his drugs, a lion without its Masai, a worker without her union, a pro-
prietor without her property, a farmer without his landscape, an eco-
system without its ecologist, a fetishist without his fetishes, a saint
without her apparitions, an elected official without her voices—each
of these propositions is accompanied by instruments capable of trans-
posing what it says, but also by its own speech impediment, its uncer-
tainties about the faithfulness of the representation.
Reception by the Upper House
How will the upper house react to the subtle pressure of its postu-
lants? Careful: let no madman come ask them whether they exist for
real or not, whether they are proposing rational facts or irrational be-
liefs, whether they belong to nature or to the “representation that hu-
mans make of it,” whether they reside in history or outside in nature.
Such questions would not only be impolite, they would also be inde-
cent and, especially, antidemocratic. (If some thug from the episte-
mology police insists on spoiling the solemn entry with these mis-
placed questions, let the officials confine him to quarters until the
ceremony is over!) The upper house is not going to require an initial
and impossible conversion among the entrants; it is going to react
quite differently. It will get moving, enter a state of general alert, a sit-
uation of worry; it will manifest scruples, attention, precaution, fear, a
state of urgency; it will be all ears—we are intentionally intermingling
terms supplied by the various corporations that take part in setting up
the cortege.
This state of alert has some very particular properties. The upper
house is responsible for the articulation of the “we,” the collective, but
unlike its partner the lower house, it has to reopen the list that com-
poses this famous “we” to answer the question “How many are there
of us to be taken into account?” An assembly that has a definitive
answer to this question, that says, for example, “we humans, “we
native-born French citizens,” “we Falklanders,” “we geneticians,” “we
whites,” “we, the communion of saints,” “we earthworms,” would not
enter into a state of alert. It would thus welcome the appeal by the ex-
ternal multitudes in a very uncivil fashion: it would give the appear-
ance of a solid fortress to be defended against all comers at any price,
and not that of a fragile collective in the process of exploration.
POLITICS OF NATURE
166