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Document Details : Title: Over de aard van de menselijke ecologie Subtitle: Perspectieven in Laudato si' en de Frankfurter Schule Author(s): PYNE, Elizabeth Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 60 Issue: 3 Date: 2020 Pages: 219-233 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.60.3.3288624 Abstract : The notion of integral ecology stands at the heart of Pope Francis’s understanding of the triangulated links between theology, society, and the environment. In this article, I demonstrate what is to be gained by considering the presentation of integral ecology in Laudato Si’ through the lens of critical social theory. To this end, I build on the work of contemporary interpreters of the Frankfurt School within the field of political ecology. Such an approach helps to illuminate the force of the encyclical’s coordinated critique of ecological and social harms. However, while underscoring this positive contribution of integral ecology to wider discussions of planetary well-being, I also draw attention to significant uncertainty regarding the liberative character of this concept. Political ecology in the tradition of the Frankfurt School becomes an important critical tool when turned inward to the meaning of human ecology and its relationship to integral ecology. My analysis hinges on an examination of the category of nature. I argue that this symbol functions ambivalently as a support for creaturely integrity at the nexus of theological anthropology and scientific ecology. To counter a damaging deployment of ‘nature’ with respect to sexual difference found in LS and elsewhere, I suggest that a perspective on human ecology informed by critical theory better accounts for the specificity of various sites of struggle across the politics of nature – some of which must contend against the concept of nature for the possibility of a livable life. Normative appeals to the role of nature in proper constructions of human ecology merit scrutiny and indeed suspicion. Yet adopting this critical lens is, I argue, consistent with the liberative impulse of integral ecology writ large. This article thus represents one step toward understanding and addressing the ideological contradictions that emerge in frameworks which, for good reason, emphasize the interrelation of humanity’s ecological and social relationships. |
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