The Polluted Subject: Capitalism, Identity, and Ecology

Subject-object dualism is not the essential root of our disrespect for non-human things; distance and difference are inherent to a collective ecology. This paper considers origins Nature’s transformation into mythical sublime, mirror human experience, alongside capitalism’s enclosure subjectivity space identity: container that creates both illusion we separate from environment can make choices independent it. Drawing out fragments personal narrative, I incorporate theories Jean Baudrillard, Rem Koolhaas, Timothy Morton, Silvia Federici question structure “being in” as an ethical sustainable environmental model. Instead utopian monism panacea destruction, posit polluted duality metaphor how ethically engage with ailing world.