Noir Materialism: Freedom and Obligation in Political Ecology

In Noir Materialism: Freedom and Obligation in Political Ecology, Michael Uhall reengineers the conceptual relationship between nature and politics by crafting the terms of a new philosophy of nature and exploring its consequences for political theory. These consequences include major theoretical reformulations of indispensable political ideas, including freedom, obligation, and the subject. These ideas need to be retooled because the ecological crisis devastating our planet is, at root, a political crisis, deeply inflected by the concepts used to help navigate decisional and material environments. Noir Materialism stages pivotal encounters with Hannah Arendt, Roberto Esposito, and F. W. J. Schelling, as well as engaging critically with biopolitics, environmental political thought, new materialism, the ontological turn in anthropology, and, surprisingly, film noir. Ultimately, Noir Materialism argues that only a return to the nightside of nature can address the conceptual gridlock impeding attempts to register and respond to the ecological crisis.

Michael Uhall is adjunct professor of political science at Indiana University East.