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Certain great friendships have left their mark in the annals of philosophy - and, without a doubt, the friendship of Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers is among them. Although they wrote very few texts together, their intellectual companionship lasted for over thirty years, and their respective work can be fully understood only when the many interconnections of their thought are brought to the fore.
Latour and Stengers occupy the same starting place, one which remains at the heart of their work: scientific practice, which is the pride of modernity. Why do we Moderns define ourselves as those who know, while others are condemned to be only believers? This question led Latour and Stengers to the same fundamental question: how to understand and live in what Latour calls "the new climatic regime" and what Stengers calls "catastrophic times"?
Philippe Pignarre's aim is not to try to sort out which ideas belong to whom but rather to interweave their thought even more. In so doing, he sheds new light on the origins and development of their work at the same time as he documents an exceptional intellectual adventure between two of the leading thinkers of our age.
List of contents
Introduction: Speech Impediments
1. To De-Epistemologise...
2. ...Or Disamalgamate The Sciences
3. A Brief Exercise in Empirical Philosophy
4. Sociology or Politics?
5. The Factish Gods
6. The Parliament of Things: Doing Ecology
7. Identifying Modes of Existence, Thinking With Whitehead
8. The Intrusion of Gaia
9. Conclusion: Composing a Common World...During the Meltdown
Bibliography
About the author
Philippe Pignarre is an editor and the author of many books.
Summary
Certain great friendships have left their mark in the annals of philosophy - and, without a doubt, the friendship of Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers is among them. Although they wrote very few texts together, their intellectual companionship lasted for over thirty years, and their respective work can be fully understood only when the many interconnections of their thought are brought to the fore.
Latour and Stengers occupy the same starting place, one which remains at the heart of their work: scientific practice, which is the pride of modernity. Why do we Moderns define ourselves as those who know, while others are condemned to be only believers? This question led Latour and Stengers to the same fundamental question: how to understand and live in what Latour calls "the new climatic regime" and what Stengers calls "catastrophic times"?
Philippe Pignarre's aim is not to try to sort out which ideas belong to whom but rather to interweave their thought even more. In so doing, he sheds new light on the origins and development of their work at the same time as he documents an exceptional intellectual adventure between two of the leading thinkers of our age.
Report
"The entwined, crafted textual conversations between the fast friends and sometimes wildly different allies, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers, that Pignarre gives the reader deserve close reading and passionate engagement. Pignarre's textual staging shows our muddy-footed heroes battling the dragon of Science, its propaganda and ideology, and its arrogant Moderns in order to open space for sciences with their obligations and consequences. Landing on Earth, indeed!"
Donna Haraway, University of California at Santa Cruz
"The philosophical friendship between Isabelle Stengers and the late Bruno Latour is among the most important of the past fifty years. In this stimulating new book, the historian and publisher Philippe Pignarre breaks fresh ground in exploring the parallel yet intersecting paths of these two key Francophone thinkers."
Graham Harman, Southern California Institute of Architecture
"Tackles deep questions about scientific practice and the meaning of modernity."
Nature
