An Ecology of Nonhuman Modes of Production

Abstract: What happens if you rework the Marxist idea of a mode of production, extending it to a variety of intersecting, nonhuman processes? Well, perhaps, even more vibrant, volatile, and regionally diverse images of ecology unfold. Key examples of nonhuman-initiated modes of production include species crossings, glacier flows, the planetary ocean conveyor, storm production, hurricanes, photosynthesis, and, perhaps, the origin of time itself. In each case, constituents and products of the mode in question are specified, often involving self-organized consolidation of non-human agencies and forces of diverse sorts. The essay closes by exploring what happens when such nonhuman modes coalesce, collude, or collide with human initiated, neoliberal modes. Results include reduction in the supply of oxygen, accelerating glacier melts, probable closure of the ocean conveyor, intense wildfires, intensifying storms, and the expansion of drought zones, all delivered by impersonal planetary modes (such as El Niños, trade winds, a shifting jet stream, the tilt and wobble of the earth) differentially to diverse parts of the world. Such nonhuman modes both amplify the effects of neoliberal climate triggers, and distribute them asymmetrically to polar and tropical regions. The proposal is to advance further beyond construing nonhuman processes to be primarily receptacles of human practices, or even merely highly sensitive to human climate triggers. Doing so to address dynamic relations across such disparate processes. Appreciation of the grandeur of a world, whose self-organizing powers and products extend beyond both cultural internalism and humanocentric economic theories, may grow with exploration of such conjunctions.