Abstract

This article explores the historical-epistemological conditions, the aesthetic expressions, and the operationalization of the tension between circles and cycles in ecology from 1950 to 1970.1 The symbolism of the circle manifests itself both in the diagrammatics of ecology—that is, the drawings, illustrations, and tables that visualize ecological relations—and in the forms of knowledge associated with it, which in turn are the basis of biopolitical operationalizations that organize the living by modifying its surroundings.2 The diagrams I discuss in the following, which mainly come from ecosystem ecology, show sections of a whole, which, according to their implicit holism, has a unifying function for the parts and is therefore brought into the image with the symbolism of the circle to circumvent the partiality of the observations that it is supposed to visualize. Accordingly, I examine the significance of the circle for the representation of cycles until 1970, when the circle largely (and quickly) disappears, at least from scientific debates. The reason for this disappearance is related to scientific ecology’s turning away from presuppositions of stability, equilibrium, and harmony—the very figures symbolized by the circle—toward new concepts such as resilience or multistability that bring forth new conceptions of circulation. The latter establish a biopolitics of continuous adaptation to environmental fluctuations that replaces (or rather complements) the old biopolitics of regulating environments as that which surrounds organisms. Within this imaginary, the circle plays a central role and to investigate this imaginary, this article sheds light on the problematic traditions of holistic thinking within ecology as well as the transformations of biopolitics.