The Oedipal Logic of Ecological Awareness
Author
Morton, Timothy
Date
2012Citation
Abstract
The Anthropocene is the radical intersection of human history and geological time. Humans
have belatedly realised that they have become a geophysical force on a planetary scale. This creeping
realisation has an Oedipal logic, that is to say, it is a strange loop in which one level of activity—industrial
agriculture and the swiftly ensuing industrial revolutionラcrosses into an entirely new level of planetary force
and, following from that, an uncanny recognition of this force. This essay argues that the Oedipal logic is
embedded in the technical, logistical and philosophical framework of agriculture as such. Indeed, the
Theban plays (of which Oedipus Tyrannus is one) dwell on the fact of agricultural society as a form of
uncanny existence. This essay argues that the principal reason for the uncanniness is the reduction of being
to non-contradiction. Exit strategies from this logic (and its concomitant logistics) cannot cleave to a view of
beings that is reductionist in any sense. Thus the potential for using Deleuze and Guattari to exit modernity is
limited. What is required is a deconstruction of existing (agri)cultures and logics, rather than an attempt to
push past them or avoid them, since as in the story of Oedipus, the attempt to push past and avoid is
precisely what brings about the cataclysm.
Type
Journal article