Ecology Without Nature Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics

Rigorous and unsettling, Timothy Morton's book is a vividly
realized critique of the political and ethical meanings of "place" and
"space." Steeped in philosophical and literary history, Ecology without
Nature is a profoundly convinced and convincing intervention, calling as it
does for a more intellectually robust and politically supple
environmentalism, one much better suited to the realities of
twenty-first-century life. A more thoughtful reflection on the future of
dwelling together in a vulnerable world would be hard to find.

Book Description
In Ecology without Nature, Timothy Morton argues that the
chief stumbling block to environmental thinking is the image of nature
itself. Ecological writers propose a new worldview, but their very zeal to
preserve the natural world leads them away from the "nature" they revere.
The problem is a symptom of the ecological catastrophe in which we are
living. Morton sets out a seeming paradox: to have a properly ecological
view, we must relinquish the idea of nature once and for all.

Ecology without Nature investigates our ecological assumptions in a way
that is provocative and deeply engaging. Ranging widely in
eighteenth-century through contemporary philosophy, culture, and history,
he explores the value of art in imagining environmental projects for the
future. Morton develops a fresh vocabulary for reading "environmentality"
in artistic form as well as content, and traces the contexts of ecological
constructs through the history of capitalism. From John Clare to John Cage,
from Kierkegaard to Kristeva, from The Lord of the Rings to electronic life
forms, Ecology without Nature widens our view of ecological criticism, and
deepens our understanding of ecology itself. Instead of trying to use an
idea of nature to heal what society has damaged, Morton sets out a radical
new form of ecological criticism: "dark ecology."