Inclusionality–Exclusionality: Environmental Philosophy and Simulative Politics

In direct response to Alan Rayner’s Inclusionality – An Immersive Philosophy of Environmental Relationships in this volume, this chapter critically reviews the validity of some stereotypically reproduced arguments within the environmental debate. It aims to demonstrate how late modern societies have moved beyond the philosophy of inclusionality that provided the foundation for ecologist thinking and politics. The post-ecologist realities of contemporary society however, are, arguably, obscured by a societal practice that is described as simulative politics: whilst there is no serious confidence – nor actually ambition – that the modernist project and promise of ecological thought will ever be completed, late modern society keeps reproducing the illusion that the ecologist ideals are still valid and on the agenda. Academics and intellectuals can hardly avoid contributing to this collective strategy of simulation, or they expose themselves to charges of having abandoned humanist values, and fatalistically taking refuge in apologias of an unacceptable status quo. Trying to pierce this protective screen surrounding late modern consciousness, this chapter aims to expose how the well-intended appeal for an immersive philosophy of inclusionality has become a function of an individualized reality of exclusionality.