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Ecopolitics: the Environment in Poststructuralist Thought

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Ecopolitics: the Environment in Poststructuralist Thought Ecopolitics Rethinking the conditions of life, space and the state of the world figured prominently in the events of 1968, yet little attention is now being paid to ecological themes that arose in this influential period. Ecopolitics reassesses awareness—or non-awareness—of ecological issues in the work of key French poststructural thinkers and others affected by these events. Calling into question the status of the ‘subject,’ poststructuralism has been driven not only by feminism but by various findings, in both the social and applied sciences, that bear a strong ecological consciousness. Poststructuralism has continued to open new ways of thinking about the world and of studying concrete conditions of life. Its long-range effects are made possible by an enviromental awareness that remains today at the heart of issues concerning cultural theory. Pointing first to some currently disparaging critiques of ecology in the work of Luc Ferry and Jean Baudrillard, Ecopolitics then returns to Claude Lévi-Strauss’ critical reading of Sartre, which led the way towards ecological thinking in contemporary theory. Through a reading of key texts by Bateson Serres, Prigogine and Stergers, Virilio, Guattari, Cixous, Irigaray and others, Ecopolitics illustrates how by means of reassessing nature and questioning technologies, a shift away from humanism has played a key role in shaping ecological thought. Ecopolitics will appeal to students concerned with the environment and those engaged in gender and cultural studies. Verena Andermatt Conley is Professor of French at Miami University, Ohio, and Visiting Professor at Harvard University. Her previous publications include Hélène Cixous: Writing the Feminine (1984, 1991); and Hélène Cixous (1992). She is also editor of Rethinking Technologies (1993). Feminism for Today General Editor: Teresa Brennan The Regime of the Brother After the Patriarchy Juliet Flower MacCannell History After Lacan Teresa Brennan Feminism and the Mastery of Nature Val Plumwood The Spoils of Freedom Renata Salecl Ecopolitics The Environment in Poststructuralist Thought Verena Andermatt Conley The Politics of (M)Othering Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature Edited by Obioma Nnaemeka Ecopolitics The environment in poststructuralist thought Verena Andermatt Conley London and New York First published 1997 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1997 Verena Andermatt Conley All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Conley, Verena Andermatt, 1943– Ecopolitics: the environment in postructuralist thought/Verena Andermatt Conley. (Opening out) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Ecology-Political aspects-France. 2. Green movement-France. 3. France-Intellectual life. I. Title. II. Series. JA75.8.C58 1996 96–17317 363.7–dc20 CIP ISBN 0-203-01227-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17434-8 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-10284-7 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-10306-1 (pbk) For Tom Contents Series preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1 A first type of disparagement: the return of the full subject and the 11 division between nature and culture 2 A second type of disparagement: denaturing or ecology as simulacrum 24 3 Emergence of ecology: beyond dialectics and existential humanism 34 4 Chaos and ethics: from science to praxis 48 5 Motor ecology 66 6 New ecological territories 79 7 Everyday life: ecological practices 94 8 Back to writing: the fate of post-1968 feminine writing 106 Conclusion 122 Notes 132 References 154 Index 161 Series preface Feminist theory is the most innovative and truly living theory in today’s academies, but the struggle between the living and the dead extends beyond feminism and far beyond institutions. Opening Out will apply the living insights of feminist critical theory in current social and political contexts. It will also use feminist theory to analyze the historical and cultural genealogies that shaped those contexts. While feminist insights on modernity and postmodernity have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become more distant from the realpolitik that made feminism a force in the first instance. This distance is apparent in three growing divisions. One is an evident division between feminist theory and feminist popular culture and politics. Another division is that between feminism and other social movements. Of course, this second division is not new, but it has been exacerbated by the issue of whether the theoretical insights of feminism can be used to analyze current conflicts that extend beyond feminism’s ‘proper’ field. In the postmodern theory he has helped build, the white middle-class universal subject has had to relinquish his right to speak for all. By the same theoretical logic, he has also taken out a philosophical insurance policy against any voice uniting the different movements that oppose him, which means his power persists de facto, if not de jure. Currently, there are no theoretical means, except for fine sentiments and good will, that enable feminism to ally itself with other social movements that oppose the power networks that sustain the white, masculine universal subject. Opening Out aims at finding those means. Of course, the analysis of the division between feminist and the other social movements is a theoretical question in itself. It cannot be considered outside of the process whereby feminist theory and women’s studies have become institutionalized, which returns us to the first division, between feminist practice and feminism in the academy. Is it simply the case that as women’s studies becomes more institutionalized, feminist scholars are defining their concerns in relation to those of their colleagues in the existing disciplines? This could account both for an uncritical adherence to a postmodernism that negates the right to act, if not speak, and to the distance between feminism in the institution and outside it. But if this is the case, not only do the political concerns of feminism have to be reconsidered, but the disciplinary boundaries that restrict political thinking have to be crossed. Disciplinary specialization might also be held accountable for a third growing division within feminism, between theoretical skills on the one hand, and literary analysis and socio-economic empirical research on the other. Poststructuralist or postmodern feminism is identified with the theoretical avant-garde, while historical, cultural feminism is associated with the study of how women are culturally represented, or what women are meant to have really done. Opening Out is based on the belief that such divisions are unhelpful. There is a small advantage in uncritical cultural descriptions, or an unreflective politics of experience; without the theoretical tools found in poststructuralist, psychoanalytical and other contemporary critical theories, our social and cultural analyses, and perhaps our political activity, may be severely curtailed. On the other hand, unless these theoretical tools are applied to present conflicts and the histories that shaped them, feminist theory itself may become moribund. Not only that, but the opportunity feminist theories afford for reworking the theories currently available for understanding the world (such as they are) may be bypassed. None of this means that Opening Out will always be easy reading in the first instance; the distance between developed theory and practical feminism is too great for that at present. But it does mean that Opening Out is committed to returning theory to present political questions, and this just might make the value of theoretical pursuits for feminism plainer in the long term. Opening Out will develop feminist theories that bear on the social construction of the body, environmental degradation, ethnocentrism, neocolonialism, and the fall of socialism. Opening Out will draw freely on various contemporary critical theories in these analyses, and on social as well as literary material. Opening Out will try to cross disciplinary boundaries, and subordinate the institutionalized concerns of particular disciplines to the political concerns of the times. Teresa Brennan Acknowledgments I wish to thank colleagues at Miami University and at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who gave me the space, time and money necessary to develop and carry out this project. Friends at Miami University, at the Universities of Wisconsin, Minnesota, California at Los Angeles, Paris VIII and Canterbury at Kent who provided valuable research tips, critical insights and discussion for different portions and versions of this book, which was presented in the form of lectures. I am especially indebted to my graduate students, whose intellectual curiosity and persistence during long seminar
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