MLN

This is a short, rich, and thought-provoking book which might best be described as a discourse-archaeological essay on the interaction between ecological, social, and political thought. It will engage many people who feel attracted by ongoing debates regarding the historical situation of rapid climate change and biodiversity loss, as well as an academic audience that is interested in political theory, the history of ideas, and (critiques of) political economy.

In times of ubiquitous greenwashing among political and economic actors, the attribute 'ecological' tends to be used in a deflationary way. The present book reminds us that the term 'ecology' refers to (1) a scientific discipline that has precursors in biology and zoology in the German context (e.g., Ernst Haeckel, Karl August Möbius) as well as to figures of thought in political economy in the nineteenth century (e.g. "Überbevölkerung", oeconomia naturae), (2) a new transdisciplinary scientific paradigm that was established in the second half of the twentieth century, and (3) a current mode of thought that strongly ties ideas of order in and of nature with ideas of societal and political order. The book takes as its starting point the diagnosis that an "ökologischterrestrisches Programm (12) has emerged that serves as a discursive and imaginary foundation of politics and political order.

The diagnosis builds on the assumption that—from the viewpoint of the history of political philosophy and political theory—ideas about political order have been long prefigured by a particular understanding of nature and the inaccessibility of nature. Thus, "[j]ede politische Ordnung […] ist das Ergebnis von willentlichen Setzungen, der geltenden Natur und dem, was sich zwischen beiden mit der Zeit einspielt." (16–17) When ideas of nature change, which, according to Scholz, occurred during the twentieth century, the same applies to the thinking and modeling of society and, in particular, of the (historical) conceptualization of political order. In other words, the way of seeing and grasping nature institutes a particular political regime. In the contemporary era, seeing nature means facing destruction, loss, and damage in the biosphere and increasingly in the so-called 'earth system.' Nature has become "verwüstete Erde" (24). For Scholz, it is important to note that the (damaged) earth is not just the face of the 'new nature,' which is also named 'the Anthropocene,' but that the earth in the form of

a "Singular der Erde" has instituted the beginning of an ecological eschatological epoch (24). The hallmarks of the "ökologische Eschatologie" (25) include efforts of conservation and care for life on the one hand, and the regulation and curation of the societal body on the other hand, so that the (residual) nature and societies are considered and handled in a similar way as subjects of ecological care and politics (26). This is what Scholz refers to as the "Ökologisierung der Gesellschaft" (26), a thesis that is presented in the introductory chapter "Der Singular der Erde" and pursued in the short final chapter with the title "Ausblick." In the final chapter "Ausblick", Scholz [End Page 1245] evokes Bruno Latour's notions of a new political regime and a 'Constitution of the Earth,'¹ which itself intensively draws upon Carl Schmitt's Nomos der Erde. Insofar as I understand it, Scholz regards Latour's eco-political ideas as in line with his own thesis about the advent of a new political order and new sources of conflict and, thus, a new era of "ökologische[r] Geopolitik" (152).

Having described the diagnostic 'bracketing' of Scholz's inquiry, we can now turn to the subject of his historical argument regarding the entanglement of ecological and political thought from its beginning in the nineteenth century onwards. As Scholz wants to provide an overview of these discursive interrelationships, his inquiry can be read as, in Foucauldian terms, 'a history of the ecological present.' He unfolds this inquiry in four chapters (1. Die Dichte des Lebens, 2. Der Haushalt der Natur, 3. Ökologie und Geopolitik, 4. Ästhetik des Anthropozäns). Rather than following...