Environmentalist Cassandra: Problematic Theoretical Assumptions of Ecosocial Literacy

Abstract

A significant part of environmentalism is affected by a kind of Cassandra Syndrome that frustrates its attempts to anticipate solutions to the ecological crisis. Underlying, this is a way of understanding social transformations in which the enunciation of scientific truth should have political effects in itself. This article analyzes the failed theoretical assumptions that reinforce this practical impotence of environmentalism, which are essentially two: a vulgar materialism of deterministic nature, with important parallels with the old doctrines of Marxist economism, and an idealism prone to expect explosive social changes from purely communicative actions. And it questions the primacy of environmentalist approaches that are indebted to this scheme, such as those that prioritize "ecosocial literacy" as the center of gravity of change towards sustainability. For this reflective task, various sources are used, from climate anthropology to critical sociology. But its common thread is the theoretical tools offered by the political complexification of the Marxist tradition itself, especially the work of Antonio Gramsci. And three concrete lines of action are proposed that serve to rethink the efforts of environmentalism from an approach oriented towards the construction of a new political hegemony.