Iker Arranz

This monograph sets out from the idea of an obscure and perverted relationship between environmentalism, understood as a 21 st century green and popular movement, and pornography, understood as a traditionalist and conservative art form. Both sides seem to come together in the interest of what has been called the Anthropocene. Somehow the same groups that rely on a fierce defense of the planet and demand a collective awareness of the risk the entire humanity faces do not do it any longer on behalf of an unknown future or revolutionary goal, but for the conservation of a still image of Earth: a positive conviction on how the future is going to look like. This aporia is dissolved into an oxymoron when environmentalist practices are put at work.

In this article, I examine the relationship between environment and political consciousness, articulating an argument that links the organic side and the economical level of environmentalist claims, and exposing some of the social movements and political positions that were coined in the Basque Country in the end of the 20 th century and beginning of the 21 st century. Some of the protests linked to environmental causes in the Basque Country fit with the narratives that give access to the new century and describe the coming concepts in the form of advent with regards to notions like sustainability, organic, energy policies, post-ideologies and even the relationship between food and environment in more recent years. In this direction, environmental movements have succeeded in confusing the materialistic goals of their claims and the very materialism implicit in nature. Thus, I claim that these movements have complied from conservative positions rather than progressist positions. Therefore, there has been an asymmetry with the ideological portion of these claims and protests and the truly emancipatory goals of any progressist position. If the drive for sustainability can counter materialist and idealist proposals, we need to find a solution where “sustainable” means organic without the bodily part of the organic term itself.