Production : compagnie Zone Critique. What I’m suggesting here is what if these photos–“Earthrise,” “The Blue Marble,” and their like, as exquisite as they are–didn’t mark change but continuity? Film screening of the play »Moving Earths« by Bruno Latour, Frédérique Aït Touati and Zone Critique in the Livestream of the ZKM on May 23, 20 at 22:15 pm CEST. This perception of our home as a globe in space has paralleled our striving for universals in political life and the globalization of the economy. Zone Critique – Frédérique Aït-Touati « Nous ne sommes pas le nombre que nous croyions être » – relire Les Microbes, guerre et paix, de Bruno Latour – AOC media Fictions of the Cosmos: Science and Literature in the Seventeenth Century Récits de la Terre In the critical zone, we must maintain what we have ... A critique of how science is … Latour’s critical zone is an attempt to “triangulate” the local and global in a different way–a way that faces climate deterioration full on. As part of the exhibition Critical Zones at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, which he curated, Bruno Latour talks about the critical zone, this unsuspected territory that we must get to know and inhabit, in order to finally terrestrialize ourselves. In an instant, all wars became civil wars, all fights fights between family, and the necessity of caring for our shared environment a shattering revelation. The cave image works as commentary on Western thought, but a cave, enclosed and underground, obscured more by an absence of light than by apparent complexity, isn’t really what Latour offers as an alternative to the image of the globe. The critical zone consists of “nothing but the activity of the living.” It’s sensitive, fragile, far from equilibrium, and hard to know. The jury’s always out–it’s almost never in, come to think of it. At times I wonder if it hasn’t already happened, and that the many attempts at articulation are merely part of the vast apparatus of habit catching up to minds and hearts. Since the USIH bloggers write under our real names, we would prefer that our commenters also identify themselves by their real name. We ask that those who participate in the discussions generated in the Comments section do so with the same decorum as they would in any other academic setting or context. As a scholar trained in intellectual history exploring the environmental humanities, I’ve written numerous sentences over the years about the need to reorganize perception, to provide a new account of reality, a new imaginary, etc. I’m glad this post sparked some thinking about your own task. First there was “the medieval notion,” which placed men at the center of the universe. https://s-usih.org/2021/01/usih2021-in-dialogue-the-politics-of-black-freedom/ It is as if we’d actually lived Plato’s myth and exited the cave into an ether of pristine abstraction and objectivity. Having lived through that entire period, my hunch is that the impact of the earth photos of the late 1960s and the 1970s stemmed from their novelty. Most of all, though, it’s relatively small and thin—”tiny, tiny, tiny,” “a varnish, really”—yet containing “everything we care for, everything we have ever encountered.”, A view of Earth from 36,000 nautical miles away as photographed on May 18, 1969, from the Apollo 10 spacecraft during its trans-lunar journey toward the moon. (all published by the MIT Press). Macleish’s early interpretation of the “Big Blue Marble” has been somewhat uncritically adopted by commentators looking back at this historic moment. Upon rereading the piece, though, I’m struck as I was the first time by the way in which MacLeish used “solidarity” as a key term in his response to the photos. His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith. The story, perhaps a legend, goes something like this: a handful of photographs of the earth in space, supplied by the Apollo missions during the nineteen-sixties and early seventies, clarified for humankind the wholeness and lonely fragility of our planet. Seeing this from outside, however, extracts us from it, Latour argues. The jury is still out. I suppose that’s part of what it means to live in the critical zone. As an alternative, Latour invites his audience to join him back inside “caveland,” where it’s dark, wet, complex, and confusing. Image credit: NASA. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Rather, he describes our home as a “critical zone,” a thin layer of sun-energized life atop the compressed remnants of the past. These questions are among several I took from viewing “Inside,” a recent lecture by Bruno Latour, available on Youtube. Marqué par Heimat, la série télévisée d’Edgar Reitz, Bruno Latour a depuis adopté ce mot qui jamais n’oblige à l’identité ou exigerait des liens du sang.« Heimat » c’est plutôt un opérateur qui permet de saisir à nouveau, existentiellement, pour soi ou pour les autres, ce que veut dire appartenir à un lieu concret. Depuis une dizaine d’année, le philosophe Bruno Latour et Frédérique Aït-Touati s’associent pour des projets au croisement de la recherche et du théâtre. Photo credit: NASA. Bruno Latour* Sciences Po, 27 Rue Guillaume, Paris 07, France Abstract The relatively new concept of “critical zones”, much like that of the “Anthropocene”, signals an interesting twist in the ways to approach life-sustaining systems on Earth and thus a new way to understand the prefix “geo” in geopolitics. Musique : Eric Broitmann. Images of the earth in space are only the most prominent example of an insistence on perceiving ourselves from outside the world. Bruno Latour (/ l ə ˈ t ʊər /; French: ; born 22 June 1947) is a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist. Bruno Latour, a philosopher and anthropologist, is the author of We Have Never Been Modern, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, Facing Gaia, Down to Earth, and many other books.He coedited (with Peter Weibel) the previous ZKM volumes Making Things Public, ICONOCLASH, and Reset Modernity! “Men’s conception of themselves and each other has always depended on their notion of the earth,” he begins. They opened a window of opportunity for reconceptualizing the vulnerability of the planet to destructive wars and ecological disasters. Can we provide an answer to our current disorientation–an alternative notion, to use MacLeish’s word–that isn’t so strange as to disorient ourselves all the more? At the scale of the usual planetary view, the thin surface of the critical zone is barely visible, it being only a few kilometers up and a few kilometers down at most. Vidéo et lumières : Patrick Laffont De Lojo. Can we provide an answer to our current disorientation–an alternative notion, to use MacLeish’s word–that isn’t so strange as to disorient ourselves all the more? Mais dans Inside il est pris dans un sens en relation avec la couche superficielle de la terre à savoir ces quelques Later there was “the nuclear notion,” which removed them from that center and made them “helpless victims in a senseless farce.” But now, with this photograph, we’d seen earth for the first time “from the depths of space,” “whole and beautiful and round and small.” Perhaps now a new notion of the earth, and of ourselves, was possible, and we could see ourselves “together, brothers on that that bright loveliness in the eternal cold.” Senselessness, might be exchanged for solidarity, presumably, and “man may at last become himself.”, The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometres (18,000 mi). Tags: Bruno Latour, cosmology, critical zone, globalization. The Apollo photos do capture something of this in the earth’s surface glow, a vibrancy indicating organization and life. On Christmas Day, 1968, the day after “Earthrise” was first published, poet and writer Archibald MacLeish offered an appreciation which was published on the front page of the Times. The critical zone is an attempt to overcome this paradox. Meanwhile the denial of the climate crisis, a crucial intellectual component to this movement, allows the new localists to blame the failures of the global on those outside the walls. Can epistemology be rebuilt from the ground up? Even a young kid drawing his or her house is trying to represent something they are actually dwelling in, and is usually capable also of explaining the necessary distinctions. At times I wonder if it hasn’t already happened, and that the many attempts at articulation are merely part of the vast apparatus of habit catching up to minds and hearts. I think that that has something laterally bonding and non-dualistic about it, and in that sense it’s not impossible that MacLeish would have accepted concurrent modes too. The Apollo photos do capture something of this in the earth’s surface glow, a vibrancy indicating organization and life. Plenty of people at the time saw the move toward multiplicity as a tragedy, a loss, a shattering of “coherence” that once presumably characterized the undergraduate course of study. Image Credit: NASA. Images of the earth in space are only the most prominent example of an insistence on perceiving ourselves from outside the world. The photo is displayed here in its original orientation, though it is more commonly viewed with the lunar surface at the bottom of the photo. Editors Bruno Latour Bruno Latour, a philosopher and anthropologist, is the author of We Have Never Been Modern, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, Facing Gaia, Down to Earth, and many other books.He coedited (with Peter Weibel) the previous ZKM volumes Making Things Public, ICONOCLASH, and Reset Modernity! Instead of “medieval” and “nuclear,” Latour uses the terms “local” and “global.” Whereas MacLeish presents a linear march forward, one notion replacing the one before, Latour recognizes the local and the global as concurrent modes. Latour’s critical zone is an attempt to “triangulate” the local and global in a different way–a way that faces climate deterioration full on. Image credit: NASA. A version of this post appears at the Society for US Intellectual History blog. Annoying questions! This is especially impressive because I also often wonder, can this actually happen? The photo provided “a unifying expression of vulnerability,” said the story in The Washington Post. Watching and listening, I was reminded of the outdoor installations I saw last year at the AURORA exhibit in downtown Dallas, which I wrote about here on the blog. I especially appreciated the good sense in your last sentence: “More generally, I have no doubt that epistemological re-orientations inspired by such imagery will occur; I would caution, however, that not everyone will embrace or adopt the new perspectives and not all new perspectives will align with each other.”. He is especially known for his work in the field of science and technology studies (STS). Latour attributes much of that moment to the fact that we find ourselves disoriented in time and space, due largely to a misleading cosmology. The story is often accompanied by some version of this flourish: Isn’t it ironic that these very images that made us newly reverent for the environment came from the space program, which the environmentalists of the time had disparaged? More generally, I have no doubt that epistemological re-orientations inspired by such imagery will occur; I would caution, however, that not everyone will embrace or adopt the new perspectives and not all new perspectives will align with each other. The jury’s always out–it’s almost never in, come to think of it, living inside the critical zone. Bruno Latour s’y emploie ici en plaçant le climat au cœur d’une guerre géopolitique mondiale en cours, fruit d’une « lutte des classes géosociales ». “Men’s conception of themselves and each other has always depended on their notion of the earth,” he begins. Later there was “the nuclear notion,” which removed them from that center and made them “helpless victims in a senseless farce.” But now, with this photograph, we’d seen earth for the first time “from the depths of space,” “whole and beautiful and round and small.” Perhaps now a new notion of the earth, and of ourselves, was possible, and we could see ourselves “together, brothers on that that bright loveliness in the eternal cold.” Senselessness, might be exchanged for solidarity, presumably, and “man may at last become himself.”. The opinions expressed on the blog are strictly those of the individual writers and do not represent those of the Society or of the writers’ employers. By Bruno Latour, the term is extended to a critical, participatory relationship to our living world, whose threatened state has reached an unprecedented scale in the Earth's now man-made history. The strength of the critical zone as a representation, as Latour himself admits, is that it foregrounds “processes and transformation.” That seems right. #USIH, New Book: “The Sower and the Seer: Perspectives on the Intellectual History of the American Midwest” @WisHistory https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/pdfs/WHS_Spring_2021_Cat_web.pdf #twitterstorians #usih @NewberryLibrary @MidWestMuseums @MidwestRootsLLC @OhioHistory @The_OAH @WhaHistory @BorderlandsHist @andrew_seal, Great essay by @etshermer on "Leo Ribuffo and 'the “Paranoid Style' in American (Intellectual) Politics.” #USIH https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/ps2021-2, Powerful stuff from @JeremiSuri: "Elite Universities Have Promoted Destructive Republican Leaders." We welcome suggestions for corrections to any of our posts. Annoying questions! Bruno Latour s’y emploie ici en plaçant le climat au cœur d’une guerre géopolitique mondiale en cours, fruit d’une « lutte des classes géosociales ». Dans le cadre de l'exposition Critical Zones au ZKM de Karlsruhe en Allemagne, dont il a assuré le commissariat, Bruno Latour vient nous parler de la zone critique, ce territoire insoupçonné que l'on doit apprendre à connaître et habiter, pour enfin se terrestrialiser. The strength of the critical zone as a representation, as Latour himself admits, is that it foregrounds “processes and transformation.” That seems right. Although shorn of patriarchal language and modernist despair, Latour’s scheme is formally similar. As a scholar trained in intellectual history exploring the environmental humanities, I’ve written numerous sentences over the years about the need to reorganize perception, to provide a new account of reality, a new imaginary, etc. ( Log Out /  The Visualization of the Critical Zone. His brief column may indeed be the source of the “Earthrise” legend, or in any case, it’s first telling. Une recherche d’Alexandra Arènes (en cours) avec Bruno Latour et le réseau OZCAR (Observatoires de la Zone Critique) coordonné par Jérôme Gaillardet, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. He is especially known for his work in the field of science and technology studies (STS). Can epistemology be rebuilt from the ground up? Meanwhile the denial of the climate crisis, a crucial intellectual component to this movement, allows the new localists to blame the failures of the global on those outside the walls. It … Intellectual History. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. It’s true that the search for universals in politics finds its reflection in the culture-flattening globalization of economics, but the existence of these images is, I’d argue, something valuable: a permanent critique of the kind of zero-sum, tribally exclusive, and narrow-gauge thinking that assumes that some kind of wall between countries, ethnic groups, or religions will solve globally mobile challenges to do with air, water, and human safety. It shows Africa, Antarctica, and the Arabian Peninsula. The Society for U.S. Ils développent ensemble au sein de la compagnie Zone Critique différentes formes d’écriture théâtrale et performative : des conférences - As our primary goal is to stimulate and engage in fruitful and productive discussion, ad hominem attacks (personal or professional), unnecessary insults, and/or mean-spiritedness have no place in the USIH Blog’s Comments section. Link: http://ga.geidai.ac.jp/en/indepth/bruno2018en/, On Christmas Day, 1968, the day after “Earthrise” was first published, poet and writer Archibald MacLeish offered an appreciation which was published on the front page of the Times. In an instant, all wars became civil wars, all fights fights between family, and the necessity of caring for our shared environment a shattering revelation. The lecture is a collaboration with some artists and designers whose projected 3-D images surround Latour on the stage as he speaks, sometimes obscuring him completely. Words like “chaos,” “disorder,” “disarray,” “confusion,” appear not just in the primary sources, not just in the polemics of higher education administrators/commentators writing during this time, but persist in many historians’ characterizations of the moment. Rather, he describes our home as a “critical zone,” a thin layer of sun-energized life atop the compressed remnants of the past. Inside s’intéresse par exemple à la « zone critique », cette mince surface où l’air, le sol, le sous-sol et le monde du vivant interagissent. Les sciences de la Zone Critique n’ont pas les mêmes fonctions politiques que celles des autres sciences naturelles 18. The story is often accompanied by some version of this flourish: Isn’t it ironic that these very images that made us newly reverent for the environment came from the space program, which the environmentalists of the time had disparaged? So my current task is finding all kinds of other words to describe what happened to the undergraduate curriculum that are descriptive but not tinged with disapproval — “multiplicitous,” “pluralizing,” “ramifying,” etc. It isn’t easy, because the default view of the period is “curricular chaos,” but that’s just one perspective among many, just as Macleish’s read of that photo was one perspective among many. The unspoken message being, of course, good thing we didn’t listen to them! Not long ago I reviewed a book that dealt with this issue: Neil Maher, Apollo in the Age of Aquarius (Reviews in American History, June 2018); while I cannot recommend the book with overall enthusiasm, its section on Whole Earth environmentalism and the public reception of NASA’s “blue marble” photo of earth in 1972 is informative. We can’t represent home and be in it simultaneously. The critical zone consists of “nothing but the activity of the living.” It’s sensitive, fragile, far from equilibrium, and hard to know. His brief column may indeed be the source of the “Earthrise” legend, or in any case, it’s first telling. The photo provided “a unifying expression of vulnerability,” said the story in The Washington Post. Ritual re-tellings came last December in news articles commemorating the fifty-year anniversary of “Earthrise,” taken by the astronauts on Apollo 8. Celebrated French philosopher Bruno Latour travels with Duke University Critical Zone scientist Daniel D. Richter, PhD to the John C. Calhoun Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) in rural South Carolina to observe how deep soil erosion gives a more nuanced view of the Anthropocene. Instead of “medieval” and “nuclear,” Latour uses the terms “local” and “global.” Whereas MacLeish presents a linear march forward, one notion replacing the one before, Latour recognizes the local and the global as concurrent modes. This is especially impressive because I also often wonder, can this actually happen? critique that was supposed to destroy it.9 If the dense and moralist cigar- smoking reactionary bourgeois can transform him- or herself into a free- floating agnostic bohemian, moving opinions,capital,andnetworksfrom He has written numerous books and articles on the anthropology of the modern world. The unspoken message being, of course, good thing we didn’t listen to them! Intellectual History, “the most environmental photograph ever taken.”, inside a kind of whirlpool, a vortex of processes in the sunshine, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. 9 mars 2020, par Sylvie Galle, par Sylvie Galle Citing the same 1968 MacLeish NYT piece that you cite here, Maher notes that indeed the early reaction to earth views from space was to call for peace and brotherhood; eventually NASA began (initially with halfhearted commitment) to incorporate environmental projects into its missions; yet it was not until Earth Day in 1990 that the blue marble image became a widespread symbol of global environmentalism. With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. Il est professeur émérite à Sciences Po Paris où il a créé il y a plus de dix ans « l’Ecole des arts politiques »… qui résume bien à la fois son enseignement et son projet de chercheur : une approche pluridisciplinaire qui se propose de réarticuler les liens entre les arts, les sciences et la p… The photo became the environmental movement’s icon, the story in The New York Times reported, “a gift of perspective at the end of a dark year.” As iconic as “Earthrise” is “The Blue Marble,” taken by Apollo 17 in 1972, which has been called “the most environmental photograph ever taken.”. I’m seeing the same thing in the historiography of higher education when it comes to things like the introduction of the elective system, the utilitarian rationale behind the land grants, the professionalization of the professoriate, etc., and how all these have impacted the undergraduate curriculum. Unfortunately the novelty effect ran its course; certain constituencies have definitely altered their views based on the small-isolated-planet imagery (or in some cases the imagery reinforced views they had already adopted); yet other persons or groups soon forgot the message; and, of course, organized push back from ideological or economic agents have helped to close that window of opportunity. In summarizing Latour, I certainly may have over-simplified his thinking–I hope readers will be inspired to go to the source and check out his lecture, “Inside.” Martin, it’s clear you see what Latour is getting at, and I can’t disagree–or imagine Latour could, either–with your point about the value of representations as critique. Yes, it makes sense to intervene on that point. Bruno Latour, sociologue, anthropologue et philosophe des sciences est une figure majeure du monde intellectuel Français et international. Most of all, though, it’s relatively small and thin—”tiny, tiny, tiny,” “a varnish, really”—yet containing “everything we care for, everything we have ever encountered.”. The photo became the environmental movement’s icon, the story in The New York Times reported, “a gift of perspective at the end of a dark year.” As iconic as “Earthrise” is “The Blue Marble,” taken by Apollo 17 in 1972, which has been called “the most environmental photograph ever taken.”. The photo is displayed here in its original orientation, though it is more commonly viewed with the lunar surface at the bottom of the photo. © 2007—2021 Society for U.S. Bruno Latour (/ l ə ˈ t ʊər /; French: [latuʁ]; born 22 June 1947) is a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist. OCT.19 : Zone critique : première semaine intensive avec Bruno Latour Natasha Meyer, Bruno Latour et Didier Debaise 2 avril 2020 dans Actualité , Séance SPEAP . First there was “the medieval notion,” which placed men at the center of the universe. What I’m suggesting here is what if these photos–“Earthrise,” “The Blue Marble,” and their like, as exquisite as they are–didn’t mark change but continuity? semaine intensive 1 B Latour B Publié le 5 février 2020 à 760 × 570 dans OCT.19 : Zone critique : première semaine intensive avec Bruno Latour ← Précédent But it seeps into the language that we use to frame the past. The term »Critical Zone« is taken from the geo-sciences and describes the biochemical, fragile layer of the earth, its surface on which life is created. Article. The jury is still out. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Although shorn of patriarchal language and modernist despair, Latour’s scheme is formally similar. I read your last sentence as describing something like this in concrete terms. Zone critique est un terme utilisé par le réseau des chercheurs qui renouvellent la question du territoire en équipant des portions de sol depuis le haut de la canopée jusqu'aux roches mères de façon à faire travailler ensemble de nombreuses disciplines qui s'ignoraient quelque peu avant. Bruno Latour talks about the Calhoun CZO in Munich. So I applaud and admire the efforts of Latour and his collaborators to do just that. Co-production : Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt By inverting the globe, flattening and refolding it “like a tart,” he and his collaborators place us inside a kind of whirlpool, a vortex of processes in the sunshine, some of those processes close and moving quickly, others moving more slowly and thus harder to detect. The critical zone is an attempt to overcome this paradox. He then employs a history of thought that, while not uncontested, is still in use today. Latour’s critical zone is an attempt to “triangulate” the local and global in a different way–a way that faces climate deterioration full on. ( Log Out /  This view of the rising Earth was captured by Apollo 8 astronauts on December 24, 1968 as they came from behind the Moon after the fourth nearside orbit. It seems on the face of it an odd proposition that “We can’t represent home and be in it simultaneously.” While the status of a representation is always subject to the medium, the context, the craft or aesthetic input, and to an extent the audience, there’s no particular logical conclusion to be drawn that this means we can’t also be in that part of human life thus represented. (all published by the MIT Press). Latour and his collaborators, like the AURORA artists, seem to begin from the premise that we require radical reorientation to bring perception and experience into sync. All text (including posts, pages, and comments) posted on this blog on or after August 7, 2012, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Therefore, we reserve the right to remove any comments that contain any of the above and/or are not intended to further the discussion of the topic of the post. He then employs a history of thought that, while not uncontested, is still in use today. 08 Dec 2016 - Bruno Latour, anthropologist and philosopher of science, gave a talk on Critical Zone science … What if what is celebrated as new perspective was actually the stubborn persistence of the old? The systems theorist Gregory Bateson would likely have smiled on this conception of complexly interrelated circuits running transforms of meaning in varying spans of time. Ils développent ensemble au sein de la compagnie Zone Critique différentes formes d’écriture théâtrale et performative. There’s a nostalgia for the good old days, not just in authors of the time who were disaffected with various manifestations of modernity, but in historians who write about them — and it’s not intentional. Watching and listening, I was reminded of the outdoor installations I saw last year at the AURORA exhibit in downtown Dallas, which I wrote about here on the blog. Images et animation : Alexandra Arènes, Axelle Grégoire, Sonia Lévy. #USIH #USIH2021 #sschat #alwayslearning. We can’t represent home and be in it simultaneously. The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometres (18,000 mi).