The Three Sustainabilities

Energy, Economy, Time

Allan Stoekl

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Paperback

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English

University of Minnesota Press
28 September 2021

Philosophy; History of ideas; Social impact of environmental issues

Bringing the word sustainability back from the brink of cliche-to a substantive, truly sustainable future

Is sustainability a hopelessly vague word, with meager purpose aside from a feel-good appeal to the consumer? In The Three Sustainabilities, Allan Stoekl seeks to (re)valorize the word, for a simple reason: it is useful. Sustainability designates objects in time, their birth or genesis, their consistency, their survival, their demise. And it raises the question, as no other word does, of the role of humans in the survival of a world that is quickly disappearing-and perhaps in the genesis of another world.

Stoekl considers a range of possibilities for the word, touching upon questions of object ontology, psychoanalysis, urban critique, technocracy, and religion. He argues that there are three varieties of sustainability, seen from philosophical, cultural, and economic perspectives. One involves the self-sustaining world ""without us""; another, the world under our control, which can run the political spectrum from corporatism to Marxism to the Green New Deal; and a third that carries a social and communitarian charge, an energy of the ""universe"" affirmed through, among other things, meditation and gifting. Each of these carves out a different space in the relations between objects, humans, and their survival and degradation. Each is necessary, unavoidable, and intimately bound with, and infinitely distant from, the others.

Along the way, Stoekl cites a wide range of authors, from philosophers to social thinkers, literary theorists to criminologists, anthropologists to novelists. This beautifully written, compelling, and nuanced book is a must for anyone interested in questions of ecology, energy, the environmental humanities, contemporary theories of the object, postmodern and posthuman aesthetics, or religion and the sacred in relation to community.

By: Allan Stoekl
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 38mm
ISBN: 9781517908188
ISBN 10: 1517908183
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 28 September 2021
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Allan Stoekl is professor emeritus of French and comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University. His books include Bataille's Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability (Minnesota, 2007) among others.

Reviews for The Three Sustainabilities: Energy, Economy, Time

""Allan Stoekl shines a bright light on the paradoxes of sustainability. At its best a hazy moral good and at its worst a pretext for smuggling toxic relations into an astroturfed future, sustainability discourse is a symptom of the global North's increasingly irrational clinging to the promises of modern progress. What is so important about Stoekl's book is its subtle and imaginative approach to rethinking sustainability and its discontents from the epistemic grounds up.""--Dominic Boyer, Rice University ""Written with force and conviction, The Three Sustainabilities is an impressive volume that pleads passionately and imaginatively for a future of generosity and gift giving that will hopefully have the force to inspire readers in their everyday lives."" --H-Net Reviews ""To this reader, the most useful aspect of the text is its elaboration of the political conscious subtending our most fascinating popular narratives of life after the inevitable global disaster.""--Martin A. Hipsky, Studies in 20th 21st Century Literature