Reconstruction 7.2 (2007)
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Translating Ecocriticism: Dialoguing with Michel Serres / Stephanie Posthumus
Abstract: Since its humble beginnings in the Western United States, ecocriticism has grown under the banner of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment into an organization of over 1000 members with international affiliates in Australia-New Zealand, Canada, Europe, India, Japan, Koria and the UK. At first sight, it would seem that ecocriticism has achieved global status. But as Ursula Heise remarks in her assessment of ecocriticism, this process of globalisation has been mainly a process of becoming known internationally. In truth, ecocriticism has remained strongly rooted in Anglophone literary studies even as it has been exported to other countries. As Heise explains, "ecocritical work on languages other than English is still scarce" ("Hitchiker's Guide" 513). The present article will attempt to address this problem. Although written in English, it will draw mainly on French texts, those of Michel Serres in particular, to demonstrate how éco-pensée directly speaks to some of ecocriticism's shortcomings and difficulties. In other words, a North American ecological perspective will not be applied to French texts (another example of Anglophone monoculturalism but of a more subtle form than the one to which Heise refers); rather, French éco-pensée will be used to answer some of the questions about ecology, ethics, language, modernity and realism that ecocriticism has been asking since it first emerged. In this way, the article will bring into a cross-cultural dialogue two ways of thinking about nature and our place in it. N.B. I will be referencing Michel Serres's most recent and as yet untranslated texts in this article: Hominescence (2001), Incandescent (2003), Rameaux (2004), and Récits d'humanisme (2005). The English translations will therefore be my own.
Introduction
<1> Since its humble beginnings in the early 1990's, ecocriticism has become more plural, more diverse, and more theoretically informed in response to objections raised by critics on various fronts. Questions have been raised, on the one hand, about ecocriticism's corpus (it's (over)emphasis on nature writing and nature as wilderness), and on the other hand, about its theoretical framework (it's (over) emphasis on representation and mimesis as standards for measuring the eco-value of literary texts) [1]. While touching on these issues, I will adopt an alternate perspective from that of other ecocritics . In place of a North-American critical and theoretical framework, I will examine ecocriticism through the lenses of French philosopher Michel Serres' eco-philosophy (1930-present) [2]. This shift in cultural perspective will bring to light the way in which ecocriticism has in large part grown from a North American environmentalist politics, ethics and philosophy. It will also open up some interesting possibilities for a new generation of ecocritics searching for a less nature-based form of environmentalism.
<2> Resisting any simple classification or description of himself and his work, Michel Serres has spent most of his life crossing borders and defying boundaries. After studying at the "Ecole Navale" (1949-1952), he went on to do a "licence" in mathematics, an "agrégation" in philosophy and a doctorate in literature. His thesis on Leibniz's mathematical models (1968) demonstrated an early desire for multidisciplinarity that was later developed in all its complexity in his Hermès series (1969, 1972, 1974, 1978, 1980). More recent books have touched on subjects as varied as the legend of angels (La Légende des anges 1993), short stories inspired by the physical world (Nouvelles du monde 1997), knowledge born from the body's kinesthesia (Variations sur le corps 1999), and the history of humankind (Hominescence 2001, Incandescent 2003, Rameaux 2004, Récits d'humanisme 2005). This great diversity means that Serres is not obviously part of any particular school of thought.
<3> In fact, it is not even clear to what extent Serres is part of the greater philosophical community in France. Rather than teaching in a philosophy department, Serres splits his year between the Department of French and Italian at Stanford and the Department of the History of Science at the Sorbonne . Although his books can be found in the philosophy section of French bookstores, Serres has not drawn much attention from fellow French philosophers [3]. This marginality has not however affected his influence on the larger French public. Serres' books sell well in France. Moreover, he is a familiar face on television and a familiar voice on the radio [4]. A member of the Académie française, Serres has gained much respect in France for his extensive knowledge and use of the French language. (He is an extremely prolific writer, publishing an average of one to two books a year for the last fifteen years.) In short, Serres has made a name for himself by remaining outside of the French philosophical community and joining instead as many other communities as possible. This multiplicity and plurality makes his work particularly well suited for exploring questions of nature and the environment.
<4> During an interview with Bruno Latour, Serres relates how his philosophy is driven by a desire to answer simple questions, questions asked during childhood about our body, our skin, the senses, the sea, the sky, trees, animals, cities, justice, law, rights, and love (1994b: 245). He adds that answers to these questions come less from books than from "a direct, often painful, experience of the state of things themselves" (1994b: 245). More recently, Serres has described himself as a nomad philosopher, living everywhere: "And now I sing my global home, earth and ocean, mountain and volcano, savannah and forest, river and lake" (Incandescent 2003: 176). Such a poetic affirmation will strike a resounding chord in the hearts of ecocritics who struggle to bring about a greater ecological awareness in a society driven by consumerism and capitalism. So why has Serres' voice not been heard more within ecocriticism?
<5> One explanation may be the lack of translated texts from French into English and the difficulty of Serres' writing. According to William Paulson (1997, 2002), the variety of subjects and disciplines that Serres' work spans is partly the reason for his small(ish) audience in the United States. (cf. "Writing that Matters", "Michel Serres' Utopia of Language"). Another explanation may be that few French literary scholars have been attracted to ecocriticism, and those that are have concentrated on the tradition of American nature writing and American environmentalism (such as Granger, Specq, Suberchicot). As for Serres' North-American readers, they have either focused on epistemological issues related to communication, history, science and time in his work (Abbas, Assad, Brown, Hayles, Paulson) or applied his philosophical concepts and figures to literary texts (Bell, Perloff, Schweighauser, Winkler). North-American readers that have integrated Serres' philosophy into an ecocritical approach, most notably Paul Harris (1997), Andrew McMurry (2003) and Ann-Catherine Nabolz (2004), have not yet done so in a systematic and comprehensive manner [5].
<6> To present Serres' eco-philosophy to an ecocritical audience, I will concentrate on some of the major issues that have plagued ecocriticism over the years. In "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Ecocriticism" Ursula Heise (2006) organizes her summary around questions of environmentalism, science, realism and globalization. In a similar vein, I will present Serres' eco-philosophy in terms of five themes that are echoed in the subtitles of this present article: ecology, science, nature, language and humanity. In each instance, the theme will be introduced in ecocritical terms and then expanded within the context of Serres' eco-philosophy. Only the final theme - humanity - will appear more exclusive to Serres' eco-philosophy in large part because ecocriticism has rejected humanistic philosophies as part of its critique of modernity. Yet even in this final case, it will become clear that Serres and ecocriticism have much to say to each other. Once the linguistic barrier separating the French philosopher and an Anglophone audience has been reduced, the two can enter into dialogue. Such a dialogue will make ecocriticism more truly multicultural in the sense of taking on another environmentalist cultural perspective rather than simply applying North American environmentalism to literary texts from other cultures.
Ecology Contextualized
<7> Scientific evidence? Political agenda? Environmental ethics? Ecocriticism has had difficulty defining ecology's role. In an early article, William Rueckert (1978) borrowed concepts from scientific ecology to analyze poems in terms of energy flows, entropy, interrelationships and the biosphere. Because of its largely metaphorical approach, Rueckert's pioneering effort remained without echo for many years. In the early nineties, however, ecocriticism, under the banner of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE), began to take shape. At a meeting of the Western Literature Association in 1992, a critical mass of researchers came together to affirm the need for "a scholarly perspective attuned to the place of the more-than-human world in particular works of art" (Branch and Slovic 2003: xi). Despite this commonly acknowledged need, there was not a clear idea of what such an approach might be based on. On the one hand, ecology as a science seemed essential to verify the "facts" of environmental degradation and to "prove" that a new perspective within literary studies is necessary. On the other hand, science in general was denounced as part of capitalism's technological train that seemed to destroy all in its path. So how exactly are ecocritics to integrate ecology as scientific discourse and/or as a political movement? And what type of relationship can be envisaged between literature and ecology? [6]
<8> Described by Jean-Marie Auzias as "the beginning of all ecology" (1992: 9; my translation) and Sydney Lévy as an "ecology of knowledge" (1997: 4-5), Serres' philosophy offers some answers to questions about ecology's role within a literary and cultural perspective in an unexpected way. Take, for example, the Auzias's and Levy's use of the word ecology. Neither critic is implying that Serres has an environmental political agenda or that his philosophy engages with ecological science. Auzias (1992) is referring to Serres' principle that philosophical experience and life experience are inseparable: knowledge is living and living is knowledge. As for Lévy (1997), he is characterizing the interconnections that permeate Serres' approach to the world. According to Josué Harari (1982) and David Bell, such an approach is encyclopedic in its scope: "a series of crossings of varying length, a mosaic of knowledge made up of borrowings, detours, codes, and messages that cross each other, creating unforeseeable connections and nodes" (1997: xxxv). In other words, Serres' work is ecological in the sense that it makes connections across space and time, across literature and science, across matter and thought.
<9> Serres' view of the world as ultimately connected corresponds to Cheryl Glotfelty's definition of ecocriticism as "tak[ing] as its subject the interconnections between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artifacts of language and literature" (1996: xix). Moving from this definition to Serres' general principle of the world as interconnected, one could ask if ecocriticism should be more concerned with making interconnections rather than taking them as its subject. In Serres' texts, original and surprising connections are constantly being created: the English painter William Turner and thermodynamics, the French comic books Tintin and communication theory, the space shuttle Challenger and Baal, etc. In this way, Serres demonstrates that knowledge itself is ecological, acting as a creative source that both discovers and makes interactions and connections.
<10> With the publication of Le Contrat Naturel (1990), Serres emerges as an important figure within the field of French political ecology [7]. Yet he denies being an environmentalist or even a partisan of ecologism. In response to the arguments raised against his idea of a natural contract (Baudrillard 1992, Bourg 1993, Ferry 1992), Serres begins Le Retour au contrat naturel (2000) by explaining that the word écologie never appears in Le Contrat Naturel because the book is neither about scientific ecology nor is it an ideological ecologism [8]. To make this clear, he reiterates the main point of Le Contrat Naturel: the natural contract is a way of understanding the coming-of-age of capitalist society that has given birth to global objects and a global subject whose interactions remain in large part unpredictable [9]. As past examples of the natural contract, Serres cites events such as the Earth Summit in Rio (1992) and the Kyoto protocol (1997) that have made the Earth a legal, global object of international political discourse. Interestingly, Serres comes back to the word ecology at the end of Le Retour (29). He explains that, etymologically, contemporary philosophy must be an ecology in the sense of a logos (discussion or discourse) about our home, our oikos (dwelling or house) (2000: 29). As part of a project to construct the foundations of a home that is taking shape in the late Twentieth Century, Serres cites his most recent books, Nouvelles du monde (1997) and Le Trésor, dictionnaire des sciences (1998). The idea of a personal, historicized and contextualized "éco-logie" represents an interesting alternative to ecology as science and/or ideology.
<11> Serres further develops the concept of the natural contract in subsequent texts. At various occasions, he interprets environmental action as our way of asking "the environment to side with us or in front of us, as an active or reactive subject to our enterprising effort" (2003: 207). It is important to emphasize that Serres, in his writings, does not endorse environmental actions such as saving endangered species, protecting natural parks or controlling global warming; instead, he attempts to explain them within the context of the natural contract. He concludes, moreover, that our relationship to biological life is moving toward "the horizon of universal integration" as all species become domesticated or at the very least encultured (2003: 310-1). Is this a good or a bad thing? Serres answers: "I'm not calling this either progress or fear: we can do nothing about it, our prehistory led us there" (2003: 312) [10]. Quite clearly then, the natural contract is not a call to get back to nature, to a less technological way of life. As part of Serres' eco-philosophy, it is a description of our present state of affairs and part of the larger and much longer history of humankind's relationship to the world.
<12> This does not mean that Serres' eco-philosophy lacks an ethical dimension [11]. Foregoing the apocalyptic cries of environmentalism, Serres opts for a more hopeful ecological message. He recognizes that the natural contract does not obligate anyone to any specific action; its force lies instead in the fact that it is both "observable" and "thinkable" (2003: 239). Its potential is realized by the continuous actions of attaching and detaching to the earth, to landscape, to the physical world that characterize humans as a species. While other living beings remain caught in their ecological niche, humankind has broken free, establishing multiple habitats in various bioregions (2004a: 173-4). But with this freedom comes the responsibility of navigating. Time and again, Serres draws on the image of a sailing vessel whose direction must be modified according to the local conditions at sea in order to stay on course. Working with others and with the environment follows from a more general ethical principle that Serres espouses as part of his eco-philosophy: the principle of living together. This principle involves, on the one hand, "circulating continuously, changing positions, sites, movements, languages, from the neighboring to the very far, from the near to the strange, from the unknown to the familiar," and on the other, opening up to the world, both human and non-human, as a form of engagement and detachment (2003: 282-3). Such an open-ended ecological ethics may not satisfy ecocritics who are accustomed to North American environmental philosophy defense of natures inherent worth (see Good pastor's "life principle," Singer's "sentience," and Taylor's "teleological center"). However, it may be exactly what a new generation of ecocritics has been looking for as a way to combine both an urbancare and earthcare politics, both a critical and an activist environmentalism, both a socialist and humanist sense of justice [12].
Science Narrativized
<13> An ardent supporter of a science-based ecocriticism, Glen Love asserts in his most recent book Practical Ecocriticism that the natural sciences are "the necessary basis for a joining of literature with what has proven itself to be our best human means for discovering how the world works" (2003: 8). From Love's perspective, science is the key to understanding and analyzing the descriptions of the physical world in the literary text. Such an assertion has drawn well-founded objections from critics such as Dana Phillips (2003) who argues that science is itself a form of discourse and as such cannot serve as a measure of objective truth for literary or artistic representations of nature. So what role might science play within a humanist discipline? Serres' take on this question offers some possible ways out of a debate that continues to divide ecocritics.
<14> First establishing himself as an epistemologist (in the French sense of a philosopher of scientific knowledge), Serres has been navigating the waters of scientific discourse since his thesis on Leibniz's mathematical models (1968). Different scientific theories have profoundly influenced his view of the world over the last thirty years: structuralist mathematics, topology, communication theory, systems theory, complexity theory and chaos theory in the early years; more recently, biotechnology, genome theory, superstring theory, paleontology and archeology. Despite his deep and enduring respect for science and its discoveries, Serres remains attentive to science's dark side: his strongest memory is that of the explosion of the atomic bombs in 1945. In order to avoid the political, scientific and industrial conditions that led to such destruction, Serres endorses the idea of "maîtriser la maîtrise", that is, mastering mastery (1973: 93). The idea reappears in Le Contrat naturel in reference to the need for a more symbiotic, more contemplative and respectful relationship with the world (1992: 61, 67). Yet Serres also recognizes that such complete control is impossible. In Le Retour, he explains that Cartesian mastery has been replaced by "a spiral where dependence and mastery inter and retroact, where outdated subjects, because of their singularity, disappear by combining with former objects" (2000: 14). The epistemologist's task, and more generally the philosopher's, is not to lay out the specific rules of conduct for science but instead to offer a theoretical framework for better understanding the conditions and the consequences of the relationship between science and culture.
<15> One obvious way Serres does this is by shedding light on science's origins in myth and culture. As he emphasizes on numerous occasions, "there is no purer myth than the idea of a science purified of all myth" (1973: 259). Serres' arguments in La Naissance de la physique (1997b) that Lucretius's poem articulates a theory of fluids, and in Feux et signaux de brume (1975) that Emile Zola's texts illustrate the theory of thermodynamics, rest on this premise that scientific knowledge and discovery follow the deeper paths of culture, myth and the sacred. Demonstrating such parallels does not, however, make Serres a social constructivist. As Steven Brown explains, Serres' position is neither "externalist" (denying the power of scientific concepts and methods) nor "internalist" (denying the influence of events outside the scientific domain upon the development of a specific science) (2000: 9). Although Brown's comment is insightful, Serres would no doubt respond that there is no clear delimitation between inside and outside, between science and culture. In Les Cinq Sens, Serres speaks of science not as an object nor as an exterior space but instead as something that informs our vision of the world without us even realizing it (1985: 372-3). In short, science works in Serres' texts while it is being worked on.
<16> Serres' most recent collection of books - Hominescence (2001), Incandescent (2003), Rameaux (2004) and Récits d'humanisme (2005) - illustrates this relationship perfectly. All four books attempt to make sense of recent scientific discoveries while at the same time using such discoveries to articulate a philosophy of/for the world. In Hominescence, Serres situates advancements in the field of genotypes within the context of the history of humankind. As biotechnology begins to cultivate living things, humankind enters into a new era of hominisation. Rather than condemn this new era, Serres tries to frame the impact of biotechnological advances within a much larger scale: social, political, paleontological and geological. At the end of Hominescence, his excitement is palpable:
Under a sky of incomparable immensity, on an earth of which we just recently acquired a moving, global knowledge, living in a body whose pain pales with that of our ancestors, handling equipment unknown to our predecessors, ... so much is left to do, to reinvent, to organize, to establish, to reflect on, to think about... what could be more exhilarating for a new philosopher? (2001: 332-3)
<17> How can ecocriticism contribute to such a project? In Incandescent, Serres introduces the expression "le Grand Récit" to characterize science and scientific knowledge. For Serres, science is the Great Story that allows him to articulate a philosophy of nature, life and the human, without falling into the trap of ideology (2003: 29). Such an assertion about a Great Story may seem disconcerting to postmodernists who refuse any one narrative as an explanation for all of life. Yet Serres appears to be subverting such a refusal by characterizing science as a story, first, and a Great Story, second. Science is chosen, not for its "truth-value" but rather for its powerful narrative value (2004: 145). Demystified of its objectivity, science can be evaluated and appreciated as a story whose laws resemble those of natural history: "As different tributaries of the Great Story, the sciences are joining literature and discovering in the humanities their bed and their home" (2003: 36). Nodal rather than linear, the Great Story can be told in a multitude of ways: one can start at any point and find connections to any other point [13]. Contextualized within a much larger timeframe, human history is no longer at the center; humans appear instead near the very end of the Great Story. By adopting such a model of science (in place of a "science-as-objective-truth model" or a "science-as-destructive-capitalist-machine model"), ecocriticism can avoid an all or nothing attitude towards scientific discourse and examine more closely the relationship between scientific narrative and cultural representations of nature.
<18> Ecocritics are, in fact, well equipped to play the role of the engaged, global thinker that Serres asserts is needed given today's global environmental crisis. In Le Tiers Instruit (1991), he details the identity of a person who is both scientifically learned ("savant") and well-cultured ("littéraire"). Bridging the gap between the sciences and the humanities, the hybrid intellectual ("le tiers instruit") applies abstract knowledge to real - social and environmental, or more precisely socio-environmental - problems. Serres gives specifics about how to educate such an individual at the end of Incandescent where he lays out a curriculum that would include three streams: 1) a student's program of specialization; 2) classes from the unifying Great Story of the sciences (physics, astrophysics, geophysics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, agronomy, medicine); and 3) classes from the mosaic of human cultures (linguistics, languages, history of religion, political science, economics, literary and artistic works of art) (2003: 351) [14]. Most ecocritics can claim competency in the humanities and their own particular area of specialization but many lack formal training in the sciences, as critics such as Heise (2006 ), Howarth (1996), and Phillips (2003) have noted. Serres' texts offer a starting point for cultivating scientific literacy within ecocriticism for they both work on and in the sciences from a larger cultural and philosophical perspective. From this vantage point, ecocritics would come to know scientific and humanistic knowledge in the way in which Serres promotes it: as that which travels, wanders, tours the world, society and the sciences (Rameaux 61).
Nature De-essentialized
<19> Kate Soper's What is Nature? has afforded ecocritics one way of working through the sticky epistemological problem of nature's meanings and representations. In her introduction, Soper distinguishes between nature-skeptics, who conceptualize nature as a constructed reality, and nature-endorsers, who base their defense of nature on the existence of an extra-discursive reality. This distinction reflects to some extent the division between postmodern and ecological discourse, although Soper asserts that her distinction allows for more overlap. For example, she herself holds a realist position while asserting that "there can be no adequate attempt ... to explore 'what nature is' that is not centrally concerned with what it has been said to be..." (21). Strangely absent from Soper's analysis of different cultural representations of nature is any mention of scientific discourse. (Soper seems more interested in ecology as a political discourse than as a scientific discourse.) It is from Soper's blind spot, the perspective of a scientific-realist, that Serres defines nature.
<20> Throughout his texts, Serres maintains a definition of nature firmly rooted in the word's etymology. Nature, from the word naître, is what is born. In a text as early as La Naissance de la physique (1977), Serres asks, "What is nature, if not a set of objects, emerging forms that transform these forms? " (116) In Hermès IV, Serres develops this idea by zeroing in on science's role in the continual formation and transformation of forms: "If we understand 'nature' as the collection of objects that the exact sciences zero in on at a particular moment of history - a limited yet workable definition - the birth of physics can only be understood within the global context of our relationship to nature" (1977: 95). Yet this role cannot be determined in advance; we cannot predict what scientific narrative will give birth to what nature. Answering more specifically the question of how to define nature, Serres explains: "How to define it? By its original sense: what was being born, what is born, what will be born; that is, a narrative of newborn events, contingent and unpredictable before birth, yet formatted in an almost necessary sequence when one looks back" (2004: 134). Neither fixed reality nor cultural construction, nature's existence corresponds to scientific narrative that follows mythology's traces. As creator, shaper and story-teller of different forms and events, each science has its own set of objects and questions. Most recently, biotechnology has given birth to a particularly novel nature as humankind is now capable of creating and transforming living cells.
In summary, there is no longer one nature, but many ... We are moving from a natured nature - things born and thus inevitable - to a naturing nature - the virtual to be born. Whence the new question... why? ... For what raison would you want, when and if you could, to fabricate another nature? This is the global question asked by the new creator of evolution. (2004: 211) [15]
Serres' preoccupation with nature is then not environmental but rather social and global, philosophical and scientific. He is most concerned with science's influence on the world that is and might be.
<21> It is not surprising that Serres dismisses simplistic visions of getting back to nature. For him, loving nature is not knowledge of nature: "For, whatever praises you have heard, whatever love you have professed for the sea, mountains, the desert or swamps, plants and animals, nature does not act as humankind's friend nor as its symbiote" (2003: 251). Serres accuses contemporary culture of not knowing nature even when - or rather especially when - nature is celebrated as "lover or stepmother, figures of speech that attest clearly to such an ignorance" (2003: 287). To remedy this, Serres speaks of bringing nature into culture, a phrase that may shock ecocritics and nature writers aiming to free nature (and themselves) from culture's devastating and degrading influence. For Serres, this reaction would most certainly be another example of contemporary culture's ignorance of what nature represents. Nature can never be free of culture nor can culture detach itself completely from nature: "Culture starts with nature, it is nature itself, pursued by other means, becoming unrecognizable at each stage" (2001: 46). The relationship between nature and culture resembles that of a Moebius strip constantly turning back on itself without a clear interiority or exteriority (2003: 70). Humankind is continually detaching itself from nature at the same time that culture is searching to reintegrate nature.
<22> Unlike Bruno Latour, Serres does not collapse the distinction between nature and culture; instead, he maintains the distinction and then explores different zones of contact [16]. He observes that we are slowly but surely discovering that culture also exists on the plane of nature (ethology's studies of animal behavior, for example) (2001: 109-35). He adds that there most surely exists a "prae-cogitat" running through the universe but that we have yet to decode it (2003: 290-2). Humankind maintains its originality as a species that travels tangentially, moving away from any set evolutionary path: "Outside of any one ecological niche, [humankind] starts and continues to live as a parting from ecology. Out-side or out-there" (2003: 232). Serres models the culture-nature relationship on the term bifurcation. While nature is the "complete series of bifurcations," "the sum of all births" (2003: 29), each culture contains its own collection of codes and abbreviations that correspond to specific bifurcations in nature (2003: 303). Unfortunately, such coding tends to veil culture's roots in nature, in part, because of discourse's "auto-attractive power" that creates the illusion of a language only referring to itself (2003: 304). Serres hopes to cure culture of such forgetfulness by detailing the ways in which human's code, detach from and turn back to the world.
Language Empiricized
<23> An early influential text in environmental literary theory, Lawrence Buell's The Environmental Imagination (1995) lays some of the theoretical groundwork for questions about literature, reality and representation that ecocriticism has raised again and again as a burgeoning literary theory. While recognizing that language is not transparent, Buell argues that some literature "gets nearer" to reality than others: environmental non-fiction texts that subscribe to a form of mimetic representation actually bridge the gap between reader and world (see Buell's chapter on "Representing the Environment"). In The Future of Environmental Criticism (2005), Buell nuances his argument for environmental realism and referentiality. He emphasizes that no text can claim a perfect correspondence between "word-world" and "actual world" for "even designedly 'realistic' texts cannot avoid being heavily mediated refractions of the palpable world" (2005: 33). He then identifies ecocriticism's originality as "the matching, or non-matching, of wordscape and worldscape that takes quite varied forms" (2005: 39). Whereas any literary text necessarily engages with both language and the world, environmental texts go beyond engagement to demonstrate that the world "out there" matters, in the sense of having materiality and weight.
<24> From the outset, Serres has clearly rejected philosophies of language that set aside the physical world, as if words, representations and discourse were all that existed. In Hermès IV, he strongly objects to the dominant linguistic paradigm of the time (i.e. the end of the 1970's) because of its tendency to "put the world in parenthesis in order to be more attentive to our representations" (1997a: 157). In opposition to what he calls the human sciences' idealism, Serres proposes "a philosophy of nature" that restores "a forgotten materialism" based on the principle that "my knowledge is a product of the world coming into being" (1997a: 157). In other words, knowledge depends on a set of physical and natural conditions in a given space and time. An interesting alternative to post-structuralism's rejection of immediacy and transparency, Serres attempts to re-root knowledge in place, in being, in the material.
<25> These attempts have been both lauded and rejected by Serres' critics. In a special issue of Critique appearing in 1979, Shoshana Felman examines the use of metaphor in Serres' La Naissance de la physique (1977b). Felman holds that Serres elaborates an important and necessary "gap theory" in his study of Lucretius's poem but that his analysis reveals a strong desire for the thing itself, for a metaphor without residue, for a conjoining of model and world. For Felman, Serres' attitude towards language remains contradictory because of its duality: one cannot at the same time establish and close the gap between language and reality. The same sort of objection can be found in N. Katherine Hayles's article "Two Voices, One Channel: Equivocation in Michel Serres" (1988). According to Hayles, "Serres' project depends upon speaking both the claims of science to represent the world and the admission of language that it can represent only itself" (1988: 11).
<26> Other readers have interpreted Serres' use of language in a more positive light. In the same issue of Critique, Claude Mouchard situates Serres' model of the relationship between word and world within a larger context: "It's as if the differences between knowledge and things, or between interpretation and the text itself ... are not only abolished, they have been replaced with multiple forms of uncertainty and unpredictability" (1979: 118; my translation). As a translator of Serres' texts and thus intimately familiar with his use of language, Paulson speaks of reference being "neither given nor refused" but rather "worked toward, that is an event" (2005: 29). Adopting an ecocritical perspective, Nabolz suggests that Serres' challenge to language's hierarchical structures can be used to envisage a more intimate relationship between humans and the world (2004: 36-7). Finally, Steven Connor (2005) emphasizes that Serres' own language is "brimming with undigested material," not at all like the empty, abstract, homogeneous language Serres so fiercely criticizes in Les Cinq Sens.
<27> All these differing interpretations reflect some of the difficulties present in Serres' early work when the philosopher adopted a much more polemical attitude towards the theories of his time. In his more recent work, Serres has nuanced his position in such a way that the more critical interpretations of his theory of language would no longer hold. In early texts, Serres is strongly critical of the dominant linguistic paradigm and yet he recognizes that "we only know things by way of systems that transform the collections of which these things are part" (1974: 9). As an epistemologist, Serres proposes science as possibly the most efficient system of transformation for knowing the world: "If nature is written, it is coded, and science is about deciphering" (1974: 28) [17]. It is from this scientific-realist position that Serres attacks phenomenology's mistaken view of sensation as being located in the visible and in language (1994b: 192-3). Serres nevertheless goes beyond science to elaborate an empiricism based on sensate perception and experience (see Les Cinq Sens). He even goes so far as to assert that knowledge originates in the body as it learns to repeat movements, explore space and exercise its physicality (see Variations sur le corps). In other words, Serres' concept of experience does not stop at scientific experiment; rather, his realism is based on both body and belief. In opposition to idealism's doctrine of understanding and reason, Serres subscribes to realism's "belief born from the senses, from brute experience" (2003: 53). Searching for knowledge plunged in the material world, Serres' epistemology promotes a symbiotic rather than a divisive relationship between thought and experience: the real awakens the act of knowledge which, in turn, awakens the real (2003: 55).
<28> Although still impatient with contemporary theory's preoccupation with language and discourse, Serres seems to have come to terms with the role of logos in the process of knowing the world: "Without fairy tales, no culture; without culture, no literature, popular or scholarly ; without religion, no stories... The word creates" (2004: 145). His most recent text, Récits d'humanisme, acknowledges that narrative is necessary to all of existence: "One must tell one's story to be born; even things must be recounted in order to occur" (2004: 17). The act of telling one's story is, moreover, necessarily rooted in physical place:
[T]he earth, fauna and flora, participate in our agrarian adventure, the sea and beach misdirect or guide us on our travels, the desert causes the Bedouin to be thirsty, the rock face can kill the mountaineer... A necessary condition of our survival, the landscape acts upon/in the narrative, can invalidate it, reorient it, create a thousand new events (2004: 119).
In this way, Serres reminds the reader of the role the physical world plays in history, of the way in which physical conditions determine our experience and understanding of the world, of the absolute contingency of any event. To understand and identify such conditions means that literary scholars need a knowledge which is both embodied and scientific about the physical world. To ecocriticism, Serres' empiricism offers a foundation for reasserting a materialized language in a literary world.
Humanity Globalized
<29> In a recent article summing up ecocriticism's strengths and weaknesses, Heise makes the following remark: "Ecological issues are situated at a complex intersection of politics, economy, technology, and culture; envisioning them in their global implications requires an engagement with a variety of theoretical approaches to globalization..." (2006: 514). Although not an actual theory of globalization, Serres' ideas on humanism, community, and identity represent an interesting perspective from which to consider questions of the global and globalization.
<30> According to Serres, humanism has been capable of only localized, exclusive definitions of the human until very recently. With the extension of science's Great Story to earth's origins, our genetic makeup, and common anthropoid ancestors, a truly universal humanism has become possible. From within this globalized humanism, Serres does for the human what he does for nature; he de-essentializes it by defining the human as what "has no fixed reference," as what "we construct ... in time with our acts and thoughts, collectively and individually"(2001: 15). This definition counters cries of anthropocentrism that may directed at Serres' eco-philosophy because of its emphasis on humanism: the human cannot be at the center if there is no center [18]. Moreover, Serres' "decentered humanism" (2001: 184) maintains that "humanity's adventure develops first in the living world that in turn develops in the inert Universe" (Incandescent 158). One objection that could be raised against Serres' globalized humanism is the problem of identity and community: what happens to political, cultural, racial and sexual differences? What is the role of local communities within a global perspective?
<31> Serres discourses at length about the difference between "appartenance" (belonging) and "identité" (identity) (Atlas1996[1994], Eclaircissements 1994b, Incandescent 2003). Questioning the way in which identity is described in terms of different groups, Serres offers a purely logical definition of identity as I=I where I is an undefined, white variable, a virtual emptiness from which can arise an infinite number of possible fullnesses. While belonging involves acts of exclusion, racism, and border building, identity evolves without defense, receives without rejection, and combines without division (2003: 120-32). The self exists as a mode that includes three unstable states: "a blank plasticity, a complicated landscape, and transformations vibrating from one phase to the other" (2003: 132). The self is known through story-telling: "Popular, sometimes misunderstood, yet endorsed by ten writers and as many philosophers, the habit of relating one's life in great detail goes deeper than abstractions and quintessence's. Narrative surpasses the concept" (2005: 31). This last statement echoes Serres' belief that "philosophy goes deep enough to know that literature is deeper than it is" (1994b: 42).
<32> Moving beyond the self to the collective means defining a new global subject, a nous (we/us), that is not bound up in the practice of local communities founded on violence and exclusion [19]. Rather than being from here or there, we have become citizens of the world (2005: 92-3). From now on, Serres explains, "we occupy places less than we haunt them intensively" (2003: 93). To exist, the global subject needs its story told; yet any version must partially filter out all the possible events that might be recounted (2003: 118). Serres commends science's Great Story that, contrary to history, underscores the role of landscape, place and the Universe in the evolution of humankind (2003: 120-2). Moreover, Serres imagines that literature fills to some extent the gap that is created by such filtering. As a collection of individual stories, literature unveils the "crazily chaotic multiplicities" that precede the emergence of collective consciousness, local languages and music (2003: 102). It is this combination of science's Great Story and literature's many individual stories that, according to Serres, make a new Universal possible, according to Serres.
<33> A global system producing local singularities, the Universal is an essential component of Serres' humanistic eco-philosophy. Like the global climate that produces local weather conditions, the Universal is unpredictable, capable of causing both chaos and peace (2003: 318-9). As told by science's Great Story, the Universal is rooted in nature's diversity, in the Universe of which "nothing is less uniform" (2003: 319). For Serres, nature provides humankind with universals, whether this be in naming flora and fauna or in assigning mathematical values, that take on different cultural particularities (2003: 324-31). In other words, the Universal is not a form of uniformity. On the contrary, it is meant to oppose globalization's imposition of a singular, local culture by promoting a global mosaic of local particularities (2003: 319) [20].
<34> Serres' desire to establish a universal theory of local differences has been a cause of concern for some of his critics. During their interviews together, Latour questions Serres again and again about his insistence on synthesis (1994b110-1, 132-6, 146, 161). What Latour's repeated and pointed questions make clear is that the the notion of a global vision does not fit with the former student's understanding of Serres multiple, local methods and approaches. Serres responds by defining synthesis in his own terms: as a form of comparativism rather than a form of sequencing (1994b: 110-1), as happening on the side of the pass and the transfer rather than on the side of the object 1994b: 161). Moreover, he asserts that only a global philosophy whose methods and solutions are local, singular and regional can possibly articulate today's global problems (1994b: 132-6). Hayles (1988) is equally suspect of such a vision in her article "Two Voices, One Channel." To characterize Serres' global theory of local differences, she uses such negative terms and expressions as "paradoxical venture," "ideology of the local," "universal solvent," "suppression of difference," "rhetorical moves" and "a nostalgic unity recoverable only in myth." Both Latour's (1994b) and Hayles' (1988) objections are rooted in a postmodernism that rejects any possible passage from the local to the global.
<35> Ecocriticism is, however, rooted in a very different attitude. As Greg Garrard remarks, ecocriticism needs "not only to 'think globally' but to think about the globe" (2004: 162). Serres offers a unique and complex way of conceptualizing the planet as a global object and humankind as a global subject without erasing local differences or embracing uniformity. Profoundly informed by science, his humanistic eco-philosophy develops new metaphors and narratives for articulating our relationship to and within the world.
Conclusion
<36> It is important to remember that bringing Serres and ecocriticism together does not mean instant and absolute correspondence between the two. Serres' eco-philosophy does not touch on the more specific problems raised within ecocriticism about imagination, representation, fictionality and artifact, to name but a few. Moreover, there are more general issues that do not come up in Serres' eco-philosophy which deserve further attention. For example, Serres does not engage with the issue of gender although he does suggest that women have a privileged relationship with the physical world and with some sort of corporal reality [21]. As for race and class issues, Serres includes some reflections on the "Third"-World and mentions the need to close the gap between "us" and "them" when taking environmental action (2001: 95-8). But his suggestions of "sharing poverty" and "extreme misery" in order to know "the real as it really is" remain abstract and are hardly satisfactory to those working in the field of environmental justice (2003: 256-62). Finally, Serres' eco-philosophy does not provide a practical, step-by-step plan for environmental action. As Whiteside remarks, "Serres barely pursues the institutional implications of his ecological thought" (2002: 125). Yet one could respond that by not dictating a set of practical applications, Serres' eco-philosophy allows for more flexibility given local conditions and concerns. Finally, Serres would respond that the philosopher's job is to "advance by producing concepts" rather than attending to concrete applications (Serres quoted in Whiteside; 2002:126).
<37> By offering a nuanced and inclusive eco-philosophy, Serres presents us with a field of literary texts that would otherwise be excluded from a strictly nature-oriented ecocritical approach. However, it is up to the ecocritics to work out the pragmatic uses of Serres' conceptual framework according to the local conditions of the object which is being examined. Although this may seem unsettling to more traditional ecocritics, "second-wave ecocritics," to borrow Buell's expression (The Future of Environmental Criticism), have shown their desire for a less categorical way of thinking about the relationship between the human and the non-human, natural and constructed environments, and literary and scientific discourse. Rather than attempting to rework traditional North American environmentalism to "fit" a poststructuralist view of the world, this new generation of ecocritics can move on to applying a new ecocritical framework to both classical texts within the nature-writing tradition and recent hybrid cultural artifacts that defy genre and stylistic conventions.
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Notes
[1] For some examples of the former, see Armbruster and Wallace 2001, Bennett 1992, Heise 1997, and Phillips 2003. For a particularly ambitious example of the latter, see Phillips 2003 (and as importantly Buell's response to Phillips in The Future of Environmental Criticism). [^]
[2] In this study, I will draw mainly on Michel Serres' most recent works. As some of these works have not yet been translated from French into English- Retour au contrat naturel (2000), Hominescence (2001), Incandescent (2003), Rameaux (2004), and Récits d'humanisme (2005) - the English translations of quotations will entirely be my own. The same is true for all of Serres' works cited in the article. [^]
[3] Aside from an early response to his work in the journal Critique (1979) and some scattered criticisms of his concept of the natural contract (Bourg 1993, Ferry 1992), Serres has not received much recognition in France. In a recent overview of France's most important contemporary thinkers (Le Magazine littéraire, October 2006), Serres' former student, Bruno Latour, is referred to several times but no mention is made of Serres. A quick glance at a bibliography of critical works highlights the fact that more articles have been written about Serres in languages other than French. While the largest contributor has been the Anglo-American community, there have also been some notable analyses of Serres's work in Italian (Delcò). Given the limits of this article, I will not hazard a response as to why this might be the case. [^]
[4] See one of Serres's most recent publications, Petites chroniques du dimanche soir, a collection of Sunday night radio broadcasts during which Serres discusses various current events with the station's manager, Michel Polacco. [^]
[5] In her review article of The Natural Contract, Laura Dassow Walls (1997) introduces the possibilities of Serres' nature philosophy to an ecocritical audience. Her first remark is that "readers educated by American writers like Emerson, Whitman, and Wallace Stevens should find Serres deeply compatible" (113). Yet her final remark reveals the difficulties she has with some of the book's most basic concepts. She wonders whether the image of a global earth with which Serres leaves the reader is meant to convey an idea of the whole or of the multiple (1997: 116). She opts for the latter, deeming that the multiple is more in keeping with Serres's philosophy. Dassow Walls's discomfort with allusions of wholeness and unity in The Natural Contract seems to me symptomatic of a general misunderstanding of the role Serres's philosophy might play within ecocriticism. The present article aims to clear up some of these misunderstandings. [^]
[6] For a more in-depth and at times vitriolic analysis of ecocriticism's ambiguous relationship to ecology, see Dana Phillips' book The Truth of Ecology (2003). Phillips accuses ecocritics of relying on outdated ecological concepts, ignoring the arguments of the science wars, and misconstruing theory's role within literary studies. [^]
[7] Political ecology is the backbone of environmentalism in France and refers to a long line of thinkers that have attempted to define living ecologically in terms of political action (Charbonneau, Deléage, Dumont, Gorz, Lipietz, Moscovici, Zin). According to Kerry Whiteside (2002), it is this idea that ecologism must also be a form of renewed humanism that distinguishes French ecologism from Anglophone environmentalism. [^]
[8] In fact, Serres is highly critical of environmentalism or what he characterizes as "les idéologies écologiques." In Eclaircissements, he dismisses these movements as the "umpteenth demonstration of the transhistoric victory of the city and the bourgeois over the fields and the woods" (1994: 209). His attitude is slightly less dismissive in Hominescence (2001). While he recognizes that such movements may be necessary in the USA where agriculture has been quickly industrialized, he questions their role in Europe where agriculture's traditional roots date much further back (2001: 95). Unfortunately, Serres does not elaborate on these eco-geographical, eco-political differences as he is more concerned with the resistance of environmentalism to recent advances in biotechnology. [^]
[9] Serres uses the expression "global death" to refer to the possible outcome of these unpredictable interactions. He is not, however, referring to the end of all life but rather to the possible end of humanity. This is an important point that environmentalists would do well to articulate more clearly: Are we fighting to save the world? Biological life will no doubt survive human extinction. This point sheds light on a key difference in Serres' political ecology: it is first and foremost meant as a response to our present human condition. The issue of environmental degradation is considered one of the many components of this human condition. [^]
[10] Serres counters the teleological dimension of this remark by following up in the next paragraph on the idea of humankind's unique "non-program." For Serres, it is the lack of determinacy, the absolute capacity for all possible outcomes that distinguishes the human race from other species in the evolutionary process. He goes on to explain that while we are domesticating all of nature by our attempts to manage ecosystems, we are also becoming objects of a new biotechnology. Finally, he holds that bioculture and biotechnology are complementary processes that need to be understood reciprocally rather than condemned on some environmental principle (2003: 312-4). [^]
[11] For a general analysis of Serres's ethics, see Julian Yate's article '"The Gift Is a Given': On the Errant Ethic of Michel Serres." [^]
[12] In The Future of Environmental Criticism, Buell makes the distinction between first-wave ecocritics, who initially came together from an ecocentic perspective, and second-wave ecocritics who have integrated a more "sociocentric perspective" (2005: 8). I have opted to speak of the possibility of combining both perspectives rather than reinforcing this distinction. [^]
[13] For an idea of what such a story might look like, see Serres and Bensaude-Vincent's edited volume, Eléments d'histoire des sciences (1989), a non-linear history of science that develops as a series of questions and responses around a set of concepts and that can be used to reconstruct any number of different stories. [^]
[14] Such an education may go well beyond the four or five years normally allotted for a university degree! In fact, Serres seems to understand the process of becoming a "tiers-instruit" as an ongoing, lifetime commitment. [^]
[15] See also Hominescence : "From natured -- passively immersed in a nature representing a collection of what is born or will be born without us - we are becoming naturing, architects and active workers of that same nature" (2001: 49). [^]
[16] Although a student of Serres, Latour has developed his own "nature-philosophy" or "politics of nature." On Eclaircissements, Latour questions Serres about the relationship between his philosophy and modernity (1994b: 209-13). Unwilling to align himself with Latour's main argument that "we have never been modern," Serres responds that he is modern but of a modernity having ancient roots (1994b: 209-13). Latour responds by characterizing Serres's philosophy as "a-modern." Within their respective views, the nature/culture drama unfolds differently. While Latour's "nature-culture" concept is based on his "we have never been modern" argument, Serres maintains the nature/culture distinction within the framework of his "ancient modernity." [^]
[17] In response to Hayles's critique, one could argue that Serres views science as a code, an algorithm, rather than as language or discourse. [^]
[18] Kerry Whiteside drives this point home in his chapter on Serres's ecologism in Divided Natures (2002). [^]
[19] For a more detailed explanation of this phenomenon, see Serres's Rome (1999) and Statues (1989) where René Girard's concept of the scapegoat is applied to the origins of culture and society. [^]
[20] Summarizing different theories of globalization, Arthur Mol gives a description strangely reminiscent of Serres's concept of the Universal: "[A]lthough there are strong global economic, political, and cultural forces at work in a comparable way all over the world, these forces have different local effects" (2001: 25). Furthermore, Mol explains that globalization can be understood as a process of heterogenization rather than as a process of homogenization. Given that Serres's eco-philosophy is very much about the planet as a global object, it is unfortunate that he does not develop a more nuanced theory of globalization, especially since he alludes to the possible positive role globalization may play in environmental reform. [^]
[21] For a more in-depth analysis of Serres's position, see Maria Assad's article "'Being Free to Write for a Woman': The Question of Gender in the Work of Michel Serres" (2005). [^]
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