To designate what becomes of the collective considered as an asso-
ciation of humans and nonhumans defined by longer lists of elemen-
tary actions called propositions, we are going to use the lovely word
“articulation.” This term is good because it has never been dragged
into the now-obsolete subject-object polemic. Next, it has the advan-
tage of bringing us closer to the apparatuses for speech production
that we defined in the first section; it can also be used to designate the
insistent reality of material things. We shall say of a collective that it is
more or less articulated,in every sense of the word: that it “speaks”
more, that it is subtler and more astute, that it includes more articles,
discrete units, or concerned parties, that it mixes them together with
greater degrees of freedom, that it deploys longer lists of actions. We
shall say, in contrast, that another collective is more silent, that it has
fewer concerned parties, fewer degrees of freedom, and fewer inde-
pendent articles, that it is more rigid. We can even say of a two-house
collective, made up of free subjects and indisputable natures, that it is
completelyinarticulate,totally speechless, since the goal of the sub-
ject-object opposition is actually to suppress speech, to suspend de-
bate, to interrupt discussion, to hamper articulation and composition,
to short-circuit public life, to replace the progressive composition of
the common world with the striking transfer of the indisputable—
facts or violence, right or might.
We shall say, on the contrary, that the new procedures proper to po-
litical ecology are going to seek articulation by all possible means.
Who assembles, who speaks, who decides in political ecology? We
now know the answer: neither nature nor humans, butwell-articulated
actors,associations of humans and nonhumans, well-formed proposi-
tions. We shall of course have to explain, in Chapter 5, how good and
bad articulations are differentiated, but at last we know that the com-
mon task is at least thinkable.
We need a final accessory to equip the members of this newly con-
voked collective. Articulated propositions must havehabits rather
than essences*.^38 If the collective were to be invaded by essences with
fixed and indisputable boundaries, natural causalities as well as hu-
man interests, no negotiation could be concluded, since one could
expect nothing from the propositions but perseverance: they would
persist until they wore out their adversary. Everything changes if
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