Deep Time, Dark Times by Wood David;

Author:Wood, David;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press

SEVEN

Posthumanist Responsibility

There would be no decision, in the strong sense of the word, in ethics, in politics, no decision, and thus no responsibility, without the experience of some undecidability.

—JACQUES DERRIDA, “Hospitality, Justice, Responsibility”

Everything takes place as if I bore the entire responsibility for this war.

—JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, Being and Nothingness

The issue of responsibility in connection with global climate change is especially challenging. In some ways, it parallels the logic of the firing squad (all blanks but one)—we are each absolved of responsibility. “I didn’t melt that glacier.” And yet, very likely “we” did, even though there is no collective “we” that acted.

The more we know about the excessively large typical Western carbon footprint, the more easily we each can feel guilty—about travel, our lifestyle, our food, and so on. This experience cuts through the lack of a collective agent, drawing on some such idea as participation: “I myself didn’t melt the glacier, but I represent a lifestyle that did, and I see myself as a prime example of that.”

I want to consider some fundamental questions about the nature of responsibility, especially in the face of doubts about the agent-as-subject, from posthumanists, new materialists, feminists, deep ecologists, and others. But before that, I will sketch the landscape of such responsibilities as we may suppose we have, and why these issues are both pressing and puzzling. I will also bracket for the moment the question of who “we” are (“we” who might be responsible).

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