Grammatical subjects,‘Hell is other people’,and irreprehensible nature

Abstract

This piece takes the scholarly debate over the causes of environmental change in the Mezquital Valley of Mexico as a starting point from which to explore an understudied aspect of human-nature relations. I first inspect English grammar – grammatical subjects in particular – to reveal how scholars who reach discrepant conclusions about environmental change face the disruptive subjectivities of one another. The discussion then draws in Jean-Paul Sartre’s well-known statement that ‘Hell is other people’ to show how subjectivity has given rise to a class of negative sentiments that we apply to other people but not to nature or any element thereof. I conclude by describing an essential difference between our interpersonal relations and our individual relations with nature, what must happen for Sartre’s definition of Hell to broaden, and how nature emerges free of our judgment.