Just SwarmAction in the Anthropocene

Environmental action is plagued by an underlying fear. This fear, which often remains unspoken, is that we have already gone past a point of no return, that even the most stringent action could not prevent irreversible changes in climate that would make our planet uninhabitable for humans and for countless other forms of life. In his latest book, Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming (2017), William Connolly—Krieger-Eisenhower Professor and teacher of political theory in John Hopkins University's political science department—addresses the dread of this "tragic possibility" (149) and, crucially, the dangerous inaction that results from such a fear.

Four years after Connolly identified how neoliberalism dangerously aggravates the fragility inherent in self-organizing ecologies in The Fragility of Things (2013), he rejoins the debate with a pluralist manifesto for practical action. The text combines scientific knowledge of planetary processes with theoretical insights from both sides of the Atlantic and references to Connolly's personal experiences in activist organizing. Maintaining that "theories of species evolution, cultural process, and political creativity need each other" (61), the text demonstrates the possibility of overcoming tired dichotomies of arts and science, theory, and action.

Connolly's pluralism meshes insights from European continental philosophy with humanist American political theory. With this approach, Connolly resists the dogmatism of an absolutely flat ontology to demonstrate the practical political applications that a conception of agency broadened beyond the human can have. Stressing the ways in which agentive forces of ecological systems impinge on human activity, he does not shy away from the responsibility that falls on humans, and particularly those populations that have contributed more to global emissions, to work to mitigate the ecological damage done: this is the "entangled humanism" (156) argued for by the text. Connolly also challenges the divide between the sacred and the secular, arguing instead for "connections across creedal difference" (139). And so it happens that the theories of Alfred North Whitehead and Bruno Latour appear alongside the teachings of Pope Francis and Mahatma Gandhi in this environmental manifesto.

Arguably the text's most empowering contribution is the empathy with which Connolly recognizes the diverse psychological barriers that prevent those who acknowledge the dangers of climate change from "moving beyond a vague sense of loss" to concerted and sustained action (166). Alongside the protectionism of "aggressive nihilism" (164), Connolly diagnoses the subtler but more pervasive problem of "passive nihilism" (165) as stemming from residual attachment to "sociocentrism, cultural internalism, humanist exceptionalism, and planetary gradualism" (165). It is possible to work on these "culturally imbued proto-thoughts," Connolly contends, by working on "the visceral register of cultural life" (167). This is an essentially Foucauldian project, a task that Connolly views as "daunting and promising politically" (167).

Such "arts of the self and constituency micropolitics" (140) form the base for what is the book's most powerful concept: the "politics of swarming." With this provocative ecological metaphor, the text offers a vision of "a 'we' creatively composed of diverse constituencies set in a variety of world regions, faiths, classes, and other subject positions" (121) that will work on "states, churches, corporations, universities, and so on from the inside and outside simultaneously" (144). In Connolly's pluralist vision, multiple swarms can work toward a shared goal without agreeing on ideology or practical methods. So far, so inclusive. The radicalism of Connolly's manifesto lies in his argument for these "swarming social movements" (145) to work toward "cross-regional general strikes … to press hegemonic states, corporations, and other institutions to redefine their priorities more rapidly and radically" (145). Here the swarm becomes less a cozy collective than a militant assemblage.

In this way, Facing the Planetary uses the compelling concept of the swarm as an enabling tool for a pluralist environmental activism. The swarm undoubtedly reformulates questions of subjectivity, agency, and intentionality, but as a political metaphor, it...