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Given these difficulties, there has been a tendency in recent theorizing
to try to bypass the impasse by looking at the humanity/nature problem
from a rather different point of view. Environmental philosopher and
feminist theorist Val Plumwood calls this point of view hybridity
(Plumwood, 2006, p. 52). Hybridity, she writes, clarifies the range
of theoretical options and can shift the problem focus in helpful ways
that dislodge blockages (ibid.; emphasis in the original). The block-
ages she has in mind are those we identified in the code of conduct
and state of being approaches to moving beyond anthropocentric
politics. The key to the hybrid approach is to recognize the links
between human and non-human concerns (ibid.), rather than seeing
them as two separate spheres.
Plumwood points out how Many, perhaps most, environmental
issues involve both humans and non-humans, often in connected ways
that are hard to disentangle , so that, In a small community, the people
who demonstrate about penguins are often the same ones who demon-
strate about traffic pollution (Plumwood, 2006, p. 59). She remarks
that Although mixing is the norm at the level of activism, at the level of
50 Green Political Thought
theory there is a puzzling segregation , and it is clear that she has the
theories we have been discussing in this chapter in mind when she writes
that Many theories create a choice between human and non-human
issues and forms of concern, or try to privilege one kind over the other
in some universalizing, context-insensitive way (for example, as deep
versus shallow ) (ibid.). From this point of view the attempt to bridge
the gap between the human and non-human spheres which character-
izes the philosophy described thus far in this chapter starts off on the
wrong foot. It fails to take into account the way in which environ-
mental issues involve both humans and non-humans , in Plumwood s
words. From the hybridity point of view deep ecology fails because
while it promotes valuing non-humans for their own sake . . . [it] makes
notably poor connections with human ecological issues (ibid., p. 60). In
this sense, deep ecology achieves no more than a reverse reduction to
non-human issues (ibid.; emphasis in the original) and is thus an
incomplete account of human and non-human emancipation.
Hybridity involves refiguring the deep/shallow distinction that drives
much deep ecological thinking. It involves seeing how the deep/shallow
metaphor cuts across the human/nature boundary. Plumwood s view
is that Some non-human concerns can be decidedly shallow , for
example those that automatically privilege human pets like cats or dogs
over other animals, or which treat pets as the paradigm of animality
(Plumwood, 2006, p. 63). By the same token, some human concerns
may be seen as deep . Another key theorist of hybridity (although he
doesn t use the word) is Bruno Latour. In stark contrast to much of the
thinking which we have analysed in this chapter, Latour wants the ecol-
ogy movement to let go of nature (Latour, 2004, p. 11) rather than
base its politics on it. This seems profoundly counter-intuitive from a
green point of view. Hybridity, though, is not only aimed at the liber-
ation of nature, but of humans and nature together. Latour says that
there is nothing more political than the activity of getting things
and people to speak. To date, politics has been about getting people
to speak, so the circle of legitimate political beings has (on one
typical account) been progressively widened to include those previously
excluded: people of colour, women and so on. Latour s position is that
deepness if it is to mean anything at all is about spreading the
capacity to speak across the human and non-human realms, and
crucially about realizing that that capacity is spread unevenly within
those realms as well as across them.
This might seem odd how can the capacity to speak be spread
unevenly within the realm of nature? It doesn t speak at all, does it?
Latour will agree that it doesn t speak, but he will point out that it has its
Philosophical foundations 51
spokespersons (Latour, 2004, p. 56), and these spokespersons ensure
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