Forward to nature: Ecological subjectivity after the discursive turn (original) (raw)
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Forward to nature? The ecological subject between dislocation and the decision
A common theme in environmentalist discourse laments a culture that has wandered too far from the guiding wisdom of the earth, and lost its way. ‘Back to nature’ suggests a return to some original state, as if an ecological subject lay suffocating under the weight of civilisation. I investigate the prospect that an ecological subject can short-circuit the post-political, technocratic approach to the environment, but take as my point of departure the discursive-turn repudiation of any unmediated access to nature. The Lacanian concept of discourse structured around master-signifiers, however, suggests nature does not lie outside of language but at its borders, and that ‘pre-discursive’ nature is a fantasy ameliorating the inadequacy of language to account for the real. While this annuls any possibility of a pre-discursive subject, far from condemning ecology as a site of political resistance it suggests that an ecological subject may be found in those spaces between discourses. An analytical schema of the relations between discourses of Nature and of Society (God and Nation, for example) is constructed to map those spaces. The schema has two dimensions: the structural relations between master-signifiers, and the historical emergence of new formations of relations. Subjects occupy the point between the dislocation of one formation and the emergence of another. By constituting nature as inherently valuable, the Nature discourses of Romanticism and modern environmentalism partially engender an ecological subject – but at the cost of perpetuating the nature/culture binary that forecloses rearticulatory alternatives. The discourse of Nature is the first ladder of ecologism’s ascendance, but only by kicking it out can it amplify the dislocation of the contemporary formation and produce the space into which an ecological subject can emerge.
The Struggle for Nature. A Critique of Radical Ecology. London and New York: Routledge, 1998
The Struggle for nature charts the scientific traps and the social pifalls of current environmental philosophies, such as deep ecology, social and political ecology, eco-feminism and eco-anarchism and argues for a 'post-naturalistic' turn in environmental philosophy. Jozef Keulartz presents a critique of environmental philosophy from two complementary angles. First, he examens the theory of power outlined in the work of Foucault and Donzelot and demonstrates how environmental philosophy can contribute to a strengthening of bio-power. Second, the author explores the philosophy of language developed in the writings of Habermas and Lyotard and shows how current environmental philosophy can form a threat to communicative power.
Springer eBooks, 2018
Toward the very end of Sean McGrath's essay, 'The Question Concerning Nature,' he notes the very common dismissal of an overly pious reading of Heidegger's notion of Gelassenheit. Canvassing the 'Ecology without Nature' (EWN) philosophy of Timothy Morton, McGrath alludes to the problem with the 'green' reading of Heidegger that argues Gelassenheit leaves one bereft of political discernment, placidly accepting 'the way things are: Should we also let the BP oil spill be? Should we let the decimation of the Amazon rainforest be?' 1 McGrath correctly notes that this is a slight misreading of Heidegger, as 'Gelassenheit was never offered as a method of environmental practice; it is, rather, an undermining of techno-scientific-capitalist thought itself, an overturning of its basic assumption, that the human is or ought to be the master of time.' 2 Requiring Gelassenheit to become a method 'is to leave the will to mastery at the root of our crisis unchallenged.' According to McGrath, 'Morton's mistake is to assume that a contemplative approach to the question concerning nature has been tried and found wanting. On the
Natura Naturans and the Organic Ecocritic: Toward a Green Theory of Temporality
If ecocriticism has been a form of scholarship that is integrated with an activist practice, that activism has most often taken the form of rhetorical appeals to conservation and to valuation of a specific place (or “place” as such), a species, or even a privileged mode of representation such as the pastoral, the work of the bioregionally-grounded poet, or green themes in middlebrow novels (Garrard, 2005). Ecocriticism-as-advocacy assumes a particular view of time. An active present is taken as a means of forestalling an undesirable future, with little account for the past; the critic is in a race against time to explicate the water images in this or that poem, and heated debate concerns the limits of an appropriate canon for such an enterprise . Meanwhile, historically-informed and materialist approaches to ecocriticism, have been proposed, which look to the past as a field of determinations and limits on the present: the present as the given product, finished or not, of past causes . Both these approaches, and the Utopian mode—so promising in its ability to imagine a positive political program in addition to the earnest advocacy we already have of the conserve this and care for that type—are all predicated on two unspoken and contradictory a priori: time as a matrix of causality, and hence the objects of time as legible in space in the present, on one side; time as a transhistorical and transcendent Now of reflection and contemplation or another. The former, in that it supports a view of nature as a time-produced and time-bound formation vulnerable and impermanent in its complexity, is appropriate to an activist stance as something to defend; the latter predicates a certain kind of criticism, specifically a detached and aesthetically-oriented gaze. Both positions have merit. However, neither is wholly or solely adequate, and there remains between them a conceptual tension if not contradiction between the political and critical engagements characteristic of ecocriticism since the 1980s.
The Eclipse of Environmental Discourse
Human Geography
In recent years, sustainability discourse has largely eclipsed e nvironmental discourse. We trace the evolution of this shift, discuss its problematic implications and analyze it in Lacanian and other theoretical terms. We discuss the respective tendencies of environmental and sustainability discourse and argue that the latter, among many other flaws, is more prone to a social fantasy of reconciling ecological, economic, and social problems, and as a consequence, disavows the threat of ecological catastrophe. Since environmental discourse also sometimes slips into social fantasy, one predicated on balance and harmony, we make the case for a revival of an environmental discourse more grounded in concrete ecological problems — an ecological realism inspired by psychoanalytic theory.
The impossible gaze of the ecological subject
Referring to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, via Zizekian environmental philosophy, this presentation of a number of contemporary art interventions considers the fantasy of ecological utopias (wilderness) as the incestuous enjoyment of nature unencumbered by the presence of the subject within it. Presented at the Home and World conference.
UN-making. Semiotics, ecology and the institutions of “Nature”
World Congress of Semiotics (IASS/AIS). Panel: Earth, health, life & death, the world in perspective: extension of the semiotic domain, constitution, and mutations of meaning. Thessaloniki, Aug 30th - Sept 3rd – Final Program , 2022
Elaborating from some features of ecological discourse as deployed by UN platforms (Tassinari 2019), we will propose an interpretation of what ecology does to semiotics – (un)making some of its assumption – and what semiotics could do with ecology – (un)making its paralysing effects (Marrone 2010). Ecological discourse, we argue, doesn’t concern the crisis of a specific object, “Nature”, but it manifests as an “epistemological crisis” (Stengers, Prigogine 1971; Serres 1990; Latour 1991, 1999, 2015, 2017) that cast upon social actors a sort of “dark competence” (having to, but not being able of knowing, wanting or doing). This crisis shall help us rethink the epistemological landscape of semiotics (cf. Greimas 1966, Fabbri 1998; Marrone 2021) where, we argue, neither “nature” nor “culture” should have any place. We will show, however, that ecology poses specifically semiotic problems (Paolucci 2021): it deals, for instance, with a continuous displacement of the threshold of “non-pertinent”; what was considered external, unnecessary, and therefore rendered invisible (CO2, soil depletion, pollution, risks), seem to return on the frontline of meaning with disruptive semantic effects on what we once held carelessly dear (fossil fuels, natural “resources”, sovereignty). With its ability to distinguish values from their object of placement (Greimas 1966; Greimas 1983), and describe modulation of modes of existence (Souriau 1955; Fontanille, Zilberberg 1998; Paolucci 2020), semiotics may help to imagine a redistribution of values placed on technologies and “resources” (Bonnet, Landivar, Monnin 2021) that facilitate ecological conflict resolution and foreshadow emerging ecological classes (Latour, Schultz 2022).
Veda Publications, 2015
The study of literature has long been preoccupied with historical approaches. However, in recent years critics are increasingly aware of the relation between literature and geography, and drawing insights from the mutual study of these two fields. Nature and literature have always shared a close relationship as is evidenced in the works of poets and other writers down the ages in almost all cultures of the world. The world of literature throngs with works dealing with beauty and power of nature. However, the concern for ecology and the threat that the continuous misuse of our environment poses on humanity have only recently caught the attention of the writers. It is this sense of concern and its reflection in literature that have given rise to a new branch of literary theory, namely Ecocriticism. This research paper gives a brief history of the gradual growth of Ecocriticism as a post-modern literary approach. Ecocritics lay emphasis on the preservation of landscape in order to save the human race. Ecocriticism not only lays emphasis on the 'harmony' of humanity and nature but also talks about the destruction caused to nature by the changes which take place in the modern world for most of which man is directly responsible. Ecocriticism is a fairly new concept but it has gained importance rapidly. More and more scholars have become aware of it and they are eager to do their research in the field of Ecocriticism and other areas associated with it. There have also been numerous debates on whether to include human culture in the physical world. Despite the broad scope of inquiry all ecological criticism shares the fundamental premise that human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it.