On the Way to Econstruction

Abstract

This chapter discusses eco-deconstruction. It highlights two guiding questions: (1) Might not an econstruction—a living, developing, and materially informed deconstruction—find itself quite at home thinking through the quandaries of environmental concern? (2) Might not environmentalism provoke a certain materialistic mutation within deconstruction? This can be argued both ways—that environmentalism finds itself in an often problematic and aporetic space of posthumanistic displacement where deconstruction is particularly well equipped to offer guidance. Equally, environmental concerns can embolden deconstruction to embrace what can be called a strategic materialism, or the essential interruptibility of any and every idealization. Moreover, deconstruction's critique of presence leads effortlessly to the strange temporalities of environmentalism. The dangers people currently face are from the accumulated impacts of past practices.