The Elemental Turn

The Elemental Turn

This essay was commissioned by Joanna Warsza and Lorena Moreno Vera for the book The Way of the Water. 

Why are we currently experiencing an elemental turn? Why are today’s artists and writers addressing the four elements: water, earth, fire and air? I will attempt to outline an answer to these questions, and I propose that we recognise the elemental turn as a critical diagnosis of contemporary life that is both an answer and a reaction to the climate catastrophe and the deepening destruction of the environment. In addition to this, this essay will set out three arguments that are relevant to the development of a new elemental ethics. Firstly, such an elemental ethics is essential as a means of drawing our attention to the current human-made state of the elements and of insisting that we take political and economic action that is based on our responsibility to these elements. Secondly, elemental ethics focuses on the irrevocable physical interdependence of people and thirdly, it also highlights the elements’ inherent right to exist, which is neither inferior nor subordinate to our rights as humans.