In this essay (updated in 2019), Bron Taylor offers background about the events that gave rise to the Earth First! movement and reviews some of the watershed moments in its history, including its print publications.
Reflections on Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island by Sabina Magagnoli.
In the fall of 2024, Amitav Ghosh visited the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society as part of the project “One Book—Many Worlds: Munich Reads Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh.” This exhibition emerges from the multifaceted discussion of climate change and its challenges conducted in the “One Book—Many Worlds” project and grapples with the question of the role of literary fiction in interdisciplinary academic exchange and climate communication beyond academia. Taking Amitav Ghosh’s recent writings on the global climate crisis, in particular the novel Gun Island, as a vantage point, the chapters in this exhibition engage with various aspects Gun Island from different disciplinary perspectives, drawing on storylines and narrative elements that allow a multifocal engagement with different social and ecological repercussions of climate change. Additionally, pieces from the spring 2025 taumelnd trauen, verschlungen bleiben student exhibition and winning and honorable mentions from the 2025 “Tell the Untold!” writing competition take the provocation to think creatively about the past and future of our environment and world further. Thereby, the exhibition chapters create a web of diverse thoughts on and readings of the role of storytelling for the contemporary interlinked social and environmental crises from a number of perspectives.
About This Exhibition
Dive into a pivotal 1993 lecture by renowned Professor Bron Taylor as he unravels the complex tapestry of the American conservation movement. This insightful presentation offers a panoramic view, tracing the philosophical and spiritual roots that shaped environmental thought and action, particularly focusing on the rise of the deep ecology movement and what Taylor terms “pagan environmentalism.”
Is technology neutral, or is it the architect of our alienation? In this March 2005 lecture, anarcho-primitivist philosopher John Zerzan argued that civilization itself—defined by domestication, division of labor, and industrial technology—is the root cause of modernity’s ecological and psychological dysfunctions.
Experience Australian environmental activist John Seed’s powerful “Ecological Healing” lecture. Introduced by University of Florida professors Shaya Isenberg & Bron Taylor, Seed, a deep ecology pioneer, calls for reconnecting with our planet, challenging the anthropocentric worldview fueling environmental destruction.
Judi Bari’s lecture on Revolutionary Ecology, with two songs at the outset, which illuminates her nature spirituality and biocentrism, her critiques of capitalism as inherently antithetical to environmental sustainability, and her strategic efforts to forge alliances between workers and environmentalists in defense of the redwood biome in Northern California.
The lecture features environmental activist Dave Foreman, introduced by Bron Taylor at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh in 1990. The event situates Foreman’s ideas within the emerging discourse on radical environmentalism and its ethical foundations.
Maril Hazlett calls for a more critical and nuanced reassessment of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, examining both its impact and its limitations in reaching diverse sectors of society.
Christof Mauch highlights the global and enduring influence of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, emphasizing her prophetic style and lasting impact on worldwide environmental thought and action.
Joan Maloof contrasts her father’s defense of DDT with her embrace of Rachel Carson’s message in Silent Spring, highlighting the personal and generational tensions surrounding pesticide use and environmental responsibility.
