Talks

Climate Change and the Destruction of Nature

This paper was presented at the ‘Mediating Climate Change Conference’ at the University of Leeds, 4th – 6th July 2017.

In my research I have been looking at the way that popular narratives on climate change inadvertently reproduce the conditions through which climate change emerges. Through the work of Hegel and Benjamin I analyse the way that nature is always presented as a coherent and unified externality. This logic was paraphrased best by George Carlin: “The planet is fine; we’re fucked”.

Hegel’s thinking on self-consciousness and his turn away from natural beauty allows us to understand the way that popular conservation projects actually deny nature the possibility to realise its own spontaneous self-movement and ultimately cause even more environmental catastrophes. I propose a way of thinking about nature through Benjamin’s work The Destructive Character. The notion of destruction is not destruction for the sake of destruction, but rather an act that clears a space for spontaneous self-movement. Destruction in relation to nature would have a double character. Firstly, our reified notion of nature as “out there” would be destroyed, and secondly, bureaucratic environmentalism would also be destroyed. In the face of climate change, the only effective act is the destruction of nature.

 

The coincidence of the gig-economy with identity politics

This paper was presented at the ‘Back to the Future: Class and the Past, 1800-2000’ conference at Lancaster University, 16th March 2017.

Capitalism necessitates that society must exist as a network of isolated individuals who are able to freely exchange commodities, and for most people the only commodity that they possess is, of course, their body. With the huge rise of the “gig-economy”, there has been a move from typical shift-based work, which was temporally and geographically consistent, to the gig-economy in which both the location and time of work become completely destabilised. I examine this through the logic of commodity fetishism. The peak of commodity fetishism emerges through the dematerialisation of the object that the fetish attached itself to. Take the virtual nature of the money commodity; no matter how much physical money is created or destroyed, wealth and value remain unaffected.

For the worker of the gig-economy, there is no workplace as such, and there is no boss. Despite the lack of physicality through which the fetish emerges, the laws that designate the movements and productivity of the workers remain just as rigid and just as real. Although workers appear to be free due their self-regulation, they must continue to conform to the law of the market.

I argue that the virtual nature of the modern notion of identity emerges through the dematerialisation of community. As alienation and reification spreads throughout modern life, identity becomes the fetish through which some semblance of unity is found. I argue that the demands of identity politics today coincide with the fetish character of gig-economy. Emancipation is defined as a dissociation from older, formal models of being through the reassertion of those same models via a strict self-regulation. To be specific, the pseudo-radical notion of fluid identities coincides with the fluidity demanded of modern workers.

 

Is Having Children a Moral Good? / Why isn’t Bertrand Russell a Triangle?

This paper was presented at the Political Studies Association Undergraduate Conference in Brighton, 24th March 2016. Unfortunately, I was unable to record the talk. However, I have posted a link to my reading notes which should give a good idea of what was discussed.

“In contemporary Western culture,” writes Christine Overall, “it ironically appears that one needs to have reasons not to have children, but no reasons are required to have them.” Diana Tietjens Meyers observed that in discussions with even the most articulate individuals, those who want to have kids fail to provide good reason. Discussions on the topic of having kids, no matter how rigorous the debate, usually ends with the party in favour of having children falling back onto some mysterious and compelling feeling that they can’t explain. I think that considering a child is a sentient being, reasons to create one require explanation.

But then, outside of my research for this paper, I found that even if there is a rigorous debate surrounding moral questions, people always fell back onto “some mysterious and compelling feeling”. I have lost count of the number of times that I have heard an articulate, intelligent, compassionate person explain in detail why, to give another example, eating meat is morally wrong and then watch them consume meat.

My problem then, is not with those who do not engage in moral philosophy. My problem is with those who do engage with moral philosophy and yet act in a way that contradicts their conclusions.