How Not to Think about Climate Change

Abstract

Fifty years ago, Auguste Rodin’s famous work The Thinker was bombed at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This essay uses the occasion and the artwork to reflect upon the challenge of thinking amidst the climate crisis.

50年前，奥古斯特·罗丹的著名作品思想者在克利夫兰艺术博物馆遭到炸弹袭击. 这篇文章利用这个场合和艺术作品来反思在气候危机中思考的挑战。

Hace cincuenta años, el famoso trabajo de Augusto Rodin, El Pensador, fue atacado con una bomba en el Museo del Arte de Cleveland. Este ensayo aprovecha la ocasión y el trabajo artístico para reflexionar sobre el reto de pensar en medio de la crisis del clima.

Key Words:

• Auguste Rodin
• bombing
• climate change
• The Thinker

关键词:

• 奥古斯特·罗丹
• 轰炸
• 气候变化、
• 思想者

Palabras clave:

• atentado con bomba
• Augusto Rodian
• cambio climático
• El Pensador

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For helpful comments or inspiration, I thank Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, Guille Bervejillo, Jennifer Calkins, Deborah Dixon, Will Jones, Geoff Mann, Kristin Mercer, and anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. True of bombings by revolutionary groups of this era generally (but see Mann 2017).

2. So far as I am aware, the Museum does not plan to mark the anniversary of the bombing.

3. Accompanied each time by my daughter, Inés, to whom I dedicate this essay.

4. According to one database, there were over fifty bombings in March 1970 (GitHub 2019).

5. As some recognized at the time: “No one can pass the shattered green man without asking himself what it tells us about the violent climate of the United States in the year 1970. It is more than just a work of art now” (Condon 1970).

6. For the technical review of the conservation practices, see Christman (1998).

7. These claims are elaborated in Climate Leviathan (Wainwright and Mann 2018).

8. Higher levels of scientific understanding correlate to wealth (the richer, the better the education); wealth is a causal factor for carbon emissions (cf. Timmons, Knight and Schor 2014; Roberts and Parks 2007).

9. Rodin had been commissioned to design a monumental bronze door for a never-completed Musée des Arts Décoratifs, on the site of the present-day Musée d’Orsay, home today to a plaster of “The Gates of Hell” (Rodin 2020).

10. This particular statue, acquired by the Cleveland Art Museum in 1917, was one of the last large-scale casts produced under Rodin’s direct supervision (CMA 2019).

11. Theories of alienation reflect the young Marx’s critical observations on the “object … labor’s product—confront[ed] as something alien, as a power independent of the producer” (Marx 1844, §XXII). Here, what is confronted is not a commodity produced by an alienated proletariat, but an esthetic representation of a particular form of alienation. The two qualities of alienation are historically implicated but distinct.

12. On Ohio’s colonization and the challenge of thinking through our climate crisis, see Bendik-Keymer (2020).

13. “Ralph Thrall King (1855–1926) … was a prominent Cleveland businessman and the President of Realty Investment Co., the largest holder of downtown Cleveland real estate at the turn of the century” (CMA 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joel Wainwright

JOEL WAINWRIGHT is Professor in the Department of Geography at Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210. E-mail: [email protected]. Author of Decolonizing Development (2008, Blackwell), Geopiracy (2013, Palgrave), and Climate Leviathan (2018, Verso, with Geoff Mann), he is presently writing a book about Karl Marx and natural history.