Ecological Philosophy and Social Differences

• In Event: Politics beyond the Human

Abstract

What does ecological theory have to offer for marginalized populations? Thinkers on the Left have long sought to graft political solidarities to material interdependencies, foremost among them Karl Marx, who attached his vision of a global political subject to an anthropocentric ecology, describing nature as “man’s inorganic body.” More recently, a variety of comparatively marginal theorists have suggested that social divisions might be mitigated and solidarities fostered by the displacement rather than the expansion of the human. What is gained or lost – for marginalized groups, for instance – by including nonhuman beings in a political commons? To answer this question, I turn to a growing popular literature on human entanglements with trees. I then consider relationships between human beings and trees as they bear on racial inequities in Chicago.

Author

• Kam Shapiro, Illinois State University