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Laudato Si’, Technologies of Power and Environmental Injustice: Toward an Eco-Politics Guided by Contemplation

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Abstract

This paper explores how Pope Francis’ critique of “the technocratic paradigm” in Laudato Si’ can contribute to an environmental ethics governed by asymmetries of power and agency. The technocratic paradigm is here theorized as linked to forms of anthropocentrism that together engender a dangerous alliance between the powers of technology and technologies of power. The meaning and import of this view become clearer when the background of these ideas gets excavated in the works of Romano Guardini. The contemporary manifestation of Guardini’s warnings appears in the form of myriad environmental injustices wrought by structures of power linked to technology. To counter such injustices, we must discern which types of technologies to develop and how to limit technocratic approaches for the sake of other values. The integral ecological outlook favored by Francis may be interpreted as a kind of eco-politics, or even, controversially, an eco-technology, with the cultivation of technologies of contemplation. Applying Peter Sloterdijk’s conceptions of anthropotechnics and monogeism to the Ignatian Exercises animating the Jesuit Francis’ work, we can see how such technologies hold potential for Catholicism to collaborate better with secular strategies in relating to Earth’s agency in a new eco-politics. Such an eco-politics could furnish an alternative to bio-politics, especially if governed by aspects of the Franciscan form-of-life identified by Giorgio Agamben. Such a project ultimately moves us beyond Laudato Si’ and the work of Romano Guardini, pointing up the limitations of Laudato Si’ in engaging the agency of the Earth.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the editors and several anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback on previous drafts of this paper. She also wishes to express gratitute to her research assistants, Emily Barr and Shambhavi Mehrotra, who each provided help at different stages of this project. Research that contributed to the ideas in this paper was supported by a grant from The Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture at Seattle University.

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  1. Management and Philosophy, Seattle University, 901 12th Ave., Seattle, WA, 98122, USA

    Jessica Ludescher Imanaka

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Imanaka, J.L. Laudato Si’, Technologies of Power and Environmental Injustice: Toward an Eco-Politics Guided by Contemplation. J Agric Environ Ethics 31, 677–701 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-018-9732-9

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