On Bruno Latour (1947–2022): The world was his laboratory

I worked closely with him for two years, researching for the Critical Zones exhibition at ZKM Karlsruhe in 2018-2020, and he has been my mentor for my own artistic research on spaces and movement during this time.

I remember him as an incredibly kind and patient person, he took time to listen and speak with all the participants, and would try and help everyone grow. Sure, he was a great thinker, but it was his near-childlike openness and excitement that influenced me most.

Once, when I was presenting my research during our regular group meeting, he fell asleep, tired from the long journey the day before. He woke up incredibly sorry but also very happy, explaining that an idea came to him in the dream of of how to talk about point of view vs. point of life (i.e. taking a usual top-down perspective of a map vs. speaking about what each being relies upon, in order to be alive). Later, in a cafe, he took the menu and drew rough sketches on the backside of it, like some genius from a movie, explaining the idea to us.

I'll miss you, Bruno.

"We have never been modern" by Latour is one of the few books that will be more important 20 years from now that it is today.

I had the pleasure to attend one of his lectures. I still don't quite get why he didn't like Foucault, but I think his idea of the hidden mass of social life is quite enlightening. IMHO one of the most interesting french intellectual ... since Foucault. :-)

Very interesting article. I had never heard of Latour until the recent anoucement of his death. The more I read about him the more I am shocked how little he is known given the importance of his work.

That was a really good summary. It is easy to pass on the work of Latour in Anglo-American contexts since he works most ardent supporters come from departments that have a bit of an inferiority complex about their standards of scholarship, but this article does a really good job of framing his work in a more personal context of his life.

His writings are really hard to understand (tried reading Changer de société, refaire de la sociologie) and it doesn't look like he's expressing complex ideas. Anyone here actually got something tangible out of him ?

I never got much into philosophy, but a long time ago some wild chain of links brought me to this paper http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/89-CRITICAL-I... , which was so clear-eyed, well-written and just amusing I couldn't believe it came from someone with a French name. (Something mischievous in me is finding pleasure in noticing that it would probably have to be published somewhere like UnHerd or Quillette if it was written in 2022.)

Later, I was interviewed by someone working with BL for http://modesofexistence.org/ . I'm wondering what came out of this.

Very interesting article – I knew some of the books and articles, but I did not know about his (non-)position in French academia.