Attracting the Earth: Climate Justice for Charles Fourier

IF 0.2 4区 文学 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM
A. Goldstein
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Abstract:At the very outset of the so-called Anthropocene, through the lens of a social theory since relegated to the “utopian” margins of critical thought, the visionary socialist Charles Fourier diagnosed a problem that mainstream modern science would spend much of the twentieth-century structurally unable to see: anthropogenic climate disruption and its etiology in the “progress” of European industry, slavery and colonial empire. This essay explores the heterodox naturalism that enabled such a prescient diagnosis, as well as the subversive image of “terraformation” that Fourier projected as a cure. For in contrast to today’s advocates of geo-engineering (but in concert with critics working to decolonize Anthropocene ecology), Fourier percieved that those who believe they know how to control the earth’s climate are the least capable agents of its emancipatory re-creation. He advanced, instead, the heretical proposition that nonhuman natures, no less than human ones, answer to justice and pleasure, rather than necessity and force. His dissident eco-social science thus aimed not to enable his Enlightened compatriots to engineer, but to disable them from thwarting the dazzling terrestrial futures that the earth’s other constituents were literally dying to create. Fourier’s techno-pastoral prophecies of orchestrated planetary transformation, then, beckon outside the familiar alternative between technofuturist hubris and ecological precaution, offering visions of multispecies luxury predicated on the abandonment of coercive labor and the adoption of a technics co-invented with human and non-human Others of Man. Next to the insane faith that our flourishing can still be founded on the earth’s domination (if only we do it right this time), Fourier’s outlandish prophecies, as Walter Benjamin once observed, “prove surprisingly sound.”
吸引地球:查尔斯·傅立叶的气候正义
摘要:在所谓的人类世一开始,通过一种社会理论的视角,这种理论被归入批判思想的“乌托邦”边缘,富有远见的社会主义者查尔斯·傅立叶诊断了一个主流现代科学在20世纪的大部分时间里都无法从结构上看到的问题:人为气候破坏及其在欧洲工业、奴隶制和殖民帝国“进步”中的病因。本文探讨了促成这种有先见之明的诊断的异端自然主义,以及傅立叶作为一种治疗方法投影的“地形”的颠覆性图像。因为与今天的地球工程倡导者(但与致力于将人类世生态学非殖民化的批评者一致)形成鲜明对比的是,傅立叶认为那些认为自己知道如何控制地球气候的人是最不可能解放地球重新创造的人。相反,他提出了一个异端命题,即非人性,不亚于人性,对正义和快乐负责,而不是对必要性和力量负责。因此,他持不同政见的生态社会科学的目的不是让他的开明同胞能够进行工程,而是让他们无法阻碍地球其他组成部分正在渴望创造的令人眼花缭乱的地球未来。傅立叶对精心策划的行星转变的技术田园预言,在技术未来主义者的傲慢和生态预防之间的熟悉替代之外发出了召唤,提供了基于放弃强迫劳动和采用与人类和非人类他人共同发明的技术的多物种奢华愿景。除了疯狂地相信我们的繁荣仍然可以建立在地球的统治之上(如果我们这次做得正确就好了)之外,正如沃尔特·本杰明曾经观察到的那样,傅立叶的古怪预言“证明是惊人的正确”
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来源期刊
DIACRITICS-A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM
DIACRITICS-A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM-
CiteScore
0.80
自引率
0.00%
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0
期刊介绍: For over thirty years, diacritics has been an exceptional and influential forum for scholars writing on the problems of literary criticism. Each issue features articles in which contributors compare and analyze books on particular theoretical works and develop their own positions on the theses, methods, and theoretical implications of those works.
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