{"id":4336,"date":"2018-12-16T15:36:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T20:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?p=4336"},"modified":"2018-12-16T15:36:43","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T20:36:43","slug":"bruno-latour-on-truth-and-praxis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/bruno-latour-on-truth-and-praxis\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruno Latour on Truth and Praxis"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe hypothesis [of this book] is that we can understand nothing about the politics of the last 50 years if we do not put the question of climate change and its denial front and center. Without the idea that we have entered into a New Climatic Regime, we cannot understand the explosion of inequalities, the scope of deregulation, the critique of globalization, or, most importantly, the panicky desire to return to the old protections of the nation-state\u2014a desire that is identified, quite inaccurately, with the \u2018rise of populism.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2013 Bruno Latour, Down to Earth\u00a0<\/em>(2018; original French edition 2017)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In his newest book, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime <\/em>(Polity 2018), Bruno Latour paints a haunting, apocalyptic portrait of our current crisis: global climate change, the product of Western exploitation of nature and colonized peoples, has created a vicious circle of growing inequality, ultranationalist isolationism, and strategic climate denial that is now being deployed tactically by the rich to protect themselves (somewhat in vain) from impending doom.<\/p>\n

We are, Latour tells us, on a Titanic\u2014that is barely an exaggeration. (21-22) The rich are pretending to deny the impending disaster so as not to alarm the popular classes and to gain advantage during the wreck. \u201c[T]he ruling classes understand that the shipwreck is certain,\u201d Latour writes; \u201cthey reserve the lifeboats for themselves and ask the orchestra to go on playing lullabies so they can take advantage of the darkness to beat their retreat before the ship\u2019s increased listing alerts the other classes!\u201d (19) The trouble is, of course, that this very strategy will ensure that no one survives the apocalypse.<\/p>\n

Latour traces the history of our crisis back to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, three forces got under way: the global rise of \u201cderegulation,\u201d or what I would call neoliberalism; an explosion in inequality; and a systematic effort at climate denial. (18) These three forces reflected what Latour calls \u201ca single historical situation: it is as though a significant segment of the ruling classes (known today rather too loosely as \u2018the elites\u2019) had concluded that the earth no longer had room enough for them and for everyone else.\u201d (1) This was the culmination of centuries of exploitation and domination of Continental Europe over its neighbors, colonies, and the Global South. It has produced a breakdown of trust and shared social life. The result is that we are now at the brink of the precipice\u2014if, that is, we have not already gone over it. The election and policies of Donald Trump are the culmination, or final realization of the endpoint of this history.<\/p>\n

Unless the West\u2014and here, Latour speaks only for Continental Europe or what he calls “Old Europe”\u2014takes responsibility, recognizes its guilt for the previous centuries of exploitation, achieves humility, and leads the way forward toward climate reason, there is no hope. \u201cWe are the ones who started it\u2014we of the Old West, and more specifically Europe,\u201d Latour emphasizes. (20) And the only way out is to \u201clearn to live with the consequences of what we have unleashed.\u201d (20)<\/p>\n

Praxis, on this account, calls for (1) recognition and confession of one\u2019s own fault (here Europe\u2019s exploitation of nature and colonies); and (2) leading by example. Telling and retelling the truth of climate change is not the solution. Imposing the facts of global warming will not help. The reason is that facts alone are not effective. They require trust first. And trust, Latour contends, has today vanished.<\/p>\n

Latour on Truth<\/h1>\n

It is here that Latour articulates his current position on facticity and truth. Whatever may have come before\u2014and Lord knows he has been accused by many for having relativized facts and truth\u2014Latour here argues that global climate change is \u201ctrue\u201d but not believed because truth requires trust.<\/p>\n

Latour argues that it all boils down to correct epistemology. A true fact cannot stand on its own, autonomously, independent of social relations, of who tells it, or finds it, or proves it\u2014and where and how it is established. There may well be facticity, but in order for facts to stick, they have to properly form part of social life. And when our shared social life has been scarred by betrayal and exploitation, it will no longer be fertile ground for the trust necessary to maintain truths.<\/p>\n

Latour summarizes, almost in the margin of his book, his epistemological position:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No attested knowledge can stand on its own, as we know very well. Facts remain robust only when they are supported by a common culture, by institutions that can be trusted, by a more or less decent public like, by more or less reliable media. (23)<\/p>\n

It is not a matter of learning how to repair cognitive deficiencies, but rather of how to live in the same world, share the same culture, face up to the same stakes, perceive a landscape that can be explored in concert. Here we find the habitual vice of epistemology, which consists in attributing to intellectual deficits something that is quite simply a deficit in shared practice. (25)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, as Latour underscores, facts do not\u00a0<\/em>\u201cstand up all by themselves,\u201d they require a \u201cshared world,\u201d and they require \u201cinstitutions\u201d and a \u201cpublic life,\u201d and they will not be believed simply by repeating them or teaching them. They require a shared practice and a shared world.<\/p>\n

Latour objects to the idea that we are living in a \u201cpost-truth politics\u201d or that the people who are ignoring global climate change are simply living in an \u201calternative reality.\u201d The problem, Latour argues, is not with them, but with \u201cus\u201d: we have so betrayed others by taking advantage of them, and exploiting them, that they have no reason to trust our social institutions anymore. By hoarding resources in order to modernize for the Western elite only, we\u2019ve stripped ourselves of a common language. \u201cBefore accusing \u2018the people\u2019 of no longer believing in anything, one ought to measure the effect of that overwhelming betrayal on people\u2019s level of trust. Trust has been abandoned along the wayside.\u201d (23)<\/p>\n

A Praxis of Penance<\/h1>\n

As a result, praxis does not call for better or more reporting, more facts, or more studies. Rather, it calls for action that addresses the deficit in trust today\u2014for acts that rebuild our shared practices and common world.<\/p>\n

The answer is not to simply reimpose the norms and institutions from the past\u2014as Steven Lukes suggested in Praxis 1\/13<\/a>. Those political and disciplinary norms\u2014from liberal tolerance to peer review\u2014went hand-in-hand, Latour would respond, with our exploitation of others. Latour does not seek a return to a past of normalized politics, but a dramatic confessional push forward.<\/p>\n

This begins, for Latour, through confession and example. In this, there is a strongly monastic dimension to his final chapters of Down to Earth<\/em>. The orientation of praxis has a distinct Christian valence. It is penitence that Latour is after.<\/p>\n