Postmodern social construction of nature

Postmodernism

preceded by Modernism

Postmodernity Hypermodernity Hypermodernism (art) Post-anarchism Posthumanism Postmodernist anthropology Post-processual archaeology Postmodern architecture Postmodern art Postmodern Christianity Postmodern dance Postmodern feminism Postmodernist film Postmodern literature Post-Marxism Post-materialism Postmodern music Postmodern picture book Postmodern philosophy Postmodern psychology Postmodernism in political science Postpositivism Post-postmodernism Postmodernist school Postmodern social construction of nature Postmodern theatre Post-structuralism Criticism of postmodernism

The Postmodern social construction of nature is a theorem or speculation of postmodernist continental philosophy that poses an alternative critique of previous mainstream, promethean dialogue about environmental sustainability and ecopolitics.

Position

Whereas traditional criticisms of environmentalism^{[citation needed]} come from the more conservative "right" of politics, leftist critiques of nature pioneered by postmodernist constructionism highlight^{[citation needed]} the need to recognise "the other". The implicit assumption made by theorists like Wapner refer to it as a new "response to eco-criticism [which] would require critics to acknowledge the ways in which they themselves silence nature and then to respect the sheer otherness of the non-human world."

Criticism

Although postmodernism prides itself^{[citation needed]} on criticizing the urge toward mastery that characterizes modernity, one criticism of it is that this mastery is what postmodernism is exerting as it captures the nonhuman world within its own conceptual domain. That in turn implies postmodern cultural criticism can deepen the modernist urge toward mastery by eliminating the ontological weight of the nonhuman world. "What else could it mean to assert that there is no such thing as nature?" . Thus, the issue becomes an existentialist query about whether nature can exist in a humanist critique, and whether we can discern the "others'" views in relation to our actions on their behalf. This is referred to as the Wapner Paradox .

See also

Davis Demeritt's typology of the social construction of nature looks at the idea from several standpoints. He seeks to clarify the meaning through exploring the extent of the different uses applied to the term.