When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime .

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital Magazine NEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
Ideas

Just Stop Art? 'Just Stop Oil' And Rousseau's Flawed Nature-Culture Divide

In the last few weeks, the Just Stop Oil protests have been catapulted to global attention by soiling art masterpieces in the name of environmental protection. But their choice of target says just as much about their view of art as their view of oil.

Photo of Just Stop Oil activists after splashing tomato soup across Van Gogh’s Sunflowers

Just Stop Oil activists after splashing tomato soup across Van Gogh’s Sunflowers

Gaspard Koenig

-OpEd-

PARIS — In a matter of weeks, tomato sauce splashed across Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, mashed potatoes covered Monet’s Haystacks, and human hands were firmly stuck on Picasso’s Massacre in Korea.

The climate activists who performed those striking actions are part of a global collective. "Just Stop Oil" is the name of their branch in the UK; "Letzsche Generation" in Germany; "Fireproof" in Australia; or "Dernière rénovation" in France. They object to their governments’ climate inaction and, more generally, society’s inaction.

Despite all my efforts, as a progressive and eco-anxious citizen, I still couldn’t come to celebrate their protests. Of course, it was all symbolic because the paintings were glass-covered and well protected. And yet why do I still find all of this objectionable?


Have I already fallen out of touch? How can we explain the discomfort felt when we see those masterpieces being soiled?

A generation more mature than its elders

Is it their message that I find displeasing? I really don’t think so. Raising awareness on climate issues is more necessary today than ever. In the last few days, a WWF report stated that 70% of the wild animal population disappeared in the last 50 years; a CNRS study predicted that global warming in France was going to be worse than expected; and the UN Secretary-General warned of a current "planetary catastrophe."

And yet, as if this is not happening, people keep exploiting new gas fields in South Africa; they keep constructing giant basins for irrigation; and they organize bobsleigh contests in the middle of the desert.

Political conquests always began with provocative acts that are barely legal

So the young rebels appear, surprisingly, much more reasonable than those adults who continue with their self-destructing actions, wearing suits and ties. The activists' protests are based on scientific arguments and moderate demands ("Just Stop Oil" is not asking for the destruction of capitalism, but for energy retrofit in social housings).

It is maybe the first time in history where the new generation looks more mature than its elders.

A protest from French climate activists in Paris, ahead of the COP27

Dernière Rénovation

Civil disobedience

Is it their method, then, that I don’t like? Not even. Political conquests always began with provocative acts that are barely legal. Henry David Thoreau, who invented the concept of civil disobedience in the 19th century, was imprisoned because he refused to pay federal taxes to the U.S., because it still supported slavery.

And Teresa Billington-Greig organized exploits that resulted in her being arrested several times before she was able to bring the feminist movement to the public’s opinion.

What disturbs me is the target. Those paintings were not just chosen because the media would talk about them. In their various interviews, the Just Stop Oil activists are systematically mocking our attachment for those simple paintings — an attachment that they find ridiculous while the planet is burning.

We cannot build an ecological world by acting against civilization

This kind of ecology activism is explicitly playing the nature-culture divide again — a direct reference to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s First Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. And the philosopher already created a buzz back in 1749 when he glorified the simplicity of virtue against the corrupting arts.

Questioning growth without rejecting progress

But we cannot build an ecological world by acting against civilization — and against the best creative minds of that civilization.

So, let us not fight the wrong battle here. It is not about getting back to the innocence described as the state of nature by Rousseau. This is only a delusional consolation from modernity. What is at stake here is the reconciliation of the Anthropocene and our ecosystem. And this is a hard task. But we can question growth without rejecting progress.

Would a humanity deprived of its groundbreaking works of art even be worth saving?


You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Society

Iran Bans Women From Going To Male Doctors — Gender Laws, Beyond The Hijab

Recovering from the shock of Iran's 2022 mass protests, the clerical regime has vigorously resumed its campaign to enforce Islamic hijab rules. But it is also pushing for gender segregation in other important ways across society

photo of women in black robes and headscarves in iran

Iranian women police officers

Updated on Nov. 7, 2023 at 2:35 p.m.

Iran's deputy-chief prosecutor, Ghulam Abbas Turki, has instructed the country's health ministry to prevent male physicians from treating female patients, saying this is a violation of morals and the law.

Turki wrote in a letter published on Sept. 14 that men working in a technical and non-technical capacity in "certain clinics" were creating "problems and difficulties for respectable ladies and their families" and even causing them "emotional and psychological problems."

Article 290 of the country's criminal code is designed to address this, he wrote. A shortage of women's clinics like birthing centers, especially in provincial districts, is forcing women into hospitals with male staff, Turki wrote — therefore, the ministry must reorganize to ensure it had the necessary female staff, from specialists to GPs, technicians, anaesthetists and nurses, across the country.

Gender segregation was on the Islamic Republic's agenda almost as soon as it took power early in 1979, and it has since sought to implement it where it could. Most recently, following mass rioting in 2022 that was in part a revolt against the Iranian regime's forceful moralizing, the state has resumed efforts to enforce its hijab or public modesty and dress norms.

Last month, Armita Geravand, an Iranian teenage girl died after reports that she was accosted by officials on Tehran's Metro while not wearing a headscarf. Geravand's death comes after her being in a coma for weeks in Tehran and after the one-year anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini which sparked nationwide protests at the time.

Beyond the hijab crackdown, the regime is also now taking a step further with gender segregation.This was evident in a flurry of communiqués and instructions issued in past months to public bodies, including hospitals. More importantly, the parliamentary legal affairs committee has approved a 70-article Hijab and Modesty Bill (Layehe-ye hejab va efaf) the judiciary proposed to parliament in the spring of 2023.


Keep reading...Show less

The latest