The Paper will elaborate in three steps on the possibility of a radical alternative to the ‘glass ceiling’ of environmental reform.
First, I’ll argue that current environmental politics is caught in a regime of promise framed according to a messianic temporality, i.e. a present defined by a future ‘revolutionary’ event – an eschaton – and a continuous postponement of such event, enabled by something holding it back – a kathecon – which pre-empts any actual change.
Second, I’ll argue that both supporters and opponents of the current regime are caught in such pre-emptive dynamics. Both neoliberal and neo-Marxist perspectives, for example, point to the eschaton of a fully technologized nature, or naturalized technology, via relentless acceleration of techno-capitalist processes, resulting in a loop of pre-emptive innovation. Furthermore, influential elaborations of (alleged) ‘exit strategies’ look at the vital excess of human/nonhuman natures, neglecting how vitality is a key driver of pre-emptive ‘change’ – see biotech and capital’s integration of ecosystem services.
Third, I’ll submit that, rather than accelerating or (supposedly) withdrawing from the techno-capitalist kathecon, one has to take seriously the messianic invitation to live according to a radical ‘as not’, i.e. the deactivation (rather than blurring) of differential identities. To this purpose, I’ll elaborate on the debate over the commons, showing how, to engender transformation, their institutionalization can be neither a matter of pure will – via commoning practices (Hardt and Negri), legal frameworks (Mattei) or factual use (Agamben) – nor of acknowledging the character of things, as dictating specific regimes (Ostrom). Revolution, as the emergency brake for a derailing modernity (Benjamin), most likely lies in the (re-)establishment of a different way to own – as not owning – i.e. a relationship of mutual respect between humans and things, at which ‘new materialist’ mobilizations are possibly gesturing.