Nature, Neoliberalism, and New Materialisms: Riding the Ungovernable (The Frankfurt School in New Times) - Hardcover

Luigi Pellizzoni

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1666967432 ISBN 13: 9781666967432

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2024

Synopsis

For a long time Western reason, of which capitalism embodies the most accomplished and radical form, seemed able of acquiring a growing capacity to control the world. Social turmoil and the ecological crisis appear to question such capacity, while in social theory ‘new materialisms’ are committed to denounce its engine – the separation and hierarchization of subject and object, language and matter, cognition and thing, living and inanimate, technology and nature. But what if, with new biotechnologies, geoengineering, ecosystem services, human enhancement, artificial intelligence, and more, the overcoming of this separation is celebrated, and world domination increasingly hinges on the unpredictable? Nature, Neoliberalism and New Materialisms: Riding the Ungovernable brings this elusive strategy into focus, reconstructing its genealogy and showing its correspondence with neoliberal governmental rationality. If anti-dualism is endorsed by an increasingly pervasive logic that panders to, and incites, planetary turbulence in order to extract value, how to combat it? Sticking with, or returning to, traditional naturalism does not work. One is rather to build on the irreducibility of the real to its description, and of nature to mere environment. A theoretical key lies in Adorno and in the concept of form of life, while prefigurative activism constitutes a promising field of experience.

About this title

About the Author

Luigi Pellizzoni is professor of environmental sociology and political ecology at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1666967432
• ISBN 13: 9781666967432
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 220