November 30, 2016 - 19:01
How to respond to news about CO2?
challenges= our presence modified old fact, drama accomplished
modernism (responsibility, long history, impotent)
scientists entangled historical drama
distant place, objective facts
facts, news, stories, alarms mixed up
economics to ecology?
earth as agent, enmeshed living organisms
subjects, shared agency/lost autonomy
It seems that Latour is claiming that the unprecedented relationship modern people share with the earth calls for a new kind of frame with which to conceptualize and discuss it. He writes that modernism lacks the repertoire of emotions to understand a relationship with the planet. We are overwhelmed by the thought of our agency in relationship to something ancient. The traditional mode of speaking about the earth in "objective" terms is no longer sufficient since humans have a direct effect on what would have originally been looked at as objective "facts of the planet". Both the earth and humans are "subjective" angents in the sense that it and we have a profound effect on each others fates while not having complete mastery of our own.
I am curious about how Latour's argument compares to the idea we discussed in class that it doesn't make sense to conceive of humans as separate from the environment. By giving the earth agency is Latour separating it from humans? At the same time making it "subjective" once again connects it to us as he argues that neither the earth nor humans have a separate autonomy.