An annotation of someone’s article abstract is probably a bit unfair. I’ve managed some awful ones myself. Sigh. Here I was, stuck in a long meeting, listening to the discussion, but sort of doodling on the abstract above, colour-coding the mixed metaphors.
Only later I read the article properly, and think it is very necessary to engage a bit more systematically – here are my initial rough notes on what Nic has to say – the article itself is free to download – the thrills of open access… Certainly the critique of the writer-activist trope deserves attention. Click the doi link to get to the article I am commenting on here (and note that Nic has a number of other enviro writer-activist stuffs here: https://essex.academia.edu/NicholasBeuret)
Beuret, N. (2023). ‘Mapping the catastrophic imaginary: The organisation of environmental politics through climate change’. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486231168395 (open access)
OK… got to get past the breathless abstract, and an unfortunate number of typos (I should talk!): ’We grasp this transformation through the way [we] collectively imagine past and future frames what we think we can do in the present’ and ‘I’ve named these three refrains are [!] the ‘catastrophe itself’, ‘humanity in excess’ and ‘the end of nature’’ (Beuret 2023). It seems to me an important piece and beyond the writer-activist rush there is something worth adopting in terms of what is achieved so far, and what might be next.
First up. Some of the ideas here could have been given a longer context. The imaginary is a concept made popular by Lacan and Castoriadis, among others, and so could have been linked to the work of the group Socialisme ou Barbarie and their efforts to involve auto-workers in France in writing about their experience of neoliberal production and its problems (part of the history of workplace inquiry). The motifs idea Beuret uses to focus upon the catastrophic imaginary – Fisher repeating Jameson’s prophetic phrasings: ‘we can imagine the end of the planet, but not the end of capitalism’ – can be related usefully to Adorno’s studies of the attachment of the German population to fascist ideas (even after WW2). This was part of the inquiry into the legacies of National Socialism (see Adorno Guilt and Defense), though motif was initially set out in Adorno’s earlier studies of music and politics in Wagner (Wagner introducing the commodification of music by breaking music into set reproducible pieces, certain refrains and motifs as a kind of identifiable discrete product – the piccolo flute equals the image of the Elefenreich). The critique of Monobot is always welcome, since overpopulation is a ‘strawman’ motif, utterly Eurocentric, though in turn this should be related to the role of that old plagiarist and East India College ‘penitent of Vishnu’ Robert ‘population’ Malthus (see Marx’s hilarious footnotes on ‘Pop’ Malthus in Capital). Finally, while the ‘Environmentalism after nature’ section is an excellent critique of arguments reliant on the prognosis of humanity’s arrogant intervening power, where: ‘humanity overwhelms nature through pollution: radioactive toxins, DDT, ozone pollutions, plastics and oil spills, genetically modified organisms and most powerfully greenhouse gases (McKibben, 2003: xv;10)’ (Beuret 20223) the relation of this to the Monthly Review enclave of metabolic rift theory (Foster, Keito etc) might have been worthwhile context (Foster’s The Return of Nature was out in 2020 and echoes here).
Nevertheless: ‘telling a story, one which frames much contemporary environmentalism in the Global North, that claims humanity in the aggregate has brought nature to an end … Through our excessive consumption of the world we have brought into being a catastrophic event, one that looms uncertainly on the horizon manifest in the form of climate change’ (Beuret 2023)
– doom. And yet – is this the message? Decidedly paralysing. Wait, there is an escape hatch (as in al good sci-fi fantasmagoria). So it is that:
‘opening up the environment movement to a broader range of images, perspectives and imaginaries that can take hold of the wealth of lived experiences and connections that constitute a planetary ecological movement … is already underway, with an increasing visibility of indigenous, Black and feminist perspectives and priorities, with the rise of alternative political framings that contest what is both realistic and what is necessary, from degrowth to collapsology, the Red Deal (The Red Nation, 2021) to the increasing centrality of commons and commoning’ (Beuret 2023)
– this opening up is what needs to be reported more widely. I hope there is a second three-part review of texts that will document what is important and ‘legitimate’ in the emergence of alternative imaginaries.
‘Imaginaries take hold when they resonate with socially legitimate framings or genres and speak to lived experience and social identity’ as is set out at the beginning of the article. ‘There are imaginaries, emergent or deliberately politically constructed, that contest or resist these hegemonic environmental and climate imaginaries … articulated through struggle and occupation (Fremeaux and Jordan, 2021), indigenous (The Red Nation, 2021), Black radical (Roane, 2023) and anti-colonial imaginaries, as well as more speculative and fabulous left-wing imaginaries that dare to consider a different future (O’Brien and Abdelhadi, 2022)’ (Beuret 2023)
Indeed, opening up the forums of the experts, policy makers, writer-activists and universities to those most impacted by ecological change would surely be a welcome and necessary effort, however much it disrupts vested interests in the institutions.
Trinketization 