Epistemologias ecológicas: Delimitando um conceito

Abstract

This article delimits the concept of ecological epistemologies, which is taken to be a comprehensive posture based on the recognition of the alterity and agency of natural processes, objects and materials. Contemporary authors from different academic trajectories have carried out reflections in this vein and they suggest the emergence of a new realism or a new materialism. It is within this movement that we seek to situate the concept of ecological epistemologies. The adjective 'ecological' seems plausible, insofar as it repositions the human in a network of symmetrical, and reciprocally determined, relations. In this way, the ecological epistemologies give voice to the world, considering the autonomy of things and of nature in their relations with humans, without thereby falling into the traps of cultural or biological determinisms. This article contextualizes the interface of the new materialisms and the environmental field, as this emerges from anthropology, philosophy, and science studies. This seems to us to be a fruitful avenue for understanding our place in the world and the world's place in us from an ecological perspective, in the sense of an ecology of though, action and knowledge.