A volume pays tribute to Jean-Paul Deléage, recently deceased, who was the brain of an authentically political ecology in France at the end of the XXe century.
Sometimes, in certain demonstrations, we come across the slogan attributed to the Brazilian Chico Mendes: “ Ecology without class struggle is gardening. » Political ecology version Jean-Paul Deléage (1941-2023) is not in a gardening mood… She is from the outset both environmentalist and political. “ (…) ecological problems are also, inseparably, social and political. You have to (…) choose your ecology ! », affirmed Deléage in 1992 in “ Ecology: the new theoretical requirements », the manifesto article opening n°1 of the journal Political ecology.
The mixtures (of selected pieces and tributes) which were published after his death by Estelle Deléage and Mathias Lefèvre under the title Jean-Paul Deléage: a fight for the biosphere converge to show that Deléage’s political ecology gives the adjective “ policy » a strong, very strong meaning. He did not become an environmentalist to avoid politics ; on the contrary, “ all his theoretical and practical reflection was forged from the intimate conviction that environmental problems found their cause in the (capitalist) social system and that it was therefore necessary to change it. », underline the coordinators in the introduction (p. 15). Wanting to protect the biosphere from (industrial) growth is wanting to change the (capitalist) world. This program articulating Marxism and ecology in one thought at a time “ red and green », to use the words of Michael Löwy, has brought together since the 1970s various thinkers including Jean-Paul Deléage, a physicist by training, the Catalan economist Joan Martinez Alier (who here signs the tribute of a brother in arms) and the philosopher André Gorz. The discourse that Gorz implemented as a philosopher and journalist, Deléage invented, with others, as a teacher-researcher “ indisciplinary »: physicist, ecological historian and geographer. New speech, new name, as he declared at the end of a conference given in 1991 (p. 98):
“ Freeing humanity from the constraints of exploitation, adjusting modes of production to the needs of the reproduction of nature, these are two current objectives that must be aligned with the ideals that supported the historic movement for socialism. How to designate this hope ? Perhaps by the term “ecosocialism”. (…) Ecology can make it possible to reformulate this ancient hope against the productivist and authoritarian models of socialism, which have all failed “.
A political researcher
Born into politics in Saint-Étienne during the years of the Algerian War, convinced that as a physicist he would be neither Newton nor Einstein (p. 199), Deléage began by combining his two passions — politics and physics — and gave himself as his first object of reflection the political effects of energy. His project intersects with others and all these projects together take off jointly in Paris 7, in a favorable intellectual environment, alongside the biologist Christian Souchon, the agronomist Jorge Vieira da Silva and the historian Jean Chesneaux (who will be president of Greenpeace between 1998 and 2002). What is created there, collectively – football enthusiast, supporter of the Saint-Étienne Greens (you can’t make it up), Deléage has always played collective -, in the wake of the work of Serge Moscovici and René Passet, in an interdisciplinary construction (physics, history of science and technology, etc.), between ecological science and politics, is unprecedented in France. It was at this time that Deléage completed a thesis under the supervision of Jean-Jacques Salomon, historian of science, then teaching at CNAM.
What is at stake here is of course not just an intellectual adventure, it is a real political and then educational adventure. This political ecology is about bringing it onto the political scene – as much as possible – and then teaching it. Deléage is both a member of Friends of the Earth (environmental activist), of the LCR (political activist) and SNESup (unionized teacher).
The economic crisis of the 1970s seemed otherwise caused solely by the energy crisis (“the shocks » oil companies), at least synchronous with it. Writing about energy from a political point of view at a time when, with the oil crisis, we are imagining a nuclear outcome is relevance itself. Nuclear power is no longer a political object only as a military issue, it also becomes one as a civilian issue.
Committed environmentalist
He works to convince (and convinces) the left of the left (the LCR in this case because, as Martínez Alier recalls in the volume, “ THE PC loved (and still loves. Ch. D) nuclear power » (p. 83)) then got involved in the campaign of the communist renovator Pierre Juquin (supported by the LCR and the PSU) during the 1988 presidential election, before joining the Greens. We are in a phase (which will last until 1995) where Deléage believes he can bring in “ in the short term » the ecological idea in the institutional political sphere (Ecology and politicsn°15/1995, p. 8)… During this presidential campaign, Deléage demonstrated a “ practical mind » which strikes Pierre Juquin: “ What minister he would have made in a progressive government ! » he exclaims in the text of memories which appears in the volume (p. 193). Politics, failing to do so at the governmental level, he will do so at the municipal level, in Ivry-sur-Seine, for “ alert, act, educate and transmit », explains in turn Édith Deléage-Perstunski (p. 197).
At the same time, he wrote an impressive number of articles (the volume gives around fifteen to read), including “ Nuclear energy and the transition to socialism » published in the magazine Communist criticism in 1978 (special issue “ May 1968-May 1978 » — article reproduced in volume p. 99 sq.), a text with revolutionary overtones which will find eight years later – eight years that one imagines of intense work – an extension and support in the great book written in collaboration with Jean-Claude Debeir and Daniel Hémery, two historians from Paris 7, The servitudes of power. A history of energy (Paris, Flammarion, 1986). This book, which has become a classic and translated into several languages, puts the question of energy into perspective (it goes back to Egypt, Rome, ancient China, etc.), explains – at the very moment of the Chernobyl disaster – how humanity got to where it is and thus sheds light from the depths of history on the nuclear rescue supported by the entire French political world to emerge from the oil crisis. A symbol of power and independence in the eyes of the State, nuclear power functions, capitalistically speaking, like an oligopoly or a cartel (with a small number of suppliers and a large number of applicants). The three authors of this History of energy propose to abandon nuclear power and plead for a socialism on a human scale, democratic, focused on free time, requiring little energy, promoting renewable sources and definitively freed from the laws of capital accumulation. Ecosocialism is not only a way of politicizing ecology, it is also a way of reinventing socialism, of inventing “ a new ecological and planetary citizenship, a new culture which puts an end to the disciplinary divisions of another age, our pre-ecological age “.
The articles included in the volume show a great reader attentive not only to ecological questions but also to research. Deléage reads a lot (p. 202) and, after having made his honey from his varied readings, he shares it: here we will find comments on essays (Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Barbara Demeneix, etc.) and fiction (Ursula le Guin, Ernest Callenbach, etc.). He used the Marxian concept of metabolism long before everyone rediscovered it via John Bellamy Foster’s book (Marx’s Ecology. Materialism and NatureNew York, Monthly Review Press, 2000), unhesitatingly follows in the footsteps of Jacques Grinevald (from the concept of thermo-industrial revolution to that of the Anthropocene). He is very attentive to the freedom of research – of movement “ Let’s save the search » (2004), he writes at the moment that it must be understood “ like the redeployment of the class struggle on a new terrain » (p. 226) — and the need for research of a cosmopolitical nature (p. 223).
He is also interested in “ merchants of doubt “, At “ climate change denial » (p. 245). If he started by pulling on the energy question, he continued to work on the whole range of ecological questions. If we had to choose an adjective to describe its political ecology, it would be the beautiful adjective “ humanist » now called into question: “ Ecology, humanism of our time », he dared to title an article from 1993 (Political ecologyn°5/1993).
For an educational ecology
But Deléage’s importance is not only political and intellectual, it is also educational. Just as he worked to bring the environmentalist idea to the stage of institutional politics, he worked to bring it to the University. He set up a “ rebellious teaching » (p. 272). This is clearly highlighted in their tribute by Denis Chartier and Estienne Rodary, who were his students as part of the DEA “ Environment: time, spaces, societies » — created in 1995, at the University of Orléans — then its doctoral students: “ It will be up to Jean-Paul Deléage to (shake up) the frameworks sufficiently to make possible a collective and institutional inclusion of political ecology in France » (p. 271), to be the “ true founder of a political ecology movement within the academic world » (p. 272). Françoise Gollain, who wrote a thesis including “ the main reference author » was André Gorz under the direction of Deléage, confirms which “ passer (…) in practice (and) in theory » it was (p. 283).
Previously, in 1993, he had participated in the creation of a doctorate in environment and development at the University of Paraná, in Brazil, as recalled by Alfio Brandenburg and Angela Duarte Ferreira (p. 291). Constructed collectively — as The History of Energy is written collectively – Deléage’s ecology-politics is a shared thought-action. Even before that, he had founded with Frédéric Brun – who had accompanied him in supporting the candidacy of Pierre Juquin then with the Greens (the party, not the football team…) – the magazine Political ecologywhich became, in 1995, Ecology & Politicsanother reflection-transmission-sharing device.
The selected pieces and the tributes that make up this volume give access to a great figure in political ecology, a man who never stopped thinking about how to promote the ecological idea and act as an environmentalist. He was the brain of an authentically political ecology in France in the years 1990-2000. Looking back on his life in 2020, he declared: “ I am a failed footballer, a half-failed physicist and a convinced environmentalist » (p. 197). Convinced and convincing.