Parliament of Things

Parliament of Things is a political concept proposed by Bruno Latour that extends democratic representation to non-human entities — rivers, forests, technologies, microbes — by treating them as actors with interests that deserve formal political voice. The proposal is not metaphorical ecology but a serious institutional design challenge: how can political assemblies represent entities that cannot speak, yet whose fates are inseparable from human decisions?

Latour's answer draws on actor-network theory: non-humans are already active in politics, but they are represented by proxy — by scientists, corporations, or activists who speak for them. The Parliament of Things would make these representations explicit, contested, and accountable. A river's representative would be no more a direct spokesperson than a lawyer is for a client; the legitimacy lies in the procedural structure that forces competing representations into open negotiation.

The concept forces a confrontation with political legitimacy: can representation work without the represented's ability to revoke it? And with ecological inheritance: if we are already shaping environments that persist across generations, the question is not whether to give nature a voice but whose voice currently speaks unchecked.