Bruno Latour 
Rejoicing 
Or the Torments of Religious Speech

Bruno Latour’s long term project is to compare the felicity
and infelicity conditions of the different values dearest to the
heart of those who have ‘never been modern’. According
to him, this is the only way to develop an anthropology of the
Moderns. After his work on science, on technology and, more
recently, on law, this book explores the truth conditions of
religious speech acts.

Even though there is no question that religion is one of the values
that has been intensely cherished in the course of history,
it’s also clear that it has become immensely difficult to
tune in to its highly specific mode of enunciation. Every effort to
speak in the right key sounds awkward, reactionary, pious or simply
empty. Hence the necessity of devising a way of writing that brings
to the fore this elusive form of speech to render it audible again.
In this highly original book, the author offers a completely
different tack on the endless ‘science and religion’
conflict by protecting them both from the confusion with the notion
of information. Like The Making of Law, this book is one more
attempt at developing this ‘inquiry on modes of
existence’ that provides an alternative definition of
society.

About the author

Bruno Latour is one of the world’s leading sociologists and
anthropologists. He taught at the École des Mines in Paris
from 1982 to 2006 and he is now Professor and Vice-President for
Research at Institut d’études politiques (Sciences Po). His
many books include Laboratory Life, We Have Never Been
Modern, Reassembling the Social and The Making of
Law.