says “Us,” a formidable clamor will respond: “Not us!” followed by nu-
merous cries of “Not me!”
Such is the greatness of this assembly: it seeks to obtain integration
without requiring assimilation all at once; it runs the risk of unifica-
tion after the upper house has run all the risks of multiplicity. At first
sight, the ordering of all these irreducibles appears all the more im-
possible in that the lower house can no longer make use of three de-
vices formerly used to produce any sort of agreement: it cannot im-
port the indisputable laws of nature to silence the diversity of human
interests; it cannot limit the discussion to matters of fact, while dis-
missing differences as either matters of opinion or private matters;
finally, it cannot bring all humans into agreement at the expense of ex-
ternal nature, treating nature as a dumping ground to be exploited at
will. From now on, nothing can limit the scope of the work it has to
carry out, if we consider that it absorbs the requirements of the vari-
ous metaphysics in all their force without any possible simplification:
the fetish-worshiper comes with his gods, genes with their Darwin,
exploited beings with their compensation claims, rivers with their
“water parliaments.” When we see the fright that takes hold of its
members, we understand better the fantastic usefulness to moderns of
the creation of the old second house, that of nature, set surreptitiously
apart, where one could, without restraints on procedures and while
keeping one’s own counsel, without even the intervention of humans,
silently wring the necks of most candidates for common existence
without even having to give reasons. Quite clearly, our new elected of-
ficials no longer have the choice of indolence, since there is no more
nature, and there is no more transcendence unified enough to inter-
vene and spare the collective the work of deciding.
Still, if they do not benefit from the conveniences of modernism,
the representatives do not suffer from its defects, either. The entities
that the old Constitution tried vainly to order in hierarchical fashion
in fact suffered from a common weakness: they were formed either of
essences that were definitively installed in the world or else of ideal
values without a fixed address. Worse still, thanks to the combined
work of the epistemologists on behalf of nature and the sociologists
on behalf of society, the lower house inherited invaders of the least ac-
commodating sort, since natural beings were be defined by their indis-
putable essence and human groups by their equally indisputable inter-
POLITICS OF NATURE
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