“Let us welcome the sounds of nature into our parliaments.”
maintenance“Biology Thinkers” (6/12). Because all species speak and humans do not have a monopoly on language, writer and translator Camille de Toledo calls the “Parliament of the Loire,” a project that aims to give a legal personality to this emblematic river.
Writer, Doctor of Comparative Literature, Camille de Toledo teaches at the Contemporary Writing Workshop at the National School of Visual Arts of La Cambre, in Brussels. Committed to legal recognition of the elements of nature, he coordinates the holding of the Loire Parliament Hearings (2019-2020) with Polau-pole Arts and Town Planning. In the fall, the teamwork will be published with the title The river who wanted to write (Links released, in bookstores on September 8th).
American ecologist Aldo Leopold wanted to “think like a mountain,” and now you want to write rivers, oceans, soils, rivers… For what reasons should the natural elements speak?
we others, sane, We encrypt the world. We never stop translating – getting people to talk – the various forms of life. Bible commentators, readers of myths, poets know this. In biblical or mythological times, we never ceased to connect stories and narratives with natural events. But the swing that will interest us at the time of our fears about habitability on Earth, is the one that will organize the “speak of the elements of nature” with law: a legal uprising of animal life forms, plants, various species, lakes, rivers, forests …
What are the signs that non-humans make?
This sentence from Victor Hugo: “It is sad to think that nature speaks and mankind does not listen.” However, today we have finer ears and better listening instruments. My father, in the last years of his life, never stopped sharing with me his readings about the work of ethicists, botanists, and budgetologists. [qui étudient les réactions réciproques d’un organisme et de son milieu]…to all those who insist on this severance between humans and non-humans – this idea that speaks only of our species – I think it is important to remember that for thousands of years, our species has read the sky, read the signals sent from forests, lakes, and rivers. I will not go into the details of the semiology of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce here. [1839-1914]And But let’s just say we’re experiencing a second season of a linguistic tipping point: a season borne by more precise knowledge, more advanced sensitive experiences, which allows us to hear this broad and powerful language of the natural elements.
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