as thosewho forbid any indisputable transfer(of force or reason), as me-
diators with whom it is necessary to reckon, as active agents whose
potential is still unknown. I am not arguing that the roles of objects
and subjects must be fused, but that the self-evident distribution of
roles must be replaced—as has been done above for the notions of
speech and social actor—by arange of uncertaintiesgoing from neces-
sity to freedom. Once we recognize, on the side of the old arena of na-
ture, that consequences always slightly exceed their causes, and, on
the side of the new arena, that what causes beings to act is still subject
to argument, this is sufficient to calm down the discussion and give all
associations of humans and nonhumans the minimum reality that is
needed to bring them together.
A More or Less Articulated Collective
In sharing the competencies of speech, association, and reality among
humans and nonhumans, we have put an end to the anthropomor-
phism of the object-subject division that mobilized all entities in a
fight for control of the common world. I have not proposed an alter-
native metaphysics, one that would be more generous and more en-
compassing; instead, I have refrained from taking the metaphysics of
nature* as the only political organization possible. We have thus pro-
gressed in our convoking of the collective, since we know what proce-
dures the foregoing subjects and objects must go through in order to
lay down their arms and rediscover their capacity to come together.
Now that speech, association, and recalcitrance have been redistrib-
uted among them, they are going to be able to begin to parley again.
Nothing proves, however, that the assembly is going to come off
well, that the participants are all going to find themselves in the ecu-
menical equivalent of some Woodstock festival in honor of Gaia. We
still do not have the slightest idea what the consequences of such a re-
union, such a resumption of the work of collection, might be. We sim-
ply know that what was formerly prohibited by the split into two
houses has now become possible. Let there be no misunderstanding:
political ecology is not going to be simpler, nicer, more rustic, more
bucolic, than the old bicameral politics. It will be both simpler and
more complicated: simpler because it will no longer live under the
constant threat of a double short-circuit, by Science and by force, but
POLITICS OF NATURE
82