2026/02/12 by Heiko Stubenrauch · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature #Environmental Philosophy and Ethics #Climate Change Communication and Perception
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/1467-8675.70035
Over the past decade, mounting evidence suggests the climate crisis is moving toward an authoritarian—or even fascist—future. Rather than cooperatively addressing the causes of global climate change, many wealthy nations are protecting themselves from its consequences in increasingly brutal ways (such as border closures or military interventions to secure resources) in order to safeguard their privileges built on unsustainable exploitation of nature (Klein 2019; Blumenfeld 2022). Across many regions, right-wing, authoritarian, and antidemocratic parties are coming to power, denying climate change while glorifying fossil fuels as a symbol of national strength (Malm and The Zetkin Collective 2021). Some individuals celebrate environmental destruction in private (e.g., through so-called “rolling coal”) and passionately hold on to climate-damaging lifestyles (Daggett 2018). At this historic moment, I propose to revisit Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment and suggest a distinctly new way of employing it to comprehend the climate crisis. In the 1980s and 1990s, the work experienced its first wave of reception within ecological theories. Back then, discussions centered on the motif of a distancing or even separating from nature, as illustrated through the figure of Odysseus. Horkheimer and Adorno argue that during the process of civilization, people undergo both an affective and cognitive distancing from nature in order to dominate it (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], pp. 1–62). Ecofeminist scholars such as Ariel Salleh and Val Plumwood took up this idea, interpreting the modern (patriarchal) subject's detached relationship with the world as a central condition of the ecological crisis (Salleh 1981, 2017 [1997]; Plumwood 1993).1 In this article, I aim to engage with the Dialectic of Enlightenment from a different angle and draw on its second key motif for interpreting the climate crisis2: not the distancing of humans from nature, but their potentially fascistic “regression to nature” (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. 138). The Dialectic of Enlightenment not only addresses how people, during the process of civilization, distance themselves from nature in order to control it, but also how those groups possessing the technological means to do so accumulate enormous social power. According to Horkheimer and Adorno, these groups began, over the course of the twentieth century, to secure their power in ever more subtle ways. In particular, they did so by offering alienated subjects promises that purported to overcome their estranged relationship with nature. Yet, rather than reconciling people with nature, these false promises serve to dominate them. Horkheimer and Adorno point to the culture industry as a paradigmatic form of this domination, where alienated subjects are promised a reconciliation with the outside world through consumption, the masses, or esoteric thinking (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], pp. 94–136). This dynamic becomes even more drastic when the consumerist promises of the culture industry—especially in times of crisis—lose their appeal and are replaced by fascist offers of reconciliation, such as racist violence, fascist movements, or anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.3 According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the twentieth century thus witnessed a “reversal”4 or “regression to nature” in a twofold sense: on the one hand, subjects lose their distance to (their inner and outer) nature by succumbing to consumerist or violent forms of drive satisfaction. At the same time—and as a consequence—they become increasingly integrated into capitalist society, which comes to appear to them as an unchangeable second nature, until democratic freedoms collapse and fascist societies fall back into a “natural state” of unfreedom (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], pp. 137–172).5 John Bellamy Foster has rightly pointed out that the Dialectic of Enlightenment ultimately critiques the social and political problems within nature-dominating societies—thus risking that the destructive relationship these societies have with nature goes unnoticed (Foster 2000; Foster and Clark 2016). Indeed, it is a political—not an ecological—collapse of Western civilization that is depicted by the motif of a regression to nature. While Metabolic Rift theorists like Foster therefore break with Frankfurt School Critical Theory to arrive at an adequate understanding of the climate crisis, I propose a different approach. For it is becoming increasingly clear that the social and political issues described in the Dialectic of Enlightenment as a regression to nature—and notably absent in most Metabolic Rift theories—are not external to the climate crisis but an integral part of it: our libidinal attachment to the consumerist culture–industry promises that leave us politically paralyzed, and the looming threat of fascism, which promises to cover up this powerlessness through violence and destruction. Rather than problematizing the first motif of the Dialectic of Enlightenment—the distancing from nature—as ecofeminism does, I will argue that its second motif—the regression to nature—should be placed at the center of climate crisis analysis. After a brief presentation of the first motif and its ecofeminist reinterpretation, I will therefore turn in detail to this second motif and bring it to bear in the context of the climate crisis. To this end, I will reinterpret the political collapse of nature-dominating modernity described by Horkheimer and Adorno with this motif as a key component of its impending ecological collapse. I will develop this reinterpretation primarily in critical engagement with Foster's Metabolic Rift theory, before deepening it in the concluding section of the paper in discussion with Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright's political theory of climate change (Mann and Wainwright 2018). Written during World War II, Dialectic of Enlightenment offers a fundamental reflection on the Western process of civilization—also referred to as Enlightenment—and its, at least provisional, failure. Although Horkheimer and Adorno analyze the political collapse of Western civilization, namely, the collective lack of freedom in the culture industry, fascism, and totalitarianism, rather than its ecological collapse, the domination of nature plays a crucial role in their critique.6 For them, civilization is, at its core, a project of emancipation through the mastery of nature. Accordingly, they interpret the failure of Western civilization as the failure of this very project. Instead of leading to the anticipated freedom, the domination of nature has resulted in catastrophe: “the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity” (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. 1). To better understand the failure of a civilization based on the domination of nature, Horkheimer and Adorno first examine how this dominance was established throughout the civilizational process. At the center of their analysis is the idea of a distancing of humans from nature, which encompasses two core aspects: a conceptual separation between humans and nature, and an affective distancing of humans from nature. While in myth human and non-human beings were still understood as part of a holistic and meaningful order, the Enlightenment—understood in that broad sense—gradually drew an increasingly sharp distinction between themselves as humans on one side and the natural world on the other. This distinction serves the function of degrading and dominating that which is distinguished and mentally distanced as nature.7 For humans increasingly came to see natural entities as passive and meaningless objects—mere raw materials, ready to be used and controlled by them as active, purpose-driven subjects. As Horkheimer and Adorno write: “Nature, stripped of qualities, becomes the chaotic stuff of mere classification, and the all-powerful self becomes a mere having, an abstract identity” (2002 [1944], p. 6). According to Horkheimer and Adorno, however, this categorical distinction between humans and nature cannot simply be declared—it must be enforced performatively. This enforcement requires an affective distancing from nature. For humans to truly become active, purpose-driven subjects who perceive nature as passive and meaningless, they must first distance themselves from it—and this comes about as they learn to control and suppress their own nature, especially their drives. Without this self-discipline, they would succumb to nature's and be by them. by their inner drive nature and thus distancing themselves from external nature, they it and the outside world in of their power to their Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. At the when human beings themselves from the of themselves as nature, the for which they themselves the of and and the of the means as the end, which in is on the of is in the of (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], pp. While this the of to which it as will for Horkheimer and Adorno primarily as a to a fascist regression to nature and the political failure of Western civilization, the motif of distancing has in ecofeminism and for failure of Western civilization, namely, its ecological own ecofeminist understanding of while the analysis of the Frankfurt The of the which culture was a of Adorno, and the Enlightenment of as of nature the way for detached of (Salleh 2017 p. ecofeminist scholars their to an only at in the Dialectic of argue that in the process of civilization, it is not only that are and but also groups of In particular, as as and people, are by the as to or to nature in order to dominate In the to the as the of and the as the of the p. on this of nature, the ecofeminist of a fundamental in how the distancing process is Rather than on the consequences of distancing for the they from a its on nature and on the groups of Horkheimer and Adorno, the conceptual and affective distancing of humans from nature is not primarily as a of and in human but rather as an threat to both nature and the to the relationship to the the subject's domination of nature on In and the of Val Plumwood the between conceptual separation and affective distancing on the one hand, and a exploitation of nature and the on the other. According to the conceptual way of cognitive and distancing from is as and with nature and the Plumwood pp. the of nature and the as passive and meaningless as condition for passive nature is not its own or it not the through this very also its own on nature and the which is it not from its destructive exploitation of nature even out of While Horkheimer and Adorno see the process of distancing between humans and nature primarily as a of and in human the ecofeminist in it is distancing becomes the of exploitation of nature and an ecological crisis. from the external the the very human and its own I would like to to the Dialectic of Enlightenment for the the motif of distancing and separation is not the when it comes to the collapse of a nature-dominating According to Horkheimer and Adorno, distancing from nature, the twentieth century witnessed a regression to nature, which they see as the of that collapse. Although Horkheimer and Adorno this motif to the than the of and even it at first that it is the motif of regression to nature—and as its an analysis of the climate crisis, I will argue this I will by the motif of a regression to nature as it from the Dialectic of before it in the context of the climate crisis. The in which the for a more world also the and the social groups it a over the of the The is in of the are domination over nature to (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. the process of distancing from nature is in According to Horkheimer and Adorno, people who alienated from their the external and human beings during the civilization process for capitalist they this people through false promises of The of by that from the world of be be it through the or the The culture industry people to drive control and promises a reconciliation with their own through (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. by in or or by to overcome and people in the in the the or in the The which Horkheimer and Adorno even to have become the of Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. promises to overcome the and of the a holistic of and these to Horkheimer and the distance to their inner nature, the external and to one at least during their reconciliation while the is culture industry its of it (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. In a is but to so that becomes an of the of p. The individuals in the overcome the p. between they The overcome the of the but the holistic they perceive is it is, their own that appear as an by on p. rather lack of people to turn to the offers of reconciliation by the culture According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the of these offers is that rather than reconciliation, they serve to people in and the capitalist to the that they or an In this the of Dialectic of Enlightenment also of a of and p. within the of the of domination, Horkheimer and Adorno see a regression to nature in two ways. The subjects of their inner nature. the control over their inner nature and the of the of (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. is this is in a controlled people do not become on the they become and the distance from their inner nature, they also up the distance from their social which increasingly to them like nature, as they it as a rather than more freedom through the civilizational people in the culture industry, toward a of nature” by a they to in Enlightenment to with the that this unfreedom not from the of first nature but from those by society, which is increasingly becoming a second nature to key point of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is its of an between the culture industry and the culture industry offers only an form of reconciliation through its consumerist promises and exploitation this false reconciliation, Horkheimer and Adorno see its as at The of domination in times of into a fascist form of For the people and are with Horkheimer and Adorno (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. As a they become to political that more and more destructive forms of satisfaction. Instead of to for the of the culture industry, they to those political who in the of In this Horkheimer and Adorno that the culture industry until the of the p. Instead of to for and as a of people turn to those who for Horkheimer and Adorno pp. anti-Semitic conspiracy that a for and and violence as Rather than with of collective during the of the industry, they their in that this in the form of the fascist of out p. In fascism, Horkheimer and Adorno see the regression to nature by the culture industry as ultimately in the they that the consumerist of which people the of but that is by fascist drive where and violence be by Horkheimer and Adorno in an of the very which civilization has from the first to (2002 [1944], p. this drive for is also and controlled from people into the “natural state” of political which they in the culture The of the culture industry in fascism, its p. political freedom over their collective For they not only the social power that them, but with it and its violence with nature as is in the as in the collective of crisis and by the process which promised to p. Dialectic of Enlightenment primarily on an dynamic of as as its of while in the relationship between and that is, the of which social hold power is therefore to draw on Frankfurt School of In from as a political that offers a and rather than in their This strength in times of crisis, not only the and of the but it is and by the a the fascist to the is thus understood as a in which during times of crisis by political power to the who domination on a their toward and leave the capitalist pp. Horkheimer and Adorno that the regression to nature it nature's domination in the of (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944], p. these must be into The point of Horkheimer and Adorno's reflection on nature-dominating civilization is its than its For them, the Enlightenment project and it ultimately as a political project of emancipation in This and have the of by such as John Bellamy Foster and Clark the Although Horkheimer and Adorno placed the domination of nature at the center of their Foster and Clark argue that they only its the of from which is only in a namely, through in the Frankfurt School Foster and Clark only to the of and human p. to Foster and the of the domination of nature on nature were The relationship between and nature cannot be within the of the Dialectic of they the Dialectic of Enlightenment for understanding ecological Foster and Clark the Dialectic of Enlightenment has Western leading of theorists and their when the ecological in the and Western with its of the domination of nature, was to analyze the and increasingly forms of between and nature” pp. For this in the to a break with the Frankfurt to the of and nature” p. only in this way the relationship between and nature be and the ecological crisis the one hand, Foster and presentation of Frankfurt School Critical Theory one must that Horkheimer and Adorno ultimately on the consequences of the domination of nature within the and the political collapse of the In the relationship between a nature-dominating and first is, the ecological of such or to the is the context in which their work was the hand, it is becoming increasingly clear that these which Horkheimer and Adorno as the regression to nature and the political collapse of Enlightenment—the political with consumerist promises of reconciliation and the of destruction and violence to fascist become central of the climate crisis. Without a understanding of these very political cannot to the climate crisis. this the relationship between and Critical Theory be In a critical analysis of the climate crisis cannot to break with the Dialectic of it be in a as a of Metabolic Rift is clear that the an ecological and social to the social order of at the of a in which the the social in with the of the of nature, while for the of their own human (Foster and Clark pp. Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright have rightly pointed out that this for an and social to the social order of abstract in most of the they to that must be it (Mann and Wainwright p. The increasingly of this of the social with nature to it is both and be by these theories. is to to this in Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of especially in their theory of the regression to nature. For capitalist becomes second nature for humans in the process that the Dialectic of Enlightenment as their regression to nature, it is the capitalist of with is increasingly as an unchangeable one the Dialectic of Enlightenment in this way as an of the Metabolic Rift its point While for Horkheimer and Adorno it is a side that the are domination over nature to (2002 [1944], p. by people with false offers of reconciliation, must this at the The regression of humans to nature, by and especially their political must be understood as a and for domination over nature. as people to a political of nature, the Dialectic of Enlightenment on a it is this regression that the of the domination of nature by the of the regression to nature to an of nature's domination by capitalist is, to a deepening of the in the between and nature. in this as an of the Metabolic Rift the point of the Dialectic of Enlightenment becomes the ecological crisis of understand the Dialectic of Enlightenment in this an to the within Metabolic Rift theory the of the with nature to offers an of the climate crisis that in many from the ecofeminist the to the ecofeminist that the distance between people and nature—and the lack of the key the climate crisis, it is their regression to nature in that that comes to the the to their inner nature, by false promises of reconciliation, which at the same to an to their social which thus becomes their second nature. In this the capitalist of also becomes a second nature for of that Metabolic Rift as the of a in the social with nature as a central of the climate crisis. these false offers of reconciliation and to nature, people lose the to control of the social with nature from and to it in a As have Horkheimer and Adorno and two forms of domination that the regression to nature through different false offers of one in the culture industry and and the in fascistic In these are in the context of the climate crisis, as they us better understand the climate described by Mann and Wainwright in As the two described and of these false offers of reconciliation to their them through the of and Adorno's of culture industry and fascism, our understanding of the through which people within these are from in political to the climate crisis. Mann and Wainwright climate of which they argue of in the The for which they the which they will in the a climate that to the climate crisis within the of with the as its Rather than as the it is the form of or the not the causes of climate it and its climate (Mann and Wainwright p. the of To understand people this climate and to to the capitalist of that causes the climate crisis, must understand as a the of it and the false promises of reconciliation of this form of The or it offers not only as does, a reconciliation with the world of and with own but it also suggests a of the capitalist of with nature. the are promised not only to for their own but a with the of a for for the even as the of also the unsustainable is the with the is that it and the very of climate crisis that be it back into in goes in with a form of of the This of not only suggests that be overcome within the capitalist but also that climate change be through technological this is only by not only the within the capitalist of as is of but also the between the capitalist of and the natural forms of esoteric in that climate change be through or in In both the is the the that fundamental collective are The crisis that has on the is thus also on the cognitive the of and climate people to the capitalist of the climate crisis, rather than the to the with nature in a different to Mann and Wainwright's as Blumenfeld has Blumenfeld is clear that will a climate which they is In of the and who for the of climate the of fossil and toward Mann and Wainwright pp. While the appeal of be understood through Horkheimer and Adorno's theory of the culture industry, that of is through the of their theory of how the between these and the to an even more destructive Horkheimer and Adorno that are In times of crisis, when consumerist promises of of people forms of these in the more and more destructive promises by fascist political dynamic to out within for its consumerist promises those who from or by it their or to the false promises of reconciling the crisis to them by the political that these more and destructive forms of satisfaction. While is by a form of about climate change, is by its that political and The Zetkin Collective pp. the of violence and fascist two it the climate by to be as and as unsustainable appear political them as of power, and to be them as they as the of climate This on both a parties the fossil industry as a symbol of national strength pp. a where such as “rolling from are as of dominance 2018). climate the of as a many are to in the to the climate crisis, them to be as the of the crisis, it as a According to the of for fascist problems are who are as that must be or from and The Zetkin Collective pp. thus of the to of the ecological of the capitalist of in ways that they are to the as it (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 p. destructive and have they be as of power. are not from the climate crisis but are as the crisis their not only be but also and As in fascism, from political by and them fascism, it from the of toward and the and for climate are toward for and to in work the is described as the power that a regression to the of nature. through the of Horkheimer and Adorno's theory, also be in climate As the of is in an of the regression to the in both violent are more and more than the controlled drive by people to become even more integrated into society, so that the capitalist of to become as second nature. which at least the that the ecological of that still be as its appeal from a different not to destructive power but people to with it, it, and in offers a reconciliation, not through the of but through the of destruction of this understanding these is the first toward them and from becoming an I would like to and from the for in Frankfurt for the and discussions on the of Critical and climate change, which this would not have In I would like to and the for their and on the The was by of during the of this external was for this and by The of with to the of this