Global Corona Controversies (2)

 

In  Bruno Latour’s recent article on the Corona pandemic in Le Monde, (and here in English) the word controversy is not mentioned once.

But the actor network perspective is everywhere.

Society, he reminds us, is composed of associations of many actors – most of whom do not have human form. If we know ANT then we know he’s talking about the non-human actors. And he lists them. Internet, the law, hospital organisation, the capacity of the State, as well as climate. The virus itself, he goes on to say, is but a link in the chain in which managing stocks of masks and tests, the law regarding property, civic behaviour, acts of solidarity, all count just as much to determine the actual virulence of the infective agent. In other words we are up against not a solitary virus but an actor network of human and non human actors enmeshed around the virus. « Once we take into account the entire network of which it is but a part, the same virus does not act the same way in Taiwan, Singapore, New York or Paris. The pandemic is no more a ‘natural phenomenon’ than yesterday’s famines or the current climate crisis. »

OK. So no controversies. But what then is his message?