of the sciences visible, we can start from nature, not in order to move
toward the human element, but—by making a ninety-degree turn—to
movetoward the multiplicity ofnature, redistributed by the sciences—
something that might be called thepluriverse*^48 to mark the distinc-
tion between the notion of external reality and the properly political
work of unification. In other words, political ecology allied to science
studies traces a new branching on the map: instead of going back and
forth between nature and the human, between realism and construc-
tivism, we can now go from the multiplicitythat no collective yet col-
lects,the pluriverse, to the collective which up to now was gathering
that multiplicity under the combined names of politics and nature.
Only political ecology makes it possible to profit from the formidable
potential of science studies, for political ecology manages at last to pry
apart multiplicity and what collects multiplicity in a single unified
whole. As for the question whether this collecting, this gathering, this
unifying, is carried out by the political instrument of nature or by the
political instrument of politics, from this point on it hardly matters—
but see Chapter 4. From now on, instead of opposing reality and rep-
resentation, we will oppose the representation of multiplicity and the
unification, through due process, of this multiplicity.
There is, then, a path other than idealism that we can follow to leave
nature behind, a path other than subjects that we can take to leave ob-
jects behind, a path other than dialectics that was supposed to enable
us to “get beyond” the contradiction between subject and object. To
put it more bluntly still, thanks to political ecology, Science no longer
kidnaps external reality to transform it into an appellate court of last
resort, threatening public life with a promise of salvation worse than
the evil against which it offers protection. Everything the human sci-
ences had imagined about the social world to construct their disci-
plines at a remove from the natural sciences was borrowed from the
prison of the Cave. Intimidated by Science, they accepted from it the
most menacing of diktats: “Yes, we readily admit it,” they confess in
chorus, “the more we talk about social construction, the further away
we actually move from the real unified things in themselves.” Whereas
what they should have done was reject the diktat and move closer—
despite the threat of Science—to the realities produced by thesciences
in order to be able to take a fresh look at the question of how the com-
mon world is composed.
POLITICS OF NATURE
40