Reinventing the Diplomat: Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour and Baptiste Morizot

Abstract

Recent debates within broadly considered posthumanities have been populated by various conceptual personae. One such figure is the diplomat. First proposed in this context by Isabelle Stengers in her Cosmopolitics series, the diplomat has been subsequently taken up and further developed by Bruno Latour, particularly in his AIME project, and most recently by Baptiste Morizot in Les Diplomates. This article traces the metamorphosis of this conceptual character in the work of Stengers, Latour and Morizot. As all three versions are relatively close to each other, this article proposes three companion figures: the heretic (for Stengers), the designer (for Latour) and the amateur (for Morizot) that allow us to carefully examine the differences between, and the specific stakes of, each iteration of the diplomat. Furthermore, the article critically evaluates the theoretical pertinence of the diplomat figure for each philosopher’s project and considers its potential for thinking about the future of our more-than-human worlds.