A Role for Art in Ecological Thought

This article redresses an oversight in current eco-theory that offers no means for revising still-persistent conceptions of nature and the natural. It proposes an ecologizing mode of analysis as one corrective. Throughout the essay is an attempt to redeem the human, the artificial, and with them, the city. The argument discovers along the way that in order to profess its non-existence, one must name and thus reify nature, a linguistic curiosity that makes clearer the extent of nature's ideological reach. This reflexive foil should be taken into consideration by those who find the persistence of nature troubling to the future of eco-theory and eco-awareness.