the ineluctable necessity of objects on the one hand and the subjects’
freedom on the other. This would presuppose that the problem has
been solved, for political ecologywould knowwhat actors are, what
they want, what they can do, and also what things and their bundles of
causality are. By what miracle would it master the dichotomy between
freedom and necessity? Where would it get this absolute knowledge?
Either from nature or from society. But to produce the absolute knowl-
edge that draws the line between “things” and “people,” political ecol-
ogy would havealreadyhad to choose between naturalization and so-
cialization, between ecology and politics. It cannot do both at once
without contradiction. This is what has made it so unstable since its
emergence; this is what makes it shift brutally between total power
and equally total impotence. Now, as I see it, political ecology is no
longer self-contradictory if it ceases to believe that it bears either on
“things,” or on “people,” or on “both at once.”
Fortunately for us, this venerable distinction does not have the so-
lidity that the patina of centuries seems to lend it. To tell the truth, it
is somewhat worm-eaten, and it holds together only through the po-
lemics to which it lends itself and will keep lending itself for some
time to come. Detached from their claim to describe domains of real-
ity, the terms “object” and “subject” are reduced to polemical roles
that make it possible to resistthe supposed monstrosity of their confronta-
tion.What is a subject, actually? That which resists naturalization.
What is an object? That which resists subjectivization. Like the war-
ring twins of mythology, they are heirs of the division into two power-
less assemblies that we abandoned above. By changing Constitutions,
we are thus also going to find out how we can get rid of the tiresome
polemics of objects and subjects.
If you assert your freedom, and someone tells you rather arrogantly
that you are in fact only a sack of amino acids and proteins, you will of
course react with indignation against this reduction, by flaunting the
imprescriptible rights of the subject. “Human beings are not things!”
you will say, pounding on the table with your fist. And you will be
quite right. If you assert the indisputable presence of a fact and some-
one explains to you rather arrogantly that you have created this fact
out of your own prejudices and that you are dealing with a “mere so-
cial construction,” you will resist this reduction violently, loudly reas-
serting the autonomy of Science against all the pressures of subjectiv-
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