Timothy Morton
Nature Isn't Real

in the frame of Nature, a public program in the middle of nature on the modern transformation of nature into Nature.
organised by Aleppo in the frame of Parckdesign, Brussels, September 2016

What ecological awareness forces us to notice is that “Nature” is an anthropocentrically-scaled concept that, to say the least, doesn’t work anymore. “Nature” is how we have been talking to ourselves about what is in fact the case, which he calls the symbiotic real. 
There is a sharp difference between the real and “reality,” or our sense of realness. Our human, agricultural and neoliberal (and so on) reality is now violently impeding less coercive relationships with nonhuman beings. Less coercive relations with nonhumans would also give rise to less coercive ones between humans. In order to bring these about, one key tactic is to drop completely the concept of "Nature".

Timothy Morton is the Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He is the author ofNothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism and Critical Theory, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality, The Ecological Thought, Ecology without Nature. He blogs regularly at ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com.



Aleppo, Brussels

Popular tracks