Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction argues that Heidegger’s question of being cannot be
separated from the question of nature and culture, and that the history of being
describes the growing predominance of culture and technology over nature, resulting in
today’s environmental crisis. It proposes that we turn to Heidegger’s thought in order
fully to understand this crisis.
In doing so it is necessary to retrieve those elements of his thought which are most
maligned by Derridean deconstruction: the pastoral, the homely, the local. In a world
coming to terms with the destructive nature of ’globalisation’ and the networks of
distribution and travel which lacerate the globe, we are witnessing a gradual return to
the ’locally produced’, the ’organic’, the ’micro-generation’ of energy unplugged from the
national and international grid: in other words, a return to the ’near’. The necessities and
problems inherent in this return, which the ’environmental movement’ must address, are
already to be found in Heidegger’s thought.
6+ (*$-!,%"!,:*$:’(*$:’!.0’:$ (:’$:’2:$!%$62-2,3$6+;(,2*3$7(8+#3$2,/$42"5$(,$!"/+"$:!
reinvent the element to which deconstruction usually confines it and bring it into a
position from which to confront the most pressing ethical and political questions of
today