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Accepted Paper:
A conceptual history of production and its environment
Maximilian Pieper
(University of Augsburg)
In the Anthropocene, society faces increasing environmental destruction. At the same time, 'production' – the dominant concept with which we understand society's interaction with the environment – has a strong creationary meaning. How can we understand this contradiction historically?
Paper long abstract:
I am interested in the question whether it makes sense to understand environmental destruction with a concept of ‘production’ so closely associated to human creation? I propose a thorough defamiliarization with the concept by laying out a concise conceptual history of ‘production’. I argue that since the 17th century the concept shifted from a natural emanative meaning to one that refers to the creationary potential of the productive human mind. The modern emphasis on the human mind not only enabled to disassociate environmental destructive consequences from production but is also closely related to the control and command over humans and nature. This is accompanied by a shift from a 'spatial' to a 'temporal' meaning of production. For this temporal production, the environment must be managed as a stable condition for production over time. However, destruction as an absolute end point cannot be adequately conceptualized if we understand the environment in such terms. Thus, efforts to describe environmental destruction with ‘production’ are hindered by the problematic logic of the concept itself.