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Lehrende: Dr. Rachel Anna Aumiller
Veranstaltungsart:
Hauptseminar
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
Semesterwochenstunden:
2
Credits:
4,0
Unterrichtssprache:
Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl:
1 | 25
Kontingentschema: Phil_Standard_WS1415
Weitere Informationen:
Für den erfolgreichen Besuch dieser Veranstaltung im Rahmen des Fachspezifischen Wahbereichs werden 4 LP angerechnet.
Kommentare/ Inhalte:
This course explores Environmental Ethics through a Marxist-feminist lens, analyzing the relationship between global capitalism and our current ecological crisis. Our readings will orient us in contemporary debates in Marxist political theory, environmental ethics, and eco-feminism.
The dominant models for sustainability demand that we reduce climate pollution by cutting back on fossil fuel emissions. This approach to ecology employs a similar logic to an economic model based on austerity, which responds to deficit with spending cuts. Recent initiatives for sustainability—notably the Green New Deal as it is being developed in the U.S. and Europe—add a positive program to the demand to reduce practices that have detrimental effects for the environment. By introducing alternative energy sources and new green jobs, for example, these deals seek to transform our social and economic structures with the aim of ecological recovery.
Some political theorists argue that various versions of the Green New Deal still do not go far enough. By “greenwashing” capitalism, these programs fail to recognize the source of our ecological crisis. They argue that in order to save planet earth a deeper ecological approach is needed, one that radically reconceives relationships of power. We will consider these relationships on a number of levels: relationships between socio-economic groups, between nations, between different species, and between the human and more-than-human world.
Drawing on Marxist and feminist perspectives, this course tests the hypothesis that our environmental crisis stems from a failure to grasp our collective existence. A lack of an understanding concerning the interconnectivity of all life results in relationships built on competition. The natural world becomes reduced to a resource to sustain our individual existences. We fear that if we don’t claim this resource for ourselves and “our people,” others will steal away our right to a prosperous future. As these “resources for sustaining the self” become threatened, social and political relationships become fueled with fear and discrimination and economic disparity widens. We will question how a perspective of our collective existence could give birth to a new ethical framework that generates global action to recover the earth as something more than a resource to be used (and used up) for our individual ends.
Many of us imagine that we can invest in the individual ends of our families, communities, or nations while neglecting other lives and other life forms that don’t appear to be directly related to us. We believe that our ethical responsibility is first and foremost to our own. And so we build walls, underground bunkers, and plan new colonies on Mars—imagining that the vulnerability of others won’t touch us. We would save ourselves before saving our planet—as if we don’t share the same fate. This course drives towards developing a new ethics that fights to sustain the common good of our collective existence.
Literatur:
Global Capitalism & the Environmental Crisis
- Ashley Dawson. Extinction: A Radical History. (New York: OR Books, 2016).
- Naomi Klein. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate. (London: Allen Lane, 2014).
- Bruno Latour. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. (Polity Press, 2018)
Eco-Marxism
- Karl Marx. Selections from Capital I.
- John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett: Marx and the Earth (Chicago: Haymarket 2017).
- Carolyn Merchant. “Social Ecology.” Radical Ecology: In Search for a Livable World. (London: Routledge, 2005) 139-164
Eco-Feminism
- Kate Soper. What is Nature?: Culture, Politics, and the Non-Human. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
- Carolyn Merchant. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and Scientific Revolution. (San Francisco: Harper, 1990).
- Carolyn Merchant. “Ecofeminism.” Radical Ecology: In Search for a Livable World. (London: Routledge, 2005) 193-222
- Laura Pulido, Tianna Bruno, Cristina Faiver-Serna & Cassandra Galentine. “Environmental Deregulation, Spectacular Racism, and White Nationalism in the Trump Era.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 2019. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2018.1549473
Sustaining the Common Good of Our Collective Existence
- William E. Connolly. Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming. (London: Duke, 2017)
- Donna Haraway. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. (London: Duke University, 2016)
- Tim Morten. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. (New York: Columbia, 2016)
Zusätzliche Hinweise zu Prüfungen:
Regular attendance and active participation are a requirement of this course. Lively class discussion and debate will be a critical component of our time together. In addition to our weekly readings, students will be expected to stay informed about current international events at the intersection of politics and the environmental crisis by drawing on different kinds of news sources. A final paper will be required for students taking this course for graded credit.
Studienleistungen:
- aktive und regelmäßige Teilnahme
- sorgfältige Vor-/Nachbereitung der Seminarsitzung
- weitere Studienleistungen werden ggf. am Anfang der Veranstaltung bekannt gegeben
Prüfungsleistung:
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