Historical Materialism, Indigenous Struggle and Ecological Crisis

Dan Boscov-Ellen, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Dept. of Social Science and Cultural Studies, Pratt Institute.

Paper presented to the Third annual conference of the World-Ecology Research Network 20-21 July, 2017 Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York

Dan is an environmental political philosopher and ethicist with a background in critical theory. His work focuses primarily on theorizing the ecological dynamics of capitalism and imperialism and explicating the political-theoretical and ethical entailments of these dynamics. His 2021 PhD dissertation, After the Flood: Political Philosophy in the Capitalocene, is a systematic theory of the normative political implications of capitalogenic environmental crisis. His recent articles on related topics have critically interrogated the universalizing discourse of the Anthropocene; worked to correct the capital-blindness and selective historical amnesia of many ethical accounts of responsibility for climate change; and analyzed the ethics of climate migration with a focus on reparative climate justice in the context of colonial oppression and capitalist exploitation. He is currently working on a book, provisionally entitled Critical Climate Ethics: Capitalism, Colonialism, and the Climate Crisis, which will build and expand upon these arguments.

Dan has developed several courses for the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies, including SS-382 Politics of Climate Change, SS-465 Capitalism and Crisis, and SSWI-285G Fascism Then and Now. In each course he teaches, Dan strives to create a welcoming intellectual space that fosters collaborative and critical philosophical reflection and connects philosophical material with current events and students’ lived experiences. His classes also incorporate a diverse array of critical and subaltern perspectives; he believes that the homogeneity of the accepted canon has blinded philosophers to arguments and ways of thinking that are crucial in a world trending toward entrenched ecological apartheid.