Journal article
A 'right to sadness': late socialist environmentalism between technocracy and romanticism and the Czech nature writer Jaromír Tomeček
- Abstract:
-
The article examines the works of nature writer Jaromír Tomeček, his public image, and his reception by literary theory and criticism as a distinctive late socialist response to environmental concerns. The article argues that the “ecological techno-optimism” of Jaromír Tomeček was representative of the late socialist reconsideration of human-nature relations that rejected the earlier modern understanding of humans as masters of nature and tried to find a new harmony between the two, but that also rejected the “pessimistic” perspective of Western ecology. Revising the tradition of socialist realism, late socialist literature allowed for sorrow over loss (“a right to sadness”) while still giving primacy to joy over progress, negating the “existential despair” of the 1960s. It thus preserved the progressive temporal orientation tied to the socialist ideal of increasing material wellbeing while trying to reconcile technocratic rationality with romantic subjectivity. “Ecological techno-optimism” eventually materialized in the form of the nuclear energy programme as the solution to the ecological crisis
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Authors
- Publisher:
- The Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
- Journal:
- Kontradikce More from this journal
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 2
- Pages:
- 67-90
- Publication date:
- 2023-02-14
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-06-07
- ISSN:
-
2570-7485
- ISBN:
- 978-80-7007-750-4
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1325234
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1325234
- Deposit date:
-
2023-02-19
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Martin Babička
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © Kontradikce 2023. The Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, as the journal’s publisher, exercises the right to utilize the work in the form in which the work appears in the printed journal Contradictions and on the journal’s website http://kontradikce.flu.cas.cz/en, in accordance with standard principles of ownership rights as defined by the Copyright Act and the Commercial Code of the Czech Republic. While authors retain moral rights as authors of their work, the Institute of Philosophy owns the copyright to works in the form they appear in Contradictions.
- Notes:
- The final version is available online from Digital Library of Czech Academy of Sciences at https://kramerius.lib.cas.cz/uuid/uuid:cc218233-9d54-4cc2-96ad-c8b026706e24
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