Philippe Descola
The Composition of Worlds: Interviews with Pierre Charbonnier
Polity Press, 2023
224 pages, bibliography, notes, index
In April 2023 the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, decided to “dissolve” Les Soulèvements de la Terre, an environmental collective that shares many parallels with Extinction Rebellion. In a news magazine controlled by Vincent Bolloré, a Catholic billionaire and France’s prime facilitator of climate skepticism and far-right propaganda, he went so far as to accuse those who inspired the movement of “intellectual terrorism.” Not intimidated by this underhanded move of a leading politician, two dozen Les Soulèvements de la Terre supporters, including high-profile ones such as Greta Thunberg and Philippe Descola, gathered in front of the Conseil d’État, France’s supreme court for administrative justice. Their protest was effective; at least, the Conseil temporarily suspended the dissolution. And the environmental collective, notwithstanding the Minister’s shameless and all-too-blatant ruse to associate it with ecoterrorism, remains very much alive and kicking.
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