Michel Seress’ Integumentum, or Why Ecology Lies (Also) Beyond Arguments

Alexandru Matei

doi:10.24193/mjcst.2021.11.04

Abstract

During the Middle Ages, integumentum was a term widely used by “intellectuals” (Le Goff) in order to unfold the function of allegory: there is no story whose signification does not echo the sacred texts, and every sacred truth needs a story to bring it to life. Integumentum was a way to make this echo explicit: a sort of “poetical coat hiding a moral or philosophical truth” (John of Garland). We want to suggest that, while no one uses integumentum anymore in order to designate the rhetoric of modern and contemporary theoretical discourse, it is in ecological theory that we may rediscover its afterlives. Hence, integumentum is not only a form of telling truths, but a form of memory, as well. In this respect, Michel Serres may be considered the first “ecological” thinker, as he avoids abstract metalanguages as much as possible, relying instead on fictions and characters in his attempt to describe the world afresh. If integumentum resurfaces as the proper way of “ecologizing,” instead of modernizing (Latour), we would like to uncover, in Michel Serres’ works, the dialectic of subjects and objects.

Highlights

(Latour), we would like to uncover, in Michel Serres’s works, the dialectic of subjects and objects
I will devote the first part of this text to retracing the path of this oblivion and to indicating the gestures of thought and writing that Michel Serres makes in order to erase it and to establish knowledge on a alliance between words and things (“les mots et les choses”)
In a third and final step, I will try to demonstrate that his discursive refoundation relies on an ancient process whose mission was precisely to save from oblivion and update an early medieval hermeneutic technique deemed to be lost: the integumentum

Summary

Introduction

(Latour), we would like to uncover, in Michel Serres’s works, the dialectic of subjects and objects. I will devote the first part of this text to retracing the path of this oblivion and to indicating the gestures of thought and writing that Michel Serres (who precedes Bruno Latour in this respect) makes in order to erase it and to establish knowledge on a (new) alliance between words and things (“les mots et les choses”).

Results

Conclusion