In 2009, the name “Bruno Latour” began appearing in book searches not as the author, but instead as the subject. I suppose that year marked the moment in which Latour became more widely recognized as a major philosophical figure in many Western countries. In the tabs below, I have listed those books I found to be most helpful when trying to deepen my own understanding of Latour’s life and ideas.
Brett Merritt
Prototyping alternative futures for science education
Allies
Books
- Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time
- Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics
- Bruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a Hybrid World
- Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Philosophy
- Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political
- Bruno Latour in Pieces: An Intellectual Biography
- Key Contemporary Thinkers: Bruno Latour
- Latour and the Humanities
- Latour for Architects
- Latour-Stengers: An Entangled Flight
- The Political Theology of Bruno Latour
Author: Michel Serres with Bruno Latour
Translated by: Roxanne Lapidus
Publisher: University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, USA)
Date: 1995
Author: Graham Harman
Publisher: re.press (Melbourne, Australia)
Date: 2009
Authors: Anders Blok & Elgaard Jensen Torben
Publisher: Routledge (London/New York)
Date: 2011
Author: Adam S. Miller
Publisher: Fordham University Press (New York)
Date: 2013
Author: Graham Harman
Publisher: Pluto Press (London)
Date: 2014
Author: Henning Schmidgen
Translated by: Gloria Custance
Publisher: Fordham University Press (USA)
Date: 2015
Author: Gerard de Vries
Publisher: Polity Press (Cambridge, UK)
Date: 2016
Edited by: Rita Felski & Stephen Muecke
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, USA)
Date: 2020
Author: Albana Yaneva
Publisher: Routledge (London)
Date: 2022
Author: Philippe Pignarre
Translated by: Stephen Muecke
Publisher: Polity Press (Cambridge, UK)
Date: 2023
Full Title: The Political Theology of Bruno Latour: Globalization, Secularization and the Environmental Crisis
Author: Tim Howles
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh, UK)
Date: Forthcoming (2023?)
Podcasts
Sadly, there are no podcasts whose central theme/focus is the work of Bruno Latour. Instead, there is a scattering of episodes produced by different podcast(er)s who tend to perform a deeper dive into one of Latour’s many texts (but mostly his books). In the upper tabs below, I have ordered the podcasts according to those whose episodes I found most instructive over the years, but I have also included podcasts–in the lower tabs–in which Latour was recorded during a lecture (or lecture series), interview, or panel discussion. I have unfortunately only included English-speaking podcasts in this collection, but I know other Latour-focused episodes exist in, for example, Dutch, Spanish, German, and French (of course). Whenever possible, I have linked the episodes to their Apple Podcast URLs (my apologies non-Apple users).
Episode #169 – Bruno Latour – We Have Never Been Modern (2022 Aug 20)
Episode #113 – ‘We Have Never Been Modern’ with Tim Howles (2021 Nov 17)
Episode #157 – Bruno Latour’s ‘Facing Gaia’ with Tim Howles (2022 Sep 28)
Episode #12 – Bruno Latour, Down to Earth (2022 May 07)
Episode – Farewell to the French philosopher Bruno Latour (2022 Nov 11)
Episode – On Bruno Latour with Joost van Loon (2023 Apr 27)
Episode #11 – My Take on Bruno Latour – Part 1 (2023 Apr 27)
Episode #12 – My Take on Bruno Latour – Part 2 (2022 Dec 09)
Show #37922 – Bruno Latour – 2021 Kyoto Prize Laureate in Arts and Philosophy How to React to a Change in Cosmology (2022 Apr 06)
Episode – Bruno Latour, Talking “Religiously” – Part I (2013 Apr 01)
Episode – Bruno Latour, Talking “Religiously” – Part II (2013 Apr 03)
Note: These two links are to webpages rather than to Apple Podcasts.
Lecture #1 – Once Out of Nature – Natural Religion as a Pleonasm (2013 Feb 18)
Lecture #2 – A Shift in Agency – With Apologies to David Hume (2013 Feb 19)
Lecture #3 – The Puzzling Face of a Secular Gaia (2013 Feb 21)
Lecture #4 – The Anthropocene and the Destruction of the Image of the Globe (2013 Feb 25)
Lecture #5 – War of the Worlds: Humans against Earthbound (2013 Feb 26)
Lecture #6 – Inside the “Planetary Boundaries”: Gaia’s Estate (2013 Feb 28)
Lecture – The Modes of Existence Project: An Exercise in Collective Inquiry and the Digital Humanities (2012 Nov 09)
Lecture/Talk – Curators talk with Bruno Latour and Yuko Hasegawa (2016 Apr 15)
Lecture – Bruno Latour: Which Aesthetic for the Gaïa Hypothesis? (2016 Dec 31)
Interview – >>Terrestrische Universität: Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel<< (2020 Jun 25)
Catalogue Presentation – with Bruno Latour, Jens Lutz, & Peter Weibel (2020 Sep 01)
Conversation – >>Beyond Matter: A Return of History<< Peter Weibel, Bruno Latour (2020 Sep 07)
Film Discussion – >>Storytelling for Earth Survival<< with Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, & Peter Weibel (2020 Sep 01)
Bruno Latour was long-affiliated with London School of Economics (LSE) events throughout his career. On the LSE Events Apple Podcasts page, you can find links to at least six different events in which Latour made some sort of contribution.
Blogs
I expect there was a more active Latour-focused blogging community between, say, 2000-2012, but my general sense is that many of these have since been been discontinued, abandoned, or shifted in their focus. Nevertheless, I’ve endeavoured here to list some still-accessible blogs even if they are currently inactive.
Describing themself as “a resource guide for reading the work of Bruno Latour,” this thoughtful Blogger site posted entries to expound on six of Latour’s books: We Have Never Been Modern, Aramis (or the Love of Technology), On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods, Rejoicing, An Inquiry Into the Modes of Existence, and Pandora’s Hope.
Years active: 2013-14
Describing themself as blog where “we discuss Bruno Latour and others,” this Blogger site posted many Latour-focused entries during its four-year run. Although their Categories sidebar shows only three entries tagged as Latour, a quick scroll through their other many other categorized posts shows they attended to Latour’s work regularly (e.g., Aramis (9), Pandora’s Hope (2), Prince of Networks (3), Reassembling the Social (10), Science in Action (5), and so on).
Years active: 2009-12
Anyone hovering near the constellation Latour will likely know of Tim Howles. Known as @AIMETim on Twitter/X, he is a thoughtful, thorough, sharp Latour scholar who also contributed to the two Hermitix podcast Latour episodes. His blog includes a number of Latour-focused and Latour-related entries–as well as Michel Serres entries–well worth reading. I’m very much looking forward to Tim’s forthcoming books on both Latour (The Political Theology of Bruno Latour) and Serres (Michel Serres and the French Philosophy of Nature’ in Angelaki).
Years active: 2009-present
Back in 2013-14 I followed the blog of the AIME Research Group | Inquiries into Modes of Existence whose energies were “dedicated to collecting responses to Bruno Latour’s recent book An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (AIME).” Contributors to the site included scholars such as Adam Robbert and Tim Howles, both of whom wrote frequently about Latour’s work on their own blogs. This blog, although no longer active, remains available and is a good companion for those reading Latour’s AIME for the first (or second) time.
Years active: 2013-14
David Caylye is a supremely talented journalist, interviewer, writer, and storyteller whose work I first encountered when stumbling across the excellent CBC Radio’s Ideas: Radio for the Mind program back in 2009. He does not maintain a Bruno Latour blog, mind you, but he did write a Latour post in April 2021 putting Latour’s work into relationship with both James Lovelock and Ivan Illich. Just recently, I discovered that Cayley wrote a three-part essay in 2021 for the online Journal of Wild Culture which is surely related to–or derived from–this blog post. Here are the links to Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3 on that essay.
Years active: 2014-present
Websites
Bruno Latour’s official site is one of the cleanest, most well organized, most functional academic websites on the Internet. Beyond his site, I have found almost no other sites dedicated to his work. As you might expect, there are a few popular websites (e.g., Wikipedia) with individual pages detailing Latour’s life/work, but in the near-future, rather than simply listing his name as associated with particular ideas, concepts, theories, etc., I suspect we will begin seeing philosophy-focused websites such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy adding ‘Bruno Latour’ entries (if they haven’t already).
On Bruno Latour’s official site, you will find a complete listing of his books (e.g., collaborative, popular), catalogs, articles (e.g., peer-reviewed research, popular), courses, and lectures. You can also view a copy of his CV. There are both French and English versions, as well as links to translations of many of his articles into, for example, Spanish.
In 1998, Bruno Latour joined forces with Emilie Hermant to produce a multi-lingual digital accompaniment to their book of the same title. The website is still available and functioning. Latour always found it amusing to find that book stores typically shelved this book in their Travel section; he tended to see it as a publication better fitted to the Philosophy section.
When you purchase a copy of Bruno Latour’s An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (2015), you are invited to join an online platform hosted by SciencesPo médialab so that you might make a contribution to Latour’s ‘living’ text.
Of course Wikipedia – English has a page for Bruno Latour, why wouldn’t they?
Of course Wikipedia – French has a page for Bruno Latour, why wouldn’t they?
Bruno Latour joined Sciences Po in 2006-07 as a University Professor. He then became their deputy director and scientific director in 2007-08. He was the founder of their highly-innovative médialab and as of January 2024 they still maintained a webpage for him with links to much of his work.
From January 2008 until December 2009, Bruno Latour coordinated the Mapping Controversies on Science for Politics (MACOSPOL) project, an academic course taught in science studies stemming from his own writings. Although the site is no longer actively maintained, there is still an accessible archived copy albeit with limited functionality. Although the SciencesPo médialab website still maintains an informational webpage for this project, I don’t have the sense they still actively offering a version of this course for their students. Thankfully, the intellectual core of this project lives on: In 2021, two of Latour’s colleagues,
Bruno Latour enthusiasts will know that the arts are central to much of his scholarship. In Argentine contemporary artist Tomás Saraceno, Latour found someone who could help his listeners and readers visualize some of his most hard-to-grasp ideas. Latour drew our attention to Saraceno’s 2010 14billion installation, for example, so that we might better understand the relationships between ‘networks,’ ‘nodes,’ travel/movement, and empty space.
According to their website, the Deep Time Walk is, “a transformative journey through 4.6 bn years of Earth history via a 4.6 km guided walk. It is an invitation to view the world differently, encouraging positive action and advocacy for a regenerative Earth.” Bruno Latour did not create this wonderful resource, but he whole-heartedly endorsed it noting that it is, “A great poeticoscientific walk synced with narration. A masterpiece to get a sense of history.” I share it here because I think it comes as close as possible to what I think Latour would promote as the sort of pedagogical exercise or experience we all need as we approach/inhabit the Anthropocene.
Videos
Reading Bruno Latour is enchanting, but listening to him speak is magical. There is something rather captivating about the particular combination of his powerful intellect, humble demeanour, dry wit, and playful sense of humor. His pronunciation and emphasis of particular English words (e.g., problem often becomes proh-em) and public speaking style endear him even further to his audience(s). There is a rich collection of Bruno Latour videos available on the Internet, but I have always found YouTube to be one of the best resources for watching him speak. Rather than link to each of his YouTube videos individually, which would be a Herculean task, I have included a link to my YouTube channel where I have curated a number of different Bruno Latour playlists. I have also included a link to Latour videos hosted by Vimeo, although of course there may be some overlap of videos between Vimeo and YouTube.
My YouTube channel where I have curated a number of different Bruno Latour playlists.
In January 2024, I typed “Bruno Latour” into Vimeo’s search bar which yielded 390 results.
Films
As Bruno Latour passed in October 2022, it’s not surprising we’ve yet to see any films made about him (I write this in January 2024). Nevertheless, I hold a great deal hope that some talented, fresh-thinking, innovative filmmaker will see to this important task in the near future. Until that biopic arrives, I offer readers/browsers a small handful of film-like projects to help fill that gap in time.
Between 23 – 30 June 2007. Frédérique Ait-Touatti helped stage a reenactment of a 1903 debate between sociological titans Gabriel Tarde and Emile Durkheim. For his part, Bruno Latour played the role of Tarde, while Bruno Karsenti played Durkheim and Louise Salmon played the role of the Dean. On 14 March 2008 at CRASSH Cambridge, Simon Schaffer played the Dean. A final version was shot in Paris with Dominique Reynié as the Dean and filmed by Martin Pavlov.
During 2015-16 (I think), filmmaker Eric Barstow followed Bruno Latour as he traveled with Duke University Critical Zone scientist Daniel D. Richter to the John C. Calhoun Critical Zone Observatory in rural South Carolina to observe how deep soil erosion gives a more nuanced view of the Anthropocene. The resulting feature-length documentary film–although not necessarily centered on Latour–was then released sometime in 2019. The film is now available in its entirety on the Duke Franklin Humanisties Institute’s YouTube channel.
With the collaboration of Frédérique Aït-Touati in 2015, filmmaker David Bornstein and producer Nora Philippe filmed an event inspired in large part by Bruno Latour’s politico-ecological concept of the “parliament of things.” The film documents the gathering of 200 students from all over the world at the Théâtre des Amandiers to perform a life-size COP…but entirely reimagined, reinvented. In addition to nation state delegates, there were also delegates for cities, oceans, soils, and yes, even oil and coal. You can also read a wonderfully produced, written and illustrated play version of the event, “A Theater of Negotiations – Make It Work,” created by Clemence Hallé and Anne-Sophie Milon.
Not long before Bruno Latour passed in October 2022, he sat down in his Paris home and agreed to be interviewed by Nicolas Truong. The resulting 12-part interview works and feels like a short film: it has both an easy rhythm and a distinct style. There are also two very touching moments: one near the end of the interview in which Bruno expresses deep emotions when asked, “What is philosophy?”; the other when he’s asked to pass along advice to his grandson, Lilo.
The interview is also now available on ARTE.tv’s YouTube channel as 12 separate videos, which non-French speaking viewers will appreciate as they can turn-on well-matched English subtitles.