Michel Serres- a Global Response to a Multiple Crisis

Michel Serres understood that existing proposals for responding to the planetary crisis are inadequate. Concentrating on reducing carbon emissions, sustainable development projects, technological inventions, state-sponsored initiatives and ’green new deals’ do not match the depth of the problem. He insisted that the abuse and exploitation of the earth and each other were inseparable and that they both have a very long history that includes but goes well beyond corporate greed, neoliberalism, capitalism, industrialisation or European colonialism.  My starting point is Serres’ idea of the Great Story. The story springs from cosmologists, astrophysicists, chemists, microbiologists and many other sciences. It is also found running through literature, myths and Indigenous knowledge. Serres understood that recent scientific discoveries about the age and composition of the universe shatter previous assumptions and open forgotten or neglected stories of a shared world. As a mere spec in the Great Story, what part do we play? Contrary to many recent popular accounts of the history of the human species, including many best-sellers, Serres offers a tale marked by dirt, conflict and abuse. He provocatively traces how our conduct, from the start, continued the behaviour of animals that mark their boundary with piss and shit. We appropriate people and land through pollution.Serres defined a ’natural contract’ that recognises that the earth and all living things should have legal status. His proposal, first put forward in 1990, in many ways anticipated the current ’rights of nature’ movement and offers a global framework for a transformation of the legal standing of the more-than-human. Serres puts forward the idea of a legal contract not with but of all nature. Serres traces an evolving era which he calls ’post-neolithic’. Serres relished new opportunities opened by global information and communication networks and devices. The internet matched his relational approach to philosophy, and he described his work in terms of hypertexts. Despite the clear dangers of the control and influence of social media, Serres found hope that new forms of technology could be decisive in forging a common voice and inventing a new politics.  Serres urged us not to allow established formats of religion, politics and thinking to ’dream life for you’. He puts forward concrete suggests for ways forward related to politics, education, technology, legal transformations, storytelling and global governance 6