Category: Publications

Benjamin L. McKean (Ohio State University) has just published a thoughtful and generous review of No Other Planet in Contemporary Political Theory.

An excerpt can be found here:

“As this overview suggests, No Other Planet covers an enormous amount of ground, drawing from an admirably wide range of texts and showing an impressive mastery of multiple literatures. This fits the book’s focus on the education of desire, since there are so many channels through which desire might be educated. It’s also an important way of decentering traditional approaches to political theory, showing that other ways of engaging with politics may illuminate our present circumstances better than the familiar tools of abstraction and generalization. In that way, the book is an exemplar of problem-driven interdisciplinarity and a model of how theorists can and should make use of cultural resources to understand our world.”

The full review, including insightful criticisms, is here:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41296-023-00644-2

Ruth Houghton (Newcastle) wrote a generous and insightful review of my new book for Global Policy. Here is an excerpt:

“The book is an excellent example of cross-disciplinary work, bringing together political philosophy, insights from literary studies, and environmental humanities. In that respect, No Other Planet is an important work for scholars working across utopian studies as well as scholars working more broadly on utopian-thought in political philosophy and environmental humanities. Thaler’s theories of utopian fault lines open a productive line of enquiry with the potential for studies to investigate the other fault lines that underpin utopian literature.”

The link to the entire review can be found here:
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/29/06/2023/book-review-no-other-planet-utopian-visions-climate-changed-world#_edn2

My new paper (co-authored with Mihaela Mihai) is now available Open Access (online first) in Memory Studies.You can download it from here:

https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231176037

Here is the abstract:

Addressing the political implications of the ever-accumulating destruction of ecosystems and more-than-human life, this paper asks whether and in what ways environmental losses should be publicly commemorated. Our answer is two-pronged. First, we hold that a politics of environmental commemoration would enfranchise those who are already grieving, by lending legitimacy to their experiences. Moreover, commemorative practices might prompt much-needed norm change by nurturing a recognition of our species’ entanglement with the more-than-human world. Second, we programmatically introduce five principles that should guide environmental commemoration, ethically and pragmatically: multispecies justice, responsibility, pluralism, dynamism, and anticlosure. A critical examination of two real-world examples – the memorialization of the passenger pigeon’s extinction and the annual ritual of the Remembrance Day for Lost Species – substantiates our theoretical argument. Finally, the paper engages with several potential criticisms.

Joe P. L. Davidson (Warwick) has just published a generous and insightful review of No Other Planet in Environmental Politics. Here is an excerpt:

“Thaler’s innovative methodological framework and judiciously analysed examples effectively and powerfully demonstrate the value of thinking speculative fiction, political theory, and climate change together. The study, with this constellation of elements, sets out a research agenda that will no doubt spur other green political theorists to explore the world of speculative fiction. Given the political disruptions associated with the climate crisis, new ways of thinking are required – and the dreams of climate fiction writers, whether weird or wonderful, hopeful or apocalyptic, are an invaluable resource.”

The full review can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2023.2213135

Jeffrey Church just had me on his consistently excellent Political Theory podcast. The new episode on No Other Planet can be found here: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/thepoliticaltheoryreview/episodes/2023-05-16T09_27_38-07_00

My new paper “Eco-miserabilism and Radical Hope” has just been published (online first) in the American Political Science Review. A link to the Open Access version can be found here:

“Eco-Miserabilism and Radical Hope: On the Utopian Vision of Post-Apocalyptic Environmentalism.” American Political Science Review, 2023 (online first), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305542300031X.

The abstract is here:

Eco-miserabilism—the thought that it is already too late to avert the collapse of human civilization—is gaining traction in contemporary environmentalism. This paper offers a “reparative” reading of this post-apocalyptic approach by defending it against those who associate it with defeatism and fatalism. My argument is that authors like Roy Scranton and the members of the Dark Mountain collective, while rejecting mainstream activism, remain invested in a specific kind of (radical) hope. Eco-miserabilists, hence, promote an affective politics for our climate-changed world that is both negative and iconoclastic. Without offering blueprints for a desirable future, they critically interrogate reality and disenchant the “cruel optimism” (Lauren Berlant) behind reformist plans for a “good Anthropocene.” The ultimate target of the eco-miserabilist position is the illusion that groundbreaking innovations, either in the realm of science and technology or of ordinary representative politics, could redeem us on an environmentally ravaged planet.

My paper “Environmental commemoration: Guiding principles and real-world cases” (co-authored with Mihaela Mihai) has been accepted for publication in Memory Studies. A pre-print can be downloaded from academia.edu.

The abstract is below:

“Addressing the political implications of the ever-accumulating destruction of ecosystems and more-than-human life, this paper asks whether and in what ways environmental losses should be publicly commemorated. Our answer is two-pronged. First, we hold that a politics of environmental commemoration would enfranchise those who are already grieving, by lending legitimacy to their experiences. Moreover, commemorative practices might prompt much-needed norm change by nurturing a recognition of our species’ entanglement with the more-than-human world. Second, we programmatically introduce five principles that should guide environmental commemoration, ethically and pragmatically: multispecies justice, responsibility, pluralism, dynamism, and anti-closure. A critical examination of two real-world examples – the memorialization of the passenger pigeon’s extinction and the annual ritual of the Remembrance Day for Lost Species – substantiates our theoretical argument. Finally, the paper engages with several potential criticisms.”

Louisa Hann, from the New Books Network, just did a conversation with me on No Other Planet.

The full interview can be found here:

https://newbooksnetwork.com/no-other-planet

There will be a launch of my new book No Other Planet on November 23, 2022, at 3pm in the Chrystal Macmillan Building, University of Edinburgh. More information on this event can be found here:

My book No Other Planet has now finally been published, after some lengthy delays.

Check out the publisher’s website: www.cambridge.org/9781009015653

For a 20% discount, enter the following code at the checkout: THALER22