#LIsa Doeland

[ronnydeschepper]

De peperbus van nonkel Miele (68): waardig uitsterven

Doemdenkbeelden en apocalyptische visioenen zijn van alle tijden. Maar vandaag liggen de kaarten anders. De Nederlandse Filosoof Lisa Doeland (*) schreef er een boek over. Het einde van de wereld voor de mens, dieren en planten is geen grote big bang. Het is een langzaam proces dat nu al bezig is met totale desintegratie op termijn als eindresultaat. We kunnen alleen nog pleiten en streven naar…

[earaercircular]

Philosopher Lisa Doeland wonders in 'Apocalypsofie': extinction, how do you introduce that well?

New Yorkers flee a tsunami in Roland Emmerich's film The Day After Tomorrow, 2004

In an intensely polluted world that will never get clean again, we must try to get it right. How? Philosopher Lisa Doeland comes up with an honest, searching answer in her book “Apocalypsofie”.

When I'm about ten pages into her new book “Apocalypsofie” [1], I wonder whether Lisa Doeland would have children. Whoever describes the climate crisis bluntly as an apocalypse does not have a rosy picture of the future. Why would you then even start having children?

For Doeland, an apocalyptic is not the same as a doomsayer, it soon becomes clear. The Dutch philosopher may not be an ecomodernist who puts all her hope in technological innovation, but she is not a prophet of doom either. She just wants to avoid the polarisation between doomsayers and ecomodernists with her "apocalypsophy" (that term is her invention). After all, both pessimism and optimism give us an illusion of distance: the future will be bad or good. But, Doeland subtly observes, it's not about the future, the downfall has already started. Her apocalypsophy is a manual for how we can still live in the full awareness of that harsh truth.

What is possible

“After a century and a half of industrial production, mass consumption and thoughtless discarding, the remains of this process are piling up visibly and invisibly, and instead of trying to hide them away and start with a clean slate, it is up to us to learn to live in and with the debris. How do you do that?”

Doeland hesitantly answers that crucial question in her book. It is only at the last chapter that readers get a little insight into what they have to do. Much more attention is paid in Apocalypsophie to the analysis of the problem and of wrong solutions. Where do the ruins come from? Why was the Club of Rome[2] never listened to? What fantasies lull us further into ruin? The philosopher looks for an answer dialoguing with big names of fellow philosophers such as Jacques Lacan[3], Bruno Latour[4], Jacques Derrida[5], Walter Benjamin[6], or living epigones in the current eco-movement such as Donna Haraway[7] or Andreas Malm[8].

But also lesser-known (and therefore all the more interesting) philosophy is accessible in Doeland's story, such as the work of Srećko Horvat[9] (After the apocalypse), Roy Scranton[10] (Learning to die in the anthropocene), Michael Marder[11] (Dump philosophy), Anna Tsing[12] (The mushroom at the end of the world), Val Plumwood[13] (The eye of the crocodile).

Doeland takes up the warnings of Derrida, Benjamin and Horvat: we are already living in the catastrophe, the world is already a dump, don't be fooled. She takes constructive advice from Tsing, Haraway and Plumwood (coincidentally, the female thinkers?): don't fear the future, but look around and learn to see what's possible.

Completely in line with the etymological meaning of 'apocalypse', Doeland sees the ecological crisis as a revelation: not of a grand vision about the end of 'the' world, but the revelation of the insight that many worlds have long since ended. The main appeal of this book is: don't think it's five to twelve or that we can still be saved, but look around you and see that the mass extinction (of insects and other animal species, of indigenous cultures, of pre-industrial societies ...) is taking place worldwide.

What can we do with that insight? According to Doeland, it protects us against what she calls dangerous fantasies: the energy transition, for example, or the circular economy that hides the real problem from our view with the promise of waste as a raw material. That real problem, says Doeland, is the capitalist need for eternal growth. And the circular economy only makes it bigger: 'The belief in the recyclability of things means that we no longer view waste as a problem, as the dark side of our disposable consumer society, but as part of a more or less natural cycle, so we don't have to worry too much about it.'

Undead waste

Destination is strict. Electric cars and solar panels are not a solution, they are part of the problem. Concepts such as 'energy transition' and 'green energy' continue to hide polluting processes of extraction and combustion. Batteries, plastic and car tires not only have to be produced, but also discarded after decay. This is how the machine of capitalism produces piles of waste that cannot be digested: undead waste, as Doeland calls it, huge piles of e-waste and plastic that haunt us and future generations.

Surprisingly, Doeland is equally sceptical about rewilding projects and veganism, if they are based on a false ideal of untouched nature or moral purity. After all, nature not only includes trees and oceans, but also nuclear waste under the soil and plastic in the sea. The fantasy of nature as a pristine canvas against which man can develop cultures is at the root of the capitalist exploitation of the earth.

Even so, the desire for a clear moral line between what is edible (plants) and what is not (animals) rests on a bad fantasy. All food is sacred, says Doeland together with ecofeminist Plumwood. And that all consumption of food is consumption of suffering is a thought she borrows from anarchist Alexis Shotwell[14]. Because everything on earth is so intensely intertwined with everything, people can no longer shut themselves off from all that is bad: plastic is in breast milk, lead in our blood, soy milk is produced industrially. Moral purity is an illusion.

Cloudy ethics

In an intensely polluted world that can never be made clean again, we must try to get it right. And we can do that well or less well. Unfortunately, even for Doeland, it is not always clear what that means in practice. She herself gives the example of diapers (so yes, she has children!). She opted for washable instead of disposable diapers, but is not sure whether that was the best choice. Was it worth all the energy?

“You must realise that you can never do everything right.” The answer to the question “How to live amidst the ruins?” is unsatisfying, but fair. For me, the most difficult challenge is not to keep myself ongoing confronted with the realisation of millions of climate refugees or the destroyed ecosystems and biodiversity, but rather: 'how do I raise children in this world?'

British Charlie Gardner[15], one of the founders of Scientist Rebellion[16], left the academy because he could no longer bring science to auditoriums full of young people, condemning them powerlessly to a bleak future. Lying to the next generation is not an option, so what do we tell them? The book Apocalypsophie is full of beautiful metaphors and intriguing provocations, but how do I translate them into a life with children? Shall I teach them 'how to get extincted properly', as Doeland sharply puts it? Is there still room for humour and happiness, for joie de vivre and fun? I suspect that Lisa Doeland assumes so, because she has chosen parenthood just like I did. But frankly talking? I'm not very sure.

Source

Katrien Schaubroeck, Filosofe Lisa Doeland vraagt zich in ‘Apocalypsofie’ af: uitsterven, hoe doe je dat goed?, in: De Strandaard, 5-08-2023, https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20230803_94888668

[1] Lisa Doeland: Apocalypsofie. Over recycling, groene groei en andere gevaarlijke fantasieën. (Apocalypsophy. About recycling, green growth and other dangerous fantasies) , Ten Have, 2023 https://www.uitgeverijtenhave.nl/boek/apocalypsofie/

[2] The Club of Rome is a nonprofit, informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders whose goal is a critical discussion of pressing global issues. The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy. It consists of one hundred full members selected from current and former heads of state and government, UN administrators, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists, and business leaders from around the globe. It stimulated considerable public attention in 1972 with the first report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth. Since 1 July 2008, the organisation has been based in Winterthur, Switzerland.

[3] Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book Écrits. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself.

[4] Bruno Latour (22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.He was especially known for his work in the field of science and technology studies (STS).After teaching at the École des Mines de Paris (Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation) from 1982 to 2006, he became professor at Sciences Po Paris (2006–2017), where he was the scientific director of the Sciences Po Medialab. He retired from several university activities in 2017.He was also a Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics.

[5] Jacques Derrida (15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed through close readings of the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy although he distanced himself from post-structuralism and disowned the word "postmodernity"

[6] Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and Neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was also related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders.

[7] Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. She has also contributed to the intersection of information technology and feminist theory, and is a leading scholar in contemporary ecofeminism. Her work criticizes anthropocentrism, emphasizes the self-organizing powers of nonhuman processes, and explores dissonant relations between those processes and cultural practices, rethinking sources of ethics

[8] Andreas Malm (born 1976 or 1977) is a Swedish author and an associate professor of human ecology at Lund University. He is on the editorial board of the academic journal Historical Materialism, and has been described as a Marxist. Naomi Klein, who quoted Malm in her book This Changes Everything, describes him as "one of the most original thinkers on the subject" of climate change.

[9] Srećko Horvat (born 28 February 1983) is a Croatian philosopher, author and political activist. The German weekly Der Freitag called him "one of the most exciting voices of his generation" and he has been described as a "fiery voice of dissent in the Post-Yugoslav landscape". His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel, Jacobin, Newsweek and The New York Times.

[10] Roy Scranton (born 1976) is an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His essays, journalism, short fiction, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Nation, Dissent, LIT, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Boston Review. His first book, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene was published by City Lights. His novel War Porn was released by Soho Press in August 2016. It was called "One of the best and most disturbing war novels in years" by Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal. He co-edited Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War. He currently teaches at the University of Notre Dame, where he is the director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative

[11] Michael Marder is Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz. He works in the phenomenological tradition of Continental philosophy, environmental thought, and political philosophy.

[12] Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (born 1952) is an American anthropologist. She is a professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2018, she was awarded the Huxley Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

[13] Val Plumwood (11 August 1939 – 29 February 2008) was an Australian philosopher and ecofeminist known for her work on anthropocentrism. From the 1970s she played a central role in the development of radical ecosophy. Working mostly as an independent scholar, she held positions at the University of Tasmania, North Carolina State University, the University of Montana, and the University of Sydney, and at the time of her death was Australian Research Council Fellow at the Australian National University.[5] She is included in Routledge's Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment (2001).

[14] Alexis Shotwell (b. 1974) is a Canadian philosopher, currently employed as Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, where she is cross-appointed with the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women's and Gender Studies and the Department of Philosophy. Educated at University of California, Santa Cruz (PhD), Dalhousie University (MA) and McGill University (BA), Shotwell has also taught at Laurentian University.

[15] Dr. Charlie Gardner’s professional identity cannot be summed up by a simple job title: he is, simultaneously, a lecturer and researcher in conservation science at the University of Kent, a practitioner and an activist with Extinction Rebellion. To him, these are not separate roles. They strengthen each other in his determination to align science with activism in order to save our planet. We spoke with Charlie about his unique approach to science and the multiple ways in which he uses his work life to make a real-world impact for all our sakes.

[16] Scientist Rebellion is an international scientists' environmentalist group that campaigns for degrowth, climate justice and more effective climate change mitigation. It is a sister organisation to Extinction Rebellion. It is a network of academics that tries to raise awareness by engaging in non-violent civil disobedience.