“small” modification, we can henceforth take it to be self-evident that
the collective is indeed composed of entities sharing enough essential
features to participate in a political ecology thatwill never again oblige
themto become,without debate,either objects belonging to nature or
subjects belonging to society.
We do not ask our readers to abandon all desire for ordering, hierar-
chy, classification, in order to toss everything into the common pot of
the collective. We simply ask them not to confuse the legitimate desire
for order and norms with the ontological distinction between object
and subject that not only did not allow this ordering to be carried out,
as we see it, but in addition introduced a horrible mess. Readers can be
reassured: they will indeed find in the chapters that follow the differ-
ences of which they are so fond, butat the endof the process, not at the
beginning. Once the institutions of the collective have stabilized these
distributions of roles and functions, we shall in fact be able to recog-
nize subjects and objects, an externality, humans, acosmos.Notatthe
beginning, not once and for all, not outside proper procedures, not
like barbarians without an assembly, that is, not like moderns without
fire or law. Yes, we have finally left the Cave era behind, along with the
cold war, the state of nature, the war of each against each, of “each
against all.” The means for articulating propositions well—what our
ancestors called thelogos—is once again located at the center of the
agora.Non nova sed nove.
POLITICS OF NATURE
90