After Lockdown by Bruno Latour

Author:Bruno Latour [Latour, Bruno]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509550036
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2021-09-08T18:30:00+00:00

9

The unfreezing of the landscape

This change of form hinges on a simple observation: we human beings have never had the experience of encountering these ‘inert things’ that, it seems, made up the ‘material’ world. This is obvious if you live in the city, since every millimetre of your living environment has been made by human beings, your fellows; but it’s also obvious if you live in the country, since every detail of your territory is the work of a living thing – sometimes far removed in time. And this sensation of the consistency of things is true as far the critical zone extends. ‘Inert things’ only exist in a thought experiment that transports you [vous], in imagination, into a world no one has ever lived in. Hence the question: does the sensation of this obvious fact now modify your ways of being, of envisioning the future, of situating yourself in space, of understanding what you call freedom of movement?

To explore the possibility of such a transformation, it would be good to have a device that could convey these ever more concrete descriptions of the territory as seen from below. With Soheil Hajmirbaba, we tried to do this by drawing a large circle on the ground, oriented by an arrow, with a sign saying more on one side and a sign saying less on the other. Then we asked the participants to stand in the centre. Behind you, on the right hand, there’s what you depend on, what provides for you, what enables you to subsist; on the left hand, what threatens you. In the front right-hand quarter, there’s what you’ll do to maintain or improve the liveability conditions you’ve enjoyed; in the front left-hand quarter, what threatens to worsen the situation, by sterilising a bit more the living conditions of those who depend on you. It’s like a children’s game, light-hearted and a lot of fun. And yet, when you get near the middle, everyone gets a bit nervous: you have to make up your mind, and that’s the hardest thing, you reveal yourself; you’re going to talk about yourself or, better still, about what keeps you alive.

The centre of the crucible, where I timidly put my feet, is the exact intersection of a trajectory – and I’m not in the habit of thinking of myself as a vector of a trajectory – which goes from the past, all that I’ve benefited from so as to exist, to grow, sometimes without even realising it, on which I unconsciously count and which may well stop with me, through my fault, which won’t go towards the future anymore, because of all that threatens my conditions of existence, of which I was also unaware. It’s hardly surprising if I’m moved. Oh, yes, it’s extremely naive, it’s incredibly simplistic: it’s like choosing between good and evil. But that’s exactly the point: it’s a judgement that you pass in tandem with the others helping you play this game of hopscotch by answering questions about what

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