Sacha Loeve and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Carbone. Ses Vies, ses oeuvres, Seuil, 2018
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17503
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Sacha Loeve and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Carbon. Its lives, its works, Seuil, 2018
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Book Reviews
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2023-10-19
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Giulia Rispoli
2021/11/01
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17503
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Sacha Loeve and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Carbon. Its lives, its works, Seuil, 2018
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140                                                         Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

   Sacha Loeve and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent
Carbone. Ses Vies, ses œuvres [Carbon. Its lives, its works], Paris, Seuil,
2018, pp. 342

Giulia Rispoli Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

    Using charcoal to draw abstract forms that emanate energy, brightness,
materiality, and blackness, in the paintings of Korean artist Lee Bae, car-
bon black acquires different forms and meanings. Quite literally, it is a pig-
ment made of soot obtained from burning plants or a chunk of carbonized
wood assembled in massive black and chalky sculptures (Serafin 2019). Yet
charcoal goes beyond materiality. The artist uses it as a metaphor for spir-
ituality, purity, and essence as, in the Korean tradition, carbon is a power-
ful source of metaphysical experience. It is a material that intimately con-
nects to life and time, and their transformation.
    In the fascinating and highly informative book Carbone, Sacha Loeve
and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent offer a portrait of carbon that merges
together all these different facets. Carbon is a technoscientific object that
falls outside the boundaries of one history, definition, or scientific dis-
course.
    If some carbon might develop into exhaustible forms like coal and oil,
other forms remain unlimited, as by mass carbon is among the most abun-
dant elements in the universe. So how can we explain its different modes
of existence? What narration should we prioritize to account for the many
ways carbon, its properties, and reactions can be studied, anticipated, and
experienced?
    Carbon is certainly more than a chemical element. The authors insist
on the multiplicity of its signatures and heteronyms which are explored in
great detail and with a persuasive writing. “Multiplicity” is used to convey
an understanding of carbon as a quasi-object that redefines, to put it with
Michel Serres, its status based on the connections it creates with the con-
text.
    Carbone joins a number of recent books attempting to consider the dif-
ferent identities of the element. Dag Olav Hessen’s book The Many Lives
of Carbon (2018) and Robert Hazen’s Symphony C (2019) are two exam-
ples of the growing interest in recounting the history of carbon beyond the
realm of chemistry. Like these accounts, in Carbone the substance is re-
leased from its status as a chemical element and becomes a milestone of the
anthroposphere and its relation to the Earth. Yet Loeve and Bensaude-
Vincent seem to provide an even larger perspective, which draws inspira-
tions from the history of science and technology, STS, cultural studies, and
philosophy.
    The book is divided into three sections focused on the invention, civi-
Book Reviews                                                              141
lization, and temporalities of carbon. The first section looks at carbon pri-
marily through the history and ideas of the natural sciences. The different
understandings of carbon are always situated, emerging from a mixture of
social, cultural, scientific, and economic conditions that characterized
western societies from the early modern period through modernity. In the
second and third sections, carbon abandons its disciplinary cradle to be-
come the main protagonist of human history. The authors claim that the
evolution of human culture is indeed marked by the effort to domesticate
and inscribe carbon in everyday life, from the mastery of fire to coal min-
ing, and the mechanization of labor to current policies to reduce Co2 emis-
sions in the atmosphere. As a matter of fact, carbon has both shaped hu-
man welfare and now mockingly exposes it to risks that are unprecedented
in history. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are the principal cause
of climate change and, therefore, a primary public enemy in the fight for a
sustainable future. At the same time, carbon acts as a currency and a credit
equivalent to a given amount of emissions, and thus performs a fundamen-
tal role in the financial market.
    Taken collectively, all of these signatures show carbon’s ability to cross
disparate realms of knowledge, from science and technology to politics,
economy, design, and culture. Living and inert, natural and cultural, car-
bon acts as a kaleidoscopic object with an intimately hybrid nature, one
manifested in its power to acquire as many forms as the periods of punctu-
ated evolution of our societies.
    Following this evolution, the authors reached as far back as Virgil’s Ae-
neid, where the mephitic air of the Mefite di Rocca San Felice in central
Italy was deemed toxic. Gaseous exhalations of carbon dioxide and sulfu-
ric acid wafting from the fumaroles caused the vegetation to perish and
were regarded by the inhabitants of that region as lethal for human beings.
Loeve and Bensaude-Vincent emphasize how carbon – already in such a
distant past – was deeply inscribed in popular culture and collective
memory as an element closely associated with risk and peril. This “ge-
omythological” (p. 23) narrative persists in some of the later conceptuali-
zations and scientific studies of carbon as, for example, toxic air, gas, and
ultimately Co2.
    Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, car-
bon became a primary object of interest for a rich generation of natural
scientists and philosophers, especially in Europe. Robert Boyle, Joseph
Priestly, Antoine Lavoisier, and Henry Cavendish sought to discover the
real nature of carbon, investigating the products of its reactions and its
many properties and forms, and ultimately tried to establish an exhaustive
nomenclature. In the nineteenth century, Dmitry Mendeleev used carbon
to express the material identity of a chemical element that remains invari-
ant as a standard measure notwithstanding its possible conversions. Car-
bon embodied a combination of materiality and abstraction, turning into a
metaphysical substance that, following Mendeleev, became an exemplary
142                                                          Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

illustration of what the term “element” means in his periodic table. But, as
the authors point out, carbon would soon “emancipate” (p. 63) itself from
chemistry to become the principal fuel of human civilization. Carbon fossil
– the backbone of life accumulated in the Earth’s crust due to photosyn-
thesis – intermeshes geological time with human temporalities when
burned and dispersed in the air. It ignited the industrial revolution, and
favored a political and economic system that profited from subordinate la-
bor (Malm 2016). The carbon-based development of our society and the
accumulation of capital are two complementary processes which reveal
how “techno-optimism” and the exploitation of fossil fuels have led to both
resource scarcity and social inequality.
    Although the authors dwell upon carbon fossil in the second half of the
book, it feels that the history of carbon does not tell us that much about
the history of coal. With many “modes of existence” and its own role in
our economic systems, coal is not reducible to carbon but might instead
require its own biography, which surely goes beyond the scope of this
book. However, the multiple systems of knowledge tracked by Loeve and
Bensaude-Vincent offer a very erudite picture of carbon as an agent of his-
tory, and guide the reader through stories that interweave human culture,
natural history, and cosmic processes. The authors feel the urgency of de-
livering as many ontologies of carbon as possible, and this makes a case for
what they term “ontography” (p. 284). Carbon is indeed mobilized in its
role as graphite that writes its own histories – as on Lee Bae’s canvas, where
carbon black is the author of its shapes. Far from indicating a metaphysics
of the object, ontography is not a synonym for ontology. Instead, it is a
narrative that draws the combination of ontology and biography in its mak-
ing. In other words, it is a process of writing (écriture) of ontologies. Draw-
ing on Gilles Deleuze, the authors emphasize the role of ontography as a
disposition of ontologies.
    Ontography is also used as a synonym for plurality. It gives a voice to
the many lives of carbon. In this respect, carbon suggests both ontological
and epistemological pluralism as the diversity of modes of existence of car-
bon invites for tolerance among the different forms of knowledge. Hence,
following Bruno Latour and Étienne Souriau, showing the plurality of car-
bon would discard totalizing forms of knowledge and deconstruct domi-
nant narratives.
    Despite the different yet intertwined lives of carbon assembled in the
book, we never feel a sense of disorientation. Some readers may still wish
for a privileged perspective to emerge. Such a red thread, more openly
framing the authors’ purpose and position, would be especially valuable in
a moment in which a proliferation of post-histories, -truths, and -human-
isms often swells into a postmodern relativism and individual systems of
values. A privileged angle would not necessarily come across as reduction-
ist or imposing a dominant narrative. It can be a vision, a claim or a belief
that many people could share and adhere to, generating a sort of collective
Book Reviews                                                               143
awareness. One may start from the assumption of carbon as a marker,
namely an indicator, or evidence that designates the most profound transi-
tions in our social, ecological, and geological history, and then trace back
carbon’s career in light of this fundamental assumption. The current dis-
ruption of carbon cycle, for example, is a global biogeochemical marker of
the Anthropocene, a term describing a proposed geological epoch charac-
terized by the all-encompassing influence of human systems on Earth’s
ecology and geology. Fly ashes are another set of markers that derive from
combustions processes, which leave their mark in strata and are measured
as material sediments of the Anthropocene. Plastic, a carbon-based mate-
rial, is another anthropogenic marker that is relevant for understanding the
Earth under human pressure. Against this backdrop, as a marker, carbon
is not only an agent of human history, but an agent of Earth system history
under human influence.
    The question of the Anthropocene is certainly not overlooked by the
authors. It comes towards the end of the book in a section addressing how
the age of carbon influences the Earth’s temporalities. The authors ap-
proach the question by referring to a récit (p. 263) that has at times gener-
ated techno-aesthetically mediated and sublime experiences of nature
where “man” is placed at the center of the Earth and dominate the planet.
According to the authors, verticality and linearity are the privileged dimen-
sions of the Anthropocene that are rooted in geological culture. On the
contrary, they argue that carbon would, also in this case, invite to consider
the multiple temporalities that fall outside narrow geochronological defi-
nitions.
    In this context, it is worth mentioning that current interdisciplinary dis-
cussion on the Anthropocene points out to the need of defining the pro-
posed new geological epoch from a perspective that interlaces the study of
the Earth system with that of human phenomena and their different time-
scales. This investigation requires an effort that goes well beyond assessing
“verticality” as the only dimension of the Anthropocene and draws instead
on a plurality of methods and approaches expanding beyond the earth sci-
ences. Also importantly, recent attempts to discuss knowledge in the An-
thropocene show how the concept has acted as a powerful tool not only
for rethinking human history, but also for fostering new research directions
in which the (earth and environmental) sciences, the humanities, and the
arts can cooperate to experiment with new ways of producing knowledge
to cope with the global environmental crisis (Renn 2020). In this respect,
adopting a perspective from energy history or Earth System Science could
help reinforce existing links between carbon’s different modes of existence
and the current Anthropocene predicament. By focusing so meticulously
on the heteronomies of carbon, the authors are left with little space to elab-
orate on an even more expanded history that would include the prospect
of the future in human-carbon interaction. But what Carbone achieves is
144                                                             Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

already extremely rich, persuasive, solid, and driven by gargantuan re-
search work. It bears witness to the authors’ remarkable ability to deal with
the extraordinarily inexhaustible subject of carbon, one which still leaves
much to be said, as Lee Bae’s charcoal reminds us.

References
Serafin, A. (2019) Lee Bae’s fascination with charcoal continues to burn bright, in
    “Wallpaper”, November the 22nd 2019 (https://www.wallpaper.com/art/lee-
    bae-exhibition-galerie-perrotin-new-york)
Hessen, D.O. (2018) The Many Lives of Carbon, London, Reaktion.
Hazen, R.M. (2019) Symphony C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Every-
   thing, New York-London, W. W. Norton & Company.
Malm, A. (2016) Fossil Capital, The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global
   Warming, London, Verso.
Renn, J. (2020) The Evolution of Knowledge, Rethinking Science in the Anthropo-
   cene, Princeton, Princeton University Press.



                                       ***

    Felix Tréguer
L’Utopie déchue. Une contre-histoire d’Internet, XVe-XXIe siècle. [The
Fallen Utopia. A Counter-History of the Internet, from the 15th to the 21st
Century], Paris, Fayard, 2019, pp. 350

Julien Rossi Universitè Catholique de l'Ouest

     A few decades ago, the Internet was heralded by many as a new frontier,
a promised land where freedom would reign. It would bring the world to-
gether in a global village, end conflicts, and challenge monopolies of old.
Today, the Internet has become almost frightening, and definitely highly
contentious. For example, end-to-end encryption has become more and
more widely accessible, but it regularly comes under attack by law enforce-
ment and intelligence agencies. Social media are accused of depriving their
users from their privacy and of facilitating the spread of dangerous “fake
news” and terrorist propaganda, fuelling calls for “content moderation”
mechanisms that amount to a restoration of censorship under a new name.
     These debates all seem rather new because the technology at play is
new. L’utopie déchue (in English: The Fallen Utopia), a book derived from
the author’s doctoral dissertation in political science, thus surprises us with
its subtitle: Une contre-histoire d’Internet, XVe-XXIe siècle (in English: A
