the two other powers, defined in Chapter 4: history has not advanced
far enough and the grip of modernism is still too strong. For the time
being, I can only contrast the State ofpolitical sciencewith the State of
science policy*.I am not indulging in word play: the very expression
“political science” expresses a new paralysis of public life by Science, a
new injection of curare to stop the political body in its tracks. To all
the disciplines that aspire to short-circuit the slow process of collec-
tive composition on the pretext of remedying its defects, political sci-
ence adds a supplementary layer: by dint of rigorous, objective stud-
ies, public life would finally be purged of whatever momentum it has
left. It would no longer have to compose the collective provisionally:
one would finally know what the social world is made of, what pas-
sions and interests move it. A scale model would be available. Con-
versely, the expression “science policy,” less well known, follows the
path of political science in the other direction and gradually loosens
the knot that the latter had only tightened further. Science policy used
to be mentioned in circles restricted, up to now every time it was nec-
essary to decide on research to be interrupted, prolonged, or initiated,
every time it was necessary to decide about the sterility or the fruitful-
ness of experimental protocols.^21 If the expression is generalized, it
can thus bring out the contrast that interests us: we need not political
science but science policy, that is, a function that makes it possible to
characterize the relative fruitfulnessof collective experiments, without
its being monopolized right away by either scientists or politicians.^22
It may seem strange to define the power to follow up as what has to
remain independent of both politicians and scientists.^23 Is the State
not the agency, par excellence, of the political? Would it not be better
for its personnel to be steeped in the sciences? No, because the mod-
ernist regime did not know how to distinguish between political pro-
duction and the dangerous support that Science offered it in bringing
to it on a platter a nature or a society that wasalreadytotalized. They
used the term “political” to characterize the agitation of the slaves of
the Cave defining their world through the clash of interests, identities,
and passions. Nothing proves that the State of the Leviathan can pass
intact from one regime to another. It has compromised itself much too
deeply, under the name “technocracy,” with the worst possible mix-
tures of sciences and politics, managing to short-circuit both the work
of the sciences and that of politics, monopolizing all the powers and
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