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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on fruit growers who choose to live with uncertainty. The discussion will outline a world better adapted to the uncertainty generated by the ecological crisis, which is nonetheless intrinsic to living beings; a world in which humans are willing to depend on existing others.

Paper long abstract:

The modernisation of agriculture everywhere has been supported by the desire to ensure yields and reduce uncertainty. Farmers who have not joined this movement often argue that uncertainty is nothing new. They interpret the growing concern of their modern colleagues with ecological crises as a somewhat naive rediscovery of a contingency with which they have learned to cope (as best they could).

This paper focuses on fruit growers who have deliberately made the heteronomous choice to live with uncertainty. Heteronomy refers to action that is influenced by a force outside the individual. Thus, the heteronomous subject accepts to share the power to determine his or her own future with others, whose autonomy she recognises.

To discuss this, I will refer to the cultivation of certain types of vine in France and especially that of the durian in Malaysia. Throughout Malaysia, the custom is never to pick these fruits from the tree to eat them instead to wait for them to fall off by themselves. This choice implies a high but accepted level of uncertainty that conditions all sensitive, technical, economic, aesthetic, and moral relationships with the plants.

The discussion of this case will make it possible to anticipate a world better adapted to the uncertainty that is generated by the ecological crisis, which is nonetheless intrinsic to living beings; a world in which human subjects accept to recognise their dependence on existing others.