Topics in German Intellectual History: Ecological Marxisms

This seminar explores recent debates about the ecological dimension of Marx’s critique of political economy. At a time when global ecological disasters appear as the most glaring manifestation of capitalism’s contradictions, new readings are challenging the cliché of Marx’s myopic productivism and elaborating the environmental theory latent in his concept of human-nature metabolism. We will focus on debates surrounding the concept of ‘metabolic rift,’ the connection between fossil fuel extraction and social control, and the convergence of these perspectives with ecofeminism, critiques of racial capitalism, and environmental aesthetics.