On October 11, 2012, I gave a lecture called “Towards a New Green Politics” at the Digital Art department of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
Here is the Abstract of the talk, and some of my lecture notes.
“The disasters that we are faced with in the areas of ecology, energy and the environment are well-known and they are truly horrific. We are confronted with global warming, the melting of the polar icecaps, the destruction of old-growth forests, oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, polluted water in the Berkeley Pit, threats to the Great Barrier Reef, loss of biodiversity, and the extinction of species. Yet the approach to Green Politics that we have in all countries in the world, and across the spectrum of political parties, is the same old discourse that has been tried for 40 years now and is not working. The question is: How can we develop an alternative to this worn-out discourse of “catastrophe warning”, how can we construct a new Green Discourse, a new Green Politics that might jump-start the ecology-environmental movement into effective action?
Politics should be based on sound basic principles, so I believe that we must start from philosophy. From the philosophy of the relationship among humanity, nature and technology. We need to settle upon new first principles, and then, based on these, assemble the new Green Politics step-by-step. My talk will be divided into three parts. First, I will speak about the book that the philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote about ecology, energy and the environment. It is called The Illusion of the End. In this book, Baudrillard accurately identifies what is fundamentally wrong with the establishment Green Politics: it revolves around an apocalyptic discourse, a perpetual warning about allegedly ‘real’ catastrophes, and it is based on wrong philosophical assumptions. Second, I will explicate the ideas presented in a book called The Technological Herbarium by Gianna Maria Gatti. This very important book has been published in three different editions in Italian, English, and German. I translated Gatti’s book from Italian into English, and I edited it and wrote a preface to it. I will elaborate the philosophical first principles regarding the relationship among humanity, nature, technology, life and art articulated by Gianna Maria Gatti. Third, building on top of the ideas of Baudrillard and Gatti, I will start to put together the essential ideational elements of the proposed new Green Politics.” We need a New Green Politics. What does it mean, New Green Politics? New media artists, and people working in media theory and media studies, can play a major role in this New Green Politics. As opposed to the Old Green Politics which was in many ways ‘anti-technology’, with a mythological idea of ‘going back to nature’ or an opposition between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’.
Green Politics is about ecology, energy and the environment. What is wrong with the existing Green Politics? Everyone is Green. In Germany, for example, all the political parties are Green, from the Green Party to the Christian Democrats. In a trans-disciplinary way, we must take the knowledge of literature studies – discourse analysis, narrative analysis, and bring it to the question of how do we formulate political discourse. The existing Green discourse has been the same for 40 years, and it is not working. The existing Green discourse is essentially a catastrophe warning. This is too similar to the way that the ideological mechanisms of the dominant society functions, both in films and in politics. The socio-political climate after September 11, 2001. The war on terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To keep us in fear and panic.
Politics and politicians are not performing the correct function of what a democracy should be. Democratic political discourse should be utopian: a discussion about how the conditions of life, the quality of life, in our society can be improved. Instead we are always told that we are always in a state of emergency. There is always some emergency or crisis going on. Some catastrophe or impending catastrophe that we have to deal with. I do not know what the New Green Politics is. I am working towards it. If I already knew, then we would already have a movement that represents these ideas. I have written up 20 Basic Principles of a New Green Politics, similar to the 20 Basic Principles of Star Trek that I wrote up in my Star Trek book. Here are 4 more very basic points about the New Green Politics:
(1) What is the definition of Nature in Western Society? At the beginning of Western Society. The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote about this. He said: Man places himself above Nature (animals, plants, environment). Definition of Nature in Western society: Man has meaning and intelligence. Nature is that which has meaning but does not have intelligence. We have to fundamentally change this. There is an ambivalence: Man is opposed to Nature, and Man is a part of Nature. Perhaps I should not even use the term ‘Man’, since it is sexist. I will continue to use it for now, although with awareness. More often, I use the term ‘humanity’. Similarly, Neil Armstrong did not know if said ‘man’ or ‘a man’ when he first stepped onto the moon. (2) We need transdisciplinary knowledge, especially beyond the split between humanities and science, Geisteswissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften. Art has a crucial role to play in this because Art is the placeholder for the future transdisciplinary knowledge.
(3) The importance of technologies. Technologies inserted into nature, technologies adding to the intelligence of nature. Hybrid natural and cultural environments. Technology not as a tool nor engineering / technical disciplines. DESIGN + TECHNOLOGY = ART (Vilem Flusser).
(4) The question of consumerism and production. We cannot save the environment and the planet only by using less, by consuming less (energy, for example). We have to change this also in the area of production. We have to really become less productive, less productivist. We have to work less, get away from the focus on work. Instead: play, creativity, diversity of activities, freedom, and enjoyment of life.
A sort of separation between man and nature is set in motion. They become two entities perceived as distinct. In the anthropocentric concept of it that has gradually been elaborated, nature is the world external to man, a world upon which man exercises his domination, on which he lays his imprint to reshape it based on the reading that he makes of it.