Tenuous Connections in Impure Communities

Ethics and the Environment, 4(1 ):85-90 © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. ISSN: 1085-6633 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. Maria Lugones Tenuous Connections in Impure Communities I want to engage Chris Cuomo's theoretico-practical path at a point that strikes me as crucial, as I am holding the multitude of lines of reflection and praxical commitments that she considers attentively in the fashioning of her path. I find myself both taken by the fragility of the moment of action in this path as expressed in Feminism and Ecological Communities (1998), and troubled by the rhetorical space1 within which the central action guiding concept, flourishing, is constructed. I am clear that the concept of flourishing does not give rise to a precise general normative claim, and its openendedness and flexibility are certainly welcome. Cuomo makes clear that "the sentence, 'Allow entities with dynamic charm to flourish,' is not an ultimate principle—it is a value-laden guideline" (p. 78). Since the fragility of nonsubjected subjectivity in the midst of unfreedom is central in my understanding of my own theoretico-praxical path, I certainly welcome an unruly ethics since ruliness in ethics has been integral to the ideological construction of unfreedom. I myself am concerned with the possibility of the development of relationality among subjected subjects towards a nonsubjected subjectivity. This is a tenuous possibility that is thoroughly unnatural because it resides in resistance to an almost irresistible domination that orders desires to its own ends. Cuomo identifies "dynamic charm" as internal. Although that which moves the resistance to domination may be thought of as "internal," its sense defies the inside/outside dichotomy; it is ungraspable but most importantly unbuildable, just "from the inside." The impetus to resist—I want to mark and retain this aspect of "dynamic charm"—is an impetus to negotiate environments produced by a subjection of living beings in the grips of and in creative tension with relations power. The environments Direct all correspondence to: Maria Lugones, Latin American/Caribbean Studies, Binghamton University (SUNY), P.O. Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000; E-mail: mlugones@binghamton.edu 85 86 ETHICS AND THE ENVIRONMENT Vol. 4, No. 1,1999 structure the material, relational, and rhetorical spaces. They structure meaning and thus what is possible to intend outside subjection. The resistant negotiation of these environments is thus keenly attentive to the subversion of meaning creation. Like Tabor Fisher I mean "negotiate" as "in negotiate a river not a contract."2 The negotiation is deeply motivated by desires that are inseparable from the eco-context. Coyotes and bears coming down from the mountains for garbage desire like the subjugated, in the place of unfreedom. In understanding our subjection and possibilities I locate myself theoretically within a strand of thought that enables us to understand those possibilities not just as temporal but also as deeply spatial, in an understanding of space as produced and negotiated , at least some of the time, against the grain and function of its own production. The production involves the production of subjects as subjected, but resistance to subjection is exercised through the production. Thus, as ecological and ecopolitical beings , we are not just temporal but also spatial in a way that does not separate history and spatiality. With Fernando Coronil (1997) I want to "integrate a spatialized conception of time with a temporalized notion of space" (p. 24). Coronil follows Doris Massey's reconceptualization of the dualist time/space opposition in bringing space out of its "exile from politics" (Coronil, 1997, p. 27). Massey's reconceptualization involves consideration of the "need to develop an alternative view of society as a four-dimensional entity, rather than as a 3D slice that moves through time" (Massey, 1992, p. 79), the "need to reconceptualize space as constructed out of interrelations, as the simultaneous coexistence of social interrelations and interactions at all spatial scales, from the most local to the most global," and "the need to think of space as both ordered and chaotic" (pp. 79-81). This reconceptualization of the politics of space and the rejection of the space/time duality seems particularly appropriate as we rethink ourselves as ecological beings in an ethic of...