Signé Michel Serres : the fine print of The Natural Contract

Moving from embarkation to casting off to end finally in distress, does Michel Serres in The Natural Contract speak of the world or of himself? The work of a postmodern Rousseau, this book treats as much nature as law, geopolitics as aesthetics, ecology as autobiography. While attempting to detach from its very self or reorient human nature, thought as inherently parasitical, Serres nonetheless remains haunted by the aesthetic imperative of putting into words the beauty of the World and the splendour of the Earth—an insuperable task which leaves the author as well as Earth and his readers at a loss, in a state of désemparement, and reveals thus one of the main paradoxes of the natural contract: the blurred identity of its signatories as well as its advocate.