Slavoj Zizek - Ecology without Nature

This lecture by Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek – never mind the crappy sound & image quality: this is philosophy folks! – should provide all next nature explorers with a feeling of recognition.

Zizek convincingly explains Darwinism learns us that nature is not a harmonious pattern of seasons, change, balance, reproduction. Rather, nature is one big catastrophy which is from time to time contained in a fragile balance, but then explodes again. Nature itself is not natural: rather it is naturalised.

Another thing he mentions is how human waste has become so integrated into the functioning of the ecosystem that (as some ecologists suggest?) an imaginary, sudden removal of all human pollution could ITSELF be an ecological catastrophe.