ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Bruno Latour’s inquiry into modes of existence with a view to exploring its contribution to a sociology of relationships to the world. For Latour, in modernity’s asymmetrical anthropology there are no acting, reacting, demanding or appealing entities other than us humans: what we face is a silent, passive world whose sole purpose is to be modified and recognized. In contrast to this “monism of being”, Latour develops an interpretation of modernity that explores the diversity of constitutive, world-creating world relations and their interrelationships. Accordingly, he puts forward a notion of religion as a mode of perceiving the world as a whole, not merely in a situational and instrumental sense but comprehensively. Every experience that allows us to feel connected with “the cosmos” in a vivid, breathing, transformational manner is ultimately a religious experience. Its power is that of transforming the fixed, indifferent world relation that characterizes modernity into one marked by (libidinous and romantic) attachment – i.e., resonance.
