The article examines the works of nature writer Jaromír Tomeček, his public image, and his reception by literary theory and criticism as a distinctive late socialist response to environmental concerns. The article argues that the “ecological techno-optimism” of Jaromír Tomeček was representative of the late socialist reconsideration of human-nature relations that rejected the earlier modern understanding of humans as masters of nature and tried to find a new harmony between the two, but that also rejected the “pessimistic” perspective of Western ecology. Revising the tradition of socialist realism, late socialist literature allowed for sorrow over loss (“a right to sadness”) while still giving primacy to joy over progress, negating the “existential despair” of the 1960s. It thus preserved the progressive temporal orientation tied to the socialist ideal of increasing material wellbeing while trying to reconcile technocratic rationality with romantic subjectivity. “Ecological techno-optimism” eventually materialized in the form of the nuclear energy programme as the solution to the ecological crisis.
The article ponders over the environmental paradoxes of the Bolivian political project. The government of Morales aspires to establish a system based on social justice, environmentally conscious politics and the respect for the indigenous populations of the country. The new Political Constitution was adopted that guarantees the political, cultural and territorial rights of the indigenous groups and delineates a well-developed framework of the environmental protection. As one of the first states of the world Bolivia admitted the legal status of nature and adopted „Law of Mother Earth“. However, to these legislative measures contrasts sharply the economic strategy of the country, based almost exclusively on mining, industrialization and commercialization of the natural resources. The government of Morales intensified the mining of the fossil fuels and prepares the way for a gigantic project of mining and processing of lithium on the Bolivian salt flats. Socio-ecological consequences of these activities might be catastrophic. We think that the ambivalent environmental attitude of the government of Morales is caused, primarily, by its effort to match up two inconsistent principles: on the one hand the anthropocentric concept of economic growth, modernity and progress and on the other the indigenous concept of „good life“ that became the official moral-ethical principle of the Bolivian state.
This paper contributes to Contradictions’ “Conceptual Dictionary” by exploring the history, theory, and practical implications of the notion of “ecosocialism”. The first part of the text follows the historical and ideological development of ecosocialism and examines its broad and diverse anarchist, feminist, and Marxist roots. This part of the text also introduces key authors of ecosocialism and their work. The subsequent part identifies critical ideas and offers a theoretical overview of scholarly and political debates about the relationship between ecosocialism and other environmental and socio-critical approaches. Finally, the text further explores the practical and political vision of the concept and reflects on the future of ecosocialist strategy.
This interdisciplinary study presents a philosophical-critical reflection on the concepts of the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene from the perspective of the humanities and social sciences. In the study, I will argue from a post-Marxist perspective that the Anthropocene is a reductionist concept, because it does not reflect capitalist processes (industrialization, commercialization, commodification, etc.) or systemic imperatives (growth, competitiveness, flexibility, and profit maximization – all elevated to axiomatic bases of economic and social policy) or patriarchy, colonialism, and racial formations. The aim of the study is to outline the parameters of a post-Marxist critical reinterpretation of the concept of the Anthropocene in relation to the concept of the Capitalocene, taking into account the functioning of global (late) capitalism, with its basic systemic imperatives that produce structural social and environmental “defects”, “excesses”, and various „injustices“; also accounting for gender and race, gender roles, post-colonial and (post-)feminist studies; and considering, finally, the need to create a normative-ontological framework for global environmental and social justice.
This article presents the contemporary conception of “environmental pragmatism” as an alternative strategy, still little known in the Czech context, for the solution of the problem of the relation between nature and culture. The point of departure for this conception are the ideas of the classical pragmatists, especially the naturalism and ethics of John Dewey. This philosophy bears within it an immanent environmental direction and it issues in the “Third Way” in the ecological movement, finding a path between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism; between individualism and holism; between instrumentalism and immanentism; between exploitation and preservation; between the dualisms of value and fact, aims and means, conservation and growth, and so on., Emil Višňovský., and Obsahuje poznámky a bibliografii
By the time liberals triumphantly proclaimed the end of history, some environmentalists had already begun to mobilize the public against Western modernity by proclaiming the end of nature. For many people, the environmentalist agenda meant a new ideology that could replace classical ideologies; many, on the other hand, understood environmentalism as radically anti-ideological. In this text, I will focus on the relationship between nature and society that lies in the core of both environmental thought and modern emancipatory projects. I will try to expose the inherent contradictions that environmental discourse inherited from liberalism and Marxism.
This article identifies connections between the current critical condition of nature and women’s position in society. The author describes ecofeminism and situates it within the context of the feminist and environmental movements. The purpose of this article is to introduce the fundamental ideas of ecofeminism, whose underlying principle is a critique of dualistic thinking, and a critique of the application of the logic of dominance and hierarchy. The author argues how this critique is derived from feministic epistemology and goes on to explain the ecofeminist critique of dualistic thinking and hierarchy historically connected to the scientific revolution, which had a big impact on the position of women in society and the current global ecological crisis., Zora Javorská., Obsahuje bibliografii, and Anglické resumé