Environment

SOCIAL TEXT contributors have approached the environmental crises of the last several decades by exploring the constitution of a second nature. If, that is, the environment furnishes particular societies with a specific set of obstacles and possibilities, this original natural realm is reshaped and transformed through human agency. A hallmark of SOCIAL TEXT’s theorization of the environment could be said to be critical inquiry into the modes through which biopower has shaped both society and the natural environment over the last several decades. SOCIAL TEXT contributors, for example, anatomized the impact of hegemonic projects of environmental transformation such as the Green Revolution. In addition, they reminded us that the polarized debates about climate change that unfolded during the 1990s were but the latest installment in the agonistic social construction of the climate in the modern world.

Ashley Dawson

Ashley Dawson is professor of postcolonial studies in the English department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. His latest books include People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017), and Extinction: A Radical History (O/R, 2016). A member of the Social Text Collective and the founder of the CUNY Climate Action Lab, he is a long-time climate justice activist.