the “-logies,” “-graphies,” and “-nomies” then become indispensable if
they serve to propose constantly, to the collective, new versions of
what it might be, while keeping track of the singularities. With the so-
cial sciences, the collective can finallycollect itself again.If quite ordi-
nary minds are capable of becoming precise and meticulous scientists,
thanks to their laboratory equipment, we can imagine what ordinary
citizens might become if they benefited, in order to conceive of the
collective, from the equipment of the social sciences. Political ecology
marks the golden age of the social sciences finally freed from mod-
ernism.
May I keep the expression “political ecology” to designate that sort
of state of war? I am aware that the connection with the “green” par-
ties remains very tenuous, since I have done nothing but criticize the
use of nature by showing that it paralyzed the combat of the ecology-
minded. How can I keep the same term, political ecology, to designate
theNaturpolitikof the ecologists who claim to be bringing nature back
into politics, and to designate a public life that has to get over its in-
toxication with nature? Am I not abusing the term here? If I have al-
lowed myself to lack respect for the political philosophy of ecology, it
is because it has made very little use up to now of the combined re-
sources of the philosophy of the sciences and comparative anthropol-
ogy, both of which, as we saw in Chapter 1, require us to give up na-
ture. In contrast, I have not ceased to do justice to the burgeoning
practice of those who discover behind every human being prolifer-
ating associations of nonhumans and whose tangled consequences
make the old division between nature and society impossible.What
term other than ecology would allow us to welcome nonhumans into politics?
I hope I may be pardoned for shaking up the wisdom of ecology in the
hope of ridding it of some of its most flagrant contradictions. To speak
of nature without taking another look at the democracy of the sciences
did not make much sense. And yet if we assure ourselves that humans
no longer engage in their politics without nonhumans, is this not what
the “green” movements have always sought, behind awkward formu-
las involving the “protection” or the “preservation” of “nature”?
A delicate question remains: Does political ecology have to inherit
the classic political divisions? The parties that lay claim to political
ecology, as has often been noted, have trouble telling their left from
their right. But left and right depend on the Assembly that brings to-
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