RESCUING LADY NATURE
33
relationships that determines the scale by which agricultural workers will be
able to apply organic fertilizer, as well as whether the soil and water will be
too damaged by previous chemical abuse. Hence, whereas organic fertilizer
represents a necessary condition for an ethical and ecological agriculture, it
alone represents an insufficient condition. The sufficient condition for a
liberatory organic agriculture is a social and politically just context: the
reconstruction of political and social institutions which not only ecologize, but
democratize agricultural practice.
TIhe TecIhnoRx: SkyiNq TIhe TEchiN<>DRAqoN
At this juncture we might ask ourselves: why are there so few discussions
which explore questions of institutional power in regards to technology in the
Ecology Movement? Why have ecological discussions of technology tended
toward romantic dreams of slaying dragons of ‘modem technology5? Why
would so many in the ecology movement prefer to critique the universal
category of ‘technology5 in general as a social medium, rather than critique the
political and economic social relations which engender particular technological
practices?27
Many of us who grew up in post-cold war America have little
consciousness of a revolutionary tradition. Few are aware that there existed a
time before die state or capitalism. We accept these hegemonic institutions as
inevitable, irreplaceable, and taken-for-granted. Therefore, when we are moved
to critique society, we focus on questions of social mediums we believe we
can change, rather than on social or political relationships and institutions
which we see as universal and insurmountable.
Romantic yearnings for ‘low5 technologies tend to lead to some pretty
ironic outcomes. A few years back, neo-Luddite Kirkpatrick Sale enacted his
anger at ‘technology’ by smashing a computer on stage at New York’s Town
Hall. Now surely, Sale knows as he takes a hammer to the machine that the
computer possesses no autonomous institutional social power. He knows that
the computer is neither neutral nor technologically determined, but that it
represents a social medium, a social-technological expression of the institutions
of the military, the state, arid corporations such as IBM or Microsoft. By
smashing the computer in the social forum of New York City’s Town Hall in
Manhattan, Sale tells us that he wishes his critique to be social if not explicitly
public. Yet Sale belongs to no municipal political forum in which his position
regarding the goodness or badness of computer technology has any authentic
political power. Rather than express his voice politically, Sale’s voice is
rendered spectacular as the glossy (computer enhanced) photograph of him
heroically slaying the computer on a page of Wired Magazine (a computer
users’ publication).