ABSTRACT
After defining discourse and stating that the very term “environment,” which assumes a separation between the subject and his/her surroundings, results from a specific discourse about nature, the chapter introduces the different discourses on the environment. It first addresses anthropocentrism as the mainstream discourse, and points out the ideas of thinkers who, in the past, expressed themselves in a different manner. It then deals with less hegemonic positions within environmentalism, such as biocentrism, ecocentrism, and deep ecology. In the following section, it takes into account the positions of ecofeminism and posthumanism, stressing how the need to overcome the nature-culture dualism must be taken into consideration, in parallel with the need to overcome other dualisms typical of the Western imagination, such as male/female or black/white. As critical geographers point out, the tendency to interpret differences in binary terms, typical of Western imagination, is also used in spatial terms to interpret the world in accordance with dualisms as developed/undeveloped, or civilized/uncivilized. On this basis, the chapter concludes by suggesting a greater integration between the geographical and the ecofeminist/posthuman approach.
