Consciences of ecology | Eurozine

with the number of Esprit qualified scientific conscienceCatherine Laraire examines how social philosopher Andre Goltz’s ecological thought was shaped by two works published in the 1970s: Edward Goldsmith and Robert Allen. blueprint for survivaland about the Meadows Report limits to growth. Goltz drew the lesson from these that growth must be limited, if not suppressed, because the pursuit of economic productivity poses a risk to human life.

But what kind of politics does this require? Are reforms and revolutions needed? In the reformist approach, “capitalism remains dominant but adopts many ecological constraints on economic production and technology.” Goltz rejected this, favoring a revolutionary approach that required “a global change: a different economy, different social relations, different modes and means of production, in order to leave capitalism in a civilized way.”

This is socialism, but an unconventional one. Strongly influenced by Sartre, Goltz supported “anti-productivist” politics, which emphasized “freedom at the collective level” over productivity. Its goal was to “separate areas of freedom from productive obligations, expand the scope of autonomy and give those excluded from work the possibility of choosing activities that suit them.”

It was these anti-productivist ideas that led Goltz to support the idea of ​​universal basic income. But Goltz’s thinking had its limits, Laraire agrees, especially his ideas about nature as something to be fought against and the dualism between humans and nature.

Charbonneau

This was not the case in the work of environmental philosopher Bernard Charbonneau. As Patrick Chastenet explains, Charbonneau conceived of freedom as direct contact with nature. After growing up in Bordeaux, he moved to Paris, where he published his first works as part of the works of Emmanuel Meunier. Esprit group. This included the Directive for the Manifesto of Individualism (1935), co-authored with Jacques Ellul, which presented the first proposal by a Western writer to impose self-imposed limits on growth.

Thanks to his work in the 1930s, Charbonneau became “the leading theorist of French political ecology in the 20th century,” writes Chastenet. But it was in 1969 that he published his most important book. Le Jardin de Babylon. This happened at the very moment when ecological consciousness was becoming mainstream. Charbonneau threw himself into the ecological politics of his time, arguing that humanity was in a “dialectical relationship with nature.” “Man’s freedom commands him to master nature, but if he destroys or even organizes nature, he simultaneously destroys his own ability to experience freedom.”

Mr. Charbonneau became deeply hostile to car culture and, above all, the tourism industry “because it is driven by the exploration and consumption of space.” Instead, Charbonneau advocates a less developed, more improvisational approach to travel that allows us to “protect unorganized spaces” and “reestablish normal relationships between people and spaces.” His proposed solution was to halt economic growth and divide the economy into “small self-managed and anarchic units.” As Chastenet points out, he knew he wasn’t offering a “miracle cure.” Instead, “he encouraged us to slow down, respect limits, and establish reference points.”

anarchoecology

Simon Guyomard and Edouard Jourdan argue that we must not forget the roots of ecological thought. In particular, it is important to recover the anarchist tradition, which was “one of the first trends to consider human liberation and environmental protection as two inseparable aspects of the same social project.”

This connection is deeply rooted in anarchist thought, dating back to its 19th century founders. For Elise Lucullus, for example, “geography and anarchism are inseparable. If we want to understand human society, we need to understand how it is embedded in the natural environment.” In Russia, similar concerns inspired the thinking of Peter Kropotkin. This tradition is ancient and still continues all over the world. Zone a Defendre From the French to the Kurdish Syrians, ecological but not reactionary. It emphasizes interdependence and views nature “not as a storehouse of resources to be exploited, but as a collection of living environments that constitute social forms.”

erotic politics

Ecofeminist philosopher Miriam Bahahou is fascinated by the interdependence of nature, social forms, and individual life. Desire, intimacy and emotion are crucial to environmental issues, she explains in an interview with Matthieu Febvre-Issaly.

“I became interested in ecology as a woman who grew up in a working-class neighborhood, as a queer feminist, as an anti-speciesist, as a North African, and as a philosophy student.” Despite facing hostility, she continues to argue that “activists are interested in building alliances rather than distancing themselves from research…and vice versa.”

In defending the importance of emotion in environmental politics, she argues that it should include “aspects of intimacy that cannot be captured by more institutional, formal, hierarchical politics.” Because they promote ideology – abstract ideas and fantasies used to create social fear and moral panic.

What she calls “eropolitics” is “bringing desire back to the world we live in” and “bringing love back to the world, its forms of life, its biodiversity, its mutations, and its future. It should be an ecological program that is exciting and accessible to everyone.”

Published in cooperation with cairn international versionwritten by Cadenza Academic Translations.