Make Bread with Human Excrement! Pierre Leroux, the Circulus, and the Nourishment of Humanity
Drolet, Michael
Make Bread with Human Excrement! Pierre Leroux, the Circulus, and the Nourishment of Humanity - 2025.
17
This article examines one of the most striking nineteenth-century critiques of the chemico-industrial transformation of agriculture and food, Pierre Leroux’s circulus. In response to the development of a capital-intensive system of agriculture, one that understood the introduction of artificial fertilizers as augmenting soil’s ability to produce without interruption and thereby yielding agriculture infinite productive gains, Leroux advanced a radical critique of extractive agriculture and developed an alternative theory of a sustainable circular economy. Leroux’s circulus, was part of a wider and deeper rejection of liberal political economy that disparaged both commodity fetichism and capitalism’s imperative of constant expansion and thereby challenged the practices of the exploitation of humans, animals, and the soil. Leroux’s circulus embodied an idea of a harmonious, equal, and free relationship between humanity and nature. Yet the circulus was no naïve or utopian response to the chemico-industrial transformation of agriculture and food. It was deeply embedded in the scientific literature of its day and maintained scientific truths that an emerging chemical vision of the world evaded. This article situates Leroux’s circulus within this wider scientific context and shows how it participated in a scientific debate on the industrial transformation of agriculture. The article shows how Leroux’s circulus contained a vision of farming, alimentation, and nature that, in the face of today’s intimately connected crises of agriculture and the climate may help us rethink our relationship to nature, agriculture, and food.
Make Bread with Human Excrement! Pierre Leroux, the Circulus, and the Nourishment of Humanity - 2025.
17
This article examines one of the most striking nineteenth-century critiques of the chemico-industrial transformation of agriculture and food, Pierre Leroux’s circulus. In response to the development of a capital-intensive system of agriculture, one that understood the introduction of artificial fertilizers as augmenting soil’s ability to produce without interruption and thereby yielding agriculture infinite productive gains, Leroux advanced a radical critique of extractive agriculture and developed an alternative theory of a sustainable circular economy. Leroux’s circulus, was part of a wider and deeper rejection of liberal political economy that disparaged both commodity fetichism and capitalism’s imperative of constant expansion and thereby challenged the practices of the exploitation of humans, animals, and the soil. Leroux’s circulus embodied an idea of a harmonious, equal, and free relationship between humanity and nature. Yet the circulus was no naïve or utopian response to the chemico-industrial transformation of agriculture and food. It was deeply embedded in the scientific literature of its day and maintained scientific truths that an emerging chemical vision of the world evaded. This article situates Leroux’s circulus within this wider scientific context and shows how it participated in a scientific debate on the industrial transformation of agriculture. The article shows how Leroux’s circulus contained a vision of farming, alimentation, and nature that, in the face of today’s intimately connected crises of agriculture and the climate may help us rethink our relationship to nature, agriculture, and food.
Réseaux sociaux