The Mountain Speaks

Purple was led to a tent at the edge of the compound, scrapped together from hessian bags, tarpaulin and branches with two female sentries in beret's guarding the entrance. Pulling aside the flap of clothe which stood in for a door, her pupils dilated as she adjusted to the the blue fluorescent light being emanated from a tube, hung by its cord from the axis of the tents frame. Inside she discerned the silhouette of a besuited man, with a narrow face behind oversized glasses which made his small black eyes look like buttons.
'Welcome Purple, I am very pleased to see you. Very pleased. What news do you bring from the mountains?'
'They are against the project sir.'
'How do you know?'
'The mountains themselves told me.'
'Would you be kind enough to tell me exactly what the mountains said.'
'Well sir, that would be difficult. As you know, the mountains mastery of our tongue is not perfect, so sometimes there is a loss of vocabulary and of feminine and masculine so that their version of our language does not operate by categorization, by placing one concept above another within a hierarchy, but by asymmetry. So that when we speak of power, they speak of difference, but then again, difference is still too loaded a term, they would be much more objective and say well, perhaps along that flat expanse of land which we call a desert, they would not call it a desert, which presupposes a difference between an area of dryness and and an area of precipitation, because as they know the desert is also wet and the marsh is also dry, so to listen to the mountains is to listen to an infinite parsing of asymmetrical relations to get to a point very far from the our arrogant designations. As far as I can say sir, the mountains oppose the project in as much as they love it, or in as much as they do not separate themselves from the you, me and the other so that we form an entire ecology of interdependence, but they want to avoid the lazy romanticism of the ecologists in that they see it as a political union rather than a natural one, so that the mountains would say that you and I and the other form a parliament, a coalition, perhaps they might even go so far as to say a federation, so the mountains and the people and the activists, the guerillas and the miners, the stones and the engineers, the machines and the investors are cantons within a free associating federation of actors who must agonize to negotiate an effect which affects us all.'
The man paused for a moment to reflect on what Purple had said.
'So, if I understand what you say correctly, it is not simply a matter of entering supposedly insentient, inanimate objects into political dialogue with humans, it is a re-inscribing of rationality onto nature, or conversely, a de-ordering of rationality and its political purport. Ipso facto, a brain would not oppose the leg if it were to become gangrenous in as much as it would simply sever the connection to protect itself. What you're arguing for is that we do not defend the rights of the mountain, but rather the mountain as an 'earth-being', if you permit me to use such materializing and anthropomorphic language, is defending the rights of us!'
Purple considered for a moment, and replied, 'If you wish to put in such geometric terms, I will not oppose, but I may say that my heart does not agree, but for your contention I think you have clarified by poorly expressed exposition of the mountains conversation well.'