Derrick Jensen (activist)
Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox writer Derrick Jensen is an American ecophilosopher<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> in the anarcho-primitivist tradition.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Early and personal life
Derrick Jensen was born in 1960<ref name=Dugan>Template:Cite web</ref> in Nebraska and was raised in Colorado.<ref name=Triplicate>Template:Cite news</ref> He attended the Colorado School of Mines with a scholarship and graduated with a bachelor's degree in mineral engineering and physics. Even before graduating, he intended to become a writer. Jensen worked briefly in engineering and as a small commercial beekeeper. He became ill from Crohn's disease and had a slow recovery. His experience with the disease contributed to his approach towards Western culture. In 1991, Jensen received a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Eastern Washington University.Template:R
He lives in Crescent City, California, and has cats.Template:R
Writing and activism
Jensen's writing and philosophy centers on the destructive tendencies of Western culture and how it proliferates between people and generations. His The Culture of Make Believe, a nonlinear composite of memoir and philosophy, outlines how Western culture was built upon brutality. Jensen has said this approach comes from wanting to be honest and "forthright without whining". When writing about massacres, slavery, and industrial forestry, he balances statistics and personal stories to "mix analysis with blood".Template:R
He wrote for two environmental organizations in 1995. A commission from an environmental organization led to his co-authored Railroads and Clearcuts, and Sierra Club Books published his interviews with activists, Listening to the Land. Jensen began A Language Older Than Words in 1996, published by Context Books in 2000. He described the book as beginning a trilogy, starting with how to be "sane in a crazy culture", followed by what one sees by becoming sane (The Culture of Make Believe), followed by what to do about what one sees.Template:R
Jensen is a critic of the mainstream environmental movement's focus on preserving civilization and technology over preserving the natural world.<ref name="politico">Holzman, Jael (2022). "How a Fight over Transgender Rights Derailed Environmentalists in Nevada". Politico.</ref> He promotes civil disobedience, radical activism, and dismantling infrastructure on a massive level in order to halt what he has called "the murder of the planet".<ref name="politico"/>
Lierre Keith and Jensen co-founded Deep Green Resistance in 2011.<ref name="politico"/> His belief, and the organization's position, that women-only spaces should exclude trans women has drawn criticism.<ref name=EW>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="politico"/>
Reception
Utne Reader named Jensen among "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World" in 2008,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Democracy Now! says that he "has been called the poet-philosopher of the ecology movement".<ref name="dominant culture killing">Template:Cite interview</ref>
Selected works
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- https://web.archive.org/web/20160518054016/http://bombmagazine.org/article/5421/vcfa.edu/writing-publishing
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- https://web.archive.org/web/20070320123626/http://www.hindu.com:80/br/2005/12/13/stories/2005121300761600.htm
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References
External links
- 1960 births
- Living people
- 21st-century American male writers
- 21st-century American non-fiction writers
- 21st-century American novelists
- American anti-capitalists
- American environmentalists
- American feminist writers
- American male non-fiction writers
- American male novelists
- American non-fiction environmental writers
- Anti-consumerists
- Colorado School of Mines alumni
- Deep ecologists
- Eastern Washington University alumni
- Ecofeminists
- American feminist musicians
- American male feminists
- Writers from Colorado
- Writers from Washington (state)