After the harrowing experience of the pandemic and lockdown, both states
and individuals have been searching for ways to exit the crisis, many
hoping to return as soon as possible to 'the world as it was before the
pandemic'. But there is another way to learn the lessons of this ordeal:
as inhabitants of the earth, we may not be able to exit lockdown so
easily after all, since the global health crisis is embedded in another
larger and more serious crisis - that brought about by the New Climate
Regime. Learning to live in lockdown might be an opportunity to be
seized: a dress-rehearsal for the climate mutation, an opportunity to
understand at last where we - inhabitants of the earth - live, what kind
of place 'earth' is and how we will be able to orient ourselves and
exist in this world in the years to come. We might finally be able to
explore the land in which we live, together with all other living
beings, begin to understand the true nature of the climate mutation we
are living through and discover what kind of freedom is possible - a
freedom differently situated and differently understood.
In this sequel to his bestselling book Down to Earth, Bruno Latour
provides a compass for this necessary re-orientation of our lives,
outlining the metaphysics of confinement and deconfinement with which we
will all be obliged to come to terms by the strange times in which we
are living.
