End of Nature
Discussion
Summary of the critiques of the ‘end of nature’ theses
Richard Douglas:
"Malm’s dispute with these authors centres on their endorsement of the ‘end of nature’ thesis. This has it that mankind’s technological reach has become so great that no separation can henceforth be made between society and nature. There is no natural world left, in the sense of being untouched by or exempt from the influence of man. The essence of the Anthropocene, within this thesis, is the realisation that humans have destabilised nature to such an extent that human agency will be needed to actively manage earth systems for the foreseeable future. The strongest variants of this thesis argue it was always illegitimate—an example of naïve ‘Cartesian dualism’—to suggest that nature and society could ever be separated in the first place.
Why do these arguments bother Malm so intensely? There are two elements to his criticism: the form, which comprises his intellectual objection to what he sees as a set of philosophical shortcomings verging on sophistry; and the essence, which is his disgust at the self-absorbed abstraction of those who wield such theories, given the urgent need for action in the face of climate change. He castigates postmodernist philosophers for claiming the past is a fictional text (thus robbing us of the ability to trace responsibility for present and future injustices); idealist constructionists for suggesting climate change is an idea (which thus might simply be interpreted away); new materialists for arguing that inanimate things have agency (thus obscuring human responsibility for present conditions, and potential to change them for the future); and ‘hybridists’ for suggesting that to separate nature and society is a philosophically illegitimate and deplorable example of anthropocentrism (when, on the contrary, it is only possible to discuss the relationship of two things if they remain, on some level, distinct entities). The Anthropocene does not mean the end of nature, Malm argues, but the very reverse: this is the return of nature, intruding back into our techno-society, reminding us of its independent existence—and our own dependence on it." (https://www.cusp.ac.uk/themes/m/forging-connections/)