Ecological citizenship and ethical responsibility: Arendt, Benjamin and political activism.

Abstract

Arendt and Benjamin created important, and in many ways complementary, understandings of historical and political action that are intimately associated with the genesis of individual ethical responsibilities. This paper considers the ways in which their theoretical perspectives might be extended and linked to defend a model of environmental activism quite distinct from those presented in top-down discourses of environmental citizenship. These emerging discourses of citizenship tend to suggest that ethical responsibilities are the products of, and to be apportioned within, pre-determined forms of contemporary governance. The 'good (environmental) citizen' is, broadly speaking, obligated to comply in a largely 'apolitical' manner with behavioural norms that facilitate the continuance of the current social/economic system. But responsibilities are not reducible to obligations, and envisaging ethics or politics as a process of predicting and managing historical change fundamentally misunderstands the inherently unpredictable nature of all political action. It also diminishes precisely the kinds of engagement that might generate the sense of responsibility necessary to inform an alternative ecological politics.

Arendt et Benjamin ont elabore des con-naissances importantes et, de bien des manieres, complementaires, sur l'action politique et historique, qui sont intimement liees a la l'origine des responsa-bilites ethiques individuelles. On etudie dans cet article comment leurs points de vue theoriques pourraient etre appliques et lies a la defense d'un modele d'activisme environnemental passablement distinct de ceux qui sont presentes dans les discours descendants sur la citoyennete environnementale. Ces nouveaux discours sur la citoyennete donnent a penser que les responsabilites ethiques sont les produits de formes preetablies de gouvernance contemporaine, dans le cadre desquelles elles devraient etre reparties. De maniere generale, un <> (en matiere d'environnement) a l'obligation de se conformer en grande partie de maniere <> aux normes comportementales qui favorisent le maintien du systeme social et economique actuel. Mais on ne peut pas reduire les responsabilites a de simples obligations, et en envisageant l'ethique ou la politique comme un processus permettant de predire et de gerer les changements historiques, on sous-estime fondamentalement la nature essentiellement imprevisible de toute action politique. Et cela reduit precisement les types d'engagements qui pourraient engendrer le sens des responsabilites necessaire pour faire connaitre une politique ecologique differente.

Key Words

Environmental responsibility, environmental citizenship, Arendt, Benjamin, ethics

Introduction

"... it seems as if a way had been found to set the desert itself

into motion, to let loose a sand storm that could cover all parts of

the inhabited earth" (Arendt 1975 [1951]: 478)

Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin developed their distinctive political theories as considered responses to modernity's darker side, in particular, but not exclusively, the rise of fascism in Germany. This development would lead, amongst so many other evils, directly to Arendt's exile and to Benjamin's suicide in September 1940 after his unsuccessful attempt to escape across the Pyrenees to Spain. It might seem then that both thinkers were caught up within, and carried away by, a larger 'historical process', of which fascism was itself a 'reactionary' (in both senses) consequence. Each had, in their own way, imagined this process in terms of a metaphorical storm that could cover the earth. For Benjamin, this storm, "keeps piling wreckage on wreckage" as it "irresistibly propels" us into an unforeseeable future. This storm, Benjamin (1992: 249) says, "is what we call progress".

It is certainly tempting to regard our current environmental crisis as yet another (negative) repercussion of this same world-wide historical process, this unfolding whirlwind of 'progress' with all its antithetical effects. But such a conclusion, though not without its merits, risks portraying individuals as little more than storm-blown chaff, powerless to resist or proffer alternatives to a situation deemed out of political control. It would also occlude both Arendt and Benjamin's own, much more thoughtful, understandings of the relations between individuals, history, and politics. Both, in fact, regarded the apparent inevitability of impending disasters, and our supposed inability to create political solutions to them, as consequences of this same (mis)understanding of history as a 'process'.

Benjamin, in particular, was highly critical of 'historicism', the dominant and dogmatic belief in an unfolding continuum of historical progress, as something "irresistible ... that automatically pursued a straight or spiral course" (Benjamin, 1992: 252), a view that pervaded (and still pervades) many political circles. This unfounded faith, he suggested, underlay the inaction of so many social democratic politicians faced with the 'inexorable' rise of fascism. Their "stubborn faith in progress" and "their servile integration in an uncontrollable apparatus" (Benjamin, 1992: 252) had led them to believe that the flow of history would assure their eventual success. But when, having already taken politics out of the hands of those they claimed to represent (that is, for Benjamin, the working class), this proved unlikely, this historicism all too easily took on a negative aspect, translating into a resigned acceptance of a most appalling state of affairs about which, it was claimed, 'nothing could be done'. (1) This, it seems, is a historical situation that risks being repeated today, this time as an environmental tragedy, a situation where despair at accelerating ecological losses, the global spread of consumer capitalism, and dire climatic predictions, easily encourage a similar political resignation.

This would be a mistake, and one we would all rue, for it is, says Arendt (1993 [1961]: 168), "in the nature of the automatic processes to which man is subject, but within which and against which he can assert himself through action, that they can only spell ruin to human life". Wherever history comes to be regarded as an automatic process, disaster follows, in part at least because this perspective makes political action seem superfluous, ineffective, and/or entirely the concern of history's self-appointed administrators, that is, professional politicians. If one accepts such a situation as political reality then all that remains is to continue 'working' and 'labouring' away under the delusion that this in itself constitutes a "political achievement" (Benjamin: 1992: 250): From Arendt and Benjamin's sense it most certainly does not. Indeed it represents an abdication of politics. It is the political equivalent of burying one's head in (what seems to) work as the sand-storm approaches.

For Arendt politics is 'action' and action is defined as a mode of human existence, of being-with-others, that is distinct from, and much more than, simply 'labouring' to fulfil our animal needs, or 'working' to produce artefacts, for example, the consumer goods that now litter the modern world. (It is also something entirely different from the posturing, lying, and play-acting that characterise much of 'party' politics in its narrow, but now widely accepted, sense.) (2) Politics emerges through our ability to act into the world, that is, to initiate novel events and possibilities through our words and deeds. The political act is an expression of human individuality and freedom, a beginning where "something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before" (Arendt 1958: 178). What we say and do in concert, though not necessarily in agreement, with others, creates that public 'space of appearances' where we each reveal who (rather than what) we are, where our unique individuality comes to the fore. In other words, our appearance in the political sphere is not a matter of any functional role we might play in society, as, say, mechanic, chef or academic, but is envisaged as a locus of creative self-actualization in the presence of others. For Arendt this is precisely what it should mean to be a citizen.

Action though is inherently risky, not just in the sense that every actor takes a personal risk in exposing their words and deeds, and thereby themselves, to the approval or censure of others, but because, once set in motion, actions' effects inevitably ramify unpredictably and uncontrollably into the future. Where labour and work maintain necessary 'services' or produce relatively solid and permanent 'things', human actions are modes of involvement in ever-changing circumstances. Their ongoing effects can become exaggerated or attenuated, apparently dissolving without trace, only to be remembered and reappear as they momentarily crystallize out in the most unexpected ways around events that can have profound political resonances. They are, in short, impossible to follow in their entirety. Yet despite, or rather because of this, we are, as individuals, responsible for the almost infinite effects our actions may have, for we have set them in motion and it is these actions, more than anything else, that define who we are. From an Arendtian perspective then, personal responsibility is coeval with individual political action.