After Nature. The idea of habitability in the concepts of Gaia, Critical Zone and Terrestrial in Bruno Latour's political ecology.

http://www.softpowerjournal.com/web/?p=2278 The paper aims to show the relevance for social and political theory of some of the conceptual performances of Gaia and Critical Zone and the connections of these performances with the concept of the Terrestrial. These three concepts play a key role in the 'political turn' that has characterised Bruno Latour's most recent theoretical work. The analysis is developed through the variations of the concept of habitability in Gaia, Critical Zone and Terrestrial, employed as a tool to grasp the semantic shifts from the scientific-naturalistic field to the political field generated by the changes that have taken place over the last twenty years in the way the different sciences of Life understand the logic of the habitability of planet Earth. Special attention in the analysis is given to the implications, for social and political theory, that the changes detected with Gaia and Zona Critica produce on the ideas of freedom and necessity once they have emerged from the modern nature/humanity dichotomy and on the logic of the conflicts that open up in the horizon of the Earth.