An Inquiry into Modes of Existence

Over the past twenty-five years, Bruno Latour has developed a research protocol different from the actor-network theory with which his name is now associateda research protocol that follows the different types of connectors that provide specific truth conditions. These are the connectors that prompt a climate scientist challenged by a captain of industry to appeal to the institution of science, with its army of researchers and mountains of data, rather than to capital-S Science as a higher authority. Such modes of extensionor modes of existence, Latour argues hereaccount for the many differences between law, science, politics, and other domains of knowledge. MagnificentAn Inquiry into Modes of Existence shows that [Latour] has lost none of his astonishing fertility as a thinker, or his skill and wit as a writerLatours main messagethat rationality is woven from more than one threadis intended not just for the academic seminar, but for the public squareand the public square today is global as never before. Jonathan Re, Times Literary Supplement Latours work makes the worldsorry, worldsinteresting again. Stephen Muecke, Los Angeles Review of Books