Composition, Politics and the Problem of Decision-Making in Latour and Serres: A Webinar Presentation by Professor David Webb

This lecture compares Bruno Latour and Michel Serres on composition, politics and the problem of decision-making beyond the human. Both ask how humans, nonhumans, artefacts and processes come together to form a world. For Latour, the absence of preconditions makes this work an ongoing, fragile political labour marked by negotiation and diplomacy. By contrast, Serres sees a continuous web of flows and shifting constraints inscribed in material and temporal processes. For him, decision-making is less an open negotiation than a navigation of codes and histories already embedded in the world. The divergence is slight, but consequential, leading to different emphases: Latour prioritises inclusivity and contestation; Serres, attentiveness to material limits.

This online presentation on Tuesday, November 18, at 12pm EST / 6pm CET, is free and open to all. Please register here or at the link above. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the webinar.

‍David Webb is Professor of Philosophy at Staffordshire University. His book Foucault’s Archaeology: Science and Transformation (Edinburgh University Press, 2013) set Foucault’s archaeology against the background of French philosophy of science. His interests include Foucault’s conception of critique as a rational practice, and the work of Michel Serres, especially with regard to ethics, politics, and ecological philosophy. He has published several papers and book chapters on the work of Serres, is co-editor of the series Michel Serres and Material Futures at Bloomsbury Press and is the co-translator with Bill Ross of Serres’ book The Birth of Physics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018).