Syllabus
1) Introduction 2) Michel Serres, The Natural Contract, The University of Michigan Press 1995, Ch. 1, pp. 1 – 26. 3) Ibid., Ch. 2, pp. 27 – 50. 4) Ibid., Ch. 3 (a), pp. 51 – 76. 5) Ibid., Ch. 3 (b), pp. 76 – 96. 6) Ibid., Ch. 4, pp. 97 – 124. 7) Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia. Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime, Polity Press, Cambridge 2017, Ch. 1, pp. 7 – 40. 8) Ibid., Ch. 2, pp. 41 – 74. 9) Ibid., Ch. 3, pp. 75 – 110. 10) Ibid., Ch. 4, pp. 111 – 145 11) Ibid., Ch. 5. pp. 146 – 183. 12) Ibid., Ch. 6. pp. 184 – 219. 13) Concluding Debate
Annotation
If Michel Serres and Bruno Latour are the two intellectually most challenging French philosophers of the turn of the 20th and 21st century, that is because they subvert the conventional division of the modern knowledge into Humanities and (natural) Sciences. This disposition serves them very well for tackling ecological crisis of our times. The reading of The Natural Contract (1995, 1992) by Serres and Facing Gaia (2017, 2015) by Latour will show not only their common ground but also their differences.
Whereas Serres conceives the global warming and its disastrous consequences as a wake-up call to re-formulate the relationship between humankind and the Earth. Latour’s actor-network-theory tries to subvert such a dichotomy by tracing concrete assemblages in which humans and non-humans always combine in a way that makes it impossible to put them into two separated realms.
The ANT undermines not only the Nature / Culture and Subject / Object dichotomies, but also the prioritization of “wholes” over “parts” of which Serres is guilty in Latour’s eyes. But what if Serres’ residual dualism and globalism are actually more suitable for the present ecological challenge than Latour’s network localism?