Abstract
The title says it all. This book is not so much a work of analytic sociology as it is an essay in cultural criticism and a tendentious one at that. Still, anyone interested in the ecology counterculture will find much food for thought. Bruckner is a prolific French essayist who has treated topics as diverse as love, happiness, guilt, and post-colonial paternalism – sometimes all within the covers of a single book. The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse (hereafter, Fanaticism) builds on Bruckner’s lively rhetorical style in a bold, often satirical, sometimes belittling, occasionally sarcastic send-up of the most radical elements in the contemporary ecology movement. Yet reading this engaging and effective translation from French, I could not but be struck by the irony. Here are depicted apocalyptic prophets who (correctly?) see the world as we know it coming to an end, and Bruckner’s jeremiad focuses on exposing them in almost the breathless terms of Fox News, rather than dealing with the issues they raise (which Bruckner begrudgingly acknowledges have serious import). He is, well, almost fanatical in his exposure of the fanatics.
Not that Bruckner lacks grist for his mill. Consider the writer in Le Monde who takes on the voice of Nature after the Fukushima nuclear disaster and warns, ‘my violence is pure, and prior to your categories of good and evil … So perish by the tsunami!’ (p. 80). Yet many of Bruckner’s quotations, taken out of the rhetorical context in which he embeds them, do not seem unreasonable: ‘Live simply, so that others may simply live’, he quotes Gandhi (p. 141). And the ratio of cited excesses to Bruckner’s raving about them is strikingly low.
The (implicit) methodology used in Fanaticism is to draw on diverse documents – not always in agreement with one another – to create a fast and loose composite of the most radical version of an ecology ideology and then to characterize this typification as fanatical and totalitarian. The whole discussion floats only loosely tethered to reality. Thematically, it is tied to Bruckner’s childhood experiences in a Jesuit school. Damage to the environment by human beings has become the new Original Sin of a secular religion, he argues, and the religion of guilt demands of us practices of self-denial that interfere with our pursuits of happiness. Bruckner seems to resent making any sacrifices for future generations, much less the future of the Earth, because the future is ultimately unknown and pressing present problems are overwhelming enough, thank you. For Bruckner, environmental asceticism is not an ethic, it is a guilt trip.
The erudition with which Bruckner writes is obvious on virtually every page, but it is not matched by the analysis. He is conversant with a wide and interesting range of social thought, citing Voltaire and Rousseau, and just as easily moving among modern cultural critics such as Theodore Adorno, sociologist Ulrich Beck, the philosopher Peter Singer, and the diverse literature generated within the ecology movement. But Fanaticism is written as a tract, not a scholarly inquiry. Although Bruckner documents a number of ecologists’ interventions meant to alarm us all about the prospects of climate change, he never effectively demonstrates that the views he cites lack validity or that they are sufficiently prevalent to justify his claims about the danger of a take-over of mainstream ecology culture by the ‘new orthodoxy’ that counters anthropocentrism with ‘anti-humanism’ and an ‘“animal ethics” that is “biocentric” or even “ecospheric”’ (pp. 100, 84). That said, it would be worth asking how and to what degree radical ecology has infused wider discourse.
Fanaticism paints the ecology movement as having two wings – a sensible moderate wing threatened by a fanatical countercultural fringe of deep ecologists who warn contemporary civilization of the error of its ways, yet simultaneously rejoice at what they deem the probable decline of its wretched and wasteful post-traditional way of life. Yet the discussions of fanaticism drip with breathless caricature (e.g. about food-scrap composting philosophies) and hyperbole (p. 159: ‘if the extremists drown out the moderates, the new sobriety will have the bitter taste of concentration camps and prisons’). Such extreme claims about extremism close off a number of worthwhile discussions, for example, about the relation of the radicals to the wider movement and about ideologies that animate a whole spectrum of movement groups and initiatives. Bruckner will have none of it: he rails equally against rational calculation of carbon costs (pp. 121, 155) and against anti-Enlightenment irrationalism. But because he zeroes in on words, not deeds or organizations, the book is ill-equipped to provide any empirical evidence about the radical takeover of the ecology movement that Bruckner asserts. This mismatch between evidence and argument means that Fanaticism fails to address a number of important questions. Given that the radical ecology theses Bruckner cites sometimes reflect contradictory ways of making meaning about global climate change, are there contending factions within the countercultural movement? If so, what are they? What are the organizational and network bases of the various elements of the countercultural movement, and how, when, and where have they influenced state, international, and mainstream nongovernmental organization (NGO) policies and agendas? Fanaticism does not pursue such questions, although it provides threads by which others can and should do so.
The complete countercultural rejection of both the existing social order and ideologies innoculating it from any form of radical change is a signature feature of utopian movements, as Karl Mannheim showed long ago. Once utopia floats free from conventional reality, it opens up to mythical formulations that will seem astonishing from within the established order. Yet as Mannheim emphasized, established ideologies will seem equally bizarre if viewed from outside the complacent affirmation of the established social order. In short, the styles of discourse that Bruckner identifies mirror the character of utopian ideologies more generally.
In exploring the utopian critique, Fanaticism raises a number of interesting questions. Are there animal rights similar to human rights? If so, who (i.e. which humans) will represent those rights? How will these humans determine what the rights of other animals are? Yet the book’s style of carping about impositions on unecological modern practices undermines Bruckner’s capacity to engage in reasoned discussion himself. Take, for example, one complaint: ‘We must no longer salt roads in the winter because salt pollutes water tables … Cars will smash into trees, people will hole up at home, but at least the soil will not suffer’ (p. 158). Bruckner would do well to consider that some highway departments have long banned the use of salt, substituting a grit compound that does not degrade the environment yet promotes highway safety. Concern about problems just might encourage solutions, but such a tack is not to be found in Fanaticism. Instead, Bruckner briefly acknowledges that the world order is undergoing an ‘anxiety of transformation’ in the face of dramatic changes away from the optimistic excesses of modernity, but despairs: ‘how can we fail to be struck by the mediocrity of the paths proposed, which limit themselves to recycling the old ideal of penitence, which returns under the mask of the nice?’ (p. 159).
Occasionally, Bruckner voices indignation that the ecology movement, in his view, has displaced concern with social inequality and poverty. But this claim is more an ornament than a central axis of the discussion. Indeed, the book is so single-minded in its attack on deep ecology that it fails to address whether there might be any differential impact of climate change on the world’s poor and dispossessed. Living in the goldfish bowl, as it were, we cannot easily determine the connections between global climate change and various extreme-weather events. What social research does clearly establish is that poor people generally face far greater challenges than affluent people when hurricanes and typhoons strike.
Over and again, I found Bruckner seeming to resent any restriction on lifestyle meant to lessen the rate of global climate change. Clearly, he is not an ethical kantian, at least in relation to the categorical imperative. He does not think that an individual’s actions (e.g. recycling) can have much effect, so why bother? Why me, when so many others are contributing even more to the problem? Certainly, anyone who acknowledges global climate change must be something of a hypocrite to keep on with a lifestyle that contributes to the problem – as people living in contemporary civilization inevitably do. For Bruckner, the solution is to attack the messengers as a way of expiating guilt.
Fanaticism offers a fascinating critical survey of contemporary countercultural ideas about ecology, sustainability, and related topics. It may be a comfortable read for people who have attained something like the good life and don’t want to make any sacrifices for the sake of the planet or future generations. Frankly, I would be surprised if that category includes many people who are readers of this journal.