Environmentalism as the renewal of the Left.

I think that environmentalism, rather than postmodernism, has renewed the Left over the last 20 years, and has been the point of departure for many who were recruited to the social justice cause subsequentially, and the main analytical framework through which people have recognised diversity as vital to society.

Few academics recognise the importance of environmental thought as a world view, (many see the left as having been renewed by postmodernism) -they see their own agency, and hence, glory reflected in the complex jargon of postmodernism- which in reality has been a hall of mirrors solipsistically reflecting itself rather than connecting with the world. (actually- perhaps i am being too harsh... i actually really enjoy using literary techniques of analysis in deconstructing texts- it can be really empowering).

Since when has the world EVER been entirely united by narratives? I only need to read the newspaper or listen to religious stories to see that grand narratives remain with us today, and they have never provided a total remedy to a feeling of being disconnected. The postmodernist belief that the loss of stories that structure our existence is the cardinal feature of our era, is little more than a nostalgic groping towards long lost childhoods rather than a realistic assesment of the human condition of our age. Narratives are only one mechanism of unity for human cognition. Other forms of unity include physical connectedness: 'sense of place', organisation etc. However, if history and cultural studies focus on narrative more than material reality, they can become overly focused on symptoms rather than causes; ideology rather than structure- whereas geography and government have focused more on causes. In this way, geography and government have been far more capable of coming to terms with the nature of our era in terms of production and causality: grounding postmodernism in materialism, rather than discourse.

The sense of loss that postmodernists attribute to the fragmentation of narratives is something that has been with us for a long time, but has accelerated due to the greater penetration of the capitalist economy into our everyday lives. It is directly related to capitalist alienation- a feeling of loss of control over our work, which has become accelerated due to the faster pace and greater demands of the global economy.
Many environmentalists go a step further than marxists in their analysis of alienation. Like the Arts and Crafts movement that reacted to the Industrial Revolution, Many environmental movements value work that is meaningful, and an existence that identifies itself more closely with the land, recognising the land as the source of sustenance, and the main means of production.

The practice of recognition is a major feature of ecological thought. An ecological thinker will look at land in an entirely different way to an untrained eye. They will recognise systems and resources in a landscape that few urban people will. They will notice the water cycle, the carbon cycle; the ways that energy from the sun is captured, stored and cycled. They will recognise fecundity, and see productiveness where the conventional economist will see barrenness. This is how their paradigm of thought is fundamentally different to neoliberal thought, providing a way of thinking that is essentially redemptive. Ecological thought animates the revolutionary imagination because it enables the recognition of productive sites that exist independently of centralised power relationships. In this way. the capitalist paradigm is destabilised as the sole means of survival for humans in this era.