Drew Pollhammer

On Some Imperatives in Michel Serres’

Ecological Ethics of Symbiotic Reciprocity

“Can we imagine a Doctor Frankenstein who would not flee in horror at the
creature he bungled at first —a Frankenstein who goes back to his laboratory?”
-B. Latour1

“Imagine, then, a genuinely im-possible democracy-to-come, one in which the

interests of all the earth’s living stakeholders were represented.”
-D. Wood2

“… [H]ow far is democracy to be extended … To the dead, to animals, to trees and

rocks?”
-J. Derrida3

                                                                                                               
1
“Will non-humans be saved? An argument in ecotheology” p. 462
2
“Derrida Vert?” p. 321
3
Rogues p. 54  
   2  

~ Introductory Remarks

In the present essay I will discuss what I deem to be Michel Serres’ ecological ‘ethics

of symbiotic reciprocity’. I say ‘discuss’ rather than ‘analyze’ or ‘clarify’ simply because

something of a comprehensive and explicit ethics is not entirely discernible in Serres’ texts.

This fact is evident in Serres’ remarks to Bruno Latour in a 1991 interview: “As for my ethic, I

trust we will have the opportunity to speak of it another time. I don’t want to die without

having written it” (Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time 127)4. Since 1991 Serres has

written somewhere in the region of 37 books (some in collaboration) and numerous papers.

Has his ethics yet appeared? Is his ethics dispersed across these many texts, or is it still to

come?

Perhaps something in the way of an ‘explicit comprehensive ethics’, in the sense of

some practical ethical guidebook, should not be expected of Serres. It is with such a lack of

expectation in mind that Maria Assad writes: “it is futile to read The Natural Contract in hopes

of finding a definitive contribution to existing ecological movements, in the sense of

ideological encouragement or concrete suggestions for solutions to environmental problems”

(Assad 161). Indeed it is one of the peculiarities of Serres’ various works that they, despite

being so heavily invested in the hard sciences, offer next to nothing in the way of ‘concrete’

scientific solutions to ecological problems. Perhaps then, readers should rest content with the

many suggestive, if not entirely developed, ethical dictums that we find throughout Serres’

books, for example: “chase out the parasite”, “master our own mastery”, “clean up the waste”,
                                                                                                               
4
Hereafter cited as “C”
   3  

“make the sea be reborn”, and “become symbionts” (The Parasite 1835; C 172; Malfeasance

75; Biogea 89; The Natural Contract 34; 65). However, without a rigorous and practical, as

well as theoretical, underpinning such ethical imperatives risk sounding like New Age airy-

fairy claptrap —or, even worse, they risk sounding like the sort of clichés one might encounter

on a bumper sticker: “Coexist”6.

One might then be justified in contending that Serres’ ecological ethics is of scanty

substance, and is perhaps useless for the purposes of averting ecological catastrophe.

Criticisms of just this sort have been launched against Serres. For example, Luc Ferry

denounces the “romantic inspiration” of Serres’ The Natural Contract, and elsewhere writes

that the book is “more a metaphorical fable than a case of rigorous argumentation”, further

adding that it is “difficult to attribute a proper meaning to the contract as proposed by Serres”

(cited in Assad 153; 158). In any case, the ‘proper meaning’ that Ferry does end up attributing

to The Natural Contract is that its claims are harmfully ‘antihumanist’.7 Conversely, Claire

Colebrook writes, in a lightly critical vein, of the “manifest humanism” in The Natural

Contract (Colebrook 106). Nevertheless, she applauds the role of the “inhuman” in Serres’

work (110).

Colebrook’s essay thus, if inadvertently, points out the problematic ambiguity within

Serres’ work with regard to whether Serres himself leans more toward ‘humanism’ or more

                                                                                                               
5
Hereafter cited as “P”
6
The “coexist” bumper sticker is a ubiquitous cliché which appears to call for an ethics of
toleration between various religious creeds.
7
On this point, see Kerry Whiteside’s excellent survey “The Resurgence of Ecological
Political Thought in France” (1995). Whiteside writes: “Ferry contends that such ecologism is
antihumanistic because it reduces man to being merely one creature among many with rights. It
is nonsensical, because only human beings have the freedom that can make them the bearers of
rights. And it is dangerous, because it seeks to overturn the democratic values that have defined
French republicanism since 1789” (44).    
   4  

toward the ‘inhuman’ or ‘antihumanism’, whatever these terms might connote. Kerry

Whiteside, for his part, points out the curiously suspect “humanistic” character of Serres’

‘natural contract’ by noting that “[i]f the natural contract parallels the pact of social courtesy at

sea, then the reason that we must accord rights to nature is mainly to protect our life-supporting

‘vessel’ from destruction. In other words, Serres himself relativizes the natural contract to

human needs” (Whiteside 45). Serres thus represents one of those curious and unfortunate

cases of a philosopher who is critically accused of holding the opposite position of whatever

side of the debate is currently criticizing him. ‘Antihumanisms‘ and ‘post-humanisms’ can

accuse him of humanism, and humanists can accuse him of antihumanism.

Thus one of the crucial aims of this paper is to come to some resolute conclusions

concerning whether or not Serres’ ecological ethics of symbiotic reciprocity is ‘humanist’

‘antihumanist’ or perhaps something else entirely. Doing so will allow me to shed light on

some of the novelties of Serres’ ecological ethics, particularly with respect to the sheer

globalism of its scope. This takes me to the chief aims of this paper: (1) to describe the central

characteristics and problematics surrounding Serres’ ecological ethics of symbiotic reciprocity

by staying as close as possible to his many texts which concern this issue; (2) to show, if only

tangentially, that the criticisms of ‘humanism’ and ‘antihumanism’ obscure Serres’ true

project, and are not very helpful for discussions of that project; and (3) to offer, where I see fit,

possibilities of applying Serres’ ethics to concrete cases of ecological problems. This latter task

will take me beyond the texts of Serres and into the hubbub of the environmentally-crisis-

ridden contemporary world. I believe that Serres recognizes the immense challenge of simply

beginning to think and to implement an ethics, as well as a politics, of the symbiotic ‘natural
   5  

contract’—a contract that would grant rights to amatola toads, Sumatran orangutans, ponderosa

pine trees, old growth forests, and ice sheets. I also believe that the process has already begun.

Contrary to Ferry, I believe that Serres’ writings on the natural contract, parasitism,

pollution and reciprocity have provided political ecology with fruitful tools with which

experiment, and that the challenge for anyone willing to experiment with them is to begin to

theorize how we might put them to practical use. The answers are, as Assad helpfully points

out, nowhere to be found in Serres’ texts (Assad 161). Serres’ readers must themselves provide

the answers. In order to attempt to arrive at some answers I think it will be helpful to proceed

by discussing the five ethical imperatives cited above: ‘chase out the parasite’, ‘clean up the

waste’, ‘make the sea be reborn’, ‘master our own mastery’, and ‘become symbionts’.

~ ‘Chase out the Parasite’

One of the chief aims of Serres’ book The Parasite is to show that parasitism precedes

exchange value: “abuse appears before use” (P 7). But here it is immediately important to point

out that there are three distinct kinds of parasite: “the biological, the social, and the physical

[static]” (cited in Morley 58-59). It is mainly the first form of parasitism listed here that Serres’

ecological ethics is concerned with. However, static is also important for Serres’ ethics. Static,

the ‘physical’ parasite, is generative of sense and non-sense within systems of communication

for heterogeneous entities. While Serres contends that for humans certain forms of noise,

billboards for example, are part and parcel of deleterious forces of ecological appropriation,

semiotically defiling a hitherto undefiled nature, this form of parasitism does not play as

crucial a role for Serres’ ecological ethics as does the biological parasite (discussed below).

With regard to the physical (static) form of parasitism, Serres ironically writes that “driving
   6  

north toward the working class neighbourhoods, you will be dazzled to the point of nausea by

aggressive images, billboards and giant lights”, as if Serres himself had blocked out the

“perpetual background noise” of his vehicle “with its deafening din” (Malfeasance 46; 49).

Thus, the noise of culture —its billboards and its traffic clamour— do play a role in

Serres’ ecological ethics. However, most of Serres’ writings on the ecologically deleterious

aspects of the parasite do not, in the main, concern physical parasitism. Nor do they concern

the sociological meaning of the parasite which is of little significance for Serres’ ecological

ethics. Rather, it is the biological meaning of the parasite which Serres’ ethics mainly concerns

itself with, inasmuch as it is the biological parasite which, when in its most vicious form, does

the most ecological damage, i.e., whatever particular damage the biological parasite in question

inflicts upon its host. Here it is important to note that not all biological parasites are parasites

which we must ‘chase out’. Many biological parasites offer their hosts certain exchange

benefits, for example, the oxpecker bird which feeds on the ticks which are themselves feeding

on impalas, or the hookworm which can offer certain benefits for human sufferers of allergies

and other ailments.

In such cases as these I contend that there is some degree of exchange value taking

place within the broader parameters of a more evidently parasitical relation. Yet, there is still

some abuse value here; the tapeworm still feeds on its host; and the oxpecker, while feeding on

the impala’s ticks also feeds on, and maliciously reopens, the impala’s bloody wounds.8 For

Serres, it is only when the parasite’s abuse of its host reaches such a degree —a degree, as we

will see, which must be determined by some external law— as to overly harm its host, that it

                                                                                                               
8
The oxpecker’s primary source of nutrition is its host’s blood, whether ingested by way of
feeding on its host’s ticks (as blood repositories) or directly through the open wounds of its
hosts, which it constantly pecks at so as to keep the wounds open.
   7  

becomes imperative that such a parasite must be ‘chased out’. There is no positive exchange

whatsoever in such purely abusive cases; there is only pure abuse value. Elsewhere, I have

discussed the extent to which Serres contends that the human is the parasite extraordinaire. I

will not rehash those points here. Rather, I wish to point out that, aside from the human, there

are other purely abusive parasites which must be chased out.

In Biogea, Serres makes note of the abuses wrought by certain plagues, particularly

Pasteurella Pestis (Yersinia pestis), which was responsible for hundreds of millions of human

deaths in the fourteenth-century (Biogea 107). Such parasites as Pasteurella Pestis are the sort

that inflicts pure abuse value: abuse without the slightest hint of exchange with its host. Serres

writes that when a parasite goes to such abusive excesses as those which result in the death of

its host, eventually too the parasite will die out for lack of food: “the excesses they committed

against their hosts put the parasites in mortal danger, for dead hosts can no longer feed or host

them” (The Natural Contract 34). Here it will be helpful to take a look at a concrete example

of overly abusive parasitism, and see whether Serres’ writings offer practical and theoretical

tools for dealing with them.

As a result of global warming the mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) has

become a particularly pervasive parasite, to the great detriment of forests in British Columbia,

California, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and elsewhere. The parasitical abuses inflicted by

the mountain pine beetle have resulted in the death of millions of pine trees across several

million hectares in North America (Raffa et al. 502). Itself an effect of global warming, the

mountain pine beetle’s increasingly pervasive actions also contribute to further global warming

in a harmful feedback loop, inasmuch as warming makes “forests susceptible to infestations,

   8  

and carbon dioxide from the felled trees … contribute[s] to future warming” (Beardsley).9

Surely the mountain pine beetle is a parasite that we must then chase out. Why is this? Simply

because the mountain pine beetle infringes upon a law—if not yet a written law, then a tacit

law—which punishes such acts of pure parasitical abuse as that which is evident in the

mountain pine beetle’s onslaught upon pine trees.

Part of what is so compelling about Serres’ ‘natural contract’ insistence that we must

extend legal rights to things is the fact that, in a way, we already do. In a way, pine trees, as

well as the flora and the fauna that live on them, are legal defendants in the case against

mountain pine beetles. Serres says as much when he writes that we “are beginning to conceive

the possibility of lawsuits that, for example, oppose polluters and this park or forest or that

mangrove swamp. Such lawsuits are only possible because of the tacit acceptance that these

‘things’ are legal subjects” (“Revisiting the Natural Contract” 2)10. To take another recent

example, in January 2014 the palm oil company PT Kallista Alam was fined $30 US million

by the Indonesian government for illegally clearing sections of protected peat forest for palm

oil production. Such a fine could be issued only if, to some extent, the Indonesian government

acknowledged the (tacit) rights of peat forests and the environing flora and fauna which subsist

within them. In “Revisiting the Natural Contract” Serres further notes that even failed events

such as the Rio and Kyoto meetings signal the fact that the natural contract is “slowly” coming
                                                                                                               
9
Cf. Raffa et al.: “Mountain pine beetle eruptions in western Canada historically were limited
in frequency, intensity, and extent by temperature regimes that remained below beetle survival
and development thresholds … As a consequence of the approximately 1 degree Celsius (°C)
to 2°C increase in mean annual temperatures in central British Columbia since 1970,
populations have expanded into more northerly latitudes and higher elevations than where they
previously persisted … The abnormally high temperatures that exacerbated host stress—and
may have also increased the annual number of beetle generations—are probably a product of
ongoing warming due to anthropogenic emissions” (511).
10
Received from: http://www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute-old/pdf/Naturalcontract.pdf (last
accessed Dec. 3, 2014).  
   9  

into effect: “The legal debate has started, the global collectivity has noted the existence and

status of the new object that, for lack of a better word, we continue to call nature, and by

conferring about it, our leaders have de facto signed the contract” (2; 6).

What the ‘Indonesia versus PT Kallista Alam’ lawsuit shows is that the (tacit) natural

contract is still restricted to national concerns and legalities. And, at an even more localized

level, in the case of the mountain pine beetle, ecological concerns are restricted to state and

provincial boundaries. Yet both cases— that of ‘North America versus the mountain pine

beetle’ and that of ‘Indonesia versus PT Kallista Alam’ —show that some kind of natural

contract is in effect. The rights of trees and their environing ecological symbionts are

represented in each case. In ‘Indonesia versus PT Kallista Alam’, trees win: PT Kallista Alam

is fined $30 US million. And in the case of ‘Colorado versus the mountain pine beetle’, again,

trees win: the mountain pine beetles are sentenced to death. Thus, there is no need to limit

lawsuits to human parasites/polluters, as is evident in the case of the mountain pine beetle. For,

in fact, the mountain pine beetle has already been judged guilty, and teams of scientists funded

by $200 US million in state aid are currently going about reducing its onslaught.11

Thus, there is no need for Serres to include within his many books detailed scientific

accounts concerning how to go about ameliorating various ecological crises.12 The scientists—

at least the ones committed to ‘the good cause’ —are already, and have been for some time,

getting down to work. In Colorado, scientists, agriculturalists, and state officials, are hard at

work ‘chasing out the parasite’. What is similarly required is an effort to chase out that part of

                                                                                                               
11
See: http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2424
12
In each specific case, the highly specialized science involved in the case at hand will be best
suited for dealing with the particular issues involved in that case. For an account of the
immense level of specialization involved in the case of Dendroctonus ponderosae I refer the
reader to Raffa et al. in ‘works cited’ below.  
   10  

humanity which is parasitical to degrees which could culminate in the death of its host. What I

now wish to discuss is the fact that chasing out that part of humanity which is hyper-abusively

parasitical will not simply mean changing our current practices to more ‘environmentally-

friendly’ ones. It will also mean “clean[ing] up the waste” and “mak[ing] the sea be reborn”

(Malfeasance 75; Biogea 89).

~ ‘Clean up the Waste’ / ‘Make the Sea be Reborn’

In recent years the problems of ‘pollution’ have taken a back seat to the (albeit

intertwined) problems of global warming and rising sea levels. At the time of writing most of

his ecologically oriented books, the greatest concern for Serres was that of pollution. Perhaps

certain pollutants and polluting practices ought to regain their formerly central status in the

environmental debate. What appears evident is that concomitant with rising sea levels will be

the rising level of toxic pollutants within the earth’s oceans. For example, the harmful toxin

Bisphenol-A13 which is found in many common plastics has been shown to have adverse

affects on many sea creatures (Oehlmann et al.). BPA has also been shown to be present at

high levels in the breast milk of Inuit women (Sun et al.). As a xenoestrogen emitter, BPA

introduces higher than normal levels of estrogen into ecosystems. The consequences of the

continually growing levels of xenoestrogens leaching into ecosystems are far-reaching.

One effect of such leaching has been the proliferation of ‘sex-less’ hermaphrodite

crocodiles in Southern Florida. Sun et al.’s study shows that Inuit children could similarly face

adverse affects by way of their mother’s BPA-heavy breast milk. If unimpeded, the dispersion

of greater amounts of BPA in the earth’s oceans would have the effect of creating a hazardous

compounding of BPA levels in Inuit populations (to say nothing of other populations) over
                                                                                                               
13  Hereafter  “BPA”.  
   11  

multiple generations, as children weaned on BPA-heavy breast milk go on to intake (by way of

a seafood-heavy diet) higher levels of the toxin and wean their children on even more BPA-

heavy breast milk. Fortunately, the powers of science have again come to our aid with the

discovery of ways of destroying the BPA toxin (Drewes et al.). It is for the simple reason that

the hard sciences have proven to be the best resources for detecting and ameliorating

ecological problems that Serres lauds them as our best means of averting greater ecological

disaster than that which is presently at hand. However, the science that Serres thinks is most fit

for the task of ecological reparations is not a science in any of its traditional forms (Times of

Crisis 49).

It is only in his most recent books, particularly Biogea and Times of Crisis, that Serres

has conceptualized what he hopes will become a global scientific collective which would

legally represent the things of the world. Serres deems such a collective the ‘Life and Earth

Sciences’, or LESC. With regard to the LESC’s role, Serres writes: “The Life and Earth

Sciences (LESC) speak Biogea’s own language ... [and] announce the laws of Biogea

according to its own codes” (Times of Crisis 51; 54). How best to go about interpreting,

representing, and defending Biogea’s ‘own codes’ is the incredibly complex task that Serres’

LESC must attempt to execute. But here I would contend that scientists are currently

undertaking such complex tasks. In Indonesia scientists, biologists, primatologists, and

agriculturalists are grouping together to represent the codes of various flora and fauna,

critically endangered Orangutan’s for example, demonstrating to the best of their abilities that

such entities have legal rights (if only tacitly at this point).

Scientists in North America equipped with comprehensive knowledge of ponderosa

pines, lodgepole pines, and whitebark pines as well as mountain pine beetles and blue stain
   12  

fungus (Grosmannia clavigera) ‘represent’ the codes of each of these entities. The scientists

have sided with the rights of the various pines, pitting the pine’s codes against those of the

mountain pine beetles and blue stain fungi. Without knowledge of the codes of diverse entities,

deciphered to the best of our scientists’ abilities, it seems that there would be no criterion by

which to determine proper action. The task then is to bring together, on a global scale, the

scientists best able to speak the codes of diverse entities, such that they could legally represent

the codes of such entities outside of national borders, within which local actions will simply

not be enough to inhibit imminent environmental catastrophe. What it means to instantiate the

‘natural contract’, I contend, does not become entirely evident until the publishing of Serres

recent short book Times of Crisis. It is here that it becomes apparent that to instantiate the

natural contract means to establish the LESC: an ecologically-oriented scientific collective best

equipped with the resources and incentives to represent ‘Biogea’ as a “legal subject” according

to its “own codes” (Times of Crisis 36; 51).

More difficult than the task of creating a ‘LESC’ by which to instantiate a natural

contract is the condition that this latter task (i.e. creating a natural contract), for Serres, requires

“clean[ing] up the waste” and “mak[ing] the oceans be reborn” (Malfeasance 71). Such tasks, I

contend, are impossible, and for this reason: even if, by some Herculean feat of scientific

ingenuity humanity was able to ‘clean up’ its landfills and oceans14, the traces of all of the

harmful pollutants humanity will have emitted over the course of a mere three centuries will

continue to proliferate indefinitely in the various aberrant mutations of species over the course

of their (hopeful?) evolution. The trace of toxic human waste is not something that can be

cleaned up, and therefore the trace of human parasitism is not something that can be ‘chased

                                                                                                               
14
Where will the garbage go? Outer space? For Serres’ comments on space as a “garbage can”
see Malfeasance, p. 53.
   13  

out’. Serres himself hints at such a reality when he writes: “He who creates viscous and

poisoned lakes … is making sure no one will take away the spaces he has occupied, now or

after he is gone” (Malfeasance 42 –my emphasis). But perhaps this unfortunate reality does not

prevent us from attempting to recognize our past errors and enter, to the best of our abilities,

into a symbiotic relation with the earth? Perhaps we can ‘master our mastery’ …

~ ‘Master our Mastery’ / ‘Become Symbionts’

Bracketing the possibility that a parasitical trace might foreclose our chances to enter

into a symbiotic relation with nature, I would now like to discuss what it might mean for

humanity to attempt to ‘master our mastery’ and ‘become symbionts’ with nature. Part of the

difficulty of imagining how humans might enter into a ‘contract of symbiosis’ with nature has

to do with the fact that it is difficult to conceive of something which does not have agency, i.e.

nature, entering into any kind of contract. Luc Ferry criticises the natural contract on these

grounds (Assad 158). Serres is well aware of Ferry’s confusion when he states that “The

Natural Contract scandalizes people … Since nature is an object, how can it be the partner in a

contract?” (C 165). One possible response to this (rhetorical) question posed by Serres might

be that an object need not have ‘agency’ to enter into a contract with active subjects. This is

manifestly not Serres’ position.

For Serres, ‘nature’ is no less active than we are passive in relation to its actions upon

us; and we are no less active than it is passive in relation to our actions upon it. This state of

affairs culminates in a blurry indistinguishibility of activity/passivity and

objectivity/subjectivity, which Serres calls “mingling” (C 165). It is for this reason that critics

of Serres are misguided when they attribute to Serres’ philosophy the position of either

‘humanism’ or ‘antihumanism’/‘inhumanism’. Serres, along with Stengers, Latour and other

   14  

cosmopoliticians15, has moved beyond the dichotomy (of human/nonhuman) and into the

strange new world of hybrid minglings. Serres’ philosophy is one which concerns the near

indistinguishibility of mingling subjects/objects in plays of swirling reciprocal co-

conditionings with other subjects/objects.16 What Serres is primarily interested in is how such

swirlings are played out on the global level.17

Here it will be helpful to cite Serres at length in a passage from Times of Crisis wherein

Serres opts for the language of ‘doubling’ and ‘double linking’ instead of mingling:

Reversal: we become the objects of the new subject Biogea. This is why I have given it
a new name. Its voice is almost as loud today as that of the social circus. Even more,
while we remain the active subjects of our knowledge and practices we also become the
passive objects of the world’s transformations. As doubles we now have a new
relationship like a double link with alternate feedback, with a world as split as we are
because as the passive object of our transformations it becomes the active subject of our
destiny. This new relationship arose because as subjects, we objectivize the world; in
turn as subject the world objectivizes us (47- 48)

What Serres is pointing out here is that, in the Anthropocene (a term which he adopts), the

human exists “on a natural scale”, itself as much a global object as is nature in its totality (The

Natural Contract 19). In The Natural Contract Serres notes the fact that, in a bygone age,

humans (his example is a farmer) and nature could coexist in a somewhat symbiotic way

inasmuch as nature gave the human (farmer) food, and the human (farmer) gave nature good

                                                                                                               
15
Serres opts for the term “cosmocracy”, and thus it may be more fitting to call him a
cosmocrat (Malfeasance 84).
16
Here it would be necessary to bring in a discussion of the ‘quasi-object’ and the ‘quasi-
subject’. For reasons of space constraints I will abstain from offering that discussion.
17
Cf. Biogea: “Whirlpools in Gea, intoxications in Bio, a thousand rebirths through the voluble
opening of their mixture” (181). “Both swirling, the world and I, we connect in helices screwed
into on another” (186).  
   15  

“stewardship” (38).18 However, the state of affairs changes when, at some point in history,

humanity begins to think that it can master nature. The position of mastery is such that an agent

thinks it can subdue, control and appropriate ‘brute’ nature without the risk that nature might

turn around and perhaps retaliate.

The notion of mastery is intertwined with that of parasitism. On this point Serres writes

that “the parasite takes all and gives nothing; the host gives all and takes nothing. Rights of

mastery … come down to parasitism” (38). Hence, when Serres calls on humanity to “master

our mastery” he means that humanity must renounce its parasitical dominion over nature;

humanity must overcome that part of itself which seeks to master things. It is only when such a

condition is met that humanity might possibly ‘become symbionts’. What it means to enter into

a truly symbiotic relationship with nature is something we can only attempt to discover after

we have ‘cleaned up the waste’, ‘chased out the parasite’ and ‘mastered our mastery’. These

are no small tasks … It is thus not without some acute awareness of the enormity of these tasks

that Serres refers to the state of a truly symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature as

“Paradise” (Biogea 122). In a peculiarly Hegelian vein Serres deems this the place where “the

real rejoins the rational” (Ibid.).

Elsewhere I have described how, for Serres, humans enter into a relationship of

symbiosis with nature when they come to render ‘reason’ to nature for its good gifts. I have

sought here to offer a few examples of cases in which scientific reasoning has, if not quite

rendered gifts back to nature, at least begun to go about correcting some of its abuses. When

Serres asks “how does the parasite mutate into a symbiont?”, he is asking a necessarily open-

                                                                                                               
18
Here I take Serres to mean that the by good stewardship the farmer simply does not indulge
in the sorts of parasitically harmful abuses that contemporary humanity is charged with having
committed.
   16  

ended and currently unanswerable question (Biogea 173). Let us propose a hypothetical

answer. Suppose we were to imagine that the pervasive spread of the mountain pine beetle was

not a consequence of our global warming actions, but was instead due to some other ‘natural’

cause, or some malevolent intention on the part of the beetle.

In such a case, we could imagine the LESC convening on the issue and weighing the

rights of the beetles relative to those of the pine trees and other species who depend for their

livelihood on the pine trees. The overly abusive parasitical actions of the beetles would be

judged as criminal relative to the more symbiotic relations of the other species within its

ecosystem. The LESC could then, by way of scientific reasoning, go about determining (as it

already has) the best ways to ‘chase out the parasite’ Dendroctonus ponderosae. By way of our

scientific reasoning, humanity could again enter into a relationship of good ‘stewardship’—or

better, partnership—with nature. Nature gives us the trees which we need in order to survive

and we give back our scientific reasoning which the trees need in order to survive. Such a

‘giving back’ would amount to the practicing of Serres’ ethics of symbiotic reciprocity. The

possibilities of other ways we might come to effectuate a relation of reciprocal symbiosis with

nature are limitless …

Homo sapiens has intelligence. He never stopped using its power, but mostly to
dominate … With intelligence as a weapon, he conquered nature and his miserable
peers in the course of a warring evolution that is ending with a victory, however so
paradoxical it might in turn lead to the species’ eradication. How can this defeat be
avoided? By changing this defective weapon: yes, I mean intelligence.
(Times of Crisis 70-71)
   17  

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   18  

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