How to understand the "Parliament of Things" thirty years later, Spinozalens lecture

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How to understand the "Parliament of Things" thirty years later, Spinozalens lecture application/pdf icon
2020

Lecture given for the reception of the Spinozalens prize, Nijmegen, 23 November 2020

Abstract

Lecture given on the 23rd of November at Radboud Reflects Nijmegen at the occasion of the Spinozalens prize 2020. Arjen Kleinherenbrink asks questions after the lecture.
BL was asked to reminisce about the argument first proposed in 1989 on a possible « Parliament of Things ». Thirty years later, we have moved from a question which could be solved by an expansion of parliamentary politics — in the way Rousseau’s version of the social contract or Serres’ natural contract. But we have move to a much more tragic situation. The question is no longer to grand rights to non humans, but to accept to be dependent on them. The lecture uses the “Embassy of the North Sea” — sponsor of the prize — to give practical example of the shift in understanding political ecology.