Thinking at the edge of the apocalypse requires an ecological thinking. Yet ecology must be rescued from green ecology, or that perspective that approaches it as a restricted domain of investigation, pertaining only to rain forests and coral reefs. Ecology is a name of being tout court. It signifies not nature, but relation. To think ecologically is to think beings in relation; regardless of whether that being be the puffer fish, economy, or a literary text. Everything is ecological. Above all, we must think culture and society as ecologies embedded in a broader ecology. This entails overcoming that form of thought that restricts culture to an economy of signs and norms governing the functioning of those signs; as something that can safely bracket out the ecological. These things, of course, are elements in the ecology of societies. Yet so too are infrastructure, material, waste, and energy. Even ecological enunciations themselves are embedded in broader ecologies. Ecological thought must include itself in its ecological investigations, practicing a certain sort of reflexivity, rather than treating itself as an observer outside of that which it observes.
January 24, 2015
January 24, 2015 at 6:35 pm
On the wavy and ragged edge of apocalypse, a complex coastline of infnite length, paradoxes of logical types can be avoided by strategies and dances of oscillations, as suggested by Bateson. Therefore, by all means, ban the outside observer from ecological thinking.
January 24, 2015 at 9:22 pm
Reblogged this on synthetic_zero.
January 25, 2015 at 5:22 pm
[…] “relation” is the wrong word for what is thought in ecological ontology. There’s something too ghostly, too incorporeal, about relations. Everything in the […]
January 26, 2015 at 4:57 pm
[…] Bryant, whose blog Larval Subjects I highly recommend you follow. In his post, entitled “Thinking at the Edge of Apocalypse“, Bryant emphasizes that the essence of ecological ontology is not ‘nature’ (i.e. […]
January 26, 2015 at 7:15 pm
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January 30, 2015 at 5:10 pm
[…] “relation” is the wrong word for what is thought in ecological ontology. There’s something too ghostly, too incorporeal, about relations. Everything in the entire […]