Environmentalism and The symptom

The environment, or better put, nature performs a dual role in a discursive formation. Nature is, naturally enough, represented discursively. The representation of nature, from a wild, untamed romantic force in pre-modernism to the modernist scientific approach, is of vital political importance. It is in this sense that we can talk of nature as universal. But nature also acts a real force; the hegemonic presentation of nature, the representation of the natural, is one of the modalities in which we encounter the real. This is because of the gap between nature and the natural, much like reality and the real, every attempted representation of nature will never be able to fully represent the natural.

Symptoms of nature occur as the necessary exception caused by the gap between nature and the natural; if- in our modernist era- nature is under man’s control than natural disasters are symptomatic. However, this is a different kind of symptom from that which I have previously discussed. The twist is that nature operates, as the real- or more accurately the real real- as a whole system independent of signification. Therefore the symptom does not necessarily develop as a result of the exclusion necessary to constitute the universality of the system. This is not to suggest that such a symptomatic process does not exist; natural disasters would not necessarily be a symptom under an alternative conception of nature. Likewise, the current conception of nature as a passive part of human society produces the symptom of production related climate change. However, a natural symptom can develop, taking the role of an exception to the universal, without being constitutive. In this sense a natural symptom is performed rather than symbolised; this performance is a dislocation of the real.

Of course, this dislocation can only exist in discourse, but more than this nature has the potential to change the very parameters of the discursive environment. Not only can there be changes in nature, but also in the natural. For example, while global production pollution did not reach levels that changed the natural, climate change was not a symptom of capitalism; nature was not affected. However, as climate change occurred (and so did the natural), then a symptom was produced, both of capitalism and nature.

Thus while capitalism’s greatest strength is it’s ability to internalise its symptoms, to commodify the constitutive exception, in this case concrete universality is real and active; the truth is out there and it cannot be avoided. However, it can be put off. Again this takes familiar form; repression, ideological externalisation, or super-ego enjoyment. Even if acid rain is all that falls and the polar ice-caps melt, this is no guarantee that the discursive conditions will change. Most likely though is that these conditions will produce a dislocation as the real breaks through fantasy. Thus, perhaps more than any other driver nature has the potential to break up capitalism.