Ecological Ungovernability and the Transition to Postliberal Modernity: On the Dialectic of the Eco-Emancipatory Project

Abstract

Late-modern societies are experiencing a transformation that is very different from the one environmental movements and many scientists have long been campaigning for. While ecological issues are slipping down the political priority list, the autocratic-authoritarian turn and the collapse of the liberal world order are gaining momentum. Ecopolitically, this transformation may be interpreted as the exhaustion of the eco-emancipatory project (EEP). From the perspective of social theory, it may be understood as the exhaustion of the present phase of modernity. This article argues that these two aspects are closely related to each other. Drawing on Ulrich Beck's theory of reflexive modernization and his distinction between a first, industrial, and a second, reflexive, modernity, it conceptualizes this dual exhaustion as the transition to a third, postliberal modernity. The logic of the EEP itself, the article suggests, is one driver of this transformation: In the wake of a triple dialectic—of sustainability, emancipation, and democracy—it has rendered the EEP outdated, given rise to a condition of ecological ungovernability and helped to pave the way for new modernity beyond the values that once underpinned this project and Western liberal modernity at large.