By Emily Anne Parker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 07/01/2021
Description:
Political hierarchies and ecological crises are often considered to be two different problems. For example, many speak in the present of parallel concerns: climate change and racial injustice. Parker argues rather that these concerns share a common cause in the polis. Polis is an ancient Greek term for the city-state, from which the English term political derives. But polis is more than a term. It is a philosophy according to which there is one complete human body, and that body is meant to govern all other things. In that sense there are not two concerns, but instead one concern: to perceive the ways in which this tradition of the polis constrains the present. This work bridges the chasm between social constructionism and new materialisms to create a philosophy of elemental difference.