r/CriticalTheory • u/DonnaHarridan Graph Theoretic ANT • 3d ago
Remembering Bruno Latour
Wow gang, I can’t believe it’s been four years since Bruno Latour died of sdlgiualsdkfeihgasdfoiwukbjuchiwue (a term I’ve just now coined to refer to Latour’s own conception of his terminal illness, in precise analogy to his coinage of the term “Saodowaoth”)
He's had a great influence on my thinking, as many of you may remember. Thinking of him, and reading some of his greatest hits today. Here's a personal favorite.
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u/rumirumirumirumi 3d ago
I've enjoyed reading Latour, and we share a favorite essay! I read it in a course on conspiracy theorizing. I just reread it now and I find it even better the second time around. Thank you for sharing.
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u/Connect_Accident_567 2d ago
For me it's "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?" (Critical Inquiry, 2004). It's a strange text to love on this sub, because it turns the tools of critique back on critique itself. He noticed that the debunking moves we were trained in, like "it's all socially constructed" or "follow the hidden interests", had become the stock rhetoric of climate denial and conspiracy culture. His answer wasn't to abandon criticism but to stop treating facts as either naive or fake and start treating them as matters of concern that have to be carefully assembled and cared for.
It reads even more prophetic now than it did twenty years ago. We Have Never Been Modern gets the citations, but this short essay is the one I actually reread.
Nice tribute, and I'll be borrowing the coinage.
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u/gin_possum 1d ago
I got a copy of ‘we have never been modern’ in undergrad, and found it incomprehensible. Then I heard him lecture a couple times and it completely opened up the ideas in a totally different and more approachable way. Great to have him brought back to mind.
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u/RosalieTheDog 10h ago
I am curious of the posterity Latour will have as an author. I think what defines his texts is a kind of playful, avuncular tone of voice, without quite straying as far as Serres, while all the same echoing other voices of his generation and the one that formed him: Foucault to a lesser extent, a lot of Deleuze, De Certeau too (though does he ever cite him?), Lévi-Strauss for certain, and some strain of bonhomie French catholicism too. I think Latour is at his best when he sparred with more polemic voices, like Stengers. Did anyone read the Stengers-Latour biographical book by their editor Pignarre, and is it interesting?
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u/hopgnoom 3d ago
Great of you to think of him. And great username too. In just one paragraph what is so great about your personal favourite? I am rereading his “Where are the missing masses…”.