New
Materialism

Ecology without Ecological Thought

Oikos-oikos. Where is my oecology? Seeing houses, but where is the garden, where is the –logy? Humans poses a milieu, but not ecology. What is the difference here?

The difference is in the approach of relationality, or rather the substance of relationality. A milieu is an interwoven web of engagements, which “…do not stay at a distance, but entangle with bodies” (Parrika, 2011, p. 37). This entangled bodies perform in the pastures of naturecultures and in the medianatures tubes of hyper-saturated relationscapes.
For example, air was not designed for human bodies, and it took some time before humans start to perform as facilitating apparatus of breathing in the air and releasing CO2. Since humans are not very efficient in releasing a proper amount of CO2, they had to employ machines to help them in this task. If one looks at the human race, they still look and feel as unrefined breathing apparatuses, trying to return the gift of breathing back to their creators a sea of CO2.The more people pollute, the closer they get to the divine stage of being accepted as proper breathing apparatuses. The one who pollutes the most , returns the best the gift of life in the form of death.

Marching forwards, the milieu is opening doors of perception towards contracting forces and establishing links with the multitude of agents participating and interacting with various mediums, but one which is seemingly ever more technological than ecological.

synonym: relations
antonym: environment
hypernym: digging
hyponym: dark ecology

References
Parrika, J. (2011). Media Ecologies and Imaginary Media: Transversal Expansions, Contractions, and Foldings. Fiberculture Journal, 17.