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Earthbound Subjectivities: From Nature to Non-Human Subjectivities in Bruno Latour

par Debaise, Didier
Référence Planet Uncanny: Redistributing Subjectivities across Technology, Nature, and Society (04-12-2025: Vienne)
Publication Non publié, 2025-12-04

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

I would like to take up for myself a proposition formulated very early by Latour:»Subjectivity, corporeality are no more a property of humans, of individuals, of inten-tional subjects, than being an external reality is a property of nature« (Latour,1999:23). I would like to adopt this proposition both as a guide for thinking throughLatour’s work and as the crystallization of a series of transformations in contemporarythought. I would like to do so along three axes which will structure my presentation.First, I will explore the critiques that have been addressed to the concept of Nature,leading to its radical questioning. If Latour’s call for a reflection on non-human sub-jectivities is so recurrent, it is because he sees in it a possibility of escaping the Mod-ern concept of nature. Consequently, it will be necessary to highlight the genesis andthe features of this vision of nature, along with its limits. What are the characteristicsof this Modern nature? What necessities did it address? In what way does the »NewClimatic Regime« compel us to let go of this concept of nature? In a first step, then,I want to bring out the diagnosis that Latour offers, particularly with the help ofWhitehead, regarding the modern concept of nature. Next, the notion of »non-hu-man subjectivities« arises to occupy the place that nature was supposed to hold. Iwould therefore try to identify the characteristics of this notion of subjectivity. Is itsimply an extension of human subjectivities? Is it a projection of those subjectivitiesonto other kinds of realities—physical, biological, technical—or does it require us tocompletely refound the very notion of subjectivity? Finally, in his most recent works, Latour calls for a reflection on the »terrestrial« and even goes so far as to oppose twocosmologies: the cosmology of the Moderns, entirely organized around the notion ofnature, and a cosmology in the making, still to be invented, a cosmology of the ter-restrials.These three aspects form the axes of what could be called a reflection on terrestrialsubjectivities, for which it would be necessary to establish the genesis and evaluate the current relevance.