In “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?“ (2004) and Reassembling the Social (2005), Bruno Latour argues for a crucial shift in how we understand public issues, moving from “matters of fact” to “matters of concern.”

Latour argues that modern science and critique have become obsessed with reducing complex phenomena to brute, indisputable “facts.” A fact is presented as a cold, objective, self-evident thing—a rock, a number, a definitive conclusion—that ends debate.

This disempowers public discussion. When something is declared a “fact,” non-scientists are told to shut up and accept it. This fuels anti-science backlash (e.g., climate denial), as people resent being dismissed.

It also hides the real work. A “fact” is actually the fragile, temporary outcome of a vast network of instruments, institutions, debates, and skilled practitioners. Calling it a “fact” erases that rich, contingent process.

A “matter of concern,” by contrast, is an issue that is uncertain, contested, entangled, and generative. It is not a simple object but an event or gathering (the French chose means both “thing” and “cause”). Examples include climate change, a vaccine, or GMOs.

A matter of concern has multiple actors (humans, animals, computer models, legal codes, chemicals), raises passionate debates about values, risks, and trade-offs, and requires careful assembly of evidence, perspectives, and institutions. Matters of concern are never finished, but must be continually re-articulated.

Latour’s suggested move from “facts” to “concern” is also deeply (cosmo)political. It asks for a new kind of diplomacy that treats issues like climate change not as a closed dogmas, but as a volatile, urgent matters of concern that gathers scientists, politicians, activists, and citizens into a collective deliberation about how best to live together give a wide range of data.

For Latour, traditional critique aimed to “debunk” beliefs by revealing their constructed, hidden underpinnings. He suggests instead that we re-assemble: trace the networks, to make the invisible work visible, to turn smooth facts back into lumpy, contested, lively concerns. The critic becomes a careful curator of matters of concern, not a cynical dogmatic applier of so-called facts.

In a nutshell: Latour asks us to stop asking “Is this a fact or a fiction?” and start asking “Who and what are assembled here? What is at stake? How can we respond?” Matters of concern are the real stuff of politics, science, and ethics—and they demand not certainty, but care.

I think there will always be room for critique even among matters of concern, especially within the realm of politics and cultural expression. I don’t even believe that critique has “run out of steam”. But if we are to engaged each other in more diplomatic and prosocial ways then the shift to matters of concern is an important move, if only to infuse our various critiques with a spirit of collaboration and reciprocity that is generative rather that merely agonistic.