Critical Theory and Environmental Pessimism: On the Intractability of Justice

• In Event: Adorno, Benjamin, and Querying the Unreason in Contemporary Politics

Abstract

This paper frames a discussion of current environmental pessimism by revisiting Frankfurt School pessimism and the ethic of responsiveness excavated by Benjamin’s articulation of a divine violence, and, by extension, Derrida’s “democracy to come.” Benjamin’s contribution to this conversation is attractive, suggesting an ethos of action in response to a profound pessimism about historical-political possibilities that nonetheless remains affirmatively grounded in its effort to redeem those exploited and cast aside by the violence that consolidates the power of the ignoble few. Derrida’s elaboration of Benjamin’s messianic posture in the notion of a “democracy to come,” in fact, informs the potential and ongoing demand of enacting an “environmental democracy to come.” If this moment of utopian elaboration always inheres in our critical engagement with governing powers of society, how does it inform our ongoing practice of environmental politics, particularly where the basic material organization of society is so well entrenched? From an environmental political perspective, what are the consequences of this radical demand encoded in its resistance to different forms of environmental violence?

Author

• Michael Lipscomb, Winthrop University