Béatrice Cointe
Béatrice Cointe joined CSI as a CNRS researcher in 2019. Her research explores the encounter between climate change and the economy, with a particular focus on the role played by the natural and economic sciences.
Based on a reading of Facing Gaia, her talk, with Léone-Alix Mazaud, will focus on the delicate exercise of describing this new “agency” – a whole smaller than its parts, a tangle of interactions and spatial and temporal scales. The methods of enquiry developed by Bruno Latour to describe the circulation of scientific facts, the composition of technical objects, or even the city of Paris, give us clues as to how to approach the description of Gaia. The theatrical experiences that have accompanied his reflections on Gaia complete them. By following the actors we observe in our own investigations as they grapple with Gaïa, we’ll see that they describe in order to act, that description, representation and action are all part of the same movement. To account for this work of description-representation-action, which interweaves chains of reference and dramaturgy, we will borrow from Latour’s habit of working with collage and photo-novels.
Speakers in Session 3: Extending questions about nature