Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T03:09:13.382Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nature's Relations: Ontology, Vulnerability, Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2020

Didier Zúñiga Open the ORCID record for Didier Zúñiga [Opens in a new window]
Didier Zúñiga*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Victoria, David Turpin Building A316, 3800 Finnerty Road, Victoria, BCV8P 5C2, Canada
*
Corresponding author. Email: dzuniga@uvic.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Political theory and philosophy need to widen their view of the space in which what matters politically takes place, and I suggest that integrating the conditions of sustainability of all affected—that is, all participants in nature's relations—is a necessary first step in this direction. New materialists and posthumanists have challenged how nature and politics have traditionally been construed. While acknowledging the significance of their contributions, I critically examine the ethical and political implications of their ontological project. I focus particularly on how the decentering of human agency that they advocate for raises a set of concerns that need to be addressed in developing an appropriate ecological ethics. I argue that the latter must be attuned to the vulnerability of living beings who participate in relationships that sustain life on earth. This brings me to conclude that qualitative distinctions between the worlds of bios and techne are necessary. This is because we need to think critically about ways of evaluating types of relationships so that we can assess them and establish which are worth nurturing and protecting and which are not.

Keywords

EcologyEthics of CareVulnerabilityOntologyAgencyNature
Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , Spring 2020 , pp. 298 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alaimo, Stacy, and Hekman, Susan. 2008. Material feminisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Arneil, Barbara. 2009. Disability, self-image, and modern political theory. Political Theory 37 (2): 218–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2012. Interview with Karen Barad. In New materialism: Interviews and cartographies, ed. Dolphijn, R. and van der Tuin, I.. Arbor, Ann, Mich.: Open Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevir, Mark, and Blakely, Jason. 2015. Naturalism and anti-naturalism. In Routledge handbook of interpretive political science, ed. Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. A.W.. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevir, Mark, and Blakely, Jason. 2018a. Why political science is an ethical issue. Political Studies 66 (2): 425–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevir, Mark, and Blakely, Jason. 2018b. Interpretive political science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borrows, Lindsay Keegitah. 2018. Otter's journey through Indigenous language and law. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Borrows, John. 2002 Recovering Canada: The resurgence of Indigenous law. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Borrows, John. 2018. Earth-bound: Indigenous resurgence and environmental reconciliation. In Resurgence and reconciliation: Indigenous–settler relations and earth teachings, ed. Borrows, J. and Tully, J.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The posthuman. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Google Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Google Scholar
Connolly, William. 2002. Neuropolitics: Thinking, culture, speed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Connolly, William. 2011. A world of becoming. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Coole, Diane, and Frost, Samantha, eds. 2010. New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Cadena, Marisol. 2010. Indigenous cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual reflections beyond “politics.” Cultural Anthropology 25 (2): 334–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Cadena, Marisol, and Blaser, Mario, eds. 2018. A world of many worlds. Durham, N.C.: Duke University.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1991. Being-in-the-world: A commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division 1. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ephraim, Laura. 2018. Who speaks for nature? On the politics of science. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frost, Samantha. 2011. The implications of the new materialisms for feminist epistemology. In Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science, ed. Grasswick, H. E.. London: Springer.Google Scholar
Frost, Samantha. 2016. Biocultural creatures: Toward a new theory of the human. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. 2002. A politics of imperceptibility: A response to “Anti-racism, multiculturalism and the ethics of identification.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 28 (4): 463–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. 2017. The incorporeal: Ontology, ethics, and the limits of materialism. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, Tim, 2011. Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge, and description. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2013. Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.Google Scholar
Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How forests think: Toward an anthropology beyond the human. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krause, Sharon. 2011. Bodies in action: Corporeal agency and democratic politics. Political Theory 39 (3): 299–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laden, Anthony S. 2012. Reasoning: A social picture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latimer, Joanna, and Miele, Mara, 2013. Naturecultures? Science, affect and the non-human. Theory, Culture & Society 30 (7/8): 5–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2004. Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Leff, Enrique. 2014. La Apuesta por la vida. Imaginación sociológica e imaginarios sociales en los territories ambientales del sur. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, Catriona. 2014. Embodied agents, narrative selves. Philosophical Explorations 17 (2): 154–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackenzie, Catriona, and Stoljar, Natalie, eds. 2000. Relational autonomy: Feminist perspectives on autonomy, agency, and the social self. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Markell, Patchen. 2014. The moment has passed: Power after Arendt. In Radical future pasts: Untimely political theory, ed. Coles, R. et al. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Mihai, Mihaela. 2019. The caring refusenik: A portrait. Constellations 26 (1): 148–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nedelsky, Jennifer 2011. Law's relations. A Relational theory of self, autonomy and law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Melissa K., and Shilling, Dan, eds. 2018. Traditional ecological knowledge: Learning from Indigenous practices for environmental sustainability. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Puig de la Bellacasa, María. 2017. Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, Fiona. 1998. Globalizing care: Ethics, feminist theory, and international relations Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Sharp, Hasana. 2011. Spinoza and the politics of renaturalization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharp, Hasana. 2016. Endangered life: Feminist posthumanism in the anthropocene? In Feminist philosophies of life, ed. Sharp, H. and Taylor, C.. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press.Google Scholar
Sharp, Hasana, and Willett, Cynthia. 2016. Ethical life after humanism: Toward an alliance between an ethics of eros and the politics of renaturalization. In Feminist philosophies of life, ed. Sharp, H. and Taylor, C.. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press.Google Scholar
Sikka, Tina. 2018. Climate technology, gender, and justice: The standpoint of the vulnerable. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.Google Scholar
Stoljar, Natalie. 2011. Informed consent and relational conceptions of autonomy. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (4): 375–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stoljar, Natalie. 2018. Answerability: A condition of autonomy or moral responsibility or both? In The social dimensions of moral responsibility, ed. Hutchinson, K., Oshana, M., and Mackenzie, C.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1985a. Introduction. In Human agency and language: Philosophical papers Vol. I. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1985b. What is human agency? In Human agency and language: Philosophical papers Vol. I. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1985c. Self-interpreting animals. In Human agency and language: Philosophical papers Vol. I. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1985d. Interpretation and the sciences of man. In Philosophy and the human sciences: Philosophical papers Vol. II. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1985e. Understanding in human science. In Philosophy and the human sciences: Philosophical papers Vol. II. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1985f. Atomism. In Philosophy and the human sciences: Philosophical papers Vol. II. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1992. Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A secular age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsing, Anna L. 2015. The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna L., Bubandt, Nils, Gan, Elaine, and Swanson, Heather A., eds. 2017. Arts of living on a damaged planet: Ghosts and monsters of the anthropocene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Tully, James. 2008. On local and global citizenship: An apprenticeship manual. In Public philosophy in a new key, Volume 2: Imperialism and civic freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tully, James. 2014. On global citizenship. In On global citizenship: James Tully in dialogue. London: Bloomsbury.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tully, James. 2016. Deparochializing political theory and beyond: A dialogue approach to comparative political thought. Journal of World Philosophies 1 (1): 51–74.Google Scholar
Tully, James. 2018. Reconciliation here on earth. In Resurgence and reconciliation, ed. Asch, M., Borrows, J., and Tully, J.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Tully, James. 2020a. Life sustains life 1. Value: social and ecological. In Nature and value, ed. Bilgrami, Akeel. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Tully, James. 2020b. Life sustains life 2. The ways of re-engagement with the living earth. In Nature and value, ed. Bilgrami, Akeel. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Nancy J. 2005. The earth's blanket: Traditional teachings for sustainable living. Vancouver: Douglas & MacIntyre.Google Scholar
Wilson, Elizabeth. 2004. Psychosomatic: Feminism and the neurological body. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfe, Cary. 2010. What is posthumanism? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar