How Bruno Latour might approach Political Science

Political science. A peculiar phrase, is it not? As if “politics” could exist as a separate realm, a domain inhabited solely by humans, divorced from the ceaseless, intricate weaving of associations that actually bring it into being. We have been so thoroughly schooled in the modernist partition, in separating the ‘social’ from the ‘natural,’ the ‘human’ from the ‘non-human,’ that we imagine politics can be understood through some abstract contemplation of human intentions or state structures.

But this is to be deaf to the very actors engaged in the political process. If we are to understand what constitutes a political act, we must, as ever, follow the actors themselves. What is this ‘state’ but a vast, complex network of mobilized entities? A parliament is not merely a collection of men and women debating; it is also the ink on the paper, the acoustics of the chamber, the whispered advice of an aide, the tremor of fear in a witness’s voice, the flickering light of the chandeliers – all of them mediators, all of them participants in the stabilization of what we then call ‘political authority.’

To study ‘political science’ as a separate discipline is to commit the very error of purification that has so disoriented us. It is to pretend that the world is neatly divided, when in truth, it is a continuously composed, constantly negotiated entanglement. The temperature of the room, the scent of the wood polish, the rustle of documents – these are not mere background details to be discounted. They are, each in their own way, collaborators in the unfolding of a political moment. They are actants, and their involvement, however humble, shapes the outcome. We have never been modern, and therefore, we have never truly had a ‘political science’ separate from the messy, hybrid…

Imagined perspective — an AI synthesis grounded in Bruno Latour’s recorded ideas and methods, not a quotation or a statement they actually made.