After Lockdown. Bruno Latour

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After Lockdown

      A Metamorphosis

      Bruno Latour

      Translated by Julie Rose

      polity

      Originally published in French as Où suis-je ? Leçons du confinement à l’usage des terrestres © Editions La Découverte, Paris, 2021

      This English edition © Polity Press, 2021

      Cet ouvrage a bénéficié du soutien du Programme d’aide à la publication de l’Institut français / This book is supported by the Institut français.

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      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5003-6

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939921

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Dedication

       For Lilo, son of Sarah and Robinson

      Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.

      Job 38:18

1 One way of becoming a termite

      There are many ways to begin. For instance, like a hero in a novel who wakes up after fainting and, rubbing his eyes, looking haggard, murmurs, ‘Where am I?’ It’s not easy, in fact, to tell where he is, especially now, after such a long lockdown, when he emerges into the street, face masked, to meet only the fleeting gaze of the few passersby.

The thing that especially disheartens him, no, alarms him, is that recently he has taken to gazing at the moon – it’s been full since last night – as if it were the only thing he could still contemplate without feeling uneasy. The sun? Impossible to be glad of its heat without immediately thinking of global warming. The trees swaying in the wind? He’s eaten up with the fear of seeing them dry out or go under the saw. Even with the water falling from the clouds, he has the unpleasant feeling he’s somehow responsible for seeing that it arrives: ‘You know very well it’ll soon be in short supply everywhere!’ Delight in contemplating a landscape? Don’t even think about it – here we are, responsible for every kind of pollution affecting it, so if you [vous] can still marvel at golden wheatfields, that’s because you’ve forgotten that all the poppies have disappeared thanks to the European Union’s agricultural policies; where the Impressionists once painted swarms of beauties, all you can see now is the impact of the EU decisions that have turned the countrysides into deserts … No, really, he can only ease his anxieties by resting his eyes on the moon: for its circling, for its phases, at least, he in no way feels responsible; it’s the last spectacle he has left. If its brightness moves you [tu] so much, that’s because, well, you know you’re innocent of its movement. As you once were when you looked at the fields, lakes, trees, rivers and mountains, the scenery, without giving a thought to the effect your every move might have, however slight. Before. Not that long ago.

      When I wake up, I start to feel the torments suffered by the hero of Kafka’s novella, Metamorphosis, who, while he’s sleeping, turns into a black beetle, a crab or a cockroach. The next morning, he finds himself terrifyingly unable to get up to go to work like he used to do before; he hides under his bed; he hears his sister, his parents, his boss’s lackey knocking on his bedroom door, which he’s carefully locked shut; he can’t get up anymore; his back is as hard as steel; he has to relearn how to control his legs and his claws, which are waving about in all directions; he gradually realises that no one can understand what he’s saying anymore; his body has changed size; he feels himself turning into a ‘monstrous insect’.

It’s as if I, too, had undergone an actual metamorphosis in January 2020. I still remember how, before, I could move around innocently taking my body with me. Now I feel like I have to make an effort and haul along at my back a long trail of CO₂ that won’t let me buy a plane ticket and take off, and that now hampers my every movement, to the point where I hardly dare tap at my keyboard for fear of causing ice to melt somewhere far away. But it’s been worse since January because, on top of that, I now project in front of me – they tell me non-stop – a cloud of aerosols whose fine droplets can spread tiny viruses in the lungs capable of killing my neighbours, who would suffocate in their beds, overrunning the hospital services. In front as behind,