A Representative Politics of Nature? Pursuing Bruno Latour's 'Collective'

Abstract

Bruno Latour has proposed a nonmodern "political ecology" based on representing humans and nonhumans in some sort of assembly. Political ecology must not aim, in his view, to protect "nature," but instead to problematize the social and scientific processes that constitute our understanding of the world. I argue that Latour's view of representation runs up against insurmountable obstacles when it comes to imagining its institutionalization and its manner of translating environmental concerns. Not representation, but participation and deliberation would better capture his insights about the direction of green democracy.

Keywords: Latour, representation, green, ecology, modern, deliberative democracy