driven crazy by ecology • The instability of the nature/culture relation • The invocation of human nature • The recourse to the “natural world” • On a great service rendered by the pseudo-controversy over the climate • “Go tell your masters that the scientists are on the warpath!” • In which we seek to pass from “nature” to the world • How to face up

Second Lecture: How Not to (De-)Animate Nature

Disturbing “truths” • Describing in order to warn • In which we concentrate on agency • On the difficulty of distinguishing between humans and nonhumans • “And yet it moves!” • A new version of natural law • On an unfortunate tendency to confuse cause and creation • Toward a nature that would no longer be a religion?

Third Lecture: Gaia, a (Finally Secular) Figure for Nature

Galileo, Lovelock: Two symmetrical discoveries • Gaia, an exceedingly treacherous mythical name for a scientific theory • A parallel with Pasteur’s microbes • Lovelock too makes micro-actors proliferate • How to avoid the idea of a system? • Organisms make their own environment, they do not adapt to it • On a slight complication of Darwinism • Space, an offspring of history

Fourth Lecture: The Anthropocene and the Destruction of (the Image of) the Globe

The Anthropocene: an innovation • Mente et Malleo • A debatable term for an uncertain epoch • An ideal opportunity to disaggregate the figures of Man and Nature • Sloterdijk or the theological origin of the image of the Sphere • Confusion between Science and the Globe • Tyrrell against Lovelock • Feedback loops do not draw a Globe • Finally, a different principle of composition • Melancholia, or the end of the Globe

Fifth Lecture: How to Convene the Various Peoples (of Nature)?

Two Leviathans, two cosmologies • How to avoid war between the gods? • A perilous diplomatic project • The impossible convocation of a “people of nature” • How to give negotiation a chance? • On the conflict between science and religion • Uncertainty about the meaning of the word “end” • Comparing collectives in combat • Doing without any natural religion

Sixth Lecture: How (Not) to Put an End to the End of Times?

The fateful date of 1610 • Stephen Toulmin and the scientific counter-revolution • In search of the religious origin of “disinhibition” • The strange project of achieving Paradise on Earth • Eric Voegelin and the avatars of Gnosticism • On an apocalyptic origin of climate skepticism • From the religious to the terrestrial by way of the secular • A “people of Gaia”? • How to respond when accused of producing “apocalyptic discourse”

Seventh Lecture: The States (of Nature) between War and Peace

The “Great Enclosure” of Caspar David Friedrich • The end of the State of Nature • On the proper dosage of Carl Schmitt • “We seek to understand the normative order of the earth” • on the difference between war and police work • How to turn around and face Gaia? • Human versus Earthbound • Learning to identify the struggling territories

Eighth Lecture: How to Govern Struggling (Natural) Territories?

In the Theater of Negotiations, Les Amandiers, May 2015 • Learning to meet without a higher arbiter • Extension of the Conference of the Parties to Nonhumans • Multiplication of the parties involved • Mapping the critical zones • Rediscovering the meaning of the State • Laudato Si’ • Finally, facing Gaia • “Earth, earth!”