Iwona Janicka

Ecological Grand Narratives: What New Stories for an Age of Climate Crisis?

Author: Iwona Janicka
Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy

DOI: doi.org/10.1007/s11245-025-10315-z

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Abstract:

The traditional idea of an autonomous human being at the centre of the universe has been a problematic fiction in Western philosophy that has been driving the ecological destruction of our world. Many thinkers from a wide variety of perspectives (feminist, critical race, poststructuralist, queer, posthuman, anarchist) have criticized the fraught idea of human-centredness. However, only few contemporary thinkers have been able to move away from critique and turn to construction in order to provide a different vision of a human subject and her place in the world. This article focuses on three such contemporary attempts at developing new—eminently ecological—metanarratives in philosophy proposed by Peter Sloterdijk, Bruno Latour and Dipesh Chakrabarty. This contribution argues that we need to reclaim grand narratives in order to think more effectively and creatively about our ecological futures. Furthermore, it contends that we need more intersectionally diverse grand narratives with which to re-imagine our collective multispecies destiny. Finally, it posits that instead of a Heideggerian politics of Heimat (home and homeland), which we find in Latour, Sloterdijk and Chakrabarty, we need new grand narratives of more-than-human cohabitability.

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