Document Type
Article
Abstract
[Fourth paragraph]
I begin with the fact of ecology's virtual exclusion from cultural studies. Cultural studies are centrally concerned with issues of meaning, subjectivity, objectivity and knowledge. They attempt to describe their production, conditions and complex structural effects. They are particularly interested in effects of inclusion and exclusion: for instance, "What is a legitimate object of attention within a particular discourse?" Why do cultural studies not attend to ecology? Why is negligible attention paid to a discourse and cultural movement, which are so challenging to dominant values and ways of life? I suggest that the omission is not accidental. Cultural studies find it difficult to think ecological discourse, because the latter implicitly questions cultural studies' own limits. It is a questioning which will be felt throughout this article. At this point I shall suggest only that these limits have to do with an institutionally conditioned resistance to engaging with the natural sciences, and more deeply still, suspicion of 'nature', as such. Intent upon resisting any naturalistic reduction - every performance as performance is context-specific, culture-specific - cultural studies is impelled to construct and continually reconstruct boundaries between the cultural and the non-cultural, or to absorb non-culture into culture. Nature becomes the lowest common denominator - a sort of cultural entropy. The disappearance of nature is achieved.
Repository Citation
Drinkwater, Chris. "Deep Ecology and Postmodernity: Making space for conversation." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 7, no. 2, 2007, pp. 1–30. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol7/iss2/4
Included in
Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons