This chapter examines Bruno Latour’s significant contributions to understanding objects and their spirituality through his critique of modernity and the development of flat ontology. It explores how Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and his concept of modes of existence challenge the modern bifurcation between nature and society, revealing how all entities—human and nonhuman—exist as actants within networks of relations. The chapter analyzes Latour’s innovative approach to transcendence, which rejects super-transcendence in favor of recognizing the small “jumps” or micro-transcendences that occur in all modes of existence. It also examines Latour’s later work on climate change and terrestrial politics, which reframes political divisions along an axis of reality/unreality rather than progressive/conservative. The chapter concludes by evaluating Latour’s potential contribution to a concept of “Object Spirituality,” suggesting that his approach offers a way to understand spirituality as emerging through relations between objects rather than imposed from above (onto-theology) or projected from within (onto-consciousness). This terrestrial spirituality acknowledges both the agency of objects and the necessary mediations through which we engage with them, providing essential resources for addressing contemporary ecological and political challenges.

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Latour and Object Spirituality: Networks, Modes, and the Earth

  • Calvyn Clarence du Toit

摘要

This chapter examines Bruno Latour’s significant contributions to understanding objects and their spirituality through his critique of modernity and the development of flat ontology. It explores how Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and his concept of modes of existence challenge the modern bifurcation between nature and society, revealing how all entities—human and nonhuman—exist as actants within networks of relations. The chapter analyzes Latour’s innovative approach to transcendence, which rejects super-transcendence in favor of recognizing the small “jumps” or micro-transcendences that occur in all modes of existence. It also examines Latour’s later work on climate change and terrestrial politics, which reframes political divisions along an axis of reality/unreality rather than progressive/conservative. The chapter concludes by evaluating Latour’s potential contribution to a concept of “Object Spirituality,” suggesting that his approach offers a way to understand spirituality as emerging through relations between objects rather than imposed from above (onto-theology) or projected from within (onto-consciousness). This terrestrial spirituality acknowledges both the agency of objects and the necessary mediations through which we engage with them, providing essential resources for addressing contemporary ecological and political challenges.