Earth System Breakdown Does Not Care About Tenure Track

Harriët Maria Bergman

Krisis 2023, 43 (1): 164-166.

Abstract

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to

instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role

(and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and

inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contempo-

rary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto.

This is one of the sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assump-

tions and arguments of the manifesto.

Keywords

Climate breakdown, Critical naturalism, Critical environmental justice, Decoloniality,

Activism

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21827/krisis.43.1.40990

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC

Krisis 2023, 43 (1)

164

Earth System Breakdown Does Not Care About Tenure Track

Harriët Maria Bergman

The university resembles an ivory tower: white and above sea level. This influences how aca-

demia responds to any crisis. “Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto” invites us to “take seriously

the enormous challenges our societies face with regard to inner and outer nature” (Gregoratto

et al 2023, 108). How should we tackle problematic issues without an account of power and

change?

A slogan from the Hambach Forest occupation states: “Der Klimawandel wartet nicht, bis

Dein Bachelor fertig ist” (Hambi Forest Occupation 2018). Academics could take that more

seriously. I wish that academics as concerned, eloquent, and rigorous as the writers of the

“Critical Naturalism Manifesto” would spend more of their time thinking about the organisa-

tion of power. Following the Zapatistas, I would like to start with a “no” from which “many

yesses can follow” (Chabot and Vinthagen 2020). A bold “no” to interlocking systems that

deteriorate living conditions for the semi-privileged in the so-called Western world and destroy

lives in the so-called Global South. Philosophy, especially critical theory, should take the cri-

ses of our times seriously. Climate breakdown asks for an unprecedented mobilisation of po-

litical power to prevent further planetary destruction and mitigation of, as well as compensa-

tion for, existing suffering caused by the fossil fuel industry. What does it mean for climate

breakdown not to wait until we have the correct theories?

Maldonado-Torres argues that “decolonial movements tend to approach ideas and change in a

way that do not isolate knowledge from action” (2023, 7). When writing about decolonization,

he warns against “the organization of special conferences and, especially, in the creation of

powerless ad hoc committees and task-teams that are meant to take as much time as possible

in generating extremely minimal recommendations that hardly anyone will implement and less

follow” (2023, 3). For me, it echoed George Monbiot and Matthew Prescot’s observation about

climate policies that “government policy is the reports and reviews” (Lanchester 2007).

With Matthew Huber, I agree that what we are up against to prevent further suffering, and how

to ameliorate and adapt to the changing circumstances, is part of a class struggle: “this partic-

ular power struggle is a class struggle over relations that underpin our social and ecological

Krisis 2023, 43 (1)

165

relationship with nature and the climate itself: ownership and control of production” (Huber

2022, 3). He argues that the professional class “centres its politics not on material struggle

over resources and power, but on ‘knowledge,’ or the belief or denial of climate change itself”

(Huber 2022, 5). Academics have been concerned with a specific conception of knowledge, a

“liberal conception of knowledge” (Maldonado-Torres 2023, 7), or a knowledge that prevents

one from focusing on power (Huber 2022, 3). It seems as if the “Critical Naturalism Mani-

festo” falls into the same trap – while mentioning some forms of domination, it leaves power

and how to contest it mostly unexamined.

I too am convinced academia should lose its Eurocentric bias, as are the authors. However,

there is more to learn – not just about nature and naturalness, theory and praxis, but about

confronting power. David Naguib Pellow introduced the concept of “critical environmental

justice” (2018), which connects environmental justice with insights from critical race theory,

amongst other disciplines. Racism is a word that is absent from the manifesto – surely, this is

also one of the problems of our time, since it exacerbates the suffering caused by the disman-

tling of the welfare state, the environmental crisis, and the pandemic.

Of course, it is relevant to denaturalize the idea of race, disability, and gender, amongst other

axes of oppression, and see what is at stake in these forms of domination. However, to do so,

it would benefit one’s analysis to call for non-Eurocentric authors and read and cite them more

generously.

The most well-versed answers to crises have come from those people and places that have

been most affected. The Bali Principles of Climate Justice, created by “representatives of peo-

ple’s movements together with activist organizations working for social and environmental

justice,” form an excellent example of movements theorizing what is needed (Bali Principles,

2002). The principles, amongst other things, affirm the need to oppose transnational corpera-

tions and market schemes, and call for a moratorium on all fossil fuel exploration and expan-

sion. Their demands of two decades earlier align with current scientific evidence, which sug-

gests that “little or no new CO2-emitting infrastructure can be commissioned and that existing

infrastructure may need to be retired early” (Tong et al. 2019).

I fully agree that we fail to answer if we fail to grasp the interconnectedness of several crises.

A failure to understand how the violation of “the basic rights of people in less developed

Krisis 2023, 43 (1)

166

countries has been made possible by historic abuses of power” can generate “mistakes about

the nature, significance, and prevention of the injustice” (McKinnon 2022, 37). For example,

Kathryn Yussoff laments that in his Fossil Capital, Andreas Malm does not hear the chains of

the enslaved rattle when he writes about cotton and the industrial revolution (2016, 16). More

diverse voices are needed – not for ticking a box, but for taking radically different perspectives.

Maybe that perspective should inform us not only about what we write but also about what we

do. Next time on the barricades?

References

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Biography

Harriët Bergman pursues a PhD at the Centre for European Philosophy at the University of Antwerp, research-

ing whether feminist philosophy and critical race theory can help discussions on climate breakdown concerning

emotions, privilege, power, and social change.