Dark Ecology
For a Logic of Future Coexistence
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Timothy Morton argues that ecological awareness in the present Anthropocene era takes the form of a strange loop or Möbius strip, twisted to have only one side. Deckard travels this oedipal path in Blade Runner (1982) when he learns that he might be the enemy he has been ordered to pursue. Ecological awareness takes this shape because ecological phenomena have a loop form that is also fundamental to the structure of how things are.
The logistics of agricultural society resulted in global warming and hardwired dangerous ideas about life-forms into the human mind. Dark ecology puts us in an uncanny position of radical self-knowledge, illuminating our place in the biosphere and our belonging to a species in a sense that is far less obvious than we like to think. Morton explores the logical foundations of the ecological crisis, which is suffused with the melancholy and negativity of coexistence yet evolving, as we explore its loop form, into something playful, anarchic, and comedic. His work is a skilled fusion of humanities and scientific scholarship, incorporating the theories and findings of philosophy, anthropology, literature, ecology, biology, and physics. Morton hopes to reestablish our ties to nonhuman beings and to help us rediscover the playfulness and joy that can brighten the dark, strange loop we traverse.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Morton (Hyperobjects), a philosopher and professor of English at Rice University, attempts with mixed results to poetically jump-start a searching reevaluation of philosophy, politics, and art in light of the current ecological crisis. The book is strange, and some may find it decidedly uncanny. In and through its looping prose, he argues that there are strata of acclimatizations that must be made in mind, body, and soul for humans to come to "ecognosis": the knowledge that our very conception of nature might be what is destroying it. In a stream-of-consciousness style, Morton weaves together scientific and humanistic perspectives to craft a text that argues that the current ecological crisis is linked to a "logistical program' " that has been present in human systems since the Stone Age. "Dark ecology" is the recognition that the changes that must be made involve melancholy, irony, unsettling joy, and ultimately radical transformations in the ways humans conceive of, and live in, the universe. Morton commands readers' attention with his free-form style, but some may find it as repellent as it is compelling. Morton extends his previous work to offer a seismically different vision of the future of ecology and humankind.
Customer Reviews
A complicated masterpiece
One of the biggest ecological problems we face, as I have discovered through the philosophy known as Object-Oriented Ontology, is anti-intellectualism. Those who think that global warming is a purely physical problem, with scientists and others with a "just do it" attitude offering the only possible ways of thinking about it, will hate this book; such prejudices are the wellspring of ecological problems in the first place, which is why scientists and engineers can't solve the problem without help. For those who understand that thoughts lead to actions which give rise to things (which is actually true), the effect will be more mixed. To one schooled in anthropology, the thought that agriculture is a kind of ecological "original sin" is hardly a startling revelation; what is interesting is that Tim convincingly discusses how and why this is the case, and this is the help science (and policy, no less importantly) doesn't realize it's looking for. My only criticism is that, while many of our fellow human beings commit the sin of excluding such ideas (because they're too "wordy", "long", "scholastic", "esoteric" and other Lovecraftian adjectives people use when they're pretending not to be interested in things they're actually just afraid they won't be able to comprehend), Tim can fairly be said to be guilty of the same sin in reverse: as a writer myself, I see little effort on his part to make his message accessible to those whom it would most benefit: ordinary people who read books and care about our future. It is certainly depressing that people pathologize intellect and so neglect good ideas; it is even more gut-wrenchingly depressing that Tim responds with his own more obscurantist brand of exclusionism. "You exclude me? Fine, I exclude you too, because I can." My point is that no one benefits from this except the petulant egos of the participants in this contest, and we have been treated to yet more evidence that there is no hope of a constructive human response to ecological problems. This personal attitude on his part is no blemish on the writing itself, as careful deep reading is what this book is for. Used in that way, the book is beautiful; be prepared to find joy in darkness, and the book will take you places you've never been.