Freigestelltes Objekt: Helle Kröte aus Keramik, die mit einer Schicht Wachs überzogen ist. Im Hintergrund ein dunkler Raum. Ein Stoff hängt an der Wand, Personen sind hinter einer Fensterscheibe zu erkennen.
Alternativ-Text (en)
Isolated object: Light-colored ceramic toad covered with a layer of wax. A dark room in the background. A fabric hangs on the wall, people can be seen behind a window pane.
In dieser Arbeit setze ich mich mit unterschiedlichen Geschichtsbegriffen auseinander. Dafür dienen mir die Diskussionen um die deutsche Erinnerungskultur als Einstiegspunkt. Das Ziel ist es allerdings nicht, unmittelbar in die polarisierte Debatte einzugreifen. Stattdessen richtet sich der Fokus auf das ideologische Fundament, das verschiedenen Formen, mit der eigenen Geschichte umzugehen, zugrunde liegt. Den theoretischen roten Faden bildet das Werk "After Evil" des Philosophen Robert Meister. Darin kritisiert er die Haltung, die Vergangenheit zwar als schlimm zu verurteilen, aber gleichzeitig auch als abgetrennt von der Gegenwart zu betrachten. Herausgearbeitet werden die Argumente unter anderem anhand von Filmen von Alexander Kluge und Harun Farocki
Medien-Beschreibung (en)
In this work, I examine different concepts of history. The discussions surrounding the German culture of remembrance serve as my starting point. However, the aim is not to intervene directly in the polarized debate. Instead, the focus is on the ideological foundations that underlie different ways of dealing with one's own history. The work “After Evil” by philosopher Robert Meister forms the theoretical leitmotif. In it, he criticizes the position of condemning the past as evil, but treating it at the same as something that is separated from the present. The arguments are elaborated on the basis of films by Alexander Kluge and Harun Farocki, among others.
This paper provides a critical examination of ecological planning based on the continuities that it displays across seemingly disparate political projects and historical periods. In order to do so, it draws on the small rural valley of La Bizkaia in Navarre, Spain. It produces an environmental history of the valley through a detailed study of its hydro-forestry resources, periodising such history according to a materialist reading of its ‘metabolic regimes’. That is to say, through the particular configurations between the natural and social orders that dictate life in La Bizkaia.
Initially, the study introduces the valley’s natural characteristics and its property structure, laying the foundations upon which the rest of this paper sits. Subsequently, it undertakes a detailed investigation of Francoist interventions in the 1940s-60s; a massive monoculture of pine trees was planted by the Francoist Forestry Council, which radically undermined La Bizkaia’s natural systems and depopulated it. This paper thus analyses the planning logic behind this natural intervention which, borrowing a term from one of its draftsmen, is named ‘total planning’.
The thesis then explores contemporary management of the valley by the Government of Navarre, which has maintained ownership until this day, aligning its plans with the international protocols and standards characteristic of green capitalism. By looking at projects undertaken in the valley for nature conservation and climate change adaptation, which receive funding from the European Union, this research reveals the continuities between Francoist policies and green capitalism, and how both operate under the logic of Total Planning. Under this planning logic, they both fail to accommodate the unpredictability of political conflict and natural systems.
Planning thus serves as a lens to explore the political and epistemological dimensions of ecological thought, placing a materialist reading of a small case study into the broader context of contemporary ecological intervention.