Catherine Malabou’s Eco-anarchism: Environnementalité and the Non-governable

Environnementalité and the Non-governable

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20873-rpvn9v1-07

Keywords:

Catherine Malabou, Michel Foucault, Non-governable, Environnementalité, Eco-governmentality

Abstract

This paper argues that Catherine Malabou’s notion of the non-governable poses an unresolvable difficulty for Michel Foucault’s concept of Environnementalité, or what has come to be termed eco-governmentality. I show that, while Foucault’s analysis remains indispensable for ecophilosophy today, he nevertheless failed to deconstruct the insidious forms of modern sovereignty that he so clearly illuminated. I approach the problem from two angles presenting Foucault’s analyses of both the living being and the environment. I show that a hegemonic order dominates the body and, by extension, its surroundings. I then turn to Malabou’s incapacitation of these hegemonic orders that continue to devastate the ecological world. Malabou shows that the Earth itself is a volatile site of non-governability that deconstructs the incessant attempts of power to dominate it.

 

References

FOUCAULT, M. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76. Edited by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. Translated by David Macey. Penguin, 2004.

FOUCAULT, M. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79. Edited by Michel Senellart. Translated by Graham Burchell. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

FOUCAULT, M. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. Pantheon, 1978.

FOUCAULT, M. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Routledge, 2002.

MALABOU, C. “One Life Only: Biological Resistance, Political Resistance.” Translated by Carolyn Shread, in Plasticity: The Promise of Explosion, edited by Tyler M. Williams, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, 227-235.

MALABOU, C. “Philosophy and Anarchism: Alternative or Dilemma?”. Translated by Carolyn Shread. In: Plasticity: The Promise of Explosion, edited by Tyler M. Williams, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, 215-225.

MALABOU, C. Stop Thief! Anarchism and Philosophy. Translated by Carolyn Shread. Polity Press, 2023.

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Published

2024-07-18

How to Cite

Cooper, M. (2024). Catherine Malabou’s Eco-anarchism: Environnementalité and the Non-governable: Environnementalité and the Non-governable. Perspectivas, 9(1), 150–162. https://doi.org/10.20873-rpvn9v1-07

Issue

Section

Homenagem a Catherinne Malabou