Читать книгу On the Animal Trail - Baptiste Morizot - Страница 9

Tracking, therefore, is an art of seeing the invisible so as to frame an authentic geopolitics. As we have mentioned, there is nothing supernatural in these invisible things even if each discovery involves a certain magic, that of tracking ‘which flushes signs’. There is nothing natural about them, either: there can be no serious geopolitics based on Nature. For the term ‘Nature’, even when used in such trivial circumstances as those which make us say ‘we’re going out for a walk to get a bit of nature’, isn’t innocent. As Morizot writes, with reference to Philippe Descola, this term is ‘the marker of a civilization’ (not a very likeable one, he adds) ‘devoted to exploiting territories on a massive scale as if they were just inert matter.’ And even if we decided to move away from this ‘heritage’ dimension and asserted our desire to protect nature, for example, we would not escape the tacit implications of this term – that there is, in front of us or around us, a passive nature, in short, an object of action – or, even worse, a leisure spot or place for spiritual renewal.

So Morizot’s project asks us to dispense with a metaphysics that has caused definite and palpable damage and that we cannot hope to patch up with a few good intentions. The first thing that needs to be revised is the old idea that we humans are the only political animals. (Indeed, we should be concerned about the fact that when we declare ourselves to be animals, this is often a way of laying claim to a quality that simply confirms our exceptionalism.) But wolves are political animals too: they know all about rules, the boundaries of territories, ways of organizing themselves in space, codes of conduct and precedence. And the same applies to many social animals. Morizot takes up, and extends to other living beings – for example, to the worms in the worm composter, whose habits are similar to our own – the idea that what we need to relearn are truly social relationships with them. Tracking, as a geopolitical practice, then becomes the art of asking everyday questions. The answers to those questions will form habits, prepare alliances or anticipate possible conflicts, in an attempt to find a more civilized, more diplomatic solution: ‘Who inhabits this place? And how do they live? How do they establish their territory in this world? At what points does their action impact on my life, and vice versa? What are our points of friction, our possible alliances and the rules of cohabitation to be invented in order to live in harmony?’