This September occasion is aimed at convening a group of remarkable scholars from across the disciplines—philosophy, history, ethnography, anthropology, sociology, colonial and indigenous studies, history of architecture, history of art, history of science, medicine, technology/STS, theater, and environmental studies—to see how we think back, and ahead, with the arc of Bruno Latour’s work.
The venue for the first day of the symposium is the Harvard Humanities Center, at 12 Quincy Street in Harvard Square; the venue for the second day is the MIT Media Lab, at 75 Amherst Street in Cambridge. A detailed program is provided below.
–Peter Galison
Thinking After Latour
Session 1 (Friday Morning, Harvard): Contexts and Fields
“We have always been Modern! But you haven’t.”
Projit Mukharji
9:30AM–10:15AM
“How to situate ourselves ‘after Bruno’?”
Isabelle Stengers
10:15AM–11:00AM
“A Serious Man”
Steven Shapin
11:00AM– 11:45AM
“Bruno Latour for Architects and Urbanists: The Reasons Behind an Ambiguous Success”
Antoine Picon
11:45AM–12:30PM
Session 2 (Friday Afternoon, Harvard): Environment: Lab & Beyond Lab
“An anthropology of modernity through the nose of a dog”
Hélène Mialet
2:00PM–2:45PM
“Thinking with Hybrids: Pathogens, Disease, History, Coloniality”
Amit Prasad
2:45PM–3:30PM
“What’s in it for the Algae?”
Leah Aronowsky
3:30PM–4:15PM
“Staging Sensitivity: Latour and the Strategies of Global Climate Science”
Deborah Coen
4:15PM–5:00PM
Session 3 (Saturday Morning, MIT) : Gaia without Purity
“Thinking with theatre: Latour on stage and the metamorphoses of Gaia”
Frédérique Aït-Touati
9:30AM–10:15AM
“Humans vs. Earthbound: Territory, Dwelling, and Scientists at War in Latour’s Gaia”
Paul Edwards
10:15AM–11:00AM
“Form in critical zones: about the fragmented porosity project”
Anna Tsing
11:00AM– 11:45AM
“Applying Actor Network Theory to Anti-Science: Does It Work, or Not?”
Naomi Oreskes
11:45AM–12:30PM
Session 4 (Saturday Afternoon, MIT): Methods: Natural Science–Social Science–Arts
“Latour and Sociology”
Michèle Lamont
2:00PM–2:45PM
“2Q23: Latour’s Double Visions”
Stefan Helmreich
2:45PM–3:30PM
“Crunchy Concepts, Slippery Angels; Thinking with Art after Latour”
Caroline Jones
3:30PM–4:15PM
“Sea of Ice”
Joseph Koerner
4:15PM–5:00PM