Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises

by Andrew Biro (Editor)

Overview

Environmental movements are the subject of increasingly rigorous political theoretical study. Can the Frankfurt School's critical frameworks be used to address ecological issues, or do environmental conflicts remain part of the "failed promise" of this group? Critical Ecologies aims to redeem the theories of major Frankfurt thinkers—Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse, among others—by applying them to contemporary environmental crises.

Critical Ecologies argues that sustainability and critical social theory have many similar goals, including resistance to different forms of domination. Like the Frankfurt School itself, the essays in this volume reflect a spirit of interdisciplinarity and draw attention to intersections between environmental, socio-political, and philosophical issues. Offering textual analyses by leading scholars in both critical theory and environmental politics, Critical Ecologies underscores the continued relevance of the Frankfurt School's ideas for addressing contemporary issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442661677
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	03/19/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Andrew Biro is a professor in the department of politics at Acadia University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Paradoxes of Contemporary Environmental Crises and the Redemption of the Hopes of the Past by Andrew Biro (Acadia University)

PART ONE: Science and the Mastery of Nature

1. Modern Science, Enlightenment, and the Domination of Nature: No Exit? by William Leiss (Professor Emeritus, Queen's University)
2. Societal Relations with Nature: A Dialectical Approach to Environmental Politics by Christopher Görg (University of Kassel)
3. The Politics of Science: Has Marcuse’s New Science Finally Come of Age? by Katharine N Farrell (Autonomous University Barcelona)

PART TWO: Critical Theory, Life, and Nature

1. Sacred Identity and the Sacrificial Spirit: Mimesis and Radical Ecology by Bruce Martin (New Mexico State University
2. From ‘Unity of Life’ to the Critique of Domination: Jonas, Freud, and Marcuse by Colin Campbell (York University)

PART THREE: Alienation and the Aesthetic

1. Adorno’s Aesthetic Rationality: On the Dialect of Natural and Artistic Beauty by Donald D Burke (York University)
2. On Nature and Alienation by Steven Vogel (Denison University)
3. Fear and the Unknown: Nature, Culture, and the Limits of Reason by Shane Gunster (Simon Fraser University)
4. Ecological Crisis and the Culture Industry Thesis by Andrew Biro

PART FOUR: Critical Theory’s Moment

1. Natural History, Sovereign Power, and Global Warming by Jonathan Short (York University)
2. Adorno’s Historical and Temporal Consciousness: Towards a Critical Theoretical Environmental Imagination by Michael Lipscomb (Winthrop University)
3. Toward a Critique of Posthuman Reason: Revisiting ‘Nature’ and ‘Humanity’ in Horkheimer’s ‘The Concept of Man’ by Timothy W Luke (Virginia Polytechnic Institute)

Afterword: The Liberation of Nature? by Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University)

 

Editorial Reviews

‘Critical Ecologies is an impressive selection of essays that successfully navigates the extremely challenging and ambiguous terrain of the early Frankfurt School… It is a sustained commitment to the equality of theory and its objects and the concomitant liberation of humanity and the material world.’—Robert M.W. Brown, The Goose 2012 issue 10
‘The volume succeeds beautifully in showing the potentials of applying critical theory to issues in environmental philosophy. Environmental philosophers of many stripes will benefit from an examination of critical theory. This book does much to facilitate that examination,’—Darrell Arnold, Philosophy in Review; vol 32:02:2012

From the Publisher

‘Critical Ecologies is an impressive selection of essays that successfully navigates the extremely challenging and ambiguous terrain of the early Frankfurt School… It is a sustained commitment to the equality of theory and its objects and the concomitant liberation of humanity and the material world.’

The Goose 2012 issue 10 - Robert M.W. Brown

‘The volume succeeds beautifully in showing the potentials of applying critical theory to issues in environmental philosophy. Environmental philosophers of many stripes will benefit from an examination of critical theory. This book does much to facilitate that examination,’

Philosophy in Review; vol 32:02:2012 - Darrell Arnold