Description
Book SynopsisBernard Charbonneau (1910-1996) was a French philosopher who specialised in political ecology and critiques of technology. Today he is considered by a growing number of environmentalists as a visionary forerunner of political ecology.
Christian Roy is a cultural historian (Ph.D. McGill 1993), an art and cinema critic, and a multilingual translator. He is an expert on the lives and thought of both Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul.
Trade ReviewThis important book should have been translated more than 30 years ago. Yet it is even more relevant now, in a world undergoing global climate change, than it has ever been. Daniel Cerezuelle, Christian Roy, and Piers H.G. Stephens are all to be praised for making a book by Bernard Charbonneau available to English language readers. -- Carl Mitcham, International Professor of Philosophy of Technology, Renmin University of China, China, and Emeritus Professor of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Colorado School of Mines, USA
The ecological emergency is so systemic and so vast that the human imagination is frozen before it. Unable to believe that things could be different, around the world people consent to fascist-paranoid politics that relieve us of the burden of thinking and visualizing. Christian Roy’s lovely translation of Charbonneau’s masterpiece allows us to un-freeze, and for the sake of all lifeforms on Earth, imagine what William Blake meant by a “mental fight” for our ecological future. -- Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English, Rice University, USA
Table of ContentsIntroduction by Piers H.G. Stephens Foreword by Daniel Cérézuelle Author’s Foreword: The Heart of the Subject Part I SEEDS: The Origins of the Ecological Rebellion 1. Origins Prehistory of the Ecological Movement A Great Silence 2. Ecology Year 01 Where the thesis, i.e. science and America, generates its own antithesis The Green Light in France 3. The Various Constellations of the Ecological Nebula At the Center and on the Margins of the Maelstrom Where Nature switches from Right to Left Communal Microcosms and Silent Majority Part II ROOTS: Foundations of the Ecological Movement 4. Nature or freedom? Nature Freedom The Contradiction Between Nature and Freedom 5. Nature and Freedom Nature and Man United in the Human Environment: Town and Country Nature and Freedom United in the Existence of Each Human Being Nature and Freedom Associated in History 6. Nature and Christianity The Rupture of Creation Incarnation Christianity and the Ecological Movement Part III DISEASES AND POISONS: Contradictions and Shortcomings of the Ecological Nebula 7. Nature, Freedom and the Ecological Movement The Temptation of Naturist Fundamentalism A Critique of Ecologism The Libertarian Temptation A Critique of the Ecological Movement’s Anarchistic and Non-Violent Strand Beyond the Ecological Right and Left 8. A Fruit Still Green Ecology without a Doctrine Weak Points of Ecological Thinking Shortcomings in Economic and Especially Social Reflection 9. Recycling Creation or Recyclable Social By-Product? Recycling Through Fashion and Fashionistas Recycling Through Techno-Structure Recycling Through Spectacle 10. Recycling Through Politicization-Depoliticization From Political Commitment to Withdrawal from Politics Recycling Through Depoliticization Recycling Through Politicization Part IV: FRUITS: Sketch of an Ecological Politics 11. Topical Utopia Ecological Conversion A Mediation Between Opposites A Revolution for That Which Exists 12. The Ecological Community The Personal Basis Language and Ecological Reason Ecological Society and Meetings The Ecological Order 13. Ecological Politics Ecology and Power Elements of Ecological Tactics in Politics A Non-Economist Economic Policy Self-Management and Ecological Self-Sufficiency Agricultural Policy and the Dis-Organization of Leisure Envoi – Concluding Words Index
