Habitability in the new climatic regime

The editors are Marco Bontempi (University of Florence), Dimitri D’Andrea (University of Florence), Andrea Ghelfi (University of Florence)

The New Climate Regime and Nature as Political Actor

The new “climate regime” challenges the dichotomous thinking with which modernity has conceived the relationships between nature and society, subject and object, transcendence and immanence. Bruno Latour’s work has shown how these three dichotomies constitute the structuring factors of the political, scientific and social perspective of modernity, highlighting the need to rethink the forms of both political action and conflict and more generally the very conditions of action. Latour’s scientific production has gone through different stages and, in the most recent one, has focused on how the new climate regime affects the forms of political thought and mobilisation. The characteristic of Latour’s approach to the new climate regime lies in overcoming the ideas of historical progress, geocentric humanism, and the passivity of nature. Action is conceived aside from the classical conditions of its intentionality and will in the form of a hybrid network that is constantly implemented by the different constituting components. The implications of this mechanism for political and social theory concern simultaneously forms of critique and socio-ecological practices.

The contributions relative to this call can freely navigate within this range of questions, intersecting transversally in a broader or more focused way the following three thematic axes about and beyond Latour:

1 – In recent years, a number of contributions from science and technology studies, cultural anthropology, geography, political theory and philosophy of science have been calling us to take the subject matter of politics seriously. Such an approach emphasises the need to develop a thoroughly materialist conception of politics, that is, a conception that does not separate the forms of human association and separation that we are used to call politics from the socio-material basis of life and from the concrete practices through which modes and forms of life are created, reproduced, sustained. With his invitation to take seriously the role that more-than-human actors play within the fabric of social conduct, Latour holds a key role within this debate. In his latest ecological-political writings, Latour suggests that we should rethink politics starting from the issue of the planet’s conditions of habitability: how can this theoretical perspective be developed withand beyond Latour? To what extent do the ecological crises in which we are immersed force us to think beyond human exceptionalism? What grounds of convergence and divergence can be traced when we compare Latour’s thought with other theoretical perspectives that, in a variety of ways, conceptualise the political in the human-non-human continuum?

2 – What theoretical-practical conditions of the new climate regime can turn the ecological perspective into a political one, i.e., can overcome the limitations of its positioning as a movement among others? Which of the current transformations can enable political ecology to outline the horizon of political action, by assuming the role that was previously played by liberalism, socialism, neoliberalism, and, more recently, by illiberal parties? What effects do the neo-climatic conditions—with their disruption of the macro-distinctions of nature and society, human and non-human, immanent and transcendent—have on the categories of political action and political space?

3 – The Latourian ontology of the metamorphic zone allows to reframe a new type of realism against the pseudo-realism of the causalistic narrative: a realism of mediators where previously intermediaries dominated. This approach forces us to rethink the relationship between realism and criticism. How does this new type of realism reshape the forms and practices of ‘critique’? Who is the bearer of the critical instance when we overcome the human-nonhuman distinction? To what extent does the new type of realism challenge and overcome the distinction between facts and norms, being and having to be, ethics and the world? What does the normative dimension of the ‘natural world’ consist of?

Soft Power calls for submissions of papers between 6,000 to 6,500 words, including footnotes.

Theoretical, philosophical, historical, and interdisciplinary contributions are welcome. All papers will undergo a double-blind peer review. Articles must be written in English or in Spanish. In order to facilitate the inclusion in international databases and indexing services, abstracts and keywords must be written both in English and Spanish.

The contributions (with author’s Name, paper’s Title, Abstract – max 20 lines – and Keywords) should be sent to info@softpowerjournal.com

DEADLINES: Full Article must be received by March 15th 2023 (acceptance of the papers will be communicated by April 1st, 2023).

Keywords: New climate regime; socio-ecological practices; forms of critique; politics of matter; human-non-human continuum; political ecology; new realism; critical zones; political ontology; Bruno Latour.