CfP: Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
The June 2023 edition of Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science will present a special issue dedicated to the work of Bruno Latour (1947-2022). His recent passing makes this a highly propitious moment to reposition and debate Latour’s impacts and legacies.
The life and work of Bruno Latour have been marked by contention. It is interesting to think how his thought, which traverses sociology, history, philosophy, anthropology, and other dialogues, raised a series of debates around his concepts, postulates, and provocations in the public arena, making him an emblematic figure of the so-called science studies. Latour did not make polemics merely an object within science studies but embodied it in the way he constituted himself as a public intellectual and in his project of society. His societal model operates in an ontological subversion, in the impossibility of separating society and nature, subject and object, humans and non-humans, that he repeatedly claimed to be unrealizable.
There is a strong identification of Latour with actor-network theory. It is interesting to reflect how, even with all the criticism, it is constantly used in various contexts, serving multiple uses, and not only in the sciences. Besides science, religion, law, and other subjects also engaged Latour’s thoughts.
His most recent works open a way to think about the regime installed with the environmental collapse in the Anthropocene. Through it, Latour also promotes a dialogue with the current political context: the rise of extreme right-wing governments marks a turn to a conservative agenda that has as one of its main support scientific denialisms, especially regarding global warming. For Latour, there is a split between the “ruling classes” and the “others”. This is an attitude of catastrophic consequences if not reversed by another action involving politics, science, and searching for another place to “land” (Down to Earth). In this scenario, Latour changed from an enemy of science in science wars to a scholar who highlighted science’s capacity to deal with contemporary problems like global warming. The science he defends, however, is not the science described by epistemologists but what he calls science in action.
The Transversal’s special issue on Latour’s thought seeks to welcome:
- Theoretical and methodological reflections, historiographical works, and others based on Latour’s theories;
- Empirical works that use Latour as a theoretical reference;
- Articles that reflect Latour’s trajectory as a public intellectual, a stirrer of controversy in the academic space and beyond;
- Papers that start from Latournian reflections and their provocations in the public sphere beyond science and technology, like the question of law, the debates around global warming, religion, etc.
Submission details:
Submissions must be received by May 10, 2023, via the journal webpage www.historiographyofscience.org so they can be considered for the June 2023 issue.
Submissions must be prepared for double-blind review. Notification of acceptance will be sent on June 10, 2023.
Please, see the Author’s Guidelines.
For any further information concerning this Call for Papers, please contact:
Bráulio Silva Chaves, Federal Center for Technology and Education of Minas Gerais – CEFET/MG
Nathan Willig Lima – Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS.
For any further information concerning this Journal, please contact:
Mauro L. Condé – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais – UFMG
Marlon J. Salomon – Universidade Federal de Goiás – UFG