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“A post-anthropocentric politics: Can neo-materialist theory provide effective solutions to the problems of global mining?”
The Extractive Industries and Society ( IF 3.808 ) Pub Date : 2020-11-25 , DOI: 10.1016/j.exis.2020.10.008
Timothy James LeCain

Even more than the Latourian theory that inspired them, neo-materialist and post-anthropocentric theories have sought to shift history's long-standing focus on human beings towards other organisms and things. These new theories argue for a fundamental reorientation of our understanding of culture—and thus society, economics, politics, etc.—to emphasize the inescapable materiality of all aspects of human existence. This is most easily demonstrated through the human alliances with other biological organisms, yet it is no less the case with abiotic materials such as the minerals and metals we extract from the earth's thin veneer of crust. In this paper, I suggest some of the many ways in which human culture and history have emerged from the mining and processing of minerals and their associated pollutants. But I also seek to squarely engage the oft-raised criticism that neo-materialist and post-anthropocentric theories fail to offer a politics or economic theory adequate to dealing with the many challenges humans now face. I argue that these theories can indeed offer just such a politics. However, they require such a radical post-anthropocentric shift away from conventional modernist thinking on both the left and right that some may dismiss them as chimerical. Given the gravity of the challenges we face, however, I argue that it is the contemporary faith in modernist solutions that is truly chimerical. Despite its radical nature, post-anthropocentrism may thus offer a more practical and realistic way forward.



中文翻译:

“后人类中心主义政治:新唯物主义理论能否为全球采矿问题提供有效的解决方案?”

新唯物主义和后人类中心主义理论甚至比启发他们的拉图尔理论更试图将历史对人类的长期关注转向其他有机体和事物。这些新理论主张从根本上重新定位我们对文化(进而对社会、经济、政治等)的理解,以强调人类生存各个方面不可避免的物质性。通过人类与其他生物体的联盟最容易证明这一点,但对于非生物材料,例如我们从地球薄薄的地壳中提取的矿物质和金属,情况同样如此。在本文中,我提出了人类文化和历史从矿物及其相关污染物的开采和加工中出现的多种方式中的一些。但我也试图正视人们经常提出的批评,即新唯物主义和后人类中心主义理论未能提供足以应对人类现在面临的许多挑战的政治或经济理论。我认为这些理论确实可以提供这样一种政治。然而,它们需要从左翼和右翼的传统现代主义思想中进行如此激进的后人类中心主义转变,以至于有些人可能会认为它们是空想的。然而,鉴于我们面临的挑战的严重性,我认为正是当代对现代主义解决方案的信仰才是真正的幻想。尽管具有激进的性质,后人类中心主义可能因此提供了一种更实际和现实的前进方式。

更新日期:2020-11-25
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