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A foucaultian critique of the conception of individual subjectivity within contemporary environmental discourse

Certain prominent environmental theorists have accounted for and/or addressed our unmitigated environmentally damaging behavior in cognitive terms, related to a common (misplaced) belief that economic development and technological advancement, among other contemporary processes, will solve our environmental problems. However, I argue that they have not given due consideration to the complex (predominantly non-cognitive/non-conscious) discursive constitution of the individual, and thus seem to adhere to a Kantian notion of autonomy that overlooks such non-cognitive factors. Focusing on this non-cognitive aspect of discursive constitution, I ascribe our ecological apathy mainly to the fact that we have been discursively constituted as docile bodies and prostrate subjects. Further, I argue that, because this process of discursive constitution is primarily non-cognitive, any attempts to remedy our ecological apathy at a cognitive level alone will not be completely effective. Consequently, I propose that a more effective way of fostering pro-environmental dispositions may be for individuals to engage in an ethic/culture of the self that is not exclusively conceptual in orientation, and which is centered on the practice of a counter-discourse that does not constitute the individual as docile and prostrate nor negate the individual’s dependence on the environment. Alternatively, in order to engender pro-environmental civilizational change, it may be necessary to operate within the discursive parameters of dominant/popular institutions, in order to incrementally alter the discourses employed within, and disseminated through, these institutions, in a manner that would lead to the problematization, rather than the endorsement, of the ecologically deleterious technological, political and economic trajectories of our time.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:8422
Date January 2009
CreatorsKonik, Inge
PublisherNelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Arts
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Masters, MPhil
Format206 leaves, pdf
RightsNelson Mandela Metropolitan University

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