Humans, nature and dialectical materialism

Capitalist relations are the crucial object of social critique due to their innate tendency to accelerate the metabolic rift and alienation, yet, I argue, our focus should stretch beyond capitalist relations. Indeed, both ecocidal and conservationist tendencies have occurred in multiple historical forms of social relations, including socialist societies, for example, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These are phenomena that reiterate the social, rather than purely capitalist relations as the driver of environmental destruction. Metabolic rifts occur due to malfunctioning of the human–human/human–nature relationships and it is the elimination and prevention of that malfunctioning that must be the aim of radical environmental politics and policies, not merely (the necessary) elimination of capitalist relations. This article contributes to the symposium in three complementary ways. First, it critiques the application of dialectical reading of human–nature relations as articulated in the Foster–Moore debate in its own right. Second, it rearticulates that reading through the lens of the dialectical biospheric analytics of late Soviet ecology. And third, it invokes the dialectical thought of Evald Ilyenkov.

Homogeneous / Heterogeneous Structure and Forms of Dialectics

The notion of utopia which is came from ancient to the present day in a historical perspective as an unreal place and which is intended to reach to perfection by the effect of social realities could not provide the critical environment necessitated for the 20th-century problems. Patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism and other realities which hold on in historical perspective touch the formations of gender, race or class consciousness off around feminist theory, and they make them the focus of the epoch. The narratives of the late 20th century rather than search for the ideal, achieve perfection, they destroy all positions not only search for those who are different from all positions but also aim to create a critical environment by seeing the irreducible together.Michel Foucault draws attention to fantastic, untroubled and homogeneous structure of the concept of utopia and liken utopias to the flowing order with the distinctive features of the language. The late 20th century formations and the environment required by these formations are expressed as the desire to construct polyphonic, heterogeneous environments and he defines these environments as heterotopia. If the narratives of the ancient period are discussed through the concept of utopia, the narratives of the late 20th century are discussed through the concept of heterotopia that is a new formation pointed out by Foucault, the texts of different periods which exhibit structurally very different positions (homogeneous and heterogeneous) are structured by collaborating on dialectical thinking. Dialectical thought continues to exist on the basis of the way of thinking both in the late 20th century narratives and in ancient texts. Getting a foothold of vague, ambiguous, transient forms which exist in the environment to human thoughts provides clues about dialectics. The human creates a series of binary oppositions, during thinking in order to find meaning in it with the motivation of rationalization. This study aims to trace different forms of dialectical thought through the texts of the different epoch (homogeneous / heterogeneous), which exhibited very different stances from each other.Considering the structural differences between antiquity and late 20th century texts, how do the limitlessness and limits of dialectical thought between binaries play a role in the construction of these differences (homogeneous/ heterogeneous)? For highlighting these differences, the narrative of The Republic of Plato as a homogeneous text is examined comparatively with the late 20th-century heterogeneous text of Triton with regard to fictionalizing dialectics over sex / gender binary opposition which is the notional focus of the late 20th-century.

Dialecticism across the Lifespan

Before dialecticism became a topic of empirical inquiry in cultural psychology, scholars in related disciplines had discussed dialecticism as a model of human development, as an essential component of maturity and wisdom. This chapter bridges these two perspectives, comparing conceptualizations of dialecticism in developmental and cultural psychology. After reviewing historical portrayals of dialecticism in various philosophical traditions, the chapter provides a comparison of historical characterizations with the contemporary treatment of dialecticism in human development and cultural psychology. Both streams—developmental and cross-cultural—are proposed as essential for an integral understanding of the construct. Subsequently, the chapter discusses the emerging developmental models of dialecticism across the lifespan and reviews the accompanying empirical evidence, situating it in a cross-cultural context. It concludes with an outline of future directions of research on dialectical thought, with attention to psychological and sociocultural processes engendering dialecticism across the lifespan.

The Creolization of Political Theory and the Dialectic of Emancipatory Thought: A Plea for Synthesis

The paper discusses Jane-Anna Gordon's important idea of the Creolization of Poitical Theory with reference to the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Frantz Fanon. It makes an argument for synthesizing this initiative with dialectical thought in order to transcend the analytical vision which gave birth to the creolizing of theory. This synthesis is proposed in order to make sense of the real of any politics of universal emancipation and to incorporate the theoretical inventions of popular actions.