Vinciane Despret, Les morts à l’oeuvre, Les Empêcheurs de Penser en Rond/La Découverte, 2023

Vinciane Despret's latest book, Les morts l'oeuvre, once again tackles the theme of how the dead continue their existence through the lives of those left behind, a topic the author has already dedicated a book-length investigation to in Au bonheur des morts/Our Grateful Dead (2015/2021b).Although the Belgian philosopher is more widely known for her many forays into animal worlds -where she employs a unique methodological combination of speculative-pragmatic philosophy, Science and Technology Studies, History of Science, and Environmental Studies -her work on the agency of the dead is equally thought provoking.Les morts l'oeuvre is an important book for researchers seeking to make sense of the relationships between the living and the dead, and the many shapes they can take both on a personal and on a public, political level.There exists, of course, vast literature in multiple disciplines about the dead.Anthropology, Sociology, Archaeology, History, and other fields, all have recorded and analyzed the ways different peoples across the world grieve, worship, remember, erase, and deal with their deceased and their remains.STS has often brought to bear its specific competencies to this subject with studies ranging from how disciplinary memory, and who is remembered, is sociotechnologically mediated (Bowker 2005) to large surveys about "perceived interactions with the dead" (Cerulo 2023).Les morts l'oeuvre, as we will see, calls forth its own research partners, both from within and without the canon of STS.The book presents its readers with a meaningful and often touching inquiry into how the living make place for the dead in their lives and become able to transform their history into something to be shared in common.The book is structured in five chapters, each analyzing one work of art produced in the context of the Les Nouveaux Commanditaires ("The New Patrons") project.According to the New Patrons' website, their mission is to allow every person in civil society to commission an artwork from an artist.As a non-profit association, The New Patrons act as mediators, connecting commissioners, artists, funding sources, and local governments and institutions (see Debaise et al. 2013 for a very thorough presentation of the project and its potentials).Despret focuses on works of art which were commissioned on behalf of someone that had already passed, either as homage, remembrance, or other less evident purposes.Despret analyzes the works themselves, but she is more interested in what the person(s) commissioning