Dump Philosophy: A Phenomenology of Devastation

Dump Philosophy by Michael Marder argues that the earth is becoming a dump for industrial output and its by-products, leading to environmental degradation and the loss of nuance and ideas. It explores the Anthropocene as a global dump and its effects on the body and mind, as well as the role of philosophy in the age of dumping.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 200 pages
Publication date: 10 December 2020
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Ranging across philosophy, theology, ecology, psychology, and art, in Dump Philosophy, Michael Marder argues that the earth, along with everything that lives and thinks on it, is at an advanced stage of being converted into a dump for industrial output and its by-products feeding consumerism and its excesses. Every day, scientific studies, media reports, and first-hand accounts of the rapidly deteriorating state of the environment hit us with a growing and disconcerting force. Trends such as microplastics in water, airborne toxins, topsoil degradation, and dangerous levels of carbon dioxide have upset the delicate ecological balance that has until now been sustaining life on the planet. Marder's original treatise paints a portrait of the Anthropocene as a global dump which wreaks havoc, causing disease and degrading our sensation, perception, and thinking, so that nuance is lost and ideas are reduced to soundbites in chains of free association. Describing the dump's fundamental characteristics and its effects on the body and the mind, he contemplates wider physiological, social, economic, and environmental metabolisms in the age of dumping, as well as the role of philosophy caught in its crosshairs. While surveying the devastation that is the reality of the twenty-first century, the book provides a frightening and yet intellectually spellbinding glimpse of the future.

Weight: 354g
Dimension: 138 x 215 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350170605