Politics in the Web of More-Than-Human Relationships. Hannah Arendt, Bruno Latour and the Ecologization of Power

In the context of political ontology(ies), the ecological crisis presents a twofold challenge: on the one hand, it requires us to conceive of plurality as a more-than-human coexistence, on the other hand, it raises the question of how the recognition of new materialisms or non-human actors can be translated into political action. In the current debate on new materialisms, which is significantly influenced by Bruno Latour and Actor-Network Theory, there is a widespread conviction that the recognition of a more-than-human plurality will result in emancipatory and ecological politics. However, affirmative trust in the power of things reflects an insufficient understanding of the political and reduces the debate to an ontological and ethical level, while power asymmetries and conflicts on an ontic level are neglected. My contribution ties in with this critique by analyzing the processes of the ecologization of power, distinguishing between three dimensions: (1) an ontological-normative dimension, in which political and normative claims are derived from an understanding of the more-than-human interconnectedness of the world, (2) an ontological-descriptive dimension that describes the current transformation of political rationalities – understood as environmentality, in which ecological processes themselves become carriers of governmental power, and (3) an ontic-political dimension that raises the question of how the gap between ontological insight and political practice can be closed. Based on a critical reading of Arendt in the sense of Latour's political ecology and Actor-Network Theory, it is shown that Arendt's conception of action in the »web of human relationships« offers a theoretical key to bridging this gap. While for Latour the political represents a web of more-than-human relationships, Arendt insists on the distinctiveness of action and plurality as purely human coexistence, whereby shared references to the world and shared responsibility make political action possible in the first place. The juxtaposition of both perspectives allows us to intertwine the ontological plurality of the world with the demand for democratic mediation and struggle. The paper argues that a political-ontological perspective can only become emancipatory if it does not affirm the ecologization of power but rather understands it as an ambivalent constellation in which new possibilities for democratization and new forms of rule are articulated simultaneously. This tension gives rise to a democratic politics of the common – a way of thinking that neither gets stuck in ontology nor suspends the political in the name of ecology.