Nature, limits and form-of-life. Issue 1 (23rd February 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pellizzoni, Luigi
• Is Part Of: Environmental politics. Volume 30:Issue 1/2(2021)
• Page Start: 81
• Page End: 99
• Publication Date: 2021-02-23
• Subjects: Limits -- degrowth -- subsumption of nature -- form-of-life -- ecosystem services -- environmental justice; Environmental policy -- Periodicals; Environmental protection -- Periodicals; Ecology -- Periodicals; Green movement -- Periodicals; 333.72
• DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2020.1868864
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0964-4016

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Sustainable development, ecological modernisation, eco-efficiency and the like have reframed material limits as conventional barriers to growth. Even in recent arguments for degrowth, limits recede to the background in favour of self-limitation. To reclaim limits as the grounds for an effective environmental politics. I reconstruct how the case for the limits to growth was reversed into a case for the growth of limits, and how foundational boundaries were increasingly blurred. Arguing that lifestyle politics is unlikely to be effective against the growth machine, I elaborate on the notion of form-of-life. If not understood as a solipsistic self-mastery but as the mutually formative encounter of living entities – provided with their own dispositions yet sharing a common destiny – this notion puts the focus on how freedom and equality are premised on, rather than hampered by, limits. I conclude with four reasons why a radical theory and politics for the environment should make use of the notion.