Micah White has written a blog post for Adbusters that explores Serres's philosophical development of the idea of mental pollution as an extension of primitive biological pollution as the marking of territory. The post is based on Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution? which gives expression to Serres's ideas about human interactions with other natural systems and what those interactions might mean. Here is a sample from the post:
The importance of Michel Serres' contribution to mental environmentalism is that he is the first to philosophically ground mental environmentalism upon a unified theory of pollution that explains how advertisements are an extension of toxic sludge. Until now, the mental environmentalist argument has been that just as polluted rivers are a necessary byproduct of creating paper so too are polluted mindscapes a byproduct of creating consumers. While this argument is still true, and Serres makes a similar point in his book, Serres has managed to do something even more profound: he has shown why one cannot be an environmentalist without also being a mental environmentalist. In closing the gap between physical and mental toxins, Serres has closed the gap between physical and mental ecology.
The photo of Serres in this post is from the blog Karavan Papou and contains an excerpt by Serres on educating the 21st century.
