Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
18.5 A Way Out - Based on Determined Negation?
Bourdieu (1998) suggests going for a 'reasoned utopianism' in order to ground the
struggle against neoliberalism, an ideology which provides the economic point of
reference for ecological modernisation. Rather than focussing on his specific aim,
I am interested in how to reason a utopia. In his essay
A Reasoned Utopia and
Economic Fatalism
he quotes Ernst Bloch:
“Bloch describes the 'considered utopian' as one who acts 'by virtue of his fully aware
fore-knowledge of the objective trend', the objective, and real, possibility of his 'ep-
och'; one who, in other words, 'anticipates psychologically a possible reality'.”
Drawing on him, Bourdieu argues for a rational utopianism, rather than pure wish-
ful thinking or objectivist automatism. This rational utopianism should be based
on science in order to reason both aims and means. Intellectuals (like himself and
Ulrich Beck) should collaborate, leading to projects and action. This is what he
calls
reasoned utopianism
.
His line of reasoning can be seen as resembling a fragment of the
Frankfurter
Schule
, namely the negative dialectics of Adorno and Horkheimer. Demirovic
(2005) reads them as proposing that a better future can develop based on
bestim-
mte Negation
, i.e. determinate negation which is an “immanent criticism [allow-
ing] to wrest truth from ideology” (Zuidervaart 2007). In fact, notions of basing
utopianism on real possibilities are widely shared: Karakayali (2004) and Demi-
rovic (2005) describe such utopianism as a specific critique of the here and now.
According to Demirovic, directed and radical change only becomes possible by
negating instances of the concrete. He juxtaposes this approach to bourgeois uto-
pianism which stabilises capitalism by posing wishes which are not possible to put
into practice. The capitalist society digests the latter kind of utopianism well by
teaching people that utopianism does not work out, i.e., by giving the impression
that bourgeois utopianism is the only form of utopianism. It does not pose a prob-
lem for capitalist society to deal with a few dreamers and a radical youth as long
as the latter know that their aims cannot become real anyway. He, like Pepper
(2005), thus suggests practical utopianism which helps to transgress the bounda-
ries of the hegemonic towards emancipation. Pepper warns against a 'heterotopia'
in which utopian thought and fantasies become part of consumerist culture and
“are devoid of social change potential” (ibid., p. 18). Rather, he says we need
practical utopianism which helps radical movements to experiment with transgres-
sive practices and thought. Echoing the anarchist ideal
21
, he argues that such uto-
pianism cannot be based on blueprints for revolutionary change but needs spaces
in which alternative paradigms can be developed and tested while grounding them
in an analysis of the local and global social and economic realities.
What could this mean for praxis of environmental management? It seems that
negating the hierarchical structure of the organisation implies more than merely
21
Cf. Franks (2006); but see also more theoretical work by May (1994) and a classic rele-
vant to this case, Rocker (1938).
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