Ecopolitics

Accretion, articulation, exploration, transformation, naming, sentiment, private and public property these are just a few of Juliana Spahr's interests. In this, her third collection of poetry, we find her performing her characteristic magic, turning these theoretical concerns into a poetic odyssey.

From her first poem, written in Honolulu, Hawaii, to the last, written in Berkeley, California, about her childhood in Appalachia, Spahr takes us on a wild patchwork journey backwards and forwards in time and space, tracking change in ecology, society, economies, herself. Through a collage of ''found language'' a deep curiosity about place, and a restless intelligence, Spahr demonstrates the vibrant possibilities of an investigatory poetics. This verse is more inclusive than exclusive; consistently Spahr includes grape varietals, the shrinking of public beachfront in Hawaii, endangered plant, fish, and wildlife species, the melting of the polar ice caps, and comparative poverty rates in her eclectic repertoire. She also knows how to sing in the oldest tradition of poetry of loss, and her lament for nature is the most keen.

The aim of the essay is to analyze the practice of “multispecies storytelling” proposed by Haraway (2016), to extrapolate tools for the creative critique of the narrative of the «Anthropocene» (Crtuzen, Stoemer 2000). The essay starts by deconstructing the dichoto- mous and patriarchal imaginaries linked to the “uncanny” (Freud 1919) and the “sublime” (Burke 1757; Kant 1790); subsequently, it shows how Haraway engages in composting alternative stories of technology and science, thanks to the adoption of the SF methodology; Finally, it analyzes the speculative fabulation entitled The Camille Stories, to appreciate the troubling polyphony and polysemy of “multispecies realism” (Pinto 2021).

This is the first part of a two-part series on anti-lithium mining protests that have erupted in Serbia over the last several months, and the broader environmental movement around it. Full text is also on the LEFTEAST website: https://lefteast.org/serbia-is-not-for-sale-on-lithium-hunger-and-other-betrayals/

Duke University Press 2017:
https://www.dukeupress.edu/finite-media

While digital media gives us the ability to communicate with and know the world, their use comes at the expense of an immense ecological footprint and environmental degradation. In Finite Media Sean Cubitt offers a large-scale rethinking of theories of mediation by examining the environmental and human toll exacted by mining and the manufacture, use, and disposal of millions of phones, computers, and other devices. The way out is through an eco-political media aesthetics, in which people use media to shift their relationship to the environment and where public goods and spaces are available to all. Cubitt demonstrates this through case studies ranging from the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang to an image of Saturn taken by NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission, suggesting that affective responses to images may generate a populist environmental politics that demands better ways of living and being. Only by reorienting our use of media, Cubitt contends, can we overcome the failures of political elites and the ravages of capital.

Özet Liberalizmin ekolojik sorunlara karşısındaki konumu, yeşil düşünce içinde bir tartışma konusudur. Liberalizm pek çok yeşil düşünür tarafından, ekolojik krize neden olan sorunların altında yatan temel faktör olarak gösterilir. Aydınlanma felsefesinin mirasçısı olarak insana diğer canlılardan daha fazla önem atfeden yaklaşımı nedeniyle eleştirilir. İnsana medeniyet, doğaya vahşilik atfederek onları birbirlerine karşıt bir konuma iteleyen ikici dünya görüşü sorunlu bulunur. En önemlisi, gelişimi ekonomik büyümeden ibaret öncelikli bir hedef olarak belirlemesi nedeniyle, doğanın talanının temel nedeni olmakla suçlanır. Buna karşın bir grup liberal düşünür bu görüşlere karşı durarak, yeşil liberalizmin mümkün olduğunu savunur. Onlara göre ekonomik liberalizm ile siyasi liberalizm birbirleriyle aynı şey değildir. Bu görüş, siyasi liberalizm ile kapitalist ekonomi arasında zorunlu bir bağın olmadığını savunur. Dolayısıyla ekolojik kriz nedeniyle suçlanması gereken siyasal liberalizm değil ekonomik liberalizmdir. Ancak bu önyargılar nedeniyle liberal felsefenin ekolojik tartışmalara sunabileceği önerilerden mahrum kalınmaktadır. Onlara göre liberalizmin sahip olduğu felsefi birikim sayesinde yeşil liberalizm yeşil düşünceye önemli katkılar sunabilecektir. Bu çalışmada yeşil liberalizmin çevre sorunlarına çözüm bulma becerisi irdelenmektedir. Çalışma, yeşil liberallerin görüşlerine karşı durarak liberal prensipler ile ekolojik prensiplerin birbiriyle uyumlu olmadığını savunmaktadır.

THE LIMITATIONS OF GREEN LIBERALISM AGAINST ECOLOGICAL PROBLEMS Abstract The position of liberalism towards ecological problems has been a matter of discussion in the green thought. Many green thinkers indicates liberalism as a main source underlying ecological crises. It has been criticized being inheritor of Enlightenment philosophy and attaching human more importance than other natural beings. Dualist perspective that attribute civilization to humanity and wildness to nature has been perceived as problematic. Most importantly, it has been blamed being the main source of the natural abuse by targeting economic growth for development. Conversely, a group of liberal thinker opposing to these critics, argues that green liberalism is possible. According to them, political liberalism and economic liberalism are not the same. This opinion argues that there is not a compulsory relation between capitalist economy and political liberalism. Therefore, economic liberalism should be blamed for the ecological crisis not political liberalism. Because of these prejudiced opinions, green thought becomes deprived of liberal contribution. According to them, the philosophical background liberalism possess could provide worthy contributions to green thought. This study examines problem solving ability of green liberalism to the ecological problems. Opposing green liberals, it argues that liberal principles are not compatible with the ecological principles.

This article proposes a non-recursive detour for the perspectival concept of ‘equivocation’ by applying it to an ongoing ecopolitical approximation. I will describe how a Brazilian climatologist and a Yanomami shaman translate their concerns about the Amazonian rainforest in order to reach each other’s audiences. Drawing on their public appearances and published texts, it will be argued that they mimetically rephrase their environmental thinking according to – what they assume to be – the conceptual imagination and the formats of communication of the Other. The shaman’s and the scientist’s connective gestures are thus taken as part of an exceptional form of public, ecopolitical dialogue, concerned with the future of the rainforest. Whereas the concept of ‘equivocation’ has proven useful to disclose the translational–ontological gap between the native’s and the ethnographer’s conceptual languages, this article aims at looking somewhere else than the recursive, ethnographic Self. In particular, the argument will pay attention to how equivocations and the so-called ‘ontological differences’ might be embodied by specific actors, in specific situations, inviting us to describe how these differences are de facto navigated and co-implicated by people other than anthropologists.

This text later appeared as Chapter 7 of the book The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism. It incorporates much of the material from the articles entitled "A Letter from New Orleans" and "Postscript to a Letter from New Orleans."

Az előadásban a természet iránti felelősségünk (és ezzel egy ökoetika és ökopolitika) olyan koncepciójának körvonalait szeretném felvázolni, mely egyszerre fenomenológiai és marxista megalapozottságú. Fenomenológiai részről egyfelől a természethez való viszonyunk fenomenológiai elméletéhez, másfelől a fenomenológiai értékelmélethez és etikához szeretnék kapcsolódni (mint amilyet Max Schelernél is találunk). Ebből a szempontból a kiindulási pont Edmund Husserl filozófiája, mely – mint arra a fenomenológiai mozgalom több kulcsfigurája is rámutatott (Hans Jonas, Erazim Kohák) – alkalmas alapot nyújthat egy ökofilozófia számára, a természettel való kapcsolatunk etikai vonatkozásainak, dimenziójának tematizálására. Másfelől Marx filozófiája, illetve általában a marxizmus, rendszerszinten nyújthat legalábbis arra irányuló megoldási kísérleteket, hogy a természethez való viszonyunkat fenntarthatóbbá, illetőleg bizonyos tekintetben etikailag elfogadhatóvá tegyük. Marx vonatkozásában az elidegenedés és emancipáció marxi elmélete az, ami kulcsfontosságú a számunkra – az, hogy a kapitalizmust az általános elidegenedés jellemzi, és az elidegenedés részben abból táplálkozik, hogy dologiként (áruként) kezeljük azt, ami lényegileg nem dologi, vagy legalábbis tartozik hozzá egy lényegileg nem-dologi dimenzió. Már magán Marxon belül is megilleti a természetet egy ilyen lényegileg nem-dologi dimenzió vagy aspektus – és Marx szerint az általános emancipációhoz hozzátartozik nem csak az ember, hanem a természet, illetőleg a természethez való viszonyunk emancipációja is.
Az előadásban azt szeretném megmutatni, hogy a két megközelítési mód nagyon szépen kiegészíti egymást, és alkalmas arra, hogy egy – a 21. századi körülményei közepette és a gyakorlatban is alkalmazható – szintetikus ökoetikai és ökopolitikai elmélet alapjaiként szolgáljanak.

https://lefteast.org/people-against-rio-tinto-three-ecopopulist-lessons/

This text zooms in on the struggles over land and rivers in Serbia to reflect on three wider tensions at the heart of Balkan ecopolitics, and three ecopopulist lessons for the regional Left. The first is green grabbing, that is, the tension between commoning and privatisation that structures all levels of environmental action – including the resistance itself. The Left is weak when it speaks about dispossession only: to turn energy transition into a material force, it must articulate all forms of emerging class gains that transition shapes. The second is the struggle over environmental debt, that is, the way debts to multinational capital are contested with one’s debts to their ancestors, who are seen as having died to liberate the land. The Left is alienated when it speaks in the name of descendants only: to connect itself with the anticolonial traditions of the oppressed, it must acknowledge all forms of generational sacrifice to which it owes life in the first place. The third is the national moral economy, that is, a populist bargain between the rulers and the ruled which might conceal another key social antagonism at play: that between the landed and the landless. To really stop the impending expropriations, the Left cannot shy away from the question of how to redistribute the land. But the real reason why ecopopulism is so appealing and yet so thorny, I argue, is because it asks an entirely new question: how to account for the exchanges of life itself.

This paper examines some dimensions of the national identity management policy in Nigeria. It specifically highlights the economic and social benefits of the policy. It argues that there is the need to look beyond mere issuance of smart cards or identification cards as the goal of identity management. Rather, its ability to transform society socioeconomically should be explored taking into consideration the biometric and demographic environment already in place. Government's indifference and citizens' lack of trust in government and technology have been blamed for the current environment of identity management in Nigeria. The paper submits that since a sound national Identity management system is linked with and complements the development of the sociopolitical and socioeconomic processes, there is therefore the need for government to make the environment conducive and convenient for an effective national identity management; and the national identity management policy should be sustained irrespective of changes in government.

In this chapter I elaborate upon the ecosophical principles that have influenced the design of Intimate Transactions. I also reflect upon the iterative design process and the progress of Intimate Transactions towards its current iteration as a participatory, embodied,networked and collaborative new media artwork. By charting the gradual refinement of its design, I will show how this project has come to fulfil writer Suzi Gablik’s prediction of an art that facilitates an understanding of complex ecological concerns and social participation.

IX Congreso de la SAF. Comité organizador: Pablo López Álvarez (Presidente, UCM), Teresa Oñate (UNED), Cristina Rodríguez Marciel (UNED), Valerio Rocco (UAM), Gabriel Aranzueque (UAM), José Luis Villacañas (UCM), Antonio Gómez Ramos (UC3M), Carmen González Marín (UC3M). Presidente de la SAF: Luis Arenas (UNIZAR).

Creativity moves from the exclusive domain of the designer into the space between disciplines and between producer and consumer. A new form of design is needed, i.e. relational design. Relational design has to focus on relationships and responsibilities instead of a focus on the individual. Relational design gives us then the opportunity to go beyond hyperconsumerism and individualism.

This is a revised and expanded version of a text written for a PM Press authors session on “Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change” at the Left Forum on June 3, 2017. In it, I try to summarize, briefly and inadequately, some of the lessons I’ve learned about radical change over the past fifty years.  There is a link to an earlier version.

Az előadásban a természet iránti felelősségünk (és ezzel egy ökoetika és ökopolitika) olyan koncepciójának körvonalait szeretném felvázolni, mely egyszerre fenomenológiai és marxista megalapozottságú. Fenomenológiai részről egyfelől a természethez való viszonyunk fenomenológiai elméletéhez, másfelől a fenomenológiai értékelmélethez és etikához szeretnék kapcsolódni (mint amilyet Max Schelernél is találunk). Ebből a szempontból a kiindulási pont Edmund Husserl filozófiája, mely – mint arra a fenomenológiai mozgalom több kulcsfigurája is rámutatott (Hans Jonas, Erazim Kohák) – alkalmas alapot nyújthat egy ökofilozófia számára, a természettel való kapcsolatunk etikai vonatkozásainak, dimenziójának tematizálására. Másfelől Marx filozófiája, illetve általában a marxizmus, rendszerszinten nyújthat legalábbis arra irányuló megoldási kísérleteket, hogy a természethez való viszonyunkat fenntarthatóbbá, illetőleg bizonyos tekintetben etikailag elfogadhatóvá tegyük. Marx vonatkozásában az elidegenedés és emancipáció marxi elmélete az, ami kulcsfontosságú a számunkra – az, hogy a kapitalizmust az általános elidegenedés jellemzi, és az elidegenedés részben abból táplálkozik, hogy dologiként (áruként) kezeljük azt, ami lényegileg nem dologi, vagy legalábbis tartozik hozzá egy lényegileg nem-dologi dimenzió. Már magán Marxon belül is megilleti a természetet egy ilyen lényegileg nem-dologi dimenzió vagy aspektus – és Marx szerint az általános emancipációhoz hozzátartozik nem csak az ember, hanem a természet, illetőleg a természethez való viszonyunk emancipációja is.
Az előadásban azt szeretném megmutatni, hogy a két megközelítési mód nagyon szépen kiegészíti egymást, és alkalmas arra, hogy egy – a 21. századi körülményei közepette és a gyakorlatban is alkalmazható – szintetikus ökoetikai és ökopolitikai elmélet alapjaiként szolgáljanak.