Der letzte ?at???? oder:Das Ü bel der Differenzierung. Latour, Luhmann, Schmitt

Twenty years ago, Bruno Latour launched a fundamental polemic against the sociology of Niklas Luhmann. No contrast seemed to be greater than the discrepancy between laboratory studies and system-theory. However, my article not only demonstrates that Latour has increasingly adapted basic tenets of the sociological theory of differentiation, but that they are in fact indispensible for his political theology of nature. In spite of the ANT-rhetoric of interconnectedness, Latour develops a model of differentiated societal trajectories just in order to surmount these differentiations spectacularly in his speculations on Gaia. At crucial points, his dialectic of differentiation and dedifferentiation resorts to concepts of Carl Schmitt. The result is a political theology of the Anthropocene, which inherits Schmitt's decisionism and bellicism.