Benjamin’s Ecologue: Language and Environmental Trauma in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Walter Benjamin’s theory of language has ecocritical implications. His panlogue, the idea that everything speaks, includes an ecologue––an understanding of natural environments based on the stories of exploitation they communicate. Benjamin’s ecologue questions the supremacy attached to the uniqueness and superiority of human language. At the same time, it preserves the task of human language to turn the wounds of the past into political narratives that interrupt the cycle of environmental destruction. This article examines Benjamin’s theory of language from an ecological perspective, discussing the objection of anthropomorphism, the sadness and mourning of nature, and the pedagogical impulse of a weak ecological power in Benjamin’s political historiography.