The Postmodern social construction of nature is a theorem

Theorem

In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proven on the basis of previously established statements, such as other theorems, and previously accepted statements, such as axioms...

 or speculation of postmodernist continental philosophy

Continental philosophy

Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...

 that poses an alternative critique of previous mainstream, promethean

Promethean

Promethean may refer to:*Prometheus, a character from Greek mythology, who was punished by the gods for stealing fire from the heavens to give to humans*Mary Shelley gave her novel Frankenstein the subtitle The Modern Prometheus...

 dialogue about environmental sustainability and ecopolitics.

Position

Whereas traditional criticisms of environmentalism come from the more conservative "right" of politics, leftist critiques of nature pioneered by postmodernist constructionism highlight the need to recognise "the other

The Other

The Other is a 1972 psychological horror film directed by Robert Mulligan, adapted for film by Tom Tryon, from his bestselling novel. It stars Uta Hagen, Diana Muldaur, and Chris & Martin Udvarnoky.-Plot:...

". The implicit assumption made by theorists like Wapner refer to it as a new "response to eco-criticism [which] would require critics to acknowledge the ways in which they themselves silence nature and then to respect the sheer otherness

Otherness

The Otherness is a malevolent force present in several of the novels by F. Paul Wilson. From the human perspective, the Otherness is evil – greater in scope than Satan and similar high agents of evil, and possibly the inspiration for such entities...

of the non-human world."

Criticism

Although postmodernism prides itself on criticizing the urge toward mastery that characterizes modernity, one criticism of it is that this mastery is what postmodernism is exerting as it captures the nonhuman world within its own conceptual domain. That in turn implies postmodern cultural criticism can deepen the modernist urge toward mastery by eliminating the ontological weight of the nonhuman world. "What else could it mean to assert that there is no such thing as nature?" . Thus, the issue becomes an existentialist query about whether nature can exist in a humanist critique, and whether we can discern the "others'" views in relation to our actions on their behalf. This is referred to as the Wapner Paradox .

See also

Davis Demeritt's typology of the social construction of nature looks at the idea from several standpoints. He seeks to clarify the meaning through exploring the extent of the different uses applied to the term.