Rights of nature

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_nature

Rights of nature or Earth rights is a legal and jurisprudential theory that describes inherent rights as associated with ecosystems and species, similar to the concept of fundamental human rights. The rights of nature concept challenges twentieth-century laws as generally grounded in a flawed frame of nature as "resource" to be owned, used, and degraded. Proponents argue that laws grounded in rights of nature direct humanity to act appropriately and in a way consistent with modern, system-based science, which demonstrates that humans and the natural world are fundamentally interconnected.

This school of thought is underpinned by two basic lines of reasoning. First, since the recognition of human rights is based in part on the philosophical belief that those rights emanate from humanity's own existence, logically, so too do inherent rights of the natural world arise from the natural world's own existence. A second and more pragmatic argument asserts that the survival of humans depends on healthy ecosystems, and so protection of nature's rights in turn, advances human rights and well-being.

From a rights of nature perspective, most environmental laws of the twentieth century are based on an outmoded framework that considers nature to be composed of separate and independent parts, rather than components of a larger whole. A more significant criticism is that those laws tend to be subordinate to economic interests, and aim at reacting to and just partially mitigating economics-driven degradation, rather than placing nature's right to thrive as the primary goal of those laws. This critique of existing environmental laws is an important component of tactics such as climate change litigation that seeks to force societal action to mitigate climate change.

As of June 2021, rights of nature laws exist at the local to national levels in at least 39 countries, including dozens of cities and counties throughout the United States. They take the form of constitutional provisions, treaty agreements, statutes, local ordinances, and court decisions. A state constitutional provision is being sought in Florida.

Basic tenets

Proponents of rights of nature argue that, just as human rights have been recognized increasingly in law, so should nature's rights be recognized and incorporated into human ethics and laws. This claim is underpinned by two lines of reasoning: that the same ethics that justify human rights, also justify nature's rights, and, that humans' own survival depend on healthy ecosystems.

Thomas Berry - a U.S. cultural historian who introduced the legal concept of Earth Jurisprudence who proposed that society's laws should derive from the laws of nature, explaining that "the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects"

First, it is argued that if inherent human rights arise from human existence, so too logically do inherent rights of the natural world arise from the natural world's own existence. Human rights, and associated duties to protect those rights, have expanded over time. Most notably, the 1948 adoption by the United Nations, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that formalized recognition of broad categories of inalienable human rights. Drafters of the UDHR stated their belief that the concept of fundamental human rights arose not from "the decision of a worldly power, but rather in the fact of existing."

Some scholars have contended thereafter that, given that basic human rights emanate from humans' own existence, nature's rights similarly arise from the similar existence of nature, and so humans' legal systems should continue to expand to recognize the rights of nature.

Some notable proponents of this approach include U.S. cultural historian Thomas Berry, South African attorney Cormac Cullinan, Indian physicist and eco-social advocate Vandana Shiva, and Canadian law professor and U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and the Environment David R. Boyd.

Vandana Shiva - an Indian scholar and activist who has written extensively on Earth Jurisprudence and Earth Democracy that she describes as based on "local communities – organized on principles of inclusion, diversity, and ecological and social responsibility"

Thomas Berry introduced a philosophy and ethics of law concept called Earth jurisprudence that identifies the earth's laws as primary and reasons that everything by the fact of its existence, therefore, has an intrinsic right to be and evolve. Earth Jurisprudence has been increasingly recognized and promoted worldwide by legal scholars, the United Nations, lawmakers, philosophers, ecological economists, and other experts as a foundation for Earth-centered governance, including laws and economic systems that protect the fundamental rights of nature.

Second, support for rights of nature also is supported through the utilitarian argument that humanity can only thrive in the long term by accepting integrated co-existence of humans with the natural world. Berry noted that the concept of human well-being derived from natural systems with no fundamental right to exist is inherently illogical, and that by protecting nature's rights, humans advance their own self-interest.

The legal and philosophical concept of rights of nature offers a shift from a frame of nature as property or resource, to nature as an interconnected Earth community partner. This school of thought aims at following the same path that human rights movements have followed, where at first recognition of rights in the rightless appeared "unthinkable", but later matured into a broadly-espoused worldview.

Christopher Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California, wrote extensively on this topic in his seminal essay, "Should Trees Have Standing", cited by a U.S. Supreme Court dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton for the position that "environmental issues should be tendered by [nature] itself." As described by Stone and others, human rights have increasingly been "found" over time and declared "self-evident", as in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, even where essentially non-existent in the law. The successes of past and current human rights movements provide lessons for the current movement to widen the circle of Earth community to include natural systems and species populations as rights-bearing entities.

Underpinnings and development

Critique of anthropocentric legal systems

Proponents of a shift to a more environmentally protective system of law contend that current legal and economic systems fail because they consider nature fundamentally as property, which can be degraded for profit and human desire. They point out that the perspective of nature as primarily an economic resource already has degraded some ecosystems and species so significantly that now, prominent policy experts are examining "endangered species triage" strategies to decide which species will be let go, rather than re-examine the economics driving the degradation. While twentieth and twenty-first century environmental laws do afford some level of protection to ecosystems and species, it is argued that such protections fail to stop, let alone reverse, overall environmental decline, because nature is by definition subordinated to anthropogenic and economic interests, rather than biocentric well-being.

Rights of nature proponents contend that re-envisioning current environmental laws from a nature's rights frame demonstrates the limitations of current legal systems. For example, the U.S. Endangered Species Act prioritizes protection of existing economic interests by activating only when species populations are headed toward extinction. By contrast, a "Healthy Species Act" would prioritize achievement of thriving species populations and facilitate economic systems that drive conservation of species.

As another example, the European Union's Water Framework Directive of 2000, "widely accepted as the most substantial and ambitious piece of European environmental legislation to date", relies on a target of "good status" of all EU waters, which includes consideration of needed "ecological flows". However, decades after the Directive's adoption, despite scientific advances in identifying flow-ecology relationships, there remains no EU definition of "ecological flow", nor a common understanding of how it should be calculated. A nature's rights frame would recognize not only the existing human right to water for basic needs, but would also recognize the rights of waterways to adequate, timely, clean water flows, and would define such basic ecological flow needs accordingly.

Underlying science and ethics

Modern environmental laws began to arise in the 1960s out of a foundational perspective of the environment as best managed in discrete pieces. For example, United States laws such as the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and numerous others began to be adopted in the early 1970s to address various elements of the natural world, separately from other elements. Some laws, such as the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act, called for a more holistic analysis of proposed infrastructure projects and required the disclosure of expected negative environmental impacts. However, it did not require that actions be taken to address those impacts in order to ensure ecosystem and species health.

These laws reflected the science of the time, which was grounded in a reductionist analysis of the natural world; the modern, system-based understanding of the natural world, and the integrated place of humans with it, was still in development. The first major textbook on ecological science that described the natural world as a system rather than a collection of different parts, was not written until 1983. The Gaia Hypothesis, which offered a scientific vision of the world as a self-regulating, complex system, first arose in the 1970s. Systems dynamics similarly began to evolve from a business focus to include socioeconomic and natural systems starting in the 1970s. Since then, scientific disciplines have been converging and advancing on the concept that humans live in a dynamic, relationship-based world that "den[ies] the possibility of isolation".

While science in the late twentieth century shifted to a systems-based perspective, describing natural systems and human populations as fundamentally interconnected on a shared planet, environmental laws generally did not evolve with this shift. Reductionist U.S. environmental laws passed in the early 1970s remained largely unchanged, and other national and international environmental law regimes similarly stopped short of embracing the modern science of systems.

Nineteenth century linguist and scholar Edward Payson Evans, an early rights of nature theorist and author of "the first extensive American statement of (...) environmental ethics”, wrote that each human is “truly a part and product of Nature as any other animal, and [the] attempt to set him up on an isolated point outside of it is philosophically false and morally pernicious”.

Thomas Berry proposed that society's laws should derive from the laws of nature, explaining that "the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects". From the scientific perspective that all life arose from the context of the universe, Berry offered the ethical perspective that it is flawed to view humans as the universe's only subjects, with all other beings merely a collection of objects to be owned and used. Rather, consideration of life as a web of relationships extending back to a shared ancestry confers subject status to all, including the inherent rights associated with that status. Laws based on a recognition of the intrinsic moral value of the natural world, create a new societal moral compass that directs society's interactions with the natural world more effectively toward well-being for all.

Aldo Leopold - a scientist and forester who advocated to "see land as a community to which we belong" rather than as "a commodity belonging to us" (1946 photograph)

Scientists who similarly wrote in support of expanded human moral development and ethical obligation include naturalist John Muir and scientist and forester Aldo Leopold. Leopold expressed that "[w]hen we see land as a community to which we belong", rather than "a commodity belonging to us", we can "begin to use it with love and respect". Leopold offered implementation guidance for his position, stating that a "thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Berry similarly observed that "whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; what is opposed to this meadow or negates it is not good." Physician and philosopher Albert Schweizer defined right actions as those that recognize a reverence for life and the "will to live".

The outgrowth of scientific and ethical advances around natural systems and species is a proposed new frame for legal and governance systems, one grounded in an ethic and a language that guide behavior away from ecological and social practices that ignore or minimize human-nature interconnections. Rather than a vision of merely "sustainable development", which reflects a frame of nature maintained as economic feedstock, scholars supporting rights of nature suggest that society is beginning to consider visions such as "thriving communities", where "communities" includes nature as a full subject, rather than simply an object to be used.

History

Common roots with Indigenous worldviews

The ethical and philosophical foundation of a nature's rights legal theory and movement is a worldview of respect for nature, as contrasted with the "nature domination" worldview that underlies the concept of nature as object and property. Indigenous law professor John Borrows observed that "[w]ithin indigenous legal traditions, creation stories... give guidance about how to live with the world", rather than live at odds with it. A 2012 international Declaration of Indigenous Peoples found that modern laws destroy the earth because they do not respect the "natural order of Creation". The Declaration observed that humans "have our place and our responsibilities within Creation's sacred order" and benefit from "sustaining joy as things occur in harmony with the Earth and with all life that it creates and sustains".

Indigenous worldviews align with and have accelerated the development of rights of nature law, including in Ecuador and Bolivia. Ecuador amended its constitution in 2008 to recognize the rights of nature in light of the perceived need to better protect and respect Pachamama, a term that embodies both the physical and the spiritual aspects of the natural world. Bolivia similarly amended its constitution and enacted nature's rights statutes to reflect traditional Indigenous respect for Pachamama, and a worldview of natural systems and humans as part of one family.

New Zealand law professor Catherine Iorns Magallanes observed that traditional Indigenous worldviews embody a connection with nature is so deep that nature is regarded as a living ancestor. From this worldview arises responsibilities to protect nature as one would a family member, and the need for a legal structure that reflects a primary frame of responsibilities to the natural world as kin.

Common roots with world religions

Many of the world's other religious and spiritual traditions offer insights consistent with a nature's rights worldview. Eastern religious and philosophical traditions embrace a holistic conception of spirituality that includes the Earth. Chinese Daoism and Neo-Confucianism, as well as Japanese Buddhism, teach that the world is a dynamic force field of energies known as bussho (Buddha nature or qi), the material force that flows through humans, nature, and universe. As the eleventh century pioneering Neo-Confucianist philosopher Zhang Zai explained, "that which extends throughout the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature".

In both Hinduism and Buddhism, karma ("action" or "declaration" in Sanskrit) reflects the reality of humanity's networked interrelations with Earth and universe. Buddhist concepts of “co-dependent arising” similarly hold that all phenomena are intimately connected. Mahayana Buddhism's "Indra's Net" symbolizes a universe of infinitely repeated mutual relations, with no one thing dominating.

Western religious and philosophical traditions have recognized the context of Earth and universe in providing spiritual guidance as well. From the Neolithic through the Bronze ages, the societies of "Old Europe" revered numerous female deities as incarnations of Mother Earth. In early Greece, the earth goddess Gaia was worshipped as a supreme deity. In the Philebus and Timaeus, Plato asserted that the "world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence (...) a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related". Medieval theologian St. Thomas Aquinas later wrote of the place of humans, not at the center of being, but as one part of an integrated whole with the universe as primary, stating that “The order of the universe is the ultimate and noblest perfection in things."

More recently, Pope Benedict XVI, head of the Catholic church, reflected that, "[t]he obedience to the voice of Earth is more important for our future happiness... than the desires of the moment. Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive." His successor, Pope Francis, has been particularly vocal on humanity's relationship with the Earth, describing how humans must change their current actions in light of the fact that "a true 'right of the environment' does exist". He warned against humanity's current path, stating that "the deepest roots of our present failures" lie in the direction and meaning of economic growth, and the overarching rule of a "deified market".

The Qur’an, Islam's primary authority in all matters of individual and communal life, reflects that "the whole creation praises God by its very being". Scholars describe the "ultimate purpose of the Shari'ah" as "the universal common good, the welfare of the entire creation," and note that "not a single creature, present or future, may be excluded from consideration in deciding a course of action."

Bringing together Western and Indigenous traditions, Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke of "Ubuntu", an African ethical concept that translates roughly to "I am because you are", observing that: "Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness... We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world."

Common roots with human rights

Human rights have been developing over centuries, with the most notable outgrowth being the adoption of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations in 1948. Key to the development of those rights are the concepts of natural rights, and rights of humans emanating from the existence of humanity.

Roderick Fraser Nash, professor of history and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, traced the history of rights for species and the natural world back to the thirteenth century Magna Carta's launch of the concept of "natural rights" that underlies modern rights discourse.

Peter Burdon, professor at the University of Adelaide Law School and an Earth Jurisprudence scholar, has expanded upon Nash's analysis, offering that seventeenth century English philosopher and physician John Locke's transformative natural rights thesis led to the American Revolution, through the concept that the British monarchy was denying colonists their natural rights. Building on that concept, U.S. President, attorney, and philosopher Thomas Jefferson argued that the "laws of nature and of nature's God" reveal "self-evident" truths that "all Men are created equal" in their possession of "certain unalienable rights", particularly "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen later recognized as well the "natural, inalienable and sacred rights of Man", adding that the "final end of every political institution is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of Man."

The expansion of rights continued out to animals, with eighteenth-nineteenth century English philosopher and legal theorist Jeremy Bentham claiming that the “day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny”. Nineteenth century linguist and scholar Edward Payson Evans observed that:

"[i]n tracing the history of the evolution of ethics we find the recognition of mutual rights and duties confined at first to members of the same horde or tribe, then extended to worshippers of the same gods, and gradually enlarged so as to include every civilized nation, until at length all races of men are at least theoretically conceived as being united in a common bond of brotherhood and benevolent sympathy, which is now slowly expanding so as to comprise not only the higher species of animals, but also every sensitive embodiment of organic life."

The 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations was another milestone, underpinned by the belief that fundamental human rights arise from "the fact of existing". The movement for rights of nature built on this belief, arguing that if "existence" is the defining condition for fundamental rights, this defining condition could not be limited to the rights of only one form of existence, and that all forms of existence should enjoy fundamental rights. For example, Aldo Leopold's land ethic explicitly recognized nature's "right to continued existence" and sought to "change the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it".

Proponents of the rights of nature also contend that from the abolition of slavery, to the granting of the right to vote to women, to the civil rights movement, and the recognition of other fundamental rights, societies have continued to expand rights in parallel with a growing acceptance of the inherent moral worth of the potential new rights holders. And, that this expansion of the circle of community ought to continue to grow to encompass the natural world, a position that has seen growing acceptance in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first.

Proponents suggest that rights derived from existence in nature do not confer human rights to all beings, but rather confer unique rights to different kinds of beings. Thomas Berry put forth the theory that rights "are species specific and limited"; that is, "rivers have river rights", "birds have bird rights", and "humans have human rights". In his view, the difference is "qualitative, not quantitative".

Extending this point, the common ethical and moral grounding of human rights and the rights of nature gives rise to the concept of "co-violations" of rights, defined as a "situation in which governments, industries, or others violate both the rights of nature and human rights, including indigenous rights, with the same action". For example, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, pollution from Texaco's (now Chevron) oil drilling operations from 1967 to 1992 resulted in an epidemic of birth defects, miscarriages, and an estimated 1,400 cancer deaths, that were particularly devastating to indigenous communities. These operations further caused more than one million acres of deforestation and polluted local waterways with 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater and contaminants, severely damaging a formerly pristine rainforest of extraordinary biodiversity. Asserting that the same human actions that created such impacts violated the fundamental rights of both people and natural systems, it is argued that ethical and legal theories that recognize both sets of rights will better guide human behavior to recognize and respect humans' interconnected relationships with each other and the natural world.

As with the recognition of human rights, legal scholars find that recognition of the rights of nature alters the framework of human laws and practices. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe theorized further that "choosing to accord nature a fraternal rather than an exploited role... might well make us different persons from the manipulators and subjugators we are in danger of becoming".

20th and 21st century developments

The adoption of the UDHR in 1948 formalized recognition of broad categories of inalienable human rights globally. These include recognition that "[a]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights", that "[e]veryone has the right to life, liberty and security of person", and that "[e]veryone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted". Recognition of fundamental rights in "soft law" instruments such as the UDHR provided guidance to nations around the world, who have since developed constitutional provisions, statutes, court decisions, regulations, and other bodies of law based on the UDHR and the human rights it champions.

Decades later, USC law professor Christopher Stone called for recognition of the legal standing and associated rights of the natural world as well, consistent with the "successive extension of rights" throughout legal history. As was done in the UDHR, Stone outlined the necessary elements of nature's participation in human legal systems, describing such a legal system as necessarily including: recognition of injuries as subject to redress by public body, standing to institute legal actions (with guardians acting on behalf of the natural entity), redress calculated for natural entity's own damages, and relief running to the benefit of the injured natural entity.

In addition to Stone's legal work, other late twentieth and early twenty-first century drivers of the rights of nature movement include indigenous perspectives and the work of the indigenous rights movement; the writings of Arne Naess and the Deep Ecology movement; Thomas Berry's 2001 jurisprudential call for recognizing the laws of nature as the "primary text"; the publication of Cormac Cullinan's Wild Law book in 2003, followed by the creation of an eponymous legal association in the UK; growing concern about corporate power through the expansion of legal personhood for corporations; adoption by U.S. communities of local laws addressing rights of nature; the creation of the Global Alliance of the Rights of Nature in 2010 (GARN; a nonprofit advancing rights on nature worldwide); and mounting global concerns with species losses, ecosystem destruction, and the existential threat of climate change.

These and other factors supported the development of the 2010 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth (UDRME). The UDRME was adopted by representatives of 130 nations at the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, convened in Bolivia following the concerns of many regarding the disappointing results of the 2009 Copenhagen climate negotiations. Just as the U.N. recognized human rights as arising from existence, so did the UDRME find that the "inherent rights of Mother Earth are inalienable in that they arise from the same source as existence". Like the UDHR, the UDRME defends the rights-bearing entity (nature and her elements) from the excesses of governing authorities. These rights include, among others, the recognition that "Mother Earth and all beings of which she is composed have... the right to life and to exist" as well as the "right to integral health". The UDRME adds that "[e]ach being has the right to a place and to play its role in Mother Earth for her harmonious functioning".

Just as the rights protected by the UDHR are enforceable by the "right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals", so too does the UDRME specifically require humans and their institutions to "recognize and promote the full implementation and enforcement of the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration". The UDRME addresses enforcement by requiring "damages caused by human violations of the inherent rights" to be "rectified", with those responsible "held accountable".[88] Moreover, it calls on states to "empower human beings and institutions to defend the rights of Mother Earth and of all beings".

Bolivian President Evo Morales urged then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to make U.N. adoption of the UDRME a priority. While that recommendation remains to be addressed, since then the UDRME has served to inform other international and national efforts, such as a 2012 Resolution by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) proposing a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature. The Incorporation of the Rights of Nature was adopted at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawaii (2016).

As of 2021 rights of nature has been reflected in treaties, constitutions, court decisions, and statutory and administrative law at all levels of government. Craig Kauffman, political science professor at the University of Oregon, and scholar of nature's rights and global governance, contends that evolving rights of nature initiatives and networks represent an "important new global movement" arising from "an informal global governance system... being constructed by citizens disillusioned by the failure of governments to take stronger actions to address the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss".

Rights of nature law

Main article: Rights of nature law

The early 2000s saw a significant expansion of rights of nature law, in the form of constitutional provisions, treaty agreements, national and subnational statutes, local laws, and court decisions. As of 2022, nature's rights laws exist in 24 countries, (up from 17 in 2021) including in Canada, at least seven Tribal Nations in the U.S. and Canada, and over 60 cities and counties throughout the United States. The total number of countries with either existing or pending rights of nature legal provisions was 29 as of 2022.

Related initiatives

The development of stronger and more active transnational rights of nature networks during the early 2000s, is a likely cause for the greater adoption of those championed principles into law. This has occurred in close integration with other, system-changing initiatives and movements for rights, including: development and implementation of new economic and finance models that seek to better reflect human rights and nature's rights; indigenous leadership to advance both the rights of indigenous peoples and nature's rights; international social movements such as the human right to water; advancement of practical solutions consistent with a nature's rights frame, such as rewilding; and rights of nature movement capacity building, including through development of nature's rights movement hubs globally.

To illustrate implementation of nature's rights laws, the nonprofit Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature established "International Rights of Nature Tribunals". These are civil society initiatives and they issue non-binding recommendations. The tribunals bring together advocates of rights of nature, human rights, and rights of indigenous peoples into a process similar to the Permanent Peoples' Tribunals. The goal of the tribunals is to provide formal public recognition, visibility, and voice to the people and natural systems injured by alleged violations of fundamental rights and marginalized in current law, and to offer a model for redress for such injuries.

As awareness of rights of nature law and jurisprudence has spread, a new field of academic research is developing, where legal scholars and other scholars have begun to offer strategies and analysis to drive broader application of such laws, particularly in the face of early implementation successes and challenges.

In popular culture

The 2018 documentary Rights of Nature: A Global Movement, directed by Isaac Goeckeritz, Hal Crimmel and Valeria Berros explores the challenges of creating new legal structures in relation to Rights of Nature.

A documentary film entitled Invisible Hand about the rights of nature movement, directed by Joshua Boaz Pribanic and Melissa Troutman of Public Herald, was released in 2020, executive-produced and narrated by actor Mark Ruffalo. It won four Best Documentary Awards.

The Overstory, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list, examined relationships with and rights of trees.

The podcast Damages explores the concept of the rights of nature in different contexts.

The Daily Show covered the concept of the rights of nature in an episode.

Green imperialism

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_imperialism
Green politics

Green imperialism or eco-imperialism or eco-colonialism or environmental imperialism is a derogatory epithet alluding to what is perceived as a Western strategy to influence the internal affairs of mostly developing nations in the name of environmentalism.

Etymology

The sceptical perception of the Brundtland report by the Third World elites was summarized as green imperialism by Helge Ole Bergesen in 1988. In 1999, the same meaning was used by Deepak Lal in his book "Green Imperialism: A Prescription for Misery and War in the World's Poorest Countries". Nonetheless, the same term is used differently in Richard Grove's book "Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism 1600–1860" in 1995. In Grove's book, it means the impact of utopian tropical islands on European data-driven scientists resulting in early environmentalism.

The first mentions of the terms environmental colonialism or eco-colonialism appeared in connection with debt-for-nature swaps since 1989. It was feared that the however well-intentioned environmental protection programs could be perceived as middlesome and imperialistic. The establishment of national parks in Africa has in some cases led to the impoverishment and displacement of local populations.

Eco-imperialism also known as ecoimperialism was originally an abbreviation for ecological imperialism as in the book by Alfred Cosby, but changed its meaning after the publication of Paul Driessen's book "Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death" in 2003. Cosby's eco-imperialism is interference with a degrading effect on the environment of targeted countries, while Driessen's eco-imperialism is interference with a degrading effect on the economy in the name of environmental improvement.

Potential examples

Several European governments announced boycotts of Malaysian timber due to unsustainable deforestation in Malaysia. Malaysia's Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamed, opposed the boycotts, arguing that "we are not exploiting the forests for no good reason. We need money. We have to export wood because we need the foreign exchange without which we cannot buy what we want."

During "Battle in Seattle" in 1999, media presented environmentalism as a new form of imperialism. The rich, developed countries impose their environmental preferences and priorities on the developing countries.

In 2009, Germany called French proposal of carbon tariffs as eco-imperialism. Back then, greenhouse tariffs met strong opposition from developing countries such as India and China, since these tariffs would impact their exports.

The biofuel transnational meta-standard regulation of the European Union promotes certain sustainable fuels. However, this regulation extends beyond EU's jurisdistion and raises the issue of eco-imperialism.

In 2014, Joji Morishita, a Japanese commissioner, expressed his concerns about calls of sustainable whaling from the International Whaling Commission by the words "The whaling issue is seen as a symbol of a larger issue sometimes in Japan... You might have heard the word 'eco-imperialism'".

The approval of the World Bank loan of $3.05bn (£2.4bn loan) for 4,764 MW Medupi Power Station drew criticism for supporting increased global emissions of greenhouse gases. If the coal plant was not built, there would have been significant limitations placed on industrial development in the country.

Relation to neoliberalism

It is sometimes described as a combination of global environmental and broad neoliberal agendas. Eco-imperialism is perceived to result in a policy of commodification of all resources of earth. This tendency of commodification of nature for environmental goals is also known as "selling nature to save it".

Political debates

See also: Environmental movement § Criticisms

Critical voices depreciate environmentalism as an excuse for hindering economic development of developing countries. Critics see alternative energy sources as far from realistic, and fossil fuels as the key to lifting entire populations out of poverty. Developing nations, led by Brazil, India and Singapore, opposed entangling global trade with pollution controls in 1994, calling them hidden protectionism, which will keep jobs in the developed countries and deprive poor nations of their competitive advantages. The agenda of environmentalist NGOs is called neo-colonialism and eco-imperialism in 2022 by Japan, Peru, South Africa, Kenya and Bolivia. Eco-imperialism functions as a derogatory epiphet.

According to Anil Agarwal, a 1990 study by the World Resources Institute allocated responsibility for global warming to developing countries. Agarwal considered this study to be flawed, politically motivated, and unjust, and saw it more as exacerbating the North-South divide. In his 1991 paper, he called this an example of environmental colonialism and blamed U.S. overconsumption for global warming.

Environmental colonialism became a subject in the book "Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All" by Michael Shellenberger. In The Wall Street Journal, John Tierney, a long-standing critic of environmentalism, wrote that "Shellenberger makes a persuasive case, lucidly blending research data and policy analysis with a history of the green movement and vignettes of people in poor countries suffering the consequences of “environmental colonialism.”"

Futurism

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism

 

Gino Severini, 1912, Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin, oil on canvas with sequins, 161.6 × 156.2 cm (63.6 × 61.5 in.), Museum of Modern Art, New York

 

Italian futurists Luigi Russolo, Carlo Carrà, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini in front of Le Figaro, Paris, February 9, 1912

Futurism (Italian: Futurismo, pronounced [futuˈrizmo]) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. Its key figures included the Italians Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, and Luigi Russolo. Italian Futurism glorified modernity and according to its doctrine, aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past. Important Futurist works included Marinetti's 1909 Manifesto of Futurism, Boccioni's 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Balla's 1913–1914 painting Abstract Speed + Sound, and Russolo's The Art of Noises (1913).

Although Futurism was largely an Italian phenomenon, parallel movements emerged in Russia, where some Russian Futurists would later go on to found groups of their own; other countries either had a few Futurists or had movements inspired by Futurism. The Futurists practiced in every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, urban design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture, and even cooking.

To some extent Futurism influenced the art movements Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism, and Dada, and to a greater degree Precisionism, Rayonism, and Vorticism. Passéism [fr] can represent an opposing trend or attitude.

Italian Futurism

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913)

Futurism is an avant-garde movement founded in Milan in 1909 by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Marinetti launched the movement in his Manifesto of Futurism, which he published for the first time on 5 February 1909 in La gazzetta dell'Emilia, an article then reproduced in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro on Saturday 20 February 1909. He was soon joined by the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and the composer Luigi Russolo. Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. "We want no part of it, the past", he wrote, "we the young and strong Futurists!" The Futurists admired speed, technology, youth and violence, the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature, and they were passionate nationalists. They repudiated the cult of the past and all imitation, praised originality, "however daring, however violent", bore proudly "the smear of madness", dismissed art critics as useless, rebelled against harmony and good taste, swept away all the themes and subjects of all previous art, and gloried in science.

Publishing manifestos was a feature of Futurism, and the Futurists (usually led or prompted by Marinetti) wrote them on many topics, including painting, architecture, music, literature, theatre, cinema, photography, religion, women, fashion and cuisine.

The founding manifesto did not contain a positive artistic programme, which the Futurists attempted to create in their subsequent Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting (published in Italian as a leaflet by Poesia, Milan, 11 April 1910). This committed them to a "universal dynamism", which was to be directly represented in painting. Objects in reality were not separate from one another or from their surroundings: "The sixteen people around you in a rolling motor bus are in turn and at the same time one, ten four three; they are motionless and they change places. ... The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, and in their turn the houses throw themselves upon the motor bus and are blended with it."

The Futurist painters were slow to develop a distinctive style and subject matter. In 1910 and 1911 they used the techniques of Divisionism, breaking light and color down into a field of stippled dots and stripes, which had been adopted from Divisionism by Giovanni Segantini and others. Later, Severini, who lived in Paris, attributed their backwardness in style and method at this time to their distance from Paris, the centre of avant-garde art. Cubism contributed to the formation of Italian Futurism's artistic style. Severini was the first to come into contact with Cubism and following a visit to Paris in 1911 the Futurist painters adopted the methods of the Cubists. Cubism offered them a means of analysing energy in paintings and expressing dynamism.

Umberto Boccioni, sketch of The City Rises (1910)

They often painted modern urban scenes. Carrà's Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (1910–11) is a large canvas representing events that the artist had himself been involved in, in 1904. The action of a police attack and riot is rendered energetically with diagonals and broken planes. His Leaving the Theatre (1910–11) uses a Divisionist technique to render isolated and faceless figures trudging home at night under street lights.

Boccioni's The City Rises (1910) represents scenes of construction and manual labour with a huge, rearing red horse in the centre foreground, which workmen struggle to control. His States of Mind, in three large panels, The Farewell, Those who Go, and Those Who Stay, "made his first great statement of Futurist painting, bringing his interests in Bergson, Cubism and the individual's complex experience of the modern world together in what has been described as one of the 'minor masterpieces' of early twentieth century painting." The work attempts to convey feelings and sensations experienced in time, using new means of expression, including "lines of force", which were intended to convey the directional tendencies of objects through space, "simultaneity", which combined memories, present impressions and anticipation of future events, and "emotional ambience" in which the artist seeks by intuition to link sympathies between the exterior scene and interior emotion.

Boccioni's intentions in art were strongly influenced by the ideas of Bergson, including the idea of intuition, which Bergson defined as a simple, indivisible experience of sympathy through which one is moved into the inner being of an object to grasp what is unique and ineffable within it. The Futurists aimed through their art thus to enable the viewer to apprehend the inner being of what they depicted. Boccioni developed these ideas at length in his book, Pittura scultura Futuriste: Dinamismo plastico (Futurist Painting Sculpture: Plastic Dynamism) (1914).

Giacomo Balla, 1912, Dinamismo di un Cane al Guinzaglio (Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash), Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912) exemplifies the Futurists' insistence that the perceived world is in constant movement. The painting depicts a dog whose legs, tail and leash—and the feet of the woman walking it—have been multiplied to a blur of movement. It illustrates the precepts of the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting that, "On account of the persistency of an image upon the retina, moving objects constantly multiply themselves; their form changes like rapid vibrations, in their mad career. Thus a running horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular." His Rhythm of the Bow (1912) similarly depicts the movements of a violinist's hand and instrument, rendered in rapid strokes within a triangular frame.

The adoption of Cubism determined the style of much subsequent Futurist painting, which Boccioni and Severini in particular continued to render in the broken colors and short brush-strokes of divisionism. But Futurist painting differed in both subject matter and treatment from the quiet and static Cubism of Picasso, Braque and Gris. As the art critic Robert Hughes observed, "In Futurism, the eye is fixed and the object moves, but it is still the basic vocabulary of Cubism—fragmented and overlapping planes". Futurist art tended to distain traditional subjects, specifically those of photographically realistic portraits and landscapes. Futurists thought of "imitation" art that copied from life to be lazy, unimaginative, cowardly, and boring. While there were Futurist portraits: Carrà's Woman with Absinthe (1911), Severini's Self-Portrait (1912), and Boccioni's Matter (1912), it was the urban scene and vehicles in motion that typified Futurist painting; Boccioni's The Street Enters the House (1911), Severini's Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin (1912), and Russolo's Automobile at Speed (1913)

Umberto Boccioni, 1913, Dynamism of a Cyclist (Dinamismo di un ciclista), oil on canvas, 70 x 95 cm, Gianni Mattioli Collection, on long-term loan to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

 

Joseph Stella, Battle of Lights, Coney Island, 1913–14, oil on canvas, 195.6 × 215.3 cm (77 × 84.75 in), Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

The Futurists held their first exhibition outside of Italy in 1912 at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, Paris, which included works by Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Giacomo Balla.

In 1912 and 1913, Boccioni turned to sculpture to translate into three dimensions his Futurist ideas. In Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) he attempted to realise the relationship between the object and its environment, which was central to his theory of "dynamism". The sculpture represents a striding figure, cast in bronze posthumously and exhibited in the Tate Modern. (It now appears on the national side of Italian 20 eurocent coins). He explored the theme further in Synthesis of Human Dynamism (1912), Speeding Muscles (1913) and Spiral Expansion of Speeding Muscles (1913). His ideas on sculpture were published in the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture In 1915 Balla also turned to sculpture making abstract "reconstructions", which were created out of various materials, were apparently moveable and even made noises. He said that, after making twenty pictures in which he had studied the velocity of automobiles, he understood that "the single plane of the canvas did not permit the suggestion of the dynamic volume of speed in depth ... I felt the need to construct the first dynamic plastic complex with iron wires, cardboard planes, cloth and tissue paper, etc."

Aldo Palazzeschi, Carlo Carrà, Giovanni Papini, Umberto Boccioni, and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 1914

In 1914, personal quarrels and artistic differences between the Milan group, around Marinetti, Boccioni, and Balla, and the Florence group, around Carrà, Ardengo Soffici (1879–1964) and Giovanni Papini (1881–1956), created a rift in Italian Futurism. The Florence group resented the dominance of Marinetti and Boccioni, whom they accused of trying to establish "an immobile church with an infallible creed", and each group dismissed the other as passéiste.

Futurism had from the outset admired violence and was intensely patriotic. The Futurist Manifesto had declared, "We will glorify war—the world's only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman." Although it owed much of its character and some of its ideas to radical political movements, it was not much involved in politics until the autumn of 1913. Then, fearing the re-election of Giolitti, Marinetti published a political manifesto. In 1914 the Futurists began to campaign actively against the Austro-Hungarian empire, which still controlled some Italian territories, and Italian neutrality between the major powers. In September, Boccioni, seated in the balcony of the Teatro dal Verme in Milan, tore up an Austrian flag and threw it into the audience, while Marinetti waved an Italian flag. When Italy entered the First World War in 1915, many Futurists enlisted. The experience of the war marked several Futurists, particularly Marinetti, who fought in the mountains of Trentino at the border of Italy and Austria-Hungary, actively engaging in propaganda. The combat experience also influenced Futurist music.

The outbreak of war disguised the fact that Italian Futurism had come to an end. The Florence group had formally acknowledged their withdrawal from the movement by the end of 1914. Boccioni produced only one war picture and was killed in 1916. Severini painted some significant war pictures in 1915 (e.g. War, Armored Train, and Red Cross Train), but in Paris turned towards Cubism and post-war was associated with the Return to Order.

After the war, Marinetti revived the movement. This revival was called il secondo Futurismo (Second Futurism) by writers in the 1960s. The art historian Giovanni Lista has classified Futurism by decades: "Plastic Dynamism" for the first decade, "Mechanical Art" for the 1920s, "Aeroaesthetics" for the 1930s.

Russian Futurism

Main articles: Russian Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, and Ego-Futurism

 

Natalia Goncharova, Cyclist, 1913

 

Group photograph of several Russian Futurists, published in their manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste. Left to right: Aleksei Kruchyonykh, Vladimir Burliuk, Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burliuk, and Benedikt Livshits.

Russian Futurism was a movement of literature and the visual arts, involving various Futurist groups. The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was a prominent member of the movement, as were Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchyonykh; visual artists such as David Burliuk, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Lyubov Popova, and Kazimir Malevich found inspiration in the imagery of Futurist writings, and were writers themselves. Poets and painters collaborated on theatre production such as the Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun, with texts by Kruchenykh, music by Mikhail Matyushin, and sets by Malevich.

The main style of painting was Cubo-Futurism, extant during the 1910s. Cubo-Futurism combines the forms of Cubism with the Futurist representation of movement; like their Italian contemporaries, the Russian Futurists were fascinated with dynamism, speed and the restlessness of modern urban life.

The Russian Futurists sought controversy by repudiating the art of the past, saying that Pushkin and Dostoevsky should be "heaved overboard from the steamship of modernity". They acknowledged no authority and professed not to owe anything even to Marinetti, whose principles they had earlier adopted, and most of them obstructed him when he came to Russia to proselytize in 1914.

The movement began to decline after the revolution of 1917. The Futurists either stayed, were persecuted, or left the country. Popova, Mayakovsky and Malevich became part of the Soviet establishment and the brief Agitprop movement of the 1920s; Popova died of a fever, Malevich would be briefly imprisoned and forced to paint in the new state-approved style, and Mayakovsky committed suicide on April 14, 1930.

An example of Futurist architecture by Antonio Sant'Elia

Architecture

Further information: Futurist architecture

The Futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia expressed his ideas of modernity in his drawings for La Città Nuova (The New City) (1912–1914). This project was never built and Sant'Elia was killed in the First World War, but his ideas influenced later generations of architects and artists. The city was a backdrop onto which the dynamism of Futurist life is projected. The city had replaced the landscape as the setting for the exciting modern life. Sant'Elia aimed to create a city as an efficient, fast-paced machine. He manipulates light and shape to emphasize the sculptural quality of his projects. Baroque curves and encrustations had been stripped away to reveal the essential lines of forms unprecedented from their simplicity. In the new city, every aspect of life was to be rationalized and centralized into one great powerhouse of energy. The city was not meant to last, and each subsequent generation was expected to build their own city rather than inheriting the architecture of the past.

Futurist architects were sometimes at odds with the Fascist state's tendency towards Roman imperial-classical aesthetic patterns. Nevertheless, several Futurist buildings were built in the years 1920–1940, including public buildings such as railway stations, maritime resorts and post offices. Examples of Futurist buildings still in use today are Trento railway station, built by Angiolo Mazzoni, and the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence. The Florence station was designed in 1932 by the Gruppo Toscano (Tuscan Group) of architects, which included Giovanni Michelucci and Italo Gamberini, with contributions by Mazzoni.

Music

Main article: Futurism (music)

Futurist music rejected tradition and introduced experimental sounds inspired by machinery, and would influence several 20th-century composers.

Francesco Balilla Pratella joined the Futurist movement in 1910 and wrote a Manifesto of Futurist Musicians in which he appealed to the young (as had Marinetti), because only they could understand what he had to say. According to Pratella, Italian music was inferior to music abroad. He praised the "sublime genius" of Wagner and saw some value in the work of other contemporary composers, for example Richard Strauss, Elgar, Mussorgsky, and Sibelius. By contrast, the Italian symphony was dominated by opera in an "absurd and anti-musical form". The conservatories was said to encourage backwardness and mediocrity. The publishers perpetuated mediocrity and the domination of music by the "rickety and vulgar" operas of Puccini and Umberto Giordano. The only Italian Pratella could praise was his teacher Pietro Mascagni, because he had rebelled against the publishers and attempted innovation in opera, but even Mascagni was too traditional for Pratella's tastes. In the face of this mediocrity and conservatism, Pratella unfurled "the red flag of Futurism, calling to its flaming symbol such young composers as have hearts to love and fight, minds to conceive, and brows free of cowardice."

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) wrote The Art of Noises (1913), an influential text in 20th-century musical aesthetics. Russolo used instruments he called intonarumori, which were acoustic noise generators that permitted the performer to create and control the dynamics and pitch of several different types of noises. Russolo and Marinetti gave the first concert of Futurist music, complete with intonarumori, in 1914. However they were prevented from performing in many major European cities by the outbreak of war.

Futurism was one of several 20th-century movements in art music that paid homage to, included or imitated machines. Ferruccio Busoni has been seen as anticipating some Futurist ideas, though he remained wedded to tradition. Russolo's intonarumori influenced Stravinsky, Arthur Honegger, George Antheil, Edgar Varèse, Stockhausen and John Cage. In Pacific 231, Honegger imitated the sound of a steam locomotive. There are also Futurist elements in Prokofiev's The Steel Step and in his Second Symphony.

Most notable in this respect, however, is the American George Antheil. His fascination with machinery is evident in his Airplane Sonata, Death of the Machines, and the 30-minute Ballet Mécanique. The Ballet Mécanique was originally intended to accompany an experimental film by Fernand Léger, but the musical score is twice the length of the film and now stands alone. The score calls for a percussion ensemble consisting of three xylophones, four bass drums, a tam-tam, three airplane propellers, seven electric bells, a siren, two "live pianists", and sixteen synchronized player pianos. Antheil's piece was the first to synchronize machines with human players and to exploit the difference between what machines and humans can play.

Dance

The Futuristic movement also influenced the concept of dance. Indeed, dancing was interpreted as an alternative way of expressing man's ultimate fusion with the machine. The altitude of a flying plane, the power of a car's motor and the roaring loud sounds of complex machinery were all signs of man's intelligence and excellence which the art of dance had to emphasize and praise. This type of dance is considered futuristic since it disrupts the referential system of traditional, classical dance and introduces a different style, new to the sophisticated bourgeois audience. The dancer no longer performs a story, a clear content, that can be read according to the rules of ballet. One of the most famous futuristic dancers was the Italian Giannina Censi [it]. Trained as a classical ballerina, she is known for her "Aerodanze" and continued to earn her living by performing in classical and popular productions. She describes this innovative form of dance as the result of a deep collaboration with Marinetti and his poetry. Through these words, she says,

I launched this idea of the aerial-futurist poetry with Marinetti, he himself declaiming the poetry. A small stage of a few square meters;... I made myself a satin costume with a helmet; everything that the plane did had to be expressed by my body. It flew and, moreover, it gave the impression of these wings that trembled, of the apparatus that trembled, ... And the face had to express what the pilot felt."

Literature

Main article: Futurism (literature)

Futurism as a literary movement made its official debut with F. T. Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism (1909), as it delineated the various ideals Futurist poetry should strive for. Poetry, the predominant medium of Futurist literature, can be characterized by its unexpected combinations of images and hyper-conciseness (not to be confused with the actual length of the poem). The Futurists called their style of poetry parole in libertà (word autonomy), in which all ideas of meter were rejected and the word became the main unit of concern. In this way, the Futurists managed to create a new language free of syntax punctuation, and metrics that allowed for free expression.

Theater also has an important place within the Futurist universe. Works in this genre have scenes that are few sentences long, have an emphasis on nonsensical humor, and attempt to discredit the deep rooted traditions via parody and other devaluation techniques.

There are a number of examples of Futurist novels from both the initial period of Futurism and the neo-Futurist period, from Marinetti himself to a number of lesser known Futurists, such as Primo Conti, Ardengo Soffici and Bruno Giordano Sanzin (Zig Zag, Il Romanzo Futurista edited by Alessandro Masi, 1995). They are very diverse in style, with very little recourse to the characteristics of Futurist Poetry, such as 'parole in libertà'. Arnaldo Ginna's 'Le locomotive con le calze' (Trains with socks on) plunges into a world of absurd nonsense, childishly crude. His brother Bruno Corra wrote in Sam Dunn è morto (Sam Dunn is Dead) a masterpiece of Futurist fiction, in a genre he himself called 'Synthetic' characterized by compression, and precision; it is a sophisticated piece that rises above the other novels through the strength and pervasiveness of its irony. Science fiction novels play an important role in Futurist literature.

Film

See also: Italian futurism in cinema

 

Thaïs by Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1917)

Italian futurist cinema (Italian: Cinema futurista, pronounced [ˈtʃiːnema futuˈrista]) was the oldest movement of European avant-garde cinema. Italian futurism, an artistic and social movement, impacted the Italian film industry from 1916 to 1919. It influenced Russian Futurist cinema and German Expressionist cinema. Its cultural importance was considerable and influenced all subsequent avant-gardes, as well as some authors of narrative cinema; its echo expands to the dreamlike visions of some films by Alfred Hitchcock.

Most of the futuristic-themed films of this period have been lost, but critics cite Thaïs (1917) by Anton Giulio Bragaglia as one of the most influential, serving as the main inspiration for German Expressionist cinema in the following decade. Thaïs was born on the basis of the aesthetic treatise Fotodinamismo futurista (1911), written by the same author. The film, built around a melodramatic and decadent story, actually reveals multiple artistic influences different from Marinett's futurism; the secessionist scenographies, the liberty furniture, and the abstract and surreal moments contribute to create a strong formal syncretism. Thaïs is the only surviving example of the 1910s Italian futurist cinema to date (35 min. of the original 70 min.).

When interviewed about her favorite film of all times, famed movie critic Pauline Kael stated that the director Dimitri Kirsanoff, in his silent experimental film Ménilmontant "developed a technique that suggests the movement known in painting as Futurism".

Female Futurists

Within F. T. Marinetti's The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, two of his tenets briefly highlight his hatred for women under the pretense that it fuels the Futurist movement's visceral nature:

9. We intend to glorify war—the only hygiene of the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of anarchists, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and contempt for woman.
10. We intend to destroy museums, libraries, academics of every sort and to fight against moralism, feminism, and every utilitarian opportunistic cowardice.

Marinetti would begin to contradict himself when, in 1911, he called Luisa, Marchesa Casati a Futurist; he dedicated a portrait of himself painted by Carrà to her, the said dedication declaring Casati as a Futurist being pasted on the canvas itself.

In 1912, only three years after the Manifesto of Futurism was published, Valentine de Saint-Point responded to Marinetti's claims in her Manifesto of the Futurist Woman (Response to F. T. Marinetti). Marinetti even later referred to her as "the 'first futurist woman.'" Her manifesto begins with a misanthropic tone by presenting how men and women are equal and both deserve contempt. She instead suggests that rather than the binary being limited to men and women, it should be replaced with "femininity and masculinity"; ample cultures and individuals should possess elements of both. Yet, she still embraces the core values of Futurism, especially its focus on "virility" and "brutality". Saint-Point uses this as a segue into her antifeminist argument—giving women equal rights destroys their innate "potency" to strive for a better, more fulfilling life.

In Russian Futurist and Cubo-Futurist circles, however, from the start, there was a higher percentage of women participants than in Italy; examples of major female Futurists are Natalia Goncharova, Aleksandra Ekster, and Lyubov Popova. Although Marinetti expressed his approval of Olga Rozanova's paintings during his 1914 lecture tour of Russia, it is possible that the women painters' negative reaction to the said tour may have largely been due to his misogyny.

Despite the chauvinistic nature of the Italian Futurist program, many serious professional female artists adopted the style, especially so after the end of the first World War. Notably among these female futurists is F.T Marinetti's own wife Benedetta Cappa Marinetti, whom he had met in 1918 and exchanged a series of letters discussing each of their respective work in Futurism. Letters continued to be exchanged between the two with F. T. Marinetti often complimenting Benedetta – the single name she was best known as – on her genius. In a letter dated August 16, 1919, Marinetti wrote to Benedetta "Do not forget your promise to work. You must carry your genius to its ultimate splendor. Every day." Although many of Benedetta's paintings were exhibited in major Italian exhibitions like the 1930-1936 Venice Biennales (in which she was the first woman to have her art displayed since the exhibition's founding in 1895), the 1935 Rome Quadriennale and several other futurist exhibitions, she was oft overshadowed in her work by her husband. The first introduction of Benedetta's feminist convictions regarding futurism is in the form of a public dialogue in 1925 (with an L. R. Cannonieri) concerning the role of women in society. Benedetta was also one of the first to paint in Aeropittura, an abstract and futurist art style of landscape from the view of an airplane.

1920s and 1930s

Joseph Stella, 1919–20, Brooklyn Bridge, oil on canvas, 215.3 × 194.6 cm, Yale University Art Gallery

 

Sail: In Two Movements by Charles Demuth 1919

Many Italian Futurists supported Fascism in the hope of modernizing a country divided between the industrialising north and the rural, archaic South. Like the Fascists, the Futurists were Italian nationalists, laborers, disgruntled war veterans, radicals, admirers of violence, and were opposed to parliamentary democracy. Marinetti founded the Futurist Political Party (Partito Politico Futurista) in early 1918, which was absorbed into Benito Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in 1919, making Marinetti one of the first members of the National Fascist Party. He opposed Fascism's later exaltation of existing institutions, calling them "reactionary", and walked out of the 1920 Fascist party congress in disgust, withdrawing from politics for three years; but he supported Italian Fascism until his death in 1944. The Futurists' association with Fascism after its triumph in 1922 brought them official acceptance in Italy and the ability to carry out important work, especially in architecture. After the Second World War, many Futurist artists had difficulty in their careers because of their association with a defeated and discredited regime.

Marinetti sought to make Futurism the official state art of Fascist Italy but failed to do so. Mussolini chose to give patronage to numerous styles and movements in order to keep artists loyal to the regime. Opening the exhibition of art by the Novecento Italiano group in 1923, he said, "I declare that it is far from my idea to encourage anything like a state art. Art belongs to the domain of the individual. The state has only one duty: not to undermine art, to provide humane conditions for artists, to encourage them from the artistic and national point of view." Mussolini's mistress, Margherita Sarfatti, who was as able a cultural entrepreneur as Marinetti, successfully promoted the rival Novecento group, and even persuaded Marinetti to sit on its board. Although in the early years of Italian Fascism modern art was tolerated and even embraced, towards the end of the 1930s, right-wing Fascists introduced the concept of "degenerate art" from Germany to Italy and condemned Futurism.

Marinetti made numerous moves to ingratiate himself with the regime, becoming less radical and avant-garde with each. He moved from Milan to Rome to be nearer the centre of things. He became an academician despite his condemnation of academies, married despite his condemnation of marriage, promoted religious art after the Lateran Treaty of 1929 and even reconciled himself to the Catholic Church, declaring that Jesus was a Futurist.

An example of Futurist design: "Skyscraper Lamp", by the Italian architect Arnaldo dell'Ira, 1929

Although Futurism mostly became identified with Fascism, it had a diverse range of supporters. They tended to oppose Marinetti's artistic and political direction of the movement, and in 1924 the socialists, communists and anarchists walked out of the Milan Futurist Congress. The anti-Fascist voices in Futurism were not completely silenced until the annexation of Abyssinia and the Italo-German Pact of Steel in 1939. This association of Fascists, socialists and anarchists in the Futurist movement, which may seem odd today, can be understood in terms of the influence of Georges Sorel, whose ideas about the regenerative effect of political violence had adherents right across the political spectrum.

Aeropainting

Main article: Aeropittura

Aeropainting (aeropittura) was a major expression of the second generation of Futurism beginning in 1926. The technology and excitement of flight, directly experienced by most aeropainters, offered aeroplanes and aerial landscape as new subject matter. Aeropainting was varied in subject matter and treatment, including realism (especially in works of propaganda), abstraction, dynamism, quiet Umbrian landscapes, portraits of Mussolini (e.g. Dottori's Portrait of il Duce), devotional religious paintings, decorative art, and pictures of planes.

Aeropainting was launched in a manifesto of 1929, Perspectives of Flight, signed by Benedetta, Depero, Dottori, Fillìa, Marinetti, Prampolini, Somenzi and Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni). The artists stated that "The changing perspectives of flight constitute an absolutely new reality that has nothing in common with the reality traditionally constituted by a terrestrial perspective" and that "Painting from this new reality requires a profound contempt for detail and a need to synthesise and transfigure everything." Crispolti identifies three main "positions" in aeropainting: "a vision of cosmic projection, at its most typical in Prampolini's 'cosmic idealism' ... ; a 'reverie' of aerial fantasies sometimes verging on fairy-tale (for example in Dottori ...); and a kind of aeronautical documentarism that comes dizzyingly close to direct celebration of machinery (particularly in Crali, but also in Tato and Ambrosi)."

Eventually there were over a hundred aeropainters. Major figures include Fortunato Depero, Marisa Mori, Enrico Prampolini, Gerardo Dottori, Mino Delle Site and Crali. Crali continued to produce aeropittura up until the 1980s.

Legacy

Futurism influenced many other twentieth-century art movements, including Art Deco, Vorticism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Dada, and much later Neo-Futurism and the Grosvenor School linocut artists. Futurism as a coherent and organized artistic movement is now regarded as extinct, having died out in 1944 with the death of its leader Marinetti.

Nonetheless, the ideals of Futurism remain as significant components of modern Western culture; the emphasis on youth, speed, power and technology finding expression in much of modern commercial cinema and culture. Ridley Scott consciously evoked the designs of Sant'Elia in Blade Runner. Echoes of Marinetti's thought, especially his "dreamt-of metallization of the human body", are still strongly prevalent in Japanese culture, and surface in manga/anime and the works of artists such as Shinya Tsukamoto, director of the Tetsuo (lit. "Ironman") films. Futurism has produced several reactions, including the literary genre of cyberpunk—in which technology was often treated with a critical eye—whilst artists who came to prominence during the first flush of the Internet, such as Stelarc and Mariko Mori, produce work which comments on Futurist ideals. and the art and architecture movement Neo-Futurism in which technology is considered a driver to a better quality of life and sustainability values.

A revival of sorts of the Futurist movement in theatre began in 1988 with the creation of the Neo-Futurist style in Chicago, which utilizes Futurism's focus on speed and brevity to create a new form of immediate theatre. Currently, there are active Neo-Futurist troupes in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Montreal.

Futurist ideas have been a major influence in Western popular music; examples include ZTT Records, named after Marinetti's poem Zang Tumb Tumb; the band Art of Noise, named after Russolo's manifesto The Art of Noises; and the Adam and the Ants single "Zerox", the cover featuring a photograph by Bragaglia. Influences can also be discerned in dance music since the 1980s.

Japanese Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto's 1986 album "Futurista" was inspired by the movement. It features a speech from Tommaso Marinetti in the track 'Variety Show'.

In 2009, Italian director Marco Bellocchio included Futurist art in his feature film Vincere.

In 2014, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum featured the exhibition "Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe". This was the first comprehensive overview of Italian Futurism to be presented in the United States.

Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is a museum in London, with a collection solely centered around modern Italian artists and their works. It is best known for its large collection of Futurist paintings.