avoid both this reification and this social construction, the border be-
tween social actors and objects had to be carefully patrolled: such was
the miserable device to which all the horror films that emerged from
the Cave had to resort.
These fears are no longer called for if what comes knocking at the
door no longer has the polemical form of a silencing matter of fact,
but the ecological form^31 of a perplexed nonhuman entering into a
relationship with the collective and gradually being socialized by the
complex equipment of laboratories. Nothing is easier than to lengthen
the lists of actants, whereas one could never manage the relationships
between objects and social actors, no matter what dialectical pirou-
ettes one thought oneself supple enough to carry out.Associatingsocial
actors withother social actors:here is a task that is already more feasi-
ble, one that nothing forbids us to accomplish.
Third Division between Humans and Nonhumans:
Reality and RecalcitranceThe entire history of diplomacy is proof: as long as weapons are not
checked at the door, peace talks cannot take place in a civil fashion.
Our strategy consists in a gradual reduction of dramatic tension that
allows the current warriors’ swords to be converted into plowshares
for future citizens. In this chapter, I am not seeking to define the fun-
damental metaphysics that would tell us once and for all how the uni-
verse is furnished. On the contrary, I would like to reopen the public
discussion, in the absence of any form of hidden decision concerning
these furnishings. I want simply to find out what equipment has to be
available to populations in order for them to assemble into a viable
collective, instead of separating into two illicit assemblies that render
each other mutually powerless and prohibit the exercise of public life.
For this operation of pacification, I propose an exchange of courte-
sies, a sort of gentleman’s agreement: Why not credit your adversaries
with the properties you hold dearest? We have just seen that this was
possible for the terms “speech” and “social actor,” which had been
thought to be anthropomorphic: there is no reason to reserve them for
humans, since they are perfectly suited to the nonhumans with which
humans share their collective existence increasingly every day, thanks
HOW TO BRING THE COLLECTIVE TOGETHER
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