The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory: Volume 101, Issue 3 (2026) Special Issue: Ecology before Nature: From the Nexus of Things to the Web of Life

Guest Editors: Alexandra Heimes, Ross Shields, and Johannes Wankhammer

The essays in this special issue recover pre-Kantian thought on the “nexus of things” (nexus rerum / Zusammenhang der Dinge) as an archive of relational thinking that took shape before “Nature” came to be understood as humanity’s other. They show that this conceptual lineage persists as an undercurrent within modern thought, where it has generated alternatives to the dualistic frameworks that came to define mainstream Western philosophy. The issue recovers the nexus paradigm as a formative influence on ecological thought and a critical resource for the present, bringing a long-sidelined, distinctly Germanophone body of thought into dialogue with contemporary theory and ecocriticism.

The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, Volume 101, Issue 3 (2026)