Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The post-ecologist condition
T2 - irony as symptom and cure
AU - Szerszynski, Bronislaw
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - Resources for an authentic response to the ‘post-ecologist condition’ as described by Ingolfur Blühdorn can be found in a cultural modernism which emphasises the contradictory nature of the human condition and whose master trope is irony. The concept of irony can help us both diagnose and respond to the crisis in public meaning which helps sustain unsustainable behaviour. Forms of dispositional irony, in which private and public meaning are disconnected from each other, are symptomatic of the post-ecologist condition; in response, forms of communicative irony are used by environmental movements to expose such dispositions and strategies. However, such tactics can only serve as partial and limited responses to the problem of unsustainability, unless they are embedded within and shaped by a generalised ironic stance towards the world and oneself. The contribution concludes by sketching elements of an environmentalism informed by this ironic ‘world relation’.
AB - Resources for an authentic response to the ‘post-ecologist condition’ as described by Ingolfur Blühdorn can be found in a cultural modernism which emphasises the contradictory nature of the human condition and whose master trope is irony. The concept of irony can help us both diagnose and respond to the crisis in public meaning which helps sustain unsustainable behaviour. Forms of dispositional irony, in which private and public meaning are disconnected from each other, are symptomatic of the post-ecologist condition; in response, forms of communicative irony are used by environmental movements to expose such dispositions and strategies. However, such tactics can only serve as partial and limited responses to the problem of unsustainability, unless they are embedded within and shaped by a generalised ironic stance towards the world and oneself. The contribution concludes by sketching elements of an environmentalism informed by this ironic ‘world relation’.
KW - Bluehdorn
KW - post-ecologism
KW - irony
KW - environmental politics
U2 - 10.1080/09644010701211965
DO - 10.1080/09644010701211965
M3 - Journal article
VL - 16
SP - 337
EP - 355
JO - Environmental Politics
JF - Environmental Politics
SN - 0964-4016
IS - 2
ER -