Preface to the PM Press Edition

One of the best-known images from Reclus’ works originally appeared above the preface of his magnum opus, L’Homme et la Terre, and is reproduced here. It depicts two hands holding the earth, coupled with the statement in French that “Humanity is nature becoming self-conscious.” It is clear that the image indicates not only that the fate of the earth is now in the hands of humanity, but also that humanity can only fulfill its weighty responsibility by acting with an awareness that we are an integral part of nature, rather than continuing under the illusion that we are a power over and above the natural world. Reclus’ message is that the “hands” in the image are those of nature acting through humanity, though it is up to the viewer whether to read the image with more emphasis on humanity or more on nature.

Another famous Reclusian image, the one reproduced on the cover of this book, contains no such ambiguity. In this image, we see Nature herself contemplating or watching over the earth, which this time is clearly held in her hands.[1] The contemplating and holding seem to be inseparable parts of one process. The image evokes aspects of the contemporary ethics of care, an important dimension of ecofeminism, in which “holding” is a key concept. Feminist philosopher Sara Ruddick introduced this idea to describe the maternal attitude of preserving, conserving, and maintaining what is needed in a child’s life. Quoting Adrienne Rich, she adds that it is an attitude essential to “world-protection, world-preservation, worldrepair.”[2] The question posed by this Reclusian image is very much in this spirit: whether we can fulfill our historical destiny as an integral part of nature, awakened to the earth, allowing it to reveal itself to us, and playing our role in holding and caring for it.

It has been almost a decade since the first edition of this work appeared. Since then, the crucial significance of Reclus’ vision of humanity as the developing self-consciousness of the earth has become increasingly clear, as the costs of the continued operation of the system of economic, political, and technological domination become more and more evident. The magnitude of these costs is most striking in regard to global ecological crisis. Researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Center have formulated a conception of “planetary boundaries” within which human activity could continue without precipitating global ecological collapse, and concluded that “transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental- to planetaryscale systems.”[3] They have defined nine such boundaries: climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, biogeochemical nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, global freshwater use, rate of biodiversity loss, land-system change, chemical pollution, and atmospheric aerosol loading. They suggest that three boundaries have already been passed and that most others are rapidly being approached.[4] Knowledge of such threats has expanded greatly over the past decade. This is exemplified by the successive United Nations Climate Change Conferences that focus the world’s attention on global climate crisis, while the negotiations fail ever more miserably.

Global social crisis has followed a similarly tragic trajectory. The consumptionist culture of nihilism and the productionist system of technological domination have continued to colonize all areas of global society, while the nationalist, ethnic identitarian, and religious fundamentalist reactions to these processes continue to accelerate. Integral to these developments (both those internal to the dominant system and those generated in reaction to it) is the continual expansion by capitalism and the state of mechanisms of surveillance, control and annihilation. In view of the inability of the dominant system to significantly reform, much less radically transform itself in the face of global social and ecological crisis, Reclus’ call for a many-sided social ecological revolution to replace the system of domination with engaged and compassionate communities in solidarity with humanity and nature seems increasingly prophetic.

The year after this book originally appeared, 2005, marked the 100^th anniversary of the death of Elisée Reclus and the 175^th anniversary of his birth. It also signaled the beginning of a surge of interest in his thought. A number of international conferences brought together researchers and activists to discuss Reclus’ work and its relevance today. These included conferences on “The Geographer, the City and the World” at the University of Montpellier, France (dedicated to Reclus and French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache); “Elisée Reclus and Our Geographies: Texts and Pretexts” at the University of Lyon, France; “Elisée Reclus, Nature and Education” at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy; and “Humanity and the Earth / L’Homme et la Terre: The Legacy of Elisée Reclus” at Loyola University in New Orleans. Such international events have continued to take place as interest in Reclus expands. The most important of these, “Elisée Reclus and the Geography of the New World,” took place in 2011 at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, which has become a global center of Reclus research.

In recent years, the rate of publication of works on or by Reclus has grown exponentially. In the wake of the centennial, two new books on Reclus and two collections of Reclus conference proceedings appeared.[5] In the succeeding years, a new biography, a work on Reclus and colonialism, another on Reclus and the United States, and a brief introductory text have appeared.[6] In addition, anarchist geographer Philippe Pelletier recently published a massive volume on Reclus, Kropotkin, and Metchnikoff to follow up his earlier book on Reclus and anarchy.[7] In addition to the new French publications, Federico Ferretti, who is responsible for some of the most important research and writing on Reclus, has published two works in Italian.[8] New editions of Reclus’ own works have included two collections of his writings on the Americas, a volume of his letters from prison and exile, a reprint of his “Great Globe” project, and a new edition of his anarchist political writings.[9] While translation of Reclus’ writings into major languages has proceeded slowly, twelve volumes of Reclus’ works have recently been published in Portuguese, and a collection in Spanish is forthcoming.[10] A documentary film on Reclus has also appeared recently.[11] In view of the rapidly growing interest in Reclus, this is an auspicious time for the new edition of the present work to appear.

We would like to reiterate our gratitude to the many who contributed to the project, and who were mentioned in the preface to the first edition. Prof. Ronald Creagh deserves further thanks for his contributions to this revised edition. In addition, we would like to thank Ramsey Kanaan and Craig O’Hara of PM Press for their encouragement and assistance, and

John Yates for his skill and imagination in designing the cover of this edition. We are extremely grateful to PM Press for making it possible for this work to become readily available to its intended audience for the first time. With its publication of the first accessible edition of this work and the first comprehensive collection of writings of Gustav Landauer in English, PM Press has been instrumental in bringing to an English-speaking audience the work of the two greatest classical communitarian anarchist philosophers. Paraphrasing Hegel’s famous statement about philosophy, “the Owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk,” we might say that for anarchist philosophy today the Owl of Minerva increasingly takes flight at PM.