Futuring Critical Theory, Keynote 3: Éric Pineault
14.09.2023 - Videos
»Ecologizing Critical Theory. From the Materiality of Social Relations to the Ecological Contradictions of Advanced Capitalism« Éric Pineault (Université du Québec à Montréal) Section 3 – Materializing Critical Theory, Keynote 3 International Conference »Futuring Critical Theory« The contemporary renewal of critical theory is confronted with a conjuncture shaped by an ecological crisis which has now existential implications for humanity and is intimately tied to the historical trajectory of capitalist society. This crisis is occurring at a time when the very notion of societal relations to nature is being called into question by critical theories and approaches based on post-Cartesian ontologies and hybridist conceptions of reality. In this new epistemic context, is it still possible to propose a critical theory that recognizes the mediation of social relations and the societal totality by natural structures with their own biophysical and ecological causalities? Or is this language which recognizes the objectivity of a natural world to be condemned because of its entanglements with modernity's project and practices of domination and exploitation through othering, dualism and abstraction? While acknowledging the situated nature of modern ecological thought and Earth sciences, we will argue that a critical ecological materialism is urgently needed to confront and think beyond the aporetic societal relations of capitalism to the planet, understood as a biophysical world. Social ecology, with its key concepts of social metabolism and colonization, has developed an epistemic approach that captures these relations within a framework based on the intermediation of social and biophysical causalities, a framework that recognizes the autonomy of each of these spheres as well as their articulations. This dialectic of intermediation provides a solid foundation for the ecologization of the theory of advanced capitalism and for a renewed non-reductionist, non-idealist, critical materialism. Futuring Critical Theory Thursday, 14 Sep 23 Campus Westend, Casino Building Goethe University Frankfurt Video / Sound / Editing: @mkffm © IfS