Dialectical Materialisms, Metabolic Rifts and the Climate Crisis
A Lacanian/Hegelian Perspective
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10486644 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kai Heron (0000-0003-0402-3077, Department of Politics and International Relations The University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester, M13 9PL UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 85 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 501-526 |
| Publication date | 2021-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0036-8237 • E-ISSN: 1943-2801 |
| Publisher | Guilford Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1521/siso.2021.85.4.501 |
| OpenAlex | W3202833145 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 41 |
Metabolic rift theory has been accused of assuming an untenable ontological dualism between nature and society. In response, two of its leading advocates, John Bellamy Foster and Andreas Malm, have tried to argue that the approach is not dualist but rather rigorously realist, nonreductively naturalist, and dialectically materialist. According to Foster and Malm, metabolic rift theory is essential because it enables eco-Marxism to make an analytic distinction between nature and society while nevertheless grasping their complex interrelation. From a Lacanian and Hegelian perspective, Foster and Malm are right to preserve the dialectical distinction between nature and society but their respective accounts of this dialectic are insufficiently materialist. Foster falls into a pre-Marxian contemplative materialism. Malm hesitates between his intended realism and Kantian idealism. For metabolic rift theory to be put on a firmer materialist footing, nature must be thought along Lacanian and Hegelian lines as incomplete, thwarted, or shot through with antagonisms out of which emerge the subject and society. To put this in dialectical terms: ontologically there is only nature, out of which society and the subject emerge as an effect of nature's failure to be fully natural
Dialectic · Dialectical materialism · Dualism · Epistemology · Hegelianism · Idealism · Materialism · Naturalism · Sociology · Subject (documents · Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics
Marx's Ecology
Marxism and the Status of Philosophy
New Materialism
What Is Sex?
Structural anthropology
Capitalism in the web of life
Uneven Development
Grundrisse
History and Class Consciousness. Studies in Marxist Dialectics
Marx and the Earth
The Metabolic Rift and Marine Ecology
Capital
Creating an Ecological Society
Ecologically Unequal Exchange
Emancipation After Hegel
Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism
Marxism in the Anthropocene
Eco-Marxism and the critical theory of nature
The World-System and the Earth System
The productive force of the negative and the desire for recognition
Ecological Imperialism and the Global Metabolic Rift
Dialectical Materialism
Capitalism and Robbery
Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature
Marxism and the Dialectics of Ecology
Has (even Marxist) political ecology really transcended the metabolic rift
Less than nothing
Sex and the Failed Absolute
Society's Metabolism
Humans, nature and dialectical materialism
The ecological rift - capitalism's war on the Earth
Ecosocialisms, Past, Present and Future
Ecovillages, Restitution, and the Political-Economic Opportunity Structure
Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift
The adventure of capital with nature
Transcending the metabolic rift
Deepening, and repairing, the metabolic rift
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |