Latour was writing about religion here, but also about all of society’s institutions. That feeling now of…

Latour was writing about religion here, but also about all of society’s institutions. That feeling now of society collapsing? That’s the ‘ruins’ he’s talking about. ‘Once they’ve been destroyed, institutions don’t get back up’. There’s a sting in the tail/tale here too /1 https://t.co/sr49XrXV7P

That sting is that what we call neoliberal politics and the politics that opposes it, both did this. Together. Both return society to a tabula rasa where the whole civilisation has to be reinvented every day, by ‘mobilising’ people. /2

Not even seeing that we already did that. Centuries ago, over centuries. That’s what our institutions were. And whether you’re ‘religious’ or not, the only way it worked was having a higher power or principle - God - to act as the unifying force. Now we have nothing similar. /3

I thought about this during the flood emergency, watching the fractured social response. People using traditional media, and social media, desperately trying to find a common ground for information and action. They mostly failed. The desperation at the possible collapse of…/4

…Twitter shares this same space. People are grasping for any way to put the Humpty Dumpty of our institutions back together, to create a shared space, a shared purpose. I doubt it will work, as Latour says, we’re living in the ruins. /end