Denaturalizing Ecological Politics: Alienation from Nature from Rousseau to the Frankfurt School and Beyond

265 Pages·2005·125.98 MB·English

by  Andrew Biro

DENATURALIZING ECOLOGICAL POLITICS
Alienation from Nature from Rousseau
to the Frankfurt School and Beyond
Denaturalizing Ecological Politics is an attempt to excavate from modern
political thought a means of rescuing human ecology- humans' rela
tionship with their environment-from the ideological trap of natural
ism. In this· work Andrew Biro develops a political theory of nature
that takes seriously both the reality of the ecological crises generated
by industrial and postindustrial society, and the antifoundationalist
critiques of 'nature' developed in postmodern social theory.
The book opens with a discussion of the deep ecologists, who argue
for a view of nature as prior to the social, and who see nature as a
guide for, or absolute limit to, human action. Following is a look at the
structuralist and poststructuralist social theorists, who claim that our
understanding of nature is solely an effect of the social - an ideological
reinforcement of social structures. In the remaining chapters the
author's readings of Rousseau, Marx, Adorno, and Marcuse provide
the starting point for a 'denaturalized' rethinking of ecological politics.
Through a close examination of primary texts and relevant secondary
sources focused on the concept of 'alienation from nature,' Biro argues
that an adequate understanding of human ecology must see human
beings not as biologically separate from the rest of nature, but as his
torically differentiated through the self-conscious transformation of
the natural environment. He maintains that only after the complexities
of the intertwining of nature and the social are fully grasped can we
begin to disentangle the social relations and processes that are neces
sary for a liberatory human ecology from those that serve to reinforce
relations of domination.
ANDREW BIRO is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in
the Department of Political Science at Acadia University.
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ANDREW BIRO
Denaturalizing Ecological Politics
Alienation from Nature
from Rousseau to the Frankfurt School
and Beyond
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO "PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
For Lisa,
for everything
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It's natural to deny our nature ... It's the whole point of being different
from animals.
Don DeLillo, White Noise
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Contents
Acknowledgments x1
Introduction: Nature or 'Nature'? Ecological Politics and the
Postmodern Condition 3
1 Ecocentrism and the Defence of Nature 12
2 Postmodemism: The Critique of 'Nature' 33
3 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Modernity and the Historicization of
Alienation 59
4 Karl Marx: Objectification and Alienation under Capitalism 83
5 Theodor W. Adorno: From Udeis to Utopia 117
6 Herbert Marcuse: Basic and Surplus Alienation 160
7 Denaturalizing Ecological Politics 197
Notes 219
Bibliography 231
Index 245