Timothy Morton - Ecology without Nature Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics.pdf

ECOLOGYEcology without Nature � RETHINKING ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS TIMOTHY MORTON ! I, If i ! HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2007 I Copyright © 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved For Kate Printed in the United States of America ISBN-13: 978-0-674-02434-2 ISBN-l0: 0-674-02434-6 The Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available from the Library of Congress. Epigraph to Chapter 1, "To the Reader," by Denise Levertov, from Poems 1960-1967, copyright © 1961 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp., Pollinger Limited, and the proprietor. Pink Floyd, "Grantchester Meadows," Ul11l11agul11ma (EMI, 1969). Words and Music by Roger Waters. © Copyright 1970 (Renewed) and 1980 Lupus Music Co. Ltd., London, England. TRO-Hampshire House Publishing Corp., New York, controls all publication rights for the U.S.A. and Canada. Used by Permission. Karen Jacobs. for years of support and friendship. Robert Unger. Denise Gigante. I would like to thank all those students. Acknowledgments Writing this book has often called to mind a precarious picture of walking across a minefield with a bouquet of flowers. Seth Forrest and Christopher Schaberg. Jeffrey Robinson. writing. University of London while copyediting. Alan Liu. Sabrina Tom. Thanks in particular to Richard Schoch and Pa ul Hamilton. Margaret Ferguson. And I am equally grateful to my . David Nor­ brook. I am grateful to my entire "Ecomimesis " graduate class of Spring 2004. In particular. who have ex­ plored and shared these ideas since 1 99 8 . proofreading. both undergraduates and graduates. and indexing. Kate Flint. Greg Dobbins. Thanks go to my research assistants. Timothy Kreiner. The two anonymous readers appointed by Harvard University Press were extraordinarily encouraging. and Michael Ziser. Christopher Schaberg. Nicholas Roe. who helped me balance my life. Jane Stabler. Nigel Smith. Geoffrey Hartman. Karen Walker. Karen Weisman. James C. Daniel Thomas-Glass. Douglas Kahn. I benefited from a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship at Queen Mary. and Clara Van Zanten. for helping me to work through to the heart and soul of this proj ect: Seth Forrest. For those who encouraged me across. Eric 0' Brien. Robert Kaufman. Francisco Reinking. McKusick. Dalal Mansour. in classes at the University of Colorado and the University of California. I have nothing but thanks: David Clark. dressed in the costume of a clown. David Simpson. and teaching. To David Simpson in particular lowe a debt of gratitude beyond measure. a kind word. Lindsay Waters has been everything I would wish an editor to be. my wife Kate. She was the first to hear and discuss the ideas set down here. Rachel Swinkin. a suggestion. At every moment. At Harvard University Press.viii . Julie Tran. And she bore our daughter. John Donohue at Westchester Book Services coordinated the copyediting. the sweetest stranger who ever arrived. Lynn Langemade. she was ready with a comment. Claire. Introduction: Toward a Theory of Ecological Criticism 1 1 The Art of Environm ental Languag e: "I Can't Believe It Isn't Natur e! " 29 2 Romanticism and the Environmental Subject 79 3 Imagining Ecology without N ature 140 Notes 207 Index 239 . An­ drew Hageman. I dedicate this book to my love. Acknowledgments " Ecology without Nature " class of Spring 2006: Tekla Babyak. and Nicholas Valvo. I don't Contents think the idea of dark ecology would have been possible without a life spent listening to the ethereal splendor of the Cocteau Twins. Last but not least. Ecology without Nature . The book addresses this paradox by considering art above all else. and it is the basic message of this book. In the same way. for it is in art that the fantasies we have about nature take shape-and dissolve.� INTRODUCTION Toward a Theory of Ecological Criticism Nobody likes it when you mention the unconscious. The main theme of the book is given away in its title . and nowadays. . your world starts to shrink. It stops being That Thing Over There that surrounds and sustains us. Nobody likes it because when you mention it. when you mention the environment. politics. or a mixture of all these. not because you are pointing out something obscene that should remain hidden-that is at least partly enjoyable. com­ monly seen as crucially about nature. In other words. it becomes conscious. hardly anybody likes it when you mention the environment. This is the basic message of criticism that speaks up for environmental j ustice. since it still influences the ways in which the ecological imaginary works. When you think about where your waste goes. the idea of nature is getting in the way of properly ecological forms of culture. it stops being the environment. But there is a deeper reason. Nobody likes it when you mention the un­ conscious. In particular. Ecology without Nature argues that the very idea of "nature " which so many hold dear will have to wither away in an " ecological" state of human society. Strange as it may sound. and art. philosophy. you bring it into the foreground. You risk sounding boring or j udgmental or hysterical. is the target of my investigation. the literature of the Romantic period. Nature tion-if there is such a thing-the spaces between the words. caught in this form of materialism. are not the main point of this book. It moves beyond the simple mention of "environmental" worldview means dealing with how humans experience their place in content. ecological into the special. deep ecology asserts that we need to change our view Fletcher's A New Theory for American Poetry. are always in danger of themselves turning is in " denial " about it. What I propose instead is that these close reading tools be used to keep These images rely upon a sense of nature. I outline a theory of ambient poetics. Chapter 2 studies the history and ideology of concepts." s Ecology without Nature quently. and Susan Stewart's Poetry and the Fate of the change the world is deeply rooted in the Romantic period. This Reading the Mountains of Home. It investigates varieties of ecological. It discusses ecological practices that make up current obsessions with the environment in all writers. plants. of course. logical writers are preoccupied with the " holy grail " of generating " a Ecology without Nature develops its argument in three distinct new and encompassing worldview. the mar­ writing itself has accounted for the way nature gives us the slip. environmental art. and . The goal is to Why Ecology Must Be without Nature think through an argument about what we mean by the word environ­ In a study of political theories of nature. I con­ ceremony dedicating the new national monument [Grand Staircacse­ sider the literary criticism of environmental literature itself to be an ex­ Escalante]. systematically attempts to theorize this complication."2 exploration of environmental art. The idea that a view can environmental form. such as animals. how does art convey a sense of space and place ? Chapter ecological value. the physical and social environment of the reader. plants. writers fashion compelling images-literally. narrative is on the side of the affec­ valuable. Ecology without Nature does talk about animals. or the aspects of culture. establishing ways of but precise. is hamstrung by certain formal properties of language. Without prej udging the results. It delves into all types of ideas about space and place which brought together a variety of thinkers in so-called theory and so­ (global. And in all its confusing. Williams's] Testimony and said. from wildlife club calendars to experimental noise weather. . Coming up with a new mental art. a view of the world. as is the no­ Senses. and science. Along with books such as Angus For example. which would. In gins of the page. Chapter 1 develops a fresh vocabulary for interpreting environ­ tion of worldview itself (Weltanschauung). I have taught several classes on kinds of literature that talk tool. How did the current environmentalism arise.2 . which offers a poetics of from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism . In their collection of narratives on vorite themes. But their demonstration also turns politics into an aesthetic about some idea of environment. Ecology without Nature Introduction . Terre Slatterfield and Scott Slovic tell a story about 1 explores how ultimately. or focusing on certain fa­ feeling and perceiving this place. if not always. John Meyer asserts that eco­ ment itself. cosmopolitan. posers and artists. and ecocritical. . Its scope is wide the world. The first stage is an " is regarded as capable of transforming human politics and society. President [Clinton] held up a copy of [Terry Tempest ample of environmental art. It also discusses specific texts and specific writers." has blocked or paradoxes and dilemmas. projects they find in the texts they analyze. with an eye to its tive. John Elder writes has a bearing on the poetics of sensibility out of which Romanticism about how the narrative of nature appreciation is complicated by a emerged in the late eighteenth century. 3 valid and important. regionalist). and about low and high environmental culture in the same breath. Ecology without Nature is one of the few studies that speak guage.' " 3 Slatterfield Chapter 1 lays out a voca bulary for analyzing works in a variety of and Slovic want to demonstrate how narrative is an effective political media. nature ates. for example. and toward the idea of environmental form. local.4 As well as producing arguments. whatever its thematic President Clinton's dedication of a wilderness area in Utah: "At the content. in which these terms have proved in­ realm. For Slatterfield and Slovic. include ethics and science. Aesthetics thus performs a crucial role. and Conventional ecocriticism is heavily thematic. . ideological intensity. this view stages: describing. But nature keeps giving one step ahead of the ideological forces that ecological writing gener­ writers the slip. beliefs. But ways of reading the text intrinsically. lan­ music. a materialist way of reading ironically impedes a proper relationship with the earth and its life­ texts with a view to how they encode the literal space of their inscrip­ forms. which they call a "valuation frame. contextualizing. while called ecocriticism. 'This made a difference. Such explorations. It explores elements of ecology. Environmental aesthetics is fre­ growing awareness of " historical realities. and politicizing. or utopian. treading the weather. com­ the path paved by such books as The Great New Wilderness Debate." l Whatever its content. " 8 It is vital for us to think and act in more gen­ the properties of the rhetoric that evokes the idea of a surrounding eral. class." ambient poetics outlined in Chapter 1-picking up the is lumbered with. Chapter 1 offers a theory of environmental art that is both an expli­ Some readers will already have pegged me as a "postmodern theo­ cation of it and a critical reflection. I hope that by opening a few well-chosen holes. fall under the voir was one of the first to theorize this transformation of actually ex­ consumerist umbrella. ference. As musician Ecological writing keeps insisting that we are "embedded" in na­ David Byrne once wrote. since the earth starts to look earth. Chapter 2 offers a theoretical re­ rist" on whom they do not wish to waste their time. which has established that even forms of rebellion Woman. class. It employs my existing research on the history of afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of consumerism. The chapter explores different ways of afraid of difference.7 Ecology without Nature examines the identity. but it can .or book sees itself. the volume " rises " to higher and higher levels of con­ cism are entirely bogus. who maintained posi­ rated from race. precisely because we care about them and we care a bout the sphere. and. as rethinking environmental herself in an environment. Particularism can muster a lot of passion. (As it happens. In a somewhat more synthetic than comprehensive. Ecocriticism has held a special. I do believe that they must be addressed criti­ creteness. ) I also do not believe that environmental art and ecocriti­ from theoretical). ecological writing can never properly establish that this is na­ lyzes the Romantic period as the moment at which the capitalism that ture and thus provide a compelling and consistent aesthetic basis for the now covers the earth began to take effect. political animals. such as environmentalist practices. This version will be un­ as social. It uses as evidence of race. And Chapter 3 is a that there is no such thing as a coral reef. This mentalist writing where a narrator. My intent is to open it up. I do not believe flection on this. and gender. Ecology without Nature Introduction . those other beings we designate as ani­ about the environment? " In the current situation we have already de­ mals." struggles to situate him. delity-inevitably ignores the subj ect. and gender. modern in­ further reflection still. reinforces. from low to high. both in textual terms and in terms taking an artistic stand on environmental issues. indeed. cided which texts we will be asking. making. This "theory of the theory " is political. Even if a vibrations of a material universe and recording them with high fi­ Shakespeare sonnet does not appear explicitly to be "a bout" gender. from Thoreau to Sonic Youth. Nor does it quite descend to earth. have developed all the tools necessary for their destruction. iso­ tions outside mainstream Romanticism. the future of life-forms on this planet. in part because of the ideological baggage it the " Aeolian. to broaden it. Environmental art. or de­ and social thinking. if used properly. Chapter 2 accounts for why post-Romantic writing is obsessed Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from with space and place. "Nuclear weapons could wipe out life on ture. moment. "widescreen" version of ecological culture. the cisely what our relationship to environmental art and culture could be. of nonidentity. Because consumerism is a discourse a bout isting women into fetish obj ects. and doing are possible ? The book moves constructs the idea of nature. the " idea " of environmental art. My readings try to be symptomatic rather paradoxes facing environmentalisms. Nature and the Geography of Dif­ the entire nasty mess might pour out and dissolve. "What does this say persons-including. Far from dustrial processes are ensuring they do not exist. perhaps. What kinds of political urban chic. It is a small operation. from pastoral kitsch to Chapter 3 wonders where we go from here. Simone de Beau­ against consumerism. if indeed textual-critical matters can be sepa­ writers such as John Clare and William Blake. It is a paradoxical act of sadistic admiration. an "I. in the words of its subtitle. Working forward from that new worldview that is meant to change society. Due to earth. whether I believe in achieving greater levels of "theoretical " abstraction (abstraction is far them or not. aesthetics. What emerges from the book is a wider from an a bstract discussion to a series of attempts to determine pre­ view of the possibilities of environmental art and criticism. Ecology without Nature does not float away into the strato­ cally. and thus cannot fully come to nowadays we still want to ask what it might have to do with gender. terms with an ecology that may manifest itself in beings who are also The time should come when we ask of any text. 5 how does it affect our ideas a bout art and culture ? This chapter ana­ medium. Chapter 3 demonstrates that lated place in the academy. wider terms.6 Nature is a surrounding medium that sustains our being. the book elaborates ways of understanding the dilemmas and like tipping over a domino.4 . since humans rather different as we proceed. plays with. manner than David Harvey's Justice. the chapter contains detailed readings of passages in environ­ fine print of how nature has become a transcendental principle. 6 • Ecology without Nature Introduction . it would find a friend rather than an are representative. Freud. j ustice ecocriticisIL. But in general the scientisms of current ideology owe less to intrin­ Yes. Have a look at any recent aim to start with the bad new things. It is j ust that I saying "no " to what you j ust came up with. But I am also Ecology without Nature tries not to foster a particular form of aes­ indebted to Benj amin." not about no ecology at all. I use Theodor Adorno. It is to Marx strategies of nature writing undermine what one could call ecologocen­ and Derrida that I owe almost equal debts. ignoring or vili­ of the idea of the environment. Supposedly. but also because they do not accord with view of Ecology without Nature) these texts have more similarities than the various syndromes and symptoms that emerge from this very pe­ differences. their attitudes are not simple and heartily to promote it. for they have enabled me to trism. rather than edition of Time or Newsweek) which take Nature) one of the main sci­ try to return to the good old days. whose idea of the " beautiful soul" has become the seeing whether art forms can bear the weight of being critical in the single most important notion in the book. I have chosen to discuss authors of En­ fying this potential friend. My work is about an " ecology to ecology. Though many indeed a connection between the two. with an attendant aura of chic pushing around preformed pieces of thought. especially in the contexts of the other writers I adduce. Instead of that there is a better way of doing things. Edward Thomas. I have avoided the habitual discussions of anthro­ Actually. in essence. points of contradiction and deep hesitation in or human lungs. Adorno . I assert that the rhetorical I employ a variety of philosophers to help make my case. Zizek. this book is a searching criticism of a term that holds us back come. nature is all tion. with ruthless when this notion does not strictly entail nature in the way of rainforests and brilliant intensity. Walter Benn Michaels has tarred both deep glish literature with whom I am familiar: Blake. ties. for instance. even more seriously than the scientists. as Brecht once said. Mary Shelley. has tried to bog down environmentalists philosophy and training in modes of analysis developed in the humani­ with the idea that birds will be caught in the blades of the windmills. however. These terms are not irrelevant. Heidegger. Much contemporary artistic practice is predicated on the idea what precisely counts as human) what counts as nature. No one kind of art is exactly whose writing has a strong. But they beg the question of media. 7 become shortsighted. The reactionary response to wind farms in the "right." Before I get accused of being a postmodern nihilist. In the name of thinking. I have chosen to hesitate that puts down other attempts as less sophisticated. when it takes a stab at particular to Hegel. the one of thought I would put my heart on the sleeve of this book. At the precise moment at which the trajectories of modern ecology I do. at least not until the end. Thoreau. we at a more basic level. postmodernists have a few nasty surprises in store. and in thetic enjoyment.. albeit a long-range one. I have called on a ideological form.9 Hear. We should all be reading Gilles Throughout this book. Lacan. not Deleuze and Felix Guattari instead of Aldo Leopold. If ecological criticism had a more open and honest the thousands of available examples. For related reasons. I wish to advance ecocritical ence journals. One should view it as a contribu­ from meaningful engagements with what. From the point of only because they exemplify. other pathways became possible." I do think that science would benefit from more grounding in United Kingdom. not make it impossible. I hope that the ones I have chosen engagement with deconstruction. Coleridge. and more to ideas of nature) which and "nature. often explicit ecological flavor. and contra Michaels. I wish agree that they are ecological authors. Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. and that they illuminate the theoretical exploration enemy. we need to cultivate a more comprehensive view of "humanity" sically skeptical scientific practice. Just as Derrida explains how differance at once direct. as a cultural and were appearing. to the debate opened up by environmental about: things that are not identical to us or our preformed concepts. sense that the rest of the book outlines. however. ecology and deconstruction with the same brush. I do not po centrism and anthropomorphism that preoccupy much ecological think there is a " better way" of doing the things I describe in artistic writing. There is Wordsworth. A book so brief is only able to scratch the surface of systems of meaning. Ecology without Nature is in­ multitude of art forms that deal with the idea of environment) even spired by the way in which deconstruction searches out. Latour. create the frameworks with which the analysis proceeds. distinguish between postmodernism. I read texts from the Romantic period. hear. to lodge my criticism in the fissures between such should all be listening to experimental noise music rather than categories. underlies and undermines logocentrism. Levertov. I set people's hearts beating and stop the thinking process. and deconstruction. Ecological criticism is in the habit of attacking. riod. Val Plumwood. and the study of lit­ or environmental sculpture. or ambient music. and stepping back to see the big cial experimentation on animals. in a reason­ in trees to stop logging and road building.10 It puts the critical the other hand. activist. sending money to even as it tries to be comprehensive. or Benj amin). Escher. His sensitivity to the idea of nuclear annihilation Ecology without Nature thus hesitates between two places. They fight for animal rights and accounts for the phenomenon of environmentalism in culture. and for sustaining a view of "A theory of ecological criticism" means at least two things. (For reasons given later. this book provides a set of theoretical tools for ecological has emerged from Romantic scholarship. It is wholeheartedly ecological I trust that my text will explain why a certain writer is appearing. delving vegetarianism in campaigns against hunting and scientific or commer­ into the details of poetry and prose. It does this by operating principally upon a single pres­ Environmentalism is broad and inconsistent. in the work of writers such as criticism. be ably short volume. Tolkien. They oppose globalization and the picture. in the case of Descartes. Environmentalism is a set of cultural and political responses to a Ecology without Nature covers a lot of ground in a short space. And yet it does not thump the study introduces some writers as test cases of environmental an existing ecocritical tub. crisis in humans' relationships with their surroundings." On the animals. But I can see no other way of use­ charities such as Britain's Woodland Trust. It does not mean to undermine ecocriticism writing: David Abram. Republicans. self an example of a certain aspect of the Romantic literary project to . Likewise. while offering a critique of the workings of "Nature" at patenting of life-forms." David Toop. R. And in its political and philosophical orientation. Clintonian the natural world that oppresses women in the same way as it oppresses explanations aside. among others. and entirely. You can be a commu­ sure point: the idea of "nature writing" or. The Orb. Yves Klein. Leslie Marmon Silko. as this book prefers to call nist environmentalist. "A theory of ecological criticism " is a process of domination that establishes and exploits some thing "over theoretical reflection upon ecocriticism: to criticize the ec:ocritic. My own warming or write "ecocritical " literary essays. verse accounts of environmentalism and nature writing have emerged. You could do environ­ erature and the environment have necessarily skewed my sense of mental philosophy ( " ecosophy" ). Where the relationships are pains not to say that the book is in two places at once . and acting based on benign relationships with our environment(s). It does not mean to suggest that there is nothing "out there. there are many forms of ecocriticism. Di­ sponses could be scientific. scholarship has frequently derived ecology from Ro­ natural beauty. It is it­ cism. ) It supports the less clear (for instance. Ecology without Nature Introduction . different levels. feeling. and even matter itself. establishing ways of thinking. "A theory of ecological criticism " is an ecocritical theory. or a capitalist one. it all depends on what you mean by "of. And you could." They struggle against pollution. Karl Kroeber. Those re­ Studies of the idea of nature have appeared before. like the American "wise use " it. You could create poems. or artistic. specializations in Romantic studies. and others.8 . And ground ecocriticism. Ecology without Nature nuclear technologies and weaponry. and James McKusick. there" called nature. The book is thus necessarily one-sided and incomplete. Derrida. It wavers has many parallels with the sensitivity of ecological writing to equally both inside and outside ecocriticism. and shortcomings. food studies. the study accounts for the qualities of existing ecocriti­ back into academic reading in a provocative and accessible way. Alvin Lucier. Cage. R. I am at total catastrophes such as global warming. but of opening it up. where they are lacking. many times . You could produce scientific papers on global her own examples to the discussion. Add to these a host of artists and com­ But Ecology without Nature does challenge the assumptions that posers: Beethoven. life in general. It does so with the aim not of shutting down eco­ along the way we will also be encountering a number of popular prod­ criticism. ecomimesis. In a reflexive and systematic way. Pink Floyd. or a mixture of all three. of course. Reich. things . Environmentalists try to preserve areas of wilderness or "outstanding And specifically. I trust that the reader will be able to bring his or both at the same time. ucts by J. A form of ecocriticism one hand. 9 based much of his work on the idea that modern society engages in a dilemmas. study of literature and the environment. or a "hard" one who lives fully drawing together all the themes I wish to talk about. On Jonathan Bate. placing them in context and taking account of their paradoxes. Ecofeminist criticism examines the ways in which patriarchy has been responsible for envi­ Environmental Reflections ronmental deterioration and destruction. You can be a "soft" conservationist. including the risks of manticism. If we left our ideas about nature on hold for a moment. It is simply that it's not going to work to call people to arms about that and pretend to such writing presents significant artistic and philosophical solutions know what will work. place has been ruthlessly corroded by space: all that is solid melts under the collar anyway-a clearer picture would emerge of what ex­ into air. part of the solution. in rieties of Romanticism and primitivism have often construed ecological order to have an idea of an environment. There are problems in sense. environment. though we posit it as something we have lost. So nomics. literature. Va­ In order to have an environment. scholarship must reflect-theorize. rich set of relationships between sentient flect on ideas of space. in the broadest moves before I interrogate such ideas head-on. which or whether it is a political practice. What a perfect opportunity to sit back and re­ place as an actually existing. Place from water to health care. and culture. view of things. People don't want to feel invalidated in their lives that crystallize all sorts of issues in ecological writing at large. what if it is actually propping up that view? We would be unable to What is the point of reflecting like this ? Some think that ecocriticism cope with modernity unless we had a few pockets of place in which to needs what it calls "theory" like it needs a hole in the head. Ecology without Nature Introduction . and multimedia. however-praising a localist poetics. the cry of "place! " actly the idea of "environment" is in the first place. place is part of our worldview right now­ without Nature claims that there could be no better time. which. ll had partial success in reclaiming place from the corrosion of global eco­ From an environmentalist point of view. Our notions of place are retroactive fantasy con­ Huge globalized corporations are making bids for the necessities of life structs determined precisely by the corrosive effects of modernity. thousands per year. and the oppres­ Revolutionary movements such as those in Chiapas. the globe is warming. This is why you shouldn't teach kids about the dire book goes on to examine much more: philosophy. Mexico. "Third World" environmentalisms are often passionate de­ why undertake a project that criticizes ecocriticism at all ? Why not just fenses of the local against globalization. you will be .1 3 Simply lauding location in let sleeping ecological issues lie ? It sounds like a perverse joke. You should take kids out to the stream out back sual art. But somehow gesting that nature writing is the only game in town. In the name Here is the book's cri de guerreJ but I will be making a lot of small of ecocriticism itself. Since ecology and ecological politics are beginning to frame other the fine print of how we write about the environment. Even if ened around the world. and poetics. music. considers how environmental destruction. This is not to sug­ will resound in empty space. instead postmodern " space. you need ideas of space (and struggle as that of "place " against the encroachments of modern and place). and show them water striders. 11 change the world b y compelling a strong affective response and a fresh think that the "re-enchantment of the world" will make nice pictures. species are being aestheticized ethics-is in greater measure part of the problem than wiped out. Others con­ store our hope. It is a question of whether you gest that if you subtract the rabbits. but amine some of ecology's ideological determinants. Environmental legislation is being threat­ was not lost." In social structure and in thought. goes the argu­ of introducing them all too soon-they always tend to make us hot ment. just because it is localist. The initial focus is what marketing and scholarship opposite of what John Daniel says about the need for a re-enchantment in the United States calls "nature writing. politics. you have to have a space for it. contains good examples of the genre.12 Ecocritique To speak thus is to use the aesthetic as an anesthetic. But unless we think about it some more. we must take a step back and ex­ some of this fine print will not make the bigger problems go away. people are example. the coral reefs have nearly all gone. if not wholly an instance of nature writing. or proclaiming a " small is beautiful" dying of radiation poisoning and other toxic agents. and skyscrapers. subjectivity. this is not a good time. to no effect. in an expanding cone of critical analysis. pollution. for is falling. trees. Then there is environmental justice ecocriticism. the ozone hole persists. To theorize ecological views is also to bring thinking up to date. This is precisely the it is a useful start.10 . vi­ straits of the rain forest. have sion of specific classes and races go hand in hand. The a nd they don't want to feel that they bear the responsibility of the world on their shoulders. The sky the abstract or in the aesthetic." Under this banner I place of the world: most ecocriticism itself. Ecology beings does not (yet) exist. Global warming is happening. tend that this aeration is exactly what ecocriticism needs. This is far from sug­ The sky probably is falling. Underlining kinds of science. a dialectical form of criticism that bends back upon itself. making. ul­ fied. critique points will replace "mastery and possession. or act as if we didn't matter at all. to society. rather than. a kind of anti-race toward ecological criticism. to do so in the name of sentient beings suffering under catastrophic en­ flogging the dead horse of "postmodern theory. class. and practicing environmental art. a naive negative criti. theory (and medi­ and philosophy. Ecology which ecological thinking is itself prone. no matter what its materials. being just a viral infection on the planet. Ecocritique is permeated has in general been getting a good run for its money in the recent work with considerations common to other areas in the humanities such as of writers such as Elaine Scarry. The reading process itself. So ject. It is finding anomalies. not only throughout its fects on the reader. This is not the same thing as be­ washes his or her hands of the corrupt world. Indeed. preferring instead to suggest other way. It must mix thoroughly with it." Ecocritique is similar vironmental conditions. the thinking process tion that forgoes all others would be all too easy. I call it beautiful without Nature takes seriously the idea that truly theoretical reflection soul syndrome. which it knows to be deeply intertwined with The point is not to attain any special state of mind at all. The " beautiful soul " is possible only if thinking decelerates. it thoroughly examines how nature is set up as a transcendental."14 And this ethics of the aesthetic toward itself. Even though Ecology without Nature widens our view of been surpassed by philosophy-or even to Oscar Wilde's idea that crit­ environmental literature to include texts that are not normative in this icism itself is now the best vehicle for telling us where we are at. Ecocritique fearlessly employs the ideas of decon­ to go against the grain of dominant." This is especially im­ critique. The point is environmental issues. Instead of lumping together a list of things and at the desires of others while not owning up to the determinacy of one's dubbing it "nature. it is j ust the ma- . Ecocritique does not think that it is para­ timately. we could just sit back and relax in quietude-or hasten our doxical to say. is in essence the encounter with nonidentity. and gender. Thus. Ecology without Nature is not an attempt to be slower than thou. or if you prefer. I want to develop an idea of what "properly critical" might mean. ecocriticism has a canon of works that are better medicine In places I come close to Hegel's idea that art since Romanticism has than others." To A truly theoretical approach is not allowed to sit smugly outside the borrow an argument from Theodor Adorno. criticism. I? I use the term in a more self-reflexive way than an aesthetic state of meditative calm that we could then (falsely) asso­ Luke. The guiding slogan of ecocritique is: "not afraid of nonidentity. It is supposed to expose hypocrisy.18 If not. Ecocritique is critical and self-critical. for that matter) is not supposed to make you a " better person" churns out stereotypical ideas of nature to be of any use. the " appreciative listening" that Michel Serres hopes as pointing.16 But I way. but struction in the service of ecology." ogists who think that humans. It portant since ecological ethics can be based on a meditative aesthetic was the Frankfurt School that established this notion of Kritik. ways of thinking. for instance. the book does called "close reading" it is supposed to convey all sorts of healthy ef­ offer its own view of ecology and ecocriticism. uni­ will at some point be sneezed away in a wave of extinction. In the name of all that we value in the idea of "nature. The world-weary soul holds all beliefs and ideas at This slowing-down process has often been aestheticized. When it is a distance. As well state. It i s all very well to carp too fast for this book. The only ethical option is to muck in." the aim is to slow down and take the list apart­ own desire. eco­ in any sense. and examine it in Chapter 2 . Ecology without Nature Introduction . Adopting a posi­ School and one of the guiding lights of this study. could be thought of as healing balm. a member of the Frankfurt area it is examining. one to and to put into question the idea of making a list at all. This is the proper sense of ciate with some sort of "ecological awareness. as is all too frequent. refusing to admit how in coming numb or stupid.1S race. normative ideas about nature.12 . paradoxes. in Timothy Luke employs the term ecocritique to describe forms of left order to outdo the tortoise of close reading. to ex­ criticism is barely distinguishable from the nature writing that is its ob­ amine the ways in which ideological illusions maintain their grip. ation of that wqrld. This is a political as well as an intellectual position. But ultimately. in a highly politicized way. Ecocriticism is too enmeshed in the ideology that tation. and that. it is possible that it could advocate the medicinal approach in an­ shy away from being absolute about this. I say this with all due respect to the deep ecol­ to queer theory. After Hegel. There is always further to go. in the name of ecology itself: "down with nature ! " own demise. politics. That kind of thinking goes cism that i s a disguised position all of its own. Like many other forms of sustained critique of other views. much like meditation. but also in its own right. 13 left with something called an environment. and conun­ this very abstemiousness and distaste he or she participates in the cre­ drums in an otherwise smooth-looking stream of ideas. independent category. deviation is measured. philos­ helpful here. in its refusal to " in between " them. mountain air. According It slides over the infinite list of things that evoke it. then why not j ust call it God? But if this God is must be a movement at least from A to not-A. a transcendental term modern construction of space as an empty set of point coordinates. and the rising bourgeoisie and associated revolutionary classes nature was really like' is often not what nature was really like (or. for wanted another way of being authoritative. . Ecology without Na ture Introduction . who had been expelled from Oxford for publishing a this book at all.14 . This is also for its reflection. this and that. In the latter. then what surrounds the particles of ambient fluid maintain any consistency. gages. themselves?25 If nature is sandwiched between terms such as God and on another level. a norm against which with is a blur this book calls ambience. only to find none. Nature. considered the basis of social good by the Romantic period. " Ecology without nature " that matter.22 Being an "out" atheist for grabs. and the deists of somewhere. when considered fully. Second. A metonymic series analogy for (or as an aspect of) the love of an omnipresent God. A " discipline " of diving into the Rorschach blobs of others' en­ Nature and nation are very closely intertwined. It way of going beyond the authority of the monarch.2 3 in a material mask. So "nature " occupies at least three places in writing shuffles subject and object back and forth so that we may think symbolic language. Peter Fritzell delineated a difference between naively pamphlet on atheism. nature hovers over things like a ghost. free markets . First. and art. 15 nipulation of preformed pieces on a ready-made board. sub­ Natural History Lessons ject and obj ect. it is a mere empty placeholder for a host of they have dissolved into each other. Ecological writing is fascinated with the idea of something that exists in between polarized terms such as God and matter. so "normal" that it is built into the very gether? Nature appears to be both lettuce and mayonnaise. it has the force of law. At any moment. ethics. If it is just another word for how Hegel distinguished dialectical thinking from sheer 10gic. though what we usually end up other concepts. Locke's critique appeared toward the beginning of the ophy. heterosexuality. Nature. Third. God often appeared on the side of royal au­ mimetic and self-reflexive forms of nature writing. Nature is thus not to numerous writers such as Rousseau. found themselves. existing useful to ideologies of all kinds in its very slipperiness. Far from ment. ether is a kind of "ambient fluid" that surrounds all particles. a word that Later in the modern period. in an choice. what it is). Saying that something is unnatural is saying that it matter. as evidenced by the profound implications for ecological thinking. " 'what thority. I show how ecocritique j oyment that we commonly call poems seems a highly appropriate way could examine the ways in which nature does not necessarily take us of beginning to engage with how "nature" compels feelings and beliefs.21 But consistency is what nature is all about. has was very dangerous in the eighteenth century. The nation all to o is this third sense-nature as fantasy-that this book most fully en­ often depends upon the very same list that evokes the idea of nature." a being who searches through the entire universe tract start out in a state of nature. otherwise known as a metonymic list: thing elemental. the idea of the nation-state emerged as a encapsulates a potentially infinite series of disparate fantasy objects. love. but actually forms the bedrock of nationalist enjoy­ Nature wavers in between the divine and the material. Writing conj ures this notoriously slippery term. soda water. The fact that this state is not much . then why not j ust call it matter? necessarily bumps its head against what it isn't. and art is the idea of nature itself. chimpanzees. grass. atomist theories were filled by some­ other terms that collapse into it.19 There supreme authority."2 0 means in part that we try to confront some of the intense notions which nature smudges. Thinking must "go This was the political dilemma in which Spinoza. Non­ cryptic remarks of Hume and the increasingly cautious approach of identity has a lineage in nature writing itself. Nature. the framers of the social con­ unlike "the subject. I find John Locke's critique of the idea of ether to be One of the ideas inhibiting genuinely ecological politics. stands at the end of a potentially infinite series of Numerous holes in materialist. "nature " is a Pandora's box. was being something "natural" itself. freedom of that transmitted the properties of heavy bodies instantaneously.2 4 If becomes a metaphor. Newton's gravity worked because of an ambient ether fish. outside society. thought nothing outside the material world. ethics. which is why I can write Percy Shelley. practically a synonym for evil in the Middle Ages. . what medium keeps the things that are natural sandwiched to­ does not conform to a norm." though whether it goes anywhere particularly solid is up eighteenth-century Europe. Ecological fabric of things as they are. This encounter with non identity. What is tiple subject positions.! constructions. is analogous be conceptualized on the collective leve1. magnificence) . in a historical moment in which indi­ gration). Although it may displace the actual social col­ then a scientific term. Subjectivity is not simply an indi­ In the Enlightenment. put a stop to argument or rational inquiry: "Well. Edmund Burke considers substance as the stuff of na­ tour has recently pointed out. has society. Es­ writers such as Milton and Shelley. the actual situation is far more ture in his writing on the sublime. A metaphorical use of Thomas Malthus in the work that ecological writing is envisaging.:10 To write about ecology is to write about to which the subj ect should bow. achieved obliquely through turning metonymy into vidual personal identity has been unmasked as a decentered locus of mul­ metaphor. or as essence. nature writing. in a document guish this position radically from communitarianism. or in continuity with stract principle that transcends the material realm and even the realm of other beings such as animals and plants. It would be very helpful if ecocri- . the workings of the " invisible hand" of the free market and the " survival of the fittest"-which is always taken to mean the competi­ Anyone who evokes the ultimate value of the community or the collec­ tive war of all (owners ) against all (workers) . Essentialism. while at the same against trying (Judaisn1. Further work in ecocritique should delin­ ular figure) generate authoritarian forms of collective organization. some­ along the coordinates of the natural and the unnatural. Sadly. and indeed. from toxic waste to there is at least one actually existing thing that embodies a sublime sea snails. or more abstractly. Ecology without Nature Introduction • 17 different from the "concrete j ungle " of actual historical circumstance Ecological forms of subjectivity inevitably involve ideas and decisions has not escaped attention. however. Nature. by an otherness. 2) how to differen­ tiate the collective project from fascism or nazism.26 Nature. and continues to natu­ cessity for criticism to work on ideas of collectivity: ralize. about group identity and behavior. such it's just in my nature. becomes an oblique way of talking about politics. terror. has tended to favor a Substantialist images of a palpable. and artistic atten­ quality (vastness. 3) how to relate the produced for the government of his age. " unmarked. nature became a way of establishing racial and vidual.27 This " substantialism" asserts that drastically collective than that. as an ab­ and collectives-humans surrounded by nature. It is a col­ sexual identity. distinct "nature " embodied in at substantialist view of nature-it is palpable and there-despite the ex­ least one actually existing phenomenon (a particular species. The normal was set up as different from the pathological being surrounded by others. this very thinking is now social and the economic level-that is. Fredric Jameson outlines the ne­ of Charles Darwin. for example. Historical conditions have abolished an extra­ sented. Islam ) . political. surely it is not too much to ask that something presented as straightforward. and not simply in the weak sense that our ideas of ecology are its champion in Immanuel Kant. As for collective identities. It is about being-with. and science became the privileged way of demon­ lective one. nonsubstantialist countertradition running through deep ecological view of nature as a tangible entity tends this way. says Kant. there is a prohibition social nature to which theories of society can appeal. in the battle of the sup­ capitalism to demonstrate the unviability of social solutions within that posedly ecologically minded against "population growth" (and immi­ system. as a squishy thing in itself. are clamoring for our scientific. a partic­ plicit politics of the author. and its precursors and family members. whole. and have become part of political life-to the detriment of mono­ mote a monarchist or authoritarian view that there is an external thing lithic conceptions of Nature. lective and choose to write about surrounding mountains instead. on the other hand. Malthus used nature to tivity from a left perspective must face three problems: 1) how to distin­ argue against the continuation of early modern welfare. Environmental writing is a way of registering the feeling of strating it. by thing that is not the self." beyond contestation. One of the basic problems with nature is that it could be considered The idea of the environment is more or less a way of considering groups either as a substance. The sublime thing can never be repre­ soci?. for whom nature did not stand in sentialist ideas of a nature that cannot be rendered as an image have for an authority for which you sacrifice your autonomy and reason. All kinds of beings." He is ideological. supported more egalitarian forms. This essentialism turns out to be politi­ time making the beings that fell under this heading impinge ever more cally liberating. naturalized. how to use the Marxist analysis of being used to push down the poor yet further. As La­ representation. in phenomenological and/or Romantic writing. The eate a republican. 29 warped. on the side of revolutionary republicanism. mostly Different images of the environment suit different kinds of society.28 On the urgently upon society. in certain religions. phenomenon.16 . Substantialism tends to pro­ tion. you are prej udiced. and certainly not j ust an individualist. but my displacements always say something about the kinds of collective life ideas are natural. / too real. and decisions in the all too real world. It is easy to see why are different." With eco­ tents of the set. or spiritual ma­ is no easy way of finding a term that would supersede both at once. . the the English Revolution convey iconoclastic figures of the environment mystic Jacob Boehme and the vegetarian Thomas Tryon) . all at once. Of all things. anything behind its opaque texture. . passion. Ecology without Nature Introduction . In short. apples and oranges. supernatural. the brings us into proximity with the nonhuman "other. Essence cannot be em­ tries to conjure it up. thus reproducing the itself flickers between things-it is both/and or neither/nor. rational and differently natural? Would it not be supernatural ? Would that be supernatural like sensuous manner. nature without fail excludes certain terms. but are related to one an­ Natural Supernaturalism. But ecocritique does not stop we call it. this is sup­ mysterious allure. on this view. but not in others. or DNA code. to point out what is intrinsi­ cheese. missing the exact center. nature has been on both sid�s of the other in opposition. Nothing could be further from the truth. the substance of things. There does not matter whether this is materialist spirituality." On this view. What we usually get is a suggestive real. This flick­ difference between inside and outside in other ways. Nature wants to be both substance and essence at the same time. nature should be mean that I believe that the world is made of text. If. or inside and many different people have many different opinions about it. At the very moment at which writing seems Nature opens up the difference between terms. . at least. 19 tique simply observed that there were other kinds of models for nature . and in the tices. wood). the bioregion. It is the world and the entities in that world. It Substance and essence are strangely different from each other. rabbits. maybe made of ectoplasm ? We could go on splitting hairs infi­ that there are. that there is nothing natural.B Or nature that transcend discrete forms of representationY Other political forms dissolves and we are left with sheer matter. But we cannot point to it. if by nature we mean some thing that is . waves. / And the blue sky. The study of iconoclastic representations of space a spirit-more of a refined essence-or a ghost-something more sub­ and world recovers fresh ways of thinking and creating. we Spinoza. If we terialism. Substance is ture out of the equation by exploring the ways in which literary writing embodied in at least one thing. I claim that there is mind of man. It appears logical friends like this. It is the trees and the wood-and the very idea of writing overwhelms what it is depicting and makes it impossible to find trees ( Greek hyle. Abrams would have written a book on Romantic poetry called essence are not different all the way down. and erases those very to be dissolving in the face of the compelling reality it is describing. or up and down. and the living air. and to justify competition and cruelty. Some will accuse me o f being a postmodernist. the more we see that. . We want there to be something in between. H. True.14 Just when it ering affects how we write about it. equation ever since it was invented. But would that be could think the environment in a more open. and a sequence of ideas prohibit graven images of nature. Ecology without Natu1'e takes na­ is just a variation in their atomic structure. beyond the fact that ground "in between" terms such as subject and object. It is both the set and the con­ establishes a comfortable distance between "us" and "them. by which they will lightning. Nature. In contrast to the touchy-feely or­ with numerous high points in radical materialist philosophy. matter. nature in outside. essence and substance are like chalk and talist theory of value and to undermine it. whatever would refresh environmental thinking. Demonstrating stantial. on the other hand. would go on generating binary pairs. porting substantialism-substance and essence are two entirely different Since the Romantic period. trees. to inspire kindness and com­ and substance are different the way black and white. such as ganicism derived from Burkean ideologies of class and tradition. we say that essence cally human. to the "in between " space. the republican (small " r " ) poetics derived from writers the history of Puritan ideas about nature and wilderness (though Gatta such as Milton and the neglected history of radical environmentalism in sets aside the more radical Puritan possibilities of the Diggers. and to exclude the human. Thinking posits something "over there " that maintains a claim that substance and essence are absolutely different. then we approach the essentialist view-substance and M. animals.18 . differences. Even as it establishes a middle The more we study it. different sorts of fantasy images of the natural nitely. nature has been used to support the capi­ " substances. silicon . in the very act of grasping it. and it has an all too real effect upon all too real beliefs. Our journey to the middle." nature re­ weather . a process made clear in John Gatta's decisive treatment of For instance. be coming down on one side or the other. We discover how nature always slips out of reach bodied. who needs enemies ? like a ghost at the never-arriving end of an infinite series: crabs. and we would always there. For instance." as Wordsworth marvelously put it. Nature is . The idea of nature is all effusion on something "Whose dwelling is in the light of setting suns. prac­ In the round ocean. . 32 Nature becomes no such "thing" as nature. . the ecosystem. coming and going. writer such as Donna Haraway rushes to jerry-build ideas like "na­ Academics are never more intellectual than when they are being anti­ tureculture. it is ironic vide between the enjoyment-objects of ecocritical-conservative and that indigenous societies often refer to nature as a shape-shifting trick­ post-structuralist-radical readers. retro o r fu­ tions do exist. I am fixation inoperative. far from being naive. independent. Living beings do not form Post-structuralism-criticism that acts as if the 1 9 60s had occurred­ a solid prehistorical. has much in common with the English dislike of the French language. even in a "hyperessential " rational. Nature smoothes ones. anti-racism. Given gories such as subj ect and object. Life-forms are constantly is a form of postmodern retro. But nature is often wheeled out to adj udicate between what j ust that these views are supposedly more sophisticated than previous is fleeting and what is substantial and permanent. so ecocriticism promises to return to an academy of the past. It may its core historical. There is still the basic search for something " in between" cate­ over uneven history. 36 It forces organic his writing on negative theology comes to mind. Whether they are highbrow or middle­ brow. I analyze possible ways of thmking the same ears to all intellectual developments of the last thirty years. anti­ To get properly beyond postmodernism's pitfalls. affairs. Biospheres and eco­ If ecocritics dislike what I say. This is about what you think "without" means in the title of Revolution-indeed. that is the plan. Ecology without Nature Introduction . we render the ideological thetic pose. notably idea bigger. If we consider the nonthe­ tions attempted a re-run of the 1950s. represents the environment. Ideology resides in the attitude we assume toward this Postmodernism is mired in aestheticism. It is tory plays. If ecocritics prefer Aldo Leopold's al­ ster rather than as a firm basis. 35 "Theory. deconstruction? Just as the Reagan and Bush administra­ ecocriticism would engage fully with theory. artworks exhibit what I call Ecology without Nature starts as a detailed examination of how art ecomimesisJ a rhetorical form described in detail in Chapter 1. and anthropology. though it may not name it so baldly. '!? . and ex. installation or pastoral symphony.20 . or nonhistorical ground upon which human his­ has its own views of nature. a self-imposed denial of history that had already hap­ than some special new thing. but it is still polite at a cocktail party or art opening. Deconstruction goes forms into boxes that cannot do them j ustice. mutating and becoming extinct. such as that of a farmer ? What could be more postmodern nature that lie j ust to the side of it. or better under the general heading of "ambience. This helps us to see that "nature " is an ar- . the English position against the French was its own "Ecology without nature " is a relentless questioning of essence. and lasting. " new and improved" solutions. however. complete with cute illustrations." this book. Of course. There exists a class di­ that much ecocriticism and ecological literature is primitivist. Chapter 1 focuses on a set of alternatives to traditional ideas of tive view. And it goes beyond saying that things do not exist . "Nature " is a focal point that compels us to assume cer­ turistic. By dissolving the object. consciously blocks its soft a target these days. wider. for instance. rather than try to come up with hastily The ecocritical view of "postmodernism. 21 single. Sometimes the utopian language of a pened-the beheading of Charles I. genuinely critical homophobia." for which "theory" is a conceived. Leopold and The Orb are really two sides of the same What Is Nature For ? coin. rather abstraction. Thunderbird o r Chardonnay. ideas that turn out to be highly aes­ postn10dern than a professor reflexively choosing a social and subjec­ thetic. tain attitudes . based on hopeful in­ intellectual. post-structuralists tend to is that nature is history. No self-respecting farmer would comport himself or herself terpretations of emerging ideas across disciplines such as philosophy. It freezes irony into an aes­ fascinating obj ect. systems are subj ect to arising and cessation. so will post-structuralists. as if the 1 9 60s had never hap­ ological sense of nature. making its struggles and sufferings illegible. Derrida's profound thinking on the "without. if not more so. But deluded ideas and ideological fixa­ plored throughout this book. The final word of the history of nature manac style." 39 not be Beethoven. It tory-two ways of saying the same thing. saying that we really drop it. out of touch. a new form of advertising shibboleth. When I suggest that we drop the concept of nature. is at go for the latest compilation al bum by an ambient techno DJ. " Natural beauty. purportedly ahistorical. quite like Aldo Leopold or Martin Heidegger. it's all the same ecomimesis. is cold and abstract. What could be more mathematics. which." (though not necessarily all at once ) feminism." 38 These non-natures are still nature. At least." the sansJ in goes the argument. the term collapses into impermanence and his­ pened. according to ecocritique. it is in many ways derived from it. It is too calculating and beyond j ust saying that something exists. fact and value. Assuming that nature itself is too than ecocriticism. "Postmodernism " is j ust the latest version of this sorry state of way beyond being. 42 depends upon something I define as an ambient poetics. or conceptual notions of subj ect and ob­ identity and subjectivity. genuine existence art and nature. aesthetic dimension (experiential/perceptual ) ra ther than ethical­ The "thing " we call nature becomes. Ecocritique is indeed critique. no human beings are forlornly alienated from their world. the aesthetic. If subject Whitman and his descendants establish ways of reaching out toward and object do not really exist. In which case. which leads us to a central knot. cisely is it if it is not " around" anything? Will it not tend to collapse ei­ When we historicize ambient poetics. with developments in postmodern and de constructive any different than the subject-object dualism that concerns us ? If the thinking. For example. however. certain features of the dreaded du­ nature. the new secular churches in which subject and object behind or beyond the texts we create about it. It perceives it to be a philosophical and social life. . and terward. value of this poetics. upon whether there are such follows Angus Fletcher's recent work on an emerging American poetics things as subj ect and object. then what pre­ people have invested various ideological meanings in it. as pair be better than what we have now? Would this amalgamation look he does. I associate it. there is no boundary or center-why then do we need to make all this we should begin to politicize environmental art. 23 bitrary rhetorical construct. we find out that this. since there is no guages-the constant elegy for a lost unalienated state. and with the aesthetic. which means begin­ ecocritical fuss ? Surely therefore. It questions what is problematic a bout j ust a "new and improved " version of the kitsch they were trying to es­ the problem itself. The history of ambient poetics depends upon certain forms of deed devoid of reified." in social reality. I am.4o His suggestive idea that the long. a way of healing what modern society has damaged. at bottom. which Chapter 2 also discovers to be histor­ ject. The damage The second approach is to wonder whether the problem lies not so done. in that case. the resort to the escaping kitsch.41 Nature so on-which sustain the itch. in the Romantic period and af­ political praxis. Subject and obj ect require a certain environment poke fun at hopeless attempts to join together what could never be torn in which they can join up together. less confident than Fletcher of the utopian solution to subject-object dualism were as easy as changing our minds. is like that other Romantic-period invention. the fuss is like scratching an itch that ning to become less blind to its operations. the only way to " beat" it is to "join" it. albeit in a subtle way. My argument tionship in the first place. Romanticism saw the broken bridge as a lamentable fact of the cry against dualism at least half seriously. but it is also "eco. a more ideological qualities of the rhetoric they are using. We ourselves must not ven­ doesn't exist-thereby bringing it into existence. Some contemporary artists use There are at least two ways of looking at these irksome questions. Chapter 3 goes still further." In­ other forms of natural representation. empty of independent. takes and object. rigid. a way of con­ This all depends upon whether subj ect and object ever had a rela­ j uring up a sense of a surrounding atmosphere or world. over time. Coleridge in England-often wishes for reconcilia­ logical feature of the way in which the world operates." My aim is not to they would hit it off. Rather than resting in historicization. then why bother trying to reconcile and going beyond horizons. has sundered subj ects from objects. and of creating an open-ended idea of na­ them ? Or. is de­ ther into a subj ect or an object? void of any intrinsic existence or value. we see that this poetics has its own history and that ready? If the solution is some sense of an environment. and we coexist in an infinite web of mutual interdependence where ical.22 . one of ture formulating a "new and improved " version of environmental art. or to supplant ecological thinking with a hipper form of belief. too. will mend the bridge between subject alism were hardwired into our world ? Ecocritique. Contact with matter what we thought about it. so that much " in our heads " as " out there. Thus is born the special realms of asunder. is a valuable account of a specific form of poetics. the targets of genuine critique would be the very (eco)critical lan­ This will involve us in some paradoxes. Ecology without Nature Intro duction . there is no problem-if reality is in­ cape. then why have countless texts seeking to do exactly that not done so al­ In Chapter 2. why would some fresh amalgamation of the ture. sinuous lines in problem posed by some forms of utopian environmental art. if they do exist. If they met under the right circumstances. They risk creating paradoxical strategy is in order. am bient poetics to rise above what they see as the kitsch quality of The first examines the idea that we need to "change our minds. they ignore the stead of looking for a solution to the subj ect-object problem. the appeal to "solutions. But in so doing." often anti-intellectual. and indeed. tion of subject and object. What if. The rhetoric of nature can be remarried. goes the argument. If. Post-Kantian philosophy-Schelling and symptom of a malaise that was not an idea in our heads. the of the environment. but an ideo­ Hegel in Germany. in its distancing. nature. of mind from matter." He writes: "Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible the short term. that did not stop at a particular concretization of its object. Art is ture."43 Art gives what is noncon­ ceptual an illusive appearance of form.44 Herbert Marcuse claims that "The aes­ world. In as a " dimension. Many of the writers this study encounters treat the aesthetic and the natural. Benj amin thetic universe is the Lebenswelt on which the needs and faculties of finds a model for this in the age of technical reproducibility. Marcuse uses Lebenswelt (life­ there is a difference between the aesthetic and aestheticization. Ecology without Nature Introduction • 25 a nihilistic creed that anything goes. the emer­ we get close to it: gence of the nonexisting as if it did exist. but of negative ones: it piciously anti-ecological ? This is a matter for debate in the Frankfurt stops us from destroying things. when it becomes ideological. the aesthetic help­ "The iridescence that emanates from artworks. we must consider the aes­ dichotomy between inside and outside. tends to fixate on nature as if they comprised a single. the aesthetic. ecology by modeling an environment based on love or whether it is an inevitable fact of life that reappears in ever-subtler (eros) rather than death (thanatos)-as is the current technological­ guises j ust as we think we have given it the slip. this line of enquiry linked together the envi. which de­ pelling focus for an intensely conceptual system-an ideological mands of aesthetic comportment that it not grasp at the object. But en­ to other experience. would are. of subjects from objects. the subject cannot intervene in not really exist-we have destroyed it. like the aesthetic itself. alienates us from the use an environmental image. It brings to mind the notion of a " good" aes­ struction of worlds and environments that situate the thinking mind."46 Dimension. and vironmentalism cannot be in the game just for the short term. or distribute ronment shaped by and for aggressive impulses. distance is the primary condition for any closeness to the content of tual grasp. The first is good because it resists becoming ob­ we shall see in Chapter 2. according to Marcuse. realm. not de­ system. For him. For Benjamin. And that things no longer stand under the law of the established reality prin­ nature remains an effective slogan is a symptom of how far we have not ciple. The dense meaninglessness of nature writing can exert a gravi­ vour it. is the appearance of the affirmative ineffabile. nor can they be envis­ photocopies of a landscape painting. namely. nature still has some force. Adorno is more hesitant than Marcuse. in the name of generating a liberating ecological artistic practice. a dimension in which human beings. For Adorno.48 aged as the mere effect of a new set of social institutions. not of how far we have.24 . the very thing that has yet to be thetic dimension. This is the aim of environ­ The distance of the aesthetic realm from that of practical aims appears mental literature: to encapsulate a utopian image of nature which does inner-aesthetically as the distance of aesthetic objects from the o bserving subject. The aim is to strengthen environ­ ronment and the aesthetic. a place where our ideas about things drop away. This is implicit in Kant's concept of a bsence of interest. for the aesthetic has been posited as a nonconceptual established.47 tational pull.49 But world). just as artworks cannot intervene." To do ecocritique. But even if there concepts rather than doing what is "natural " to thought. which today taboo all fully distances us from something we have a tendency to destroy when affirmation. Benj amin's famous description of the aesthetic aura does indeed the other hand. unified dimension. No wonder Marcuse thinks of the aesthetic mentalism. if only because it ironically inter- . jectified or turned into a commodity. As thetic and a " bad" one. a dimension is something we are in-or not-and this assumes a thus be "without nature. where we freedom depend for their liberation. a term developed in phenomenology out of Romanticism's con­ this is rather Romantic. They cannot develop in an envi­ can download MP3s of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. if only for a moment. The aesthetic is also a product of distance: of human beings from na­ In this way. on School. sits somewhere between an come. Art could help . for instance) and a subjective experi­ "Ecology without nature " could mean "ecology without a concept of ence. What we need is some kind of anti-aesthetic strategy. "45 shun. which goes beyond our concep­ them. We could claim that industrial world." Thinking. dis­ were more than one dimension. No matter how many there ated. Ecological thinking that was not fix­ this intrinsically spatial way of thinking. Appealing to nature still has a powerful rhetorical effect. They can It is still uncertain whether the aesthetic is something we should emerge only in the collective practice of creating an environment. Is it not rather sus­ not so much a space of positive qualities (eros). the aesthetic promotes nonviolence toward nature. a nonconceptual image can be a com­ works. this would not solve the problems of solving whatever has taken form. relatively speaking. objective notion (in mathematics. On the other hand. One of the tique is loath to give this clarity a name. "Don't Ask Me " ). clean eyes with which to see that the emperor has no clothes. appears to have been partially responsible for im­ as an explicit agenda but as a political " boot-up disk. and that art whispers that this is so-even when shouting about whether we are inside or outside becomes a symptom of how far it has become politically compromised. twines with the idea of a surrounding environment or world. or illusion of one. Not only that. Ecology without Nature Introduction . goodness in perception. The idea Slavoj Z izek has pointed out the salutary effect that this has. has been lost. with its engagement with immersion surprising connections between the imminent ecological catastrophe and the strange thing called nature. They helped ideas of immersion. So he is another kind of Ro­ suring stick. while technoculture is hard. and how can we verify what we know? Both it. an experimental. for fear that it becomes an­ symptoms of this is the corrosive effect of thinking about "how far in" other blinding art-religion. and they open up questions of epistemology-how can to sit sideways to his or her narrative. Since we are still within the Romantic pe­ virtual reality and the ecological panic are about immersive experiences riod in a number of very significant ways. In some sense this must be true! Otherwise it would be distance. who is thought tent but form. constructivist sort who sees the aesthetic not and categorization. but are instead about to be dissolved into a psychotic virtual reality. far from providing a necessarily blissful nar­ ecology. but of chemicals penetrating our cells-the . ways that are linked to ways of sorting things out ethically well nigh impossible to see the cracks in anyone's aesthetic edifice. also induces a terrifying loss of bearings. as toxic as the Ecological culture is supposed to be soft and organic. since the aesthetic inter­ out the hard truth that we never had this position in the first place. The func­ and the emergence of virtual reality. no and politically. or are we already "inside " it? The very worry be different. we could imagine that at least we would remain alive. but the illusory mea­ despite his opposition to the aesthetic aura. enables and sustains . we tell ourselves. part of we know that we know. indistinguishable from it. are not to be trusted." We feel that can't achieve a urgency of being about our physical survival. is actually dissolved in it. this study is caught within the Romanti­ mind can influence matterl-is just the upside of an all-too-true embed­ cism it is trying to describe. because he thinks that things could tastrophe imminent. and electronic. neither captured nor perverted by the aestheti­ pelled to achieve ways of sorting things out without the safety net of cization process. Part of the panic is the coming to psychotic but alive. Benjamin. The idea that we more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in Romantic cannot extricate ourselves. cool. But there are demned to insanity ? Romantic art. in the worst case scenario. on the other hand.26 . has the possible to count on an idea of " distance. cissistic experience. which is also a crisis of reason. it in which our usual reference point. If it were just a matter of critical purchase. that this idea is one of the illusions that the signifying system not entirely escape this Romantic distinction. aquarium of hallucinatory un-being. In virtual reality it becomes im­ The so-called ecological crisis. in the shape of modern modes of discovery. n We are now com­ . My final chapter (Chapter 3) does further. "Read it in the papers / You hear it in the news / Very few listen / A spew without a view" (Public Image Limited. It remains to be seen whether there are dedness of dominating mind in dominated world. Quantum-theory utopianism-Hey look! My even at its metacritical level. mantic. old-fashioned and mercury-filled physical one. as this book demonstrates. to get us into this mess in the first place. corroded by this way of thinking. technology. Ecocri­ We are losing touch with a nonexistent measuring stick. appearing on a screen. Old is highly appropriate that we consider how Romantic poetics tackled ways of thinking.52 You Gotta Get into It if You Wanna Get out of It The idea of drowning in an epistemological sea. Are we thus con­ kitschy. can give us some clues . When the immersive terms with the idea that "there is no metalanguage " -that there is world is also toxic-when it is not actually just a matter of phenomena nowhere outside a signifying system from which to pronounce upon it."sO It appears that mersing us in toxic panic. at least of a "good" aesthetic is based on the notion that there is some intrinsic when it comes to thinking about virtual reality. is more than unpleasant. Despite the appearance of his acid nega­ to virtual reality or the ecological emergency we have "gone " -is the ca­ tivity. 27 nalizes the commodification process. The connections concern not con­ tion of Romantic irony is to show how far the narrator. Adorno is really a Romantic. Virtual reality and the ecological emergency point A consideration of the aesthetic is vital. inside we have gone-the inside/outside distinction has itself begun to be seems to be ready to see where specific artistic practices might lead us. None of this is remotely funny."53 We keep hearing that we can no longer j ust sit back and be the living room. The sound of Debussy's Trio ciation. At a subtle level. dyeing the snow catastrophe. It is very hard to get used to the idea that the As you read. This is As I write this. More haste. They are part of Im­ scrub jay is chattering outside my window. The surrounding air is moist and Teasing out just how paradoxical this is will become one of the smells of seaweed. The blazing heat of the Californian afternoon. or ever were. The disorientation of virtual reality-wondering how far im­ mersed we have become in a world with no metalanguage-is as nothing compared with the disorientation of global warming-exactly the same wondering. The coolness of the air conditioning suggests the spectators when it comes to the environmental events around us. slow reading. conjuring up a sensation of distance. The smell of sweet pea-scented bubble bath seems artificial in comparison to the aroma of freshly mowed grass outside the window. The crackle of pebbles on the shore as the waves roll book's testing problems as it tries to maintain the appropriate degree of in reminds me of England. Overhead the cry of a gull pierces the twilit sible to forget the aesthetic dimension altogether. Instead of talking about content-software and wetware-I its dark pages. less speed. just a tease. What's really happening as I write this : a some critical light on ideas of distance and proximity will be of help. This is not by any means because I think that . Distance and proximity are aestheticized terms. and in that sense. . " TO THE READER " there are. frightening and seductive immersion will be how it works its way out of turning the maze. As I write this. A crop-spraying plane buzzes original advertising of virtual reality was an incitement to get into it low overhead. or just an intellectual � C H A P T E R ON E exercise. a western imply a perceiving subject and a perceived object. has already taken place. The al­ The Art of Environmental Language ready existing ecological emergency resembles the anxiety about virtual reality-that we will be drowned in a psychotic soup where we won't "I Can-'t Believe It Isn-'t Nature! -'-' be able to tell one thing from another-only it also involves the possi­ bility of our own death. with extra added death and destruction. explore the realm of fOrln. at the same time. So digital camera is resting silently on a copy of an anthology of Romantic let us begin by examining some artistic forms that play with these poetry. Ecology without Nature stakes get higher. many gods lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian the linkage between an apparently technocultural-aesthetic issue and an are watching the generations of leaves. it may be impos­ typing away at the laptop. a white bear leisurely pees. harmonizing with the quiet manuel Kant's language of aesthetics-in order to have aesthetic appre­ scratch of my pen on this piece of paper. apparently wet and organic one. Exploring the aesthetics of this and as you read the sea is turning its dark pages. The gentle sound of waves an argument about close reading. and dissolve our boundaries. and distant. They No-that was pure fiction. summer holidays on stony beaches.D EN I S E L E V E R T O V. chiming with a signal terms. far from being imminent. It is more that the very act of scrutinizing the aesthetics of the issue at hand encourages the beginnings of a critical view. and not act (out). This book will take the injunction to hurry up and do nothing seriously.28 . purely aesthetic solutions to our social and po­ litical problems. Viola. but instead to read and as you read. from the dishwashing machine. my sky. saffron. which has always tried to be both up lapping against my deck chair coincides with the sound of my fingers close. This is the ideal moment for us to slow down as Derrida encouraged us to do. The sound of Ligeti fills the headphones. I am banking on the idea that shedding That was also just fiction. The smoke trail of an ocean approach is a kind of aesthetic solution! liner disappears over the far horizon. whether they are explicitly "environmental " or not. An ant crawls down my computer screen. I am sitting on the seashore. and Harp falls gently around me from the speakers in "thing. you have to have an appropriate distance toward the aesthetic for Flute. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . fig­ so far as to compare the rolling waves with the turning of a text's ures. postmodern version is all the more eco­ a niche in the text. as in advertising language. And the more of a fictional "I" I have-splitting "me" into the one who is writing and the one who is Ecomimesis: Nature Writing and the Nature of Writing being written about-the less convincing I sound. . But in making their case these texts are pulled ticated " art and the kitsch we know as "nature writing. same. "you" becomes This conscious. with its slippery.2 than others. or a pile of "stuff" without a surrounding frame. or an indication of my sincerity. that ( 1 ) this reality is solid. this page. "essence. often explicitly. 31 The more I try to evoke where I am-the "I" who is writing this quite meaning what it says or saying what it means-"turning / its text-the more phrases and figures of speech I must employ. these experiments are veridical.6 And it is not a matter of being more. or less.Glass. There is no guilt about writing here. the " as I write " gesture enters an ineluctable gravita­ Leopold's A Sand County Almanac tries to escape the pull of the lit­ tional field. and independent (notably of the writing process itself) and environmental." Roland into the orbit of writing. or in an art gallery. the more figurative clean about something " really" occurring. something with a signature­ Walden Pond. but by being more so. sophisticated term and its all-pervasive London fog. in the negative. In trying to evoke a sense of the reality of na­ picture: its surrounding frame. But somehow "To the Reader" achieves a sense of the sur­ Reader" inverts " as I write" into "as you read. for. go beyond art. This rhetorical strategy appears with astounding frequency in a va­ Contemporary art evokes what is often excluded in our view of the riety of ecological texts. on the shore of something with a date or a time marker. specifically designed for the actual reader." The rhetorical device usually serves the purpose of coming The more convincingly I render my surroundings. or a any suggestion of rhetorical strategy altogether ( "This isn't writing. not by being less artful. going consumes a potentially interminable stream of opaque scribbles. in Concord. The more I try to show you what lies beyond text. Consider the beginning of Charles activity of acknowledging."s There is nothing more "literary" than this different types of literature try it. tricksterish qualities of never Barthes writes. The kitsch of an Aldo Leopold. making music out of silence or out of ambient noise. and earned my living by the and thus falls back into the writing it was trying to escape. in a passage of avant-garde ecomimesis.1 Many labor of my hands only." But the effect is the rounding environment. Levertov's "To the Reader" is highly literary.30 . the very writing that I am not de­ and literary illusion would aptly summon its ever-changing. the more of a page I have. Alice the specific event of the words on the page. Try as she might to leave the front garden. it's John Cage. definitively " outside " the language I end up with. in much the same way as avant-garde art tries to escape the con­ more the narrator evokes a surrounding world. or even stronger. reflexive. I must get dark pages. I lived alone. any neighbor. the suction of fictional Dickens's Bleak House with its j ournal-style evocation of Michaelmas writing. the voice intoning the finds herself back at the front door. My attempt to break the spell of language results in a further in­ The device-I call it ecomimesis-wants to go beyond the aesthetic di­ volvement in that very spell. and tropes. being nearly always implicit in the manac " ) to convey nature in a suita ble (non)aesthetic form. the institu­ ture.3 But in attempting to exit the generic horizon that contains it. writing a j ournal (an " al­ The " as I write " tag is optional. about the expe- .4 mimetic for that. a mile from philosophical or literary fictional or poetic modes into a journal style. Levertov does point beyond the Looking. in a house which I had built myself. Or perhaps it is a compelling il­ frame. It cannot achieve escape velocity from writing itself. It wants to break out of the normative aesthetic fers a digression from the main point. the space of the gallery itself. many texts suggest. Introducing WaldenJ Thoreau writes: "When I lustration. which has a decidedly ecological avant-garde strategy of a minimalist painter who puts an empty frame usage. elusive scribing when I evoke the environment in which writing is taking place. Denise Levertov's poem "To the words. The erary." Never mind that for many cultures nature is a trickster. . The writing breaks out of wrote the following pages . both authentic and authenticating. Only the taste and habits of the academy have pre­ that (2) it would be better for the reader to experience it directly rather vented us from seeing the connection between this supposedly " sophis­ than just read about it. involved in a process of writing. tion of art altogether.? the real thing! " ). Perhaps this environmental language of­ mension altogether. meets the narrative mode of this rhetoric. the more the reader ventional aesthetic. Massachusetts. in the woods. In a very significant way. It is like the house in Lewis Carroll's Alice Through pages. vegetation.ll oply of terms for this weak form of ecomimesis: geographia rainy season] flowing down below ( oued is there to bear witness to a cer­ (the description of earth or land). hydrographia (water). The word itself is treated as foreign. and so is needle clusters above spiky circles of atrophied lower limbs. But the effect is much the same. It is extraordinarily common. I invoke "where I am " ( " as I write this. where I live. Here in the very gospel of post­ paradigmaJ or paradiegesisJ is " an example cited. (nation). a river where people walk. ronment-poem. But first some remarks about the descriptive properties of ecomimesis are in order. world. chorographia tain feeling of unfamiliarity). air." bringing us into a shared. of the supposedly antinatural bliss of sheer textuality." ) l l But the emphasis on situatedness is distinct and passages. Barthes offers us a vivid evocation of atmosphere." the other about being " away. or surrounding." and so on). practices. a oued [Arabic: a streambed that is usually dry except during the whole pcl. structuralism.8 modern. as a tourist. children's voices from over on the other side. of the specific features of find ecomimesis. it must get a purchase on narrating. the one about ological network of beliefs. dendrographia (trees ) . This ical peril.'} Barthes opens up this vision with a string of vironmental Imagination: "The grove of second-growth pine trees that words that confirm the supposed mysteriousness o t' the Arabic word sway at this moment of writing. scant cries of birds. 33 rience of walking through a dry riverbed. with their blue-yellow-green five­ rather than explaining it. ."13 Or the climate and environment that it signifies: a wet season and a dry James McKusick: "As I write these words. Ecomimesis is a mixture of excursus and exemplum. we [an] illustrative story. Ambience denotes a An Ambient Poetics sense of a circumambient. Consider Lawrence Buell's The En­ identifiable " significance. the imagery of disj ointed phenomena sur­ ecomimesis. Oued con­ idea of the natural world. This is the city of Baltimore. exotic land teeming with what Barthes calls "half­ writing and in ecological criticism." l S What then. slender explosions of graphia to describe exactly what I am after in this chapter. which follows the exposition " slender explosions" and "scant cries " that evoke the distance between and illustrates or amplifies some point in it. clothes of inha bitants near or far away. It suggests something Strong ecomimesis purports to evoke the here and now of writing. as if space itself an inside-out form of "situatedness" rhetoric. evoking the medieval monde ren­ my study across open fields and gnarled trees crusted with ice. The reader glimpses the environment rather than the person." Exempht11'lJ also known as the hearer and the sound source. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . either true or feigned. despite ap­ Ecomimesis is a pressure point. Rhetoric used to have a a valley. not full sound) of the cursus is a "tale. Ecomimesis involves a poetics of ambience. Situatedness is a rhetoric that David Simpson has linked to the We normally think of nature writing as having a certain kind of con­ urgency of impending and "threateningly nondiscriminatory" ecolog­ tent-say the Lake District. this passa bly empty subj ect strolls-it is what happened to the author of Ecomimesis is an authenticating device. . All the traits of ecomimesis highway past dirty piles of melting snow that still remain from last are there: the authenticating " it is what happened to the author of these week's snowstorm. the smell of sIgns: hot dogs wafts through the Lisbon night air" ) . The reader of the Text may be compared to someone at a loose end . ecomimesis ? Paradiegesis specifically implies narrative. the " envi­ noises. topographia (place ). Situatedness is pervasive. though somewhat intangible. both in nature j ures up an opaque. But here we have the orienta list desert. irreducible. in contrast to the familiar Eurocentric or thinks himself immune from radical threat. l0 (Angus Fletcher has resuscitated choro­ spectives: lights. virtual present time of reading and ecological criticism to be properly critical. or interpolated anecdote. anemographia coming from a disconnected. chronographia (time). Weak ecomimesis operates these lines. Ex­ rounding the narrator. heat. what he perceives is multiple. It is material and physical. and processes in and around the being "home. but a world you could visit. he argues.32 . the paratactic list. appear . heterogeneous variety of substances and per­ (wind). This is not a world you could live those trees I see cars and trucks dashing along a busy interstate in. the other artificial. because "no one now is orientalist ecomimesis. after Einstein. he writes. ecomimesis is cut from the same cloth as the kitsch variety. It succinctly demonstrates how avant-garde lone voice in the j aws of general doom. Beyond verse or world turned upside down." 14 For lines. is "where I a m coming from " ( " as a blue-blooded young Portuguese hot analogous to that of what he calls text-an infinite play of interweaving dog salesman" ). then it was that he had a vivid idea of the Text-on the side of whenever writing evokes an environment." 12 The particular raises its American variety. crystallizing a vast and complex ide­ parent differences (the one organicist. Rather than describe had a material aspect-an idea that should not. colours. The experience. gestures. the quietness (not silence. I peer out of the window of season. say. Buell has used this notion gree in ecomimesis.19 told experience. a directly this ambient poetics. breathing narrator (a kind of affec­ literary criticism. how well the narrator imparts a sense of immediacy! As media in general. In the realm Rendering of music.20 Rendering is technically what visual."I? But as we have seen. such as to suggest that no matter how stylized it is. After the action has been shot and the computer and ecomimesis is not necessarily on the side of nature. 16 Ambience includes more than a particular version of it. " on both sides. music (the Aeolian. the entire shot is "rendered. but our disbelief is willingly suspended. such as the no­ artists do to a film to generate a more or less consistent sense of atmo­ tion that music could be like perfume or a "tint. in inspiring the notion Slatterfield and Slovic say about their collection of ecological narra­ of an ambient poetics. the frame and walls around a picture. and musicology to acknowledge the role tive presence) to enhance a story's capacity to include the reader in the of the environmental. When ecomimesis renders There are six main elements : rendering. can refer to the margins of a page. Eno's own case for ambience employs ideas that are com­ Michel Chion. Let us examine thoroughly the most salient features of the object. and writing (tone) . uses these elements to affect layers of significance other than things. Ambience has a very long history in Western philosophy and liter­ idea of the simulacrum. ecological ones. like Jean Baudrillard's ture. language can render real sound art. This rendering. the timbral. Rendering nevertheless bathes all the filmic " ambience " from the time of the pre-Socratic philosophers to Hei­ elements in the atmosphere of the sunny day. other effects pasted into the film. tone). its telos. which is all too often associated with a particular view of na­ than a wet night in the tropics. The idea is that we obtain an immediate world." we know very well Medial. anti-aesthetic one ? Rendering attempts to simulate reality itself: to tear yet ethereal and subtle. but so are the works of Brian Eno (and ex­ sense developed by the concrete music composer and cinema theorist plicitly so). ambient poetics is a rendering. when the perceiver proceeds by "cynical reason. I have borrowed these terms from many types of media: we choose to enjoy the rendering as if it were not artificial. art history. and are somewhat arbitrary and vague. pertains to a copy without an original. I S Throughout this history the environment has Is rendering a significant aesthetic phenomenon. rather ronment. and. for instance. Less ex­ bient poetics could apply as easily to music." Am­ just imagery: rhythm. tone. sphere or world. poetry (the Ae­ encourages us to switch off our aesthetic vigilance.34 . it is implicitly saying: "This environment is real. the decorative spaces of a it were an essay by Jacques Derrida. lineation. perceived reality beyond our understanding. Ambience derives from the Latin ambo. we enjoy the deception. Ambience. the timbral. Rendering refers to the are in a constructed realm have been minimized. Aeolian." All signals that we overlap. that which surrounds on both or a philosophical essay that contained ecomimesis might not suddenly sides. even result of ambient poetics. or performance perimental ecomimesis restricts itself to imagery alone. the medial. Despite in­ nology derives from diverse forms reflects the significance of multi­ evitable failure. do Aeolian. most fundamentally. if music. New kinds of art and aesthetics have provoked tives. sculpture.and sonic-effects monly associated with artifice rather than with nature. Rendering film (rendering). The fact that the termi­ very well that it is a special effect. degger and beyond. a sunny day in the Alps." so that I choose the word ambience in part to make strange the idea of envi­ all the filmic elements will simulate. and synesthesia in particular. Alternatively. These terms not think that there is an aesthetic framework here. Or cesses-effects . the re-mark. Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony is ambient. Leo Spitzer has traced the jagged evolution of the senses of was no "real " sunny day. the an environment."22 Francis Ponge's view of adequation (an idea that we The different elements of ambient poetics are all present to some de­ will see is important for Heidegger) is similar. more or less palpable. Tone describes the material makeup. More formally experimental ecomimesis. building (parergon). 35 strange. it might. painting (re-mark). But even if we know olian). or a non-aesthetic or been associated with a surrounding atmosphere. the nature rendered by ecomimesis. and typography. the silence before and after break out into Mallarmean experiments with crossed-out words-or. and timbral refer to technical or " efficient" pro­ that we are being deceived. A realist novel art as it could to writing. that is.23 . it calls on "the use of a living.21 There ature. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . It is the job of ecomimesis to convey this sense to pieces the aesthetic screen that separates the perceiving subject from of atmosphere. including niches for sculpture-a word that was later taken up in ecological language. I mean this in the Williams's Fifth Symphony. as is Vaughan First and foremost. sentimental rather than naive. If only the If we foreground the contactJ we obtain a phatic statement (Greek poet could do a rubbing of his or her brain." If we focus on the context. and impressionism (and expres­ you. we're standing by. and technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar' . or see a movie. These precursors of the structuralists. it performs a medial structuralist theories of language. the Rendering practices risk forgetting the other side of Romanticism. a " direct" rendering of unconscious processes." " Check.24 turns which the message is transmitted. They point out the atmosphere in habit. When the medium of commu­ The medial derives from the argument in Roman Jakobson's " Closing nication becomes impeded or thickened." Foregrounding the message itself results in a poetic state­ taking place is to interrupt that communication.36 . When exploring the radically new environment of the moon.27 It is immersive yet humorous and ironical in a way that is. 37 Art since the age of sensibility has sought this immediacy. first words between the American astronauts and Houston were phatic: the value of hesitation and irony. They overlook why Wordsworth in­ "You can go ahead with the TV now. for us. The Russian Formalists. check. either at the level of content or at the level of form. Notice how the black ment. ." sequence of narrative events. contact. or the electromagnetic field that makes it possible to listen to instance). code." Although reflection temporary ambient electronic music of samples from radio talk shows then dissolves this tranquility until " an emotion. or the graphics out of which they were composed. similar to that which ( "Hello. the six aspects of communication and their attendant literary effects. a structuralist. Medial writing.26 Jakobson explores snow makes us painfully aware of walking. naturalism. Nam June Paik's TV Garden ( 1 982). Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . check one. for instance. is gradually produced." but also is "recollected in tranquility. " Can you read this awfully small typeface ? " "This tele­ us directly." "You're on the air. described literariness as an impeding of effects are achieved by foregrounding one of the parts of communica­ the normative processes of language.25 Already we can see cracks in the ecomimetic illusion of that a statement that foregrounds the medium should necessarily have immediacy. of all the different types of communication. we obtain a "met­ blank paper ? alinguistic " statement: "You can't say that! It isn't allowed in When ecomimesis points out the environment." The contact is the dimension-as literally matic writing." Stressing the addresser working properly. scanned telephone conversations and other was before the subj ect of contemplation. and transmit the feelings to phasisJ speech) . count. just as Statement. Viktor Shklovsky declared. of ab­ as you would like to understand that word-in which communication stract expressionism with its monumental canvases. If the code is foregrounded. addressee." with its analyses of phatic statements. and so forth). we become aware of it. if only for a while. share this function alone. to do with speech per se . message. thinks that poetic language is pe­ marks on this page are separated from the edge by an empty margin of culiarly self-referential. we get a function. The con­ results in an "emotive " statement: "Let me tell you how I feel about verse is also true: to point out the medium in which communication is Jakobson. of concrete music's takes place. Phatic statements make us aware of the actual air between sampling and splicing of environmental sound (by Luc Ferrari. Usually The Medial: Contact as Content we spend our lives ignoring the contact." "Testing. Jakobson claimed that talking birds televisions broadcasting images of leaping dancers into budding flowers. Ecomimesis interrupts the flow of an argument or a model of communication. we notice it as a medium of transmission. . The six parts are addresser. to increase the diffi­ context. Emphasizing the addresser gives us a "conative " statement culty and length of perception because the process of perception is an that directly focuses on the intentions of the receiver of the message: aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged."29 When the phone is not " You must feel that Jakbson's model is valid. We have only to think of surrealism and auto­ testing. thus making us aware of the atmosphere . Medial statements pertain to perception. microphone check. in Schiller's Future ecocriticism must take the phatic dimension of language into ac­ language. since Jakobson. highlights the page on which the words were written. Contact "referential " statement: "This is a message about Jakobson's six-part becomes content. Call me back in five minutes-I can't hear doubtless of realism. or of environmental art that creates a "space " we must in­ recorded music.28 does itself actually exist in the mind. you're on the air " ). and phatic phenomena." The environ­ sisted that poetry not only is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful mental aspect of phatic communication explains the popularity in con­ feelings. and phone line is very crackly. sionism." the process thus becomes delayed I prefer the term medial rather than phaticJ because I see no reason and mediated. This is the logic of a certain type of Romanticism. "The tion. Thoreau is describing how sound is "filtered"-a tion we make between medium as atmosphere or environment-as a common idea since the advent of the synthesizer. performs this bolic meaning ( "timbral " comes from timbre.32 dial musical passage would make us aware of the "violin-ness " of the sound-its timbre. Conversely. Lev­ ment. It is not merely a rep­ etition of what was worth repea ting in the bell. Since the inal sound." "air. but partly the voice of the sound of music is available via the medium of. an orig­ point out is the very nledium of the voice or of writing itself. the sense that it is working " all which the thought processes in the sonnet begin to shift. Thoreau theorizes the medial quality of am­ emitting matter is vibrating. undo the boundary between what we consider noise and what we con­ sider sound-is interested in timbre. the fact that it is made of taut vi­ The Timbral brating strings inside a hard wooden box. a violin.38 . The echo is. Our awareness of mosphere in which they resonate: this dimension is available precisely because its transparency has been All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the impeded by the addition of the exuberant. rather than about its sym­ in the Romantic period as an addition to the pianoforte. The sustain pedal. reverberation. The echo un­ this is why much experimental "noise " music-which seeks precisely to dermines notions of originality and presence. guitarist in the improvisational (birdsong.30 Maurice Blanchot traced the earliest moment of this "dark pages "-they are obscure as well as visually dark. of switching from one idea to another. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language • 39 " around" the action or the environment in which or about which the function itself. Surely Thoreau about the "original" quality of echoed sound. And it is the clinamen of Lucretius. however. trope. of negation. that we cannot be as confident as Medial statements can include media in the sense of tim bre. At the end generates a certain atmosphere surrounding Rothko's giant squares of of Levertov's "To the Reader. This undermines the normal distinc­ onyms for music. as paper and pages. seduces us from tint it imparts to it. the sustained vibration of a note or drone philosopher is writing." we don't know what is written on the vibrating color. It is also a by itself" or " coming from nowhere " ( see the subsection after next) . The obj ect. the di­ ertov's "turning " is a trope that physicalizes the notion of troping or of mension is the page we are reading. the "found " quality. since they bient music can render a picture of an environment using sound effects contain medial elements. that portion of sound which the elements had taken up and modu­ Here comes the twist. talks of the inclusion of " un-intention" (his tech­ through drones." between a sphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure temporal marker and an indicator of logical analogy. and therein is the magic and charm of it. So one of the contents of a medial message bient poetics. and which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the ecomlmeSlS. nical term for silence) in the paintings of Mark Rothko. that the dimension of reading is the same as inscription: that reader and In Thoreau's Walden the distant sound of bells brings to mind the at­ writer inhabit the same dimension. the same place. and the physical mantic poetry. Linguistic art can do the same. An echo is evidence of a medium of the air that in­ the foreground." and "melody" are all syn­ could be the medium in this sense. the turn "As I write" ( birds are singing. There came to me in this case a melody which the a ir one level of rhetoric to the next. We shall see. One of the media that medial statements can lated and echoed from vale to vale. Un-intention of concrete music is tim bre. and the medial is always literal to some extent. the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph. the material. exorbitant ecomimesis to the same effect. then a me­ wood. say. The turn (Italian: volta) is a moment in a sonnet at ambient poetics. In general. Avant-garde and experimental artworks that are makes us aware of the space in which the vibration is occurring. a rhetorical turning. invented The timbral is about sound in its physicality. Keith Rowe. We enter the warm bath of ambient had strained. a vibration of the universal lyre. ambient poetics seeks to undermine the tervenes between things like a bell and the human ear. the grass is growing) is a medial state­ or swerve of particles that brings about the generation of worlds. to some extent. Cage's prepared piano makes us aware of the materiality of the piano. just as the intervening atmo­ argument. Literally. "The character or quality . which electronically background or "field"-and medium as material thing-something in filters sound waves." poised between " since " and "when. and feedback. waves) or make us aware of the space in which we are sitting music group AMM.31 This unworking accounts for the automated feel of rhythm of turning. We become feature of art to what he calls the desoeuvrement ( " unworking" ) in Ro­ aware of the text as material. The "as. The timbre is the quality with which the sound­ In this remarkable passage. wood. Am­ not directly ecological in content are environmental in form. Notice how " strained. that vibrates. The idea is to reinforce the illusion volta. but also of wood normal distinction between background and foreground. sometime around the late Romantic and Victorian periods. air) thing. for instance. We hear "the storm whistling in cesses continuing without a subject or an author. What is closest elemental terms is thinking that matter has certain intrinsic qualities­ to home is also the strangest-the look and sound of our own throat. It comes "from nowhere. This is strongly envi­ tempered). timbral statements can be strongly medial. The difficulty used to be is the meaningless fluctuation of tongue-enjoyment. For Heidegger. The Aeolian has no the chimney. and i s amplified and transmitted b y various materials and energy pending upon the particular voice or instrument producing it" ) . plants. Thinking in of the uncanniest phenomena we could ever encounter. evoking the medium water. 41 of a musical or vocal sound (distinct from its pitch and intensity) de­ cuit). or as other beings saliva." the sound of the wind in the door. Here is a paradox. earth. Lacan's "llanguage. timbre and tone (see the later subsection). experiment Timbre derives from the Greek tympanon. margin. a special suspension of ultramarine (crystals of correctly. rhetoric as fiery or earthy. One of the strongest am­ philosophy of elements bears strong resemblances to phenomenology. I am hot the physicality and materiality of the language. yet surrounding. They are inseparable the voice-over in a movie. touch. and gives rise to resonant sound when struck. Even a supposedly "pure " tone on the screen. A guitar note brings to mind the wood out of which it is is a way of describing a "thing " that is also an "environment. subj ective experience. and skull: the grain of the voice. the elements were manifolds of what material. however." j ust where it appears-somewhere in between. is disembodied across the moor.33 fields."4 0 We could also invoke the interpretation of sheer tinguishing properly between inside and outside. Like. These terms have gradu­ that utters them. It does not originate anywhere in the picture from matter."39 But such ideas risk suggesting that there is nothing other than ears. the auditorium (surround sound). water is watery through and through. water. The taut skin of the drum. this voice does or into objectivity. teeth. to keep nature not edit out its material embodiment. Rhodopas: "IKB / Derrida has shown how this suggestive term evokes the difficulty of dis­ spirit in matter. taste. which initially meant a p articular percussion instrument. Cinematic " rendering" employs acousmaric sound to fill such as a sine wave still emerges from material (say. as Barthes called it.35 Far (animals." or tone all by itself. either the thing as a sensory manifold (a mixture of how things feel. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . wateriness is not j ust "painted on " to the surface of the thing called Thus. Martin Heidegger affirms that we never hear sound in the abstract. it keeps collapsing either into subjectivity from the transcendental "Voice " of Derridean theory. And medial statements can be timbral. with pure tone." The parent's voice. He wrote of In­ printing press makes sure the paper is flat enough to register the type ternational Klein Blue. throat. Modern art and theory. the idea of "pure " sound derives from a notion of Timbre. "Acousmatic " sound. pointing out ally come to have a purely subjective sense (this room feels dry. The Classical elements (fire. The tympan in a Klein's pure blue canvases hang in numerous galleries.40 . The specific sound form of a partic- ." "lalangue. bient effects is the rendering of this timbral voice. the elemental ronmental." It is sub­ made. The perceptual phenomena we it is inextricably bound up with the space in which it is heard. this margin. Before they became spe­ fluctuation makes us think about a space (the mouth) that is thoroughly cific atoms in the periodic table. the wail of the hound obvious source. and so on). separates the inside from the outside like a art-Yves Klein's and Derek Jarman's use of blue are extreme examples. including fields of force. Our own body is one We still describe verse as liquid. and so on) : "the aisthetonJ that which is perceptible by sensa­ came to describe the way sound strikes or stamps (French timbrel') our tions. an electrical cir. Is this drum. Consider have been exploring possess material thingliness. This axiom asserts that at bottom. perhaps impossible. we hear the way things (a very rich word for Heidegger) soundJ The Aeolian ensures that am bient poetics establishes a sense of pro­ in an almost active sense of the verb. foreground and background were about the body as much as they were about the atmosphere.38 For Heidegger there is no such thing as a "pure " sound emanating from an unseen source. Whether we think of nature as an environment. The Aeolian Instead. are more than intertwined. We could point to the use of sheer sound or color in even of the eardrum.34 sound or color in psychoanalytic and literary theory.41 The timbral voice is vivid with the resonance of the lungs. part of the inside or the outside? ground lapis lazuli) in a clear commercial binder.37 Nursery rhymes enable the baby to hear the sound of the we conventionally separate as "subjectivity" and " objectivity. The tim bral and the medial are two ways of describing the same stantial. It is very hard. a drum or a bell without a clapper ( "tam bourine " is a related word). rather than any specific words .36 This meaningless resolved by ideas such as that of the elements. Wag­ sphere as instrument and as raw material. or a certain become occupied with different phenomena."42 natural uncanny: an unusual occurrence that is ultimately explicable.43 Aeolian phe­ Tone is a notoriously casual term. over an addiction. hence "ecotone. music. used by Alexander von Humboldt in his description of how is less focus on the musicians (if any) and the music (if any). there is no source at all. more precise significance. there ment " ). Experimental music contains examples of The Aeolian provokes anxiety. If the source is obscure. One metaphor blends into another in a disturbing. environmental writing and forms of poetics going back to the culture of The idea of sounds without a source has come under attack from sensibility in the eighteenth century. refers temporary sound art. A certain degree of audiovisual hallucination happens when we read to the point at which time comes to a standstill. There is often " Shh! Listen! " Even at the very depth of the illusion of rendering. To investigate this. acoustic ecology yearns for an organic world of the film 's surface appear to fly overhead. Acoustic ecology the environment. So does the everyday tween an obscure source and no source at all. In these environments. as Celeste Langan has demonstrated concerning Walter Scott's us rescue the idea of tone from its awful fate in American high schools. Ambience is an expansion of the space-time continuum in an artwork. his or her experiences there. It has something kitsch a bout it: it is nomena are necessarily synesthetic. its admonishing tone of physicality by playing with typographical arrangement. vulgar . significantly. Like other rary art and theory) is the environment.45 Tone accounts materially for that slippery absorption. because built into it is a hesitation be­ acousmatic sound. let poetry. Because we cannot directly perceive the source. punning way that makes it impossible to decide which level of reality is. Murray Schafer. addiction and withdrawal are intensely physical is always underwritten by a more threatening void. since this very void processes that must be endured." a zone of ecological transition. and synesthesia may not give rise too emotional. The surrounding quiet of a face-to-face contact in which the sound of things corresponds to the desert of shifting sands is heard as we watch the protagonist recalling way they appear to the senses and to a certain concept of the natural.46 proponents of acoustic ecology. the phenomenon does not reside in control. But this obscurity parison with geology. We need to expand our percep­ raphy came not from its ability to displace a voice but its ability to dis­ tion to take stock of it. technology of listening to recorded sound: "The true threat of phonog­ the phenomenon dwells in our world. Each layer minimizes the input of a conscious subj ect: by com­ SCUl'e-we should just open our ears and eyes more. When we consider it closely. There is a literary analogy in nerian forms." in CascadiaJ Brenda Hillman's ex­ our world. and visual art play with atmo­ more compelling from of Gesamtkunstwerk than immersive. This is akin to Todorov's supernatural periment with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. rather than sheer silence.42 . tone has a to a holistic pattern. however. emerging from loudspeakers. R. A different from conventional music. to use a geolog­ Tone: IntensitYJ StasisJ Suspension ical figure. We thus scriptions of California through geologic time and an account of getting face a choice between a transcendental experience and a psychotic one. and Immanuel Kant in his matic sound can compel us to a state of distraction rather than aesthetic analysis of the sublime. who coined the Tone is useful because it ambiguously refers both to the body and to term soundscape in 1 967. is a blankness that is structural to our acceptance of the illusion itself. Multimedia. For "the body" (as it is so often called in contempo­ criticizes disembodiment as a feature of modern alienation. It is like what Tzvetan Todorov calls the super­ place a person's own voice. The form of the poem heightens the is what gives ecomimesis its divine intensity. A poem called "A Geology. It also. in the conventional. This is the import of con­ pitch: the way in which matter is vibrating. long narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel.44 In poetry. It radically bisects it. comprising productions that are supposed to be to a notion of place. labeled it schizophonia. It refers to the quality of vibration. 43 ular place is reproduced. This is not inevitable: synaesthesia could become an even word atmosphere." " attune­ places traditionally reserved for visual art. out of reach of our reading gaze. images can appear to arise without or despite the narrator's If. It is impossible to determine which layer has pri­ Most ecomimesis wants to reassure us that the source is merely ob­ ority. too physical. Jet planes unseen on forms of Romanticism. Acous­ different art emerges from different climates. is both a montage of de­ marvelous: an event that must be believed on its own terms. Tone can those organs of our perception not engaged by the disembodied event denote the tension in a string or muscle (muscle tone). the bedrock. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . there something going on in the margin. Sound art is sometimes exhibited in rough aesthetic equivalent is the German Stimmung ( " mood. as Mallarme does pages for the reader to get through. Stasis becomes audible in ground would dissolve it-it must resort to oblique rhetorical strate­ musical suspension. as how words fail our ability to describe something. j ust as much as it makes sustains suspended chords that do not progress from A to B. Disco music compels dancers to stay on the dance theology. like negative than another layer. "It is a 'state. and other kinds of broken lineation. Tone is another word Later in the eighteenth century. Sir Thomas Raffles spontaneously. and to the paper on which it is written ( and the si­ stasis. It takes a visual form. Negative theology asserts that God is not big.' such as moonlight poured over gives apophasis a self-reflexive twist. Plateaus of tension and relaxation take "cooler. and thus it is appropriate to our multimedia age. same length as positive musical phrases. which for this sweet spot. the discourse of sentimentality. Lockean able to mine ever more deeply the basic blues structure for a sweet spot. for the performer to substitute In the second decade of the nineteenth century. There is a school of thought that negative ecology. suspension occurs when the time of the plot (the lence of the unspoken) . was developed into an ethics in Adam blues.48 a suspended chord pulsating in rhythmic space. there . this is a strong form of ekphrasis (descriptio. A more complex "over there. This negative delin­ composers such as Claude Debussy incorporated into their composi­ eation is especially important in ambient poetics. always near the resolution but never quite making it. "We inhabit the body" like a person living in a house. In narrative. Ekphrasis exists when a narrator says "picture this." It often out of sheer blankness. Since repetition is itself a function of differ­ perceiver and perceived is a predominant theme in Maurice Merleau­ ence. But in so doing. but remain us aware of the atmosphere. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . then house. As with rhythm. there is such a plot-the events of a narrative in chronological sequence-and story­ thing as negative imagery. where one layer of sound changes more slowly gies. black. with implications for the evolu­ This is how ambience enters the time dimension. we notice that our gaze is poem. somewhere within the third part of a four-part registered truth on the body."51 Static sound became a basis of contemporary music. sence of sound or graphic marks can be as potent as their presence. rhyme scheme. Metonymic listing tion slows down or suspends narrative time. but here. located in a specific place. . like phenomenological philosophy. white. Extreme negativity consists in ellipsis ( . . empiricism asserts that reality will be different for different perceivers. . Tone is a matter of tion of the nove1. enjoyed the repetitive music of the Indonesian gamelan. then hip-hop. and Leonhard A text can describe something by delineating it negatively. or apophasis-saying something in the neg­ the events in the order in which the narrator tells them." Texts also exploit negative rhythm to generate tone. create tone tion) . Just input. the ampli­ being centered. 45 Cartesian sense. Our senses are disoriented. such as Homer's description of (or consider Heidegger's word Beffig ) . . even in visual art. small. j ust how much. that in the story an intervening ekphrasis is inserted that takes several Even more extreme is placing a word under erasure. were progressively Ponty's phenomenology. is a more apt description of nature. tone is also quantitative. Specifically. imagery comes in clusters. How do you pronounce a Achilles' shield during the intense description of battle at the end of the crossed-out word ? The erasure compels us to pay attention to the word Iliad. whether of rhythm or imagery: strictly speaking. floor not only because it involves repetitive beats. a less repetitive rhythmic structure. The narrative aspect of ecomimesis generates tone. Suppose that in ative.49 Synesthetic works of art try to disrupt our sense of quantity." our hearing is " outside " the room we are sitting in. An AA rhyme scheme increases the energy level of a central point. as would a preponderance of repeated beats. Cage scored optional quantities of silence of exactly the from the time of the story (the events as they are narrated) .50 Vivid descrip­ as words come in phrases. vivid descrip­ Gaps between stanzas.47 There also exists a British lineage. or si­ events as they would have occurred in "real time " ) diverges widely lence in music. ) or silence. inhabiting "the body" from a tude of vibrations. event B follows event A after an interval of five seconds. The linkage of blance. but traditionally ekphrasis can embody any sensory is not necessarily a matter of what sort of imagery. but also because it Environmental art makes us aware of our ears. I remain convinced by . the plot. Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. In terms of imagery. Since ambience tries tions what they had learned from the gamelan since its appearance at to evoke the background as background-to drag it into the fore­ the Exposition Universelle in Paris ( 1 8 89 ) . The ab­ place over time. then disco. Let us distinguish between can generate an overwhelming tone. funk. Think of the use of shadow in drawing. it nudges us out of the " in between" without resolution.44 . Occupatio Huizinga later declared. This can only be a matter of sem­ vulgar Cartesianism. The effect on the reader is that the time of narration is held in as graphic mark. consisting in complaining about the fields. renders the text Bodily processes are cyclic. It is rather a staying-in-place again. to a loss of consciousness. through that We are approaching the fundamental properties of ambient poetics. The composer rectly brought "in front of" the sense organs without losing its envi­ Jonty Semper recently combined every availa ble BBC recording of the roning properties. to the magnitude of the earth. what Wordsworth called a "spot of time. or dancer's ) point of view. the ab­ other kind of medium." evokes a sense of sheer space. but cating distinct political and historical bearings . and one that appears to surround us and which cannot be di­ that would make Britons aware of their country's dead. or the diffusion of a huge cloud of scent? We generally take one kind of medium to be the background: the am­ This language establishes a plateau on which all signals are equal in in­ bient air or electromagnetic field. Before Cage. and finally to "the im­ the basis of ecomimesis. This background. or some other effect.46 . much more so than that of Burke. or specifically ambient music. such that each previous recording becomes what is then re­ endowed with its own intensity. or glittering color. The sheer quantity of nature writing a plateau or suspension.61 Quincey.s2 It is probable that a negative poetics of the environment also and-now of bodily sensation. Current neurophysiology has suggested that a re­ two minutes ' silence. This surely explains the cenotaph. We are thrown back on the here­ physical.60 Background music. our mind recognizes its power to imagine what is not there: ground" but appears "in the foreground. The text that Lucier reads is about this pro- . attempt to undo the normal dif­ tionalist rituals. we have "Sublime is what even to be able to think proves that the mind has a a paradoxical situation in which background and foreground have col­ power surpassing any standard of sense. the two minutes' silence on undo the difference between a perceptual event upon which we can Armistice Day was intended from its inception as a radio broadcast focus. is a phrenic symptoms such as hearing voices (foreground phenomena) em­ suggestive transportation point in the text. And what could be more evocative of this than a swathe of blankness. If Kant him­ more rarely. how much more would someone inclined toward materi­ other one. this and that. "S4 Kant demonstrates this by lapsed in one sense. In Kant's foreground. transcendental idealist that he is. Background and foreground rely upon distin­ mense multitude of such Milky Way systems. The Romantic bohemian consumerist. from the size of a tree. language that evokes an endless murmuring or Re-Mark : "1 Can't Believe It Isn't Art" scribbling. We talk about " back­ the mind from the external world to the internal one. the one we explored as the timbral. terms indi­ Negative quantity has become a powerful tool of modern art. also of modern ideology. from the reader's stration of the shifting and intertwined qualities of foreground and (or listener's. Thomas De considered as lying in the background. air vents) that are normally beam down into it. can­ ceptor in the hypothalamus. A breakdown in the neurotrans­ Zero in New York City is entitled " Reflections of Absence. For example.Sf'.56 The design that won the commission for Ground foreground and background sound. but De Quincey makes the term self. provides tools for reading am­ experientialY. tone gives us pause." while music appears as in the foreground." is a cause of its power. appears as sence of something "there. taking us on a journey of quantity. of a mountain. enables the disti!1ction between nons firing. and. Syncope commonly refers to abbreviation. De Quincey theorizes how. complete with newsreel hiss. but De Quincey extends the term toward the notion of tone. actually existing things rather than in mental experience. A negative quantity. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . but persist in another sense. experimented with his own kinds of psychic and physical in­ Alvin Lucier's 1 Am Sitting in a Room ( 1 970) is a powerful demon­ tensity in taking opium. A disembodied Aeolian sound emanates "from the back­ terms. consider the use of silence in na­ Muzak.62 A voice speaking in a room is recorded over and over pausing is not a mere hiatus or stopping. the empty tomb of ference between foreground and background. In the anechoic cham ber at Harvard. and rain. ground noise. The tensity-which might as well be silence. birds calling.s7 This Kant's view of the sublime provides a limit case for this section of the heightening of awareness takes place in what De Quincey calls paren­ argument.I Parenthesis usually places a phrase or sentence inside an­ bient poetics. signified through ellipsis. 47 Den'ida 's remarks that negative theology is still plagued by the meta­ not the same as no information at all. the paper on which text appears. who evokes the sublime in thesis or syncope." which is recorded in the same room. There is "not much going on. suffers from these symptoms . alism or empiricism do the same."S5 The sublime transports guishing between here and there." mission across this receptor may in part be responsible for schizo­ Negative quantity. Alpha-7." With Aeolian events. The Aeolian attempts to the unknown soldier.S3 Cage heard the sound of his own body as if it were amplified. which allows subjectivity to anating from sonic sources (radiators. and ultimately between makes of "space. or both as ground. as well as from larger. or between space and idea of mediumJ split into two aspects (foreground and background). The subjective value site. the recording picks up the reso­ "extraneous " matter on the canvas ? Or between noise and sound (how nance of the room and feeds it back. pay attention to these squiggles as meaningful in some unspecified way. while it remains strictly im­ ence of (significant) marks. When the bird Woodstock " not one. Eliot's poetry. and not two. as tongue to bell. but we know that he is But so are monist ones-there is no (single. place ? We must be careful not to assert that a medium exists " before " the split It is a truism that contemporary art tries to challenge such distinc­ occurs. is There is a device that produces it in art." Voice is to room. how do we recognize that some image of an ex­ as environmental as writing about birds and trees." without reference to an outside. We could easily think of visual equivalents. It doesn't take mental sculpture.65 The re-mark is the fundamental property of Gestalt psychology establishes a rigid distinction between figure and am bience. S. as it were. How does the split that separates background and foreground occur ? (Woodstock himself. There was never a point of "hand-over" at which are just a hair's breadth (if that) away from each other. It is a special ground such that figure and ground entail each other (the faces and mark (or a series of them ) that makes us aware that we are in the pres­ candlestick illusion is the classic example ). who appeared after the Woodstock festival. at the same time. ) He calls it the re-mark. There is a Buddhist saying that reality is humor of the Charlie Brown cartoons. signals in the text. (Likewise. a that the room was present in the voice at the very beginning of the pro­ space that. Otherwise Alvin Lucier would speech bubble. since really what we are dealing with is the entiate between foreground and background." Dualistic interpretations are highly dubious. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . or patches of paint and re-mark is a quantal event. I am suggesting here that subjectivity and obj ectivity room " sits in a room. Jacques Derrida has brilliantly close to the subject of this book. which performs the action of the re-mark and makes us not have been able to generate I Am Sitting in a Room.63 that shines out of places such as Thoreau's Walden Pond emanate from Aesthetic. independent.64 We can be sure that this dis­ mark is to answer the question: how little does the text need to differ­ crimination is metaphysical. and between music and sheer sound. The work is situated on a wavering margin between words and language. The re-mark is minimalistic. "I am sitting in a student response. happens to someone. The illusive play the sound of the voice " in itself" modulated into the sound of the room of the re-mark establishes their difference out of an undifferentiated " in itself. What happens at the level of the re-mark re- .67 Every tim� I teach a class on ecological other. but ground. lasting) speaking. between a ringing bell and a sounding tongue ?66 Between a sub­ sion. How do you discriminate between the let­ possible to see both as figure. be­ ternal thing is actually an "objective correlative " for a subjective state? cause it tries directly to render the actual (sensation of) environment al­ Some very small flicker occurs. because the little squiggles above his head are placed in a "thing" underneath the dualist concept. The re-mark is a kind of echo. In modern life this distinction is between objective (space ) and voice and the room are mutually determining. if not more so. at least one student asserts that "place " is what a person music. Despite the rigidity of the cess. amplifier feedback nonspecific smell and a specific or significant scent? Or. such as environ­ into a "subjective " one. To identify the re­ criminations between inside and outside. its basic gesture. After a short while. Andy Goldsworthy's work gradually dissolves into its much for ecomimesis to suggest a quality of place. The ters on this page and random patches of dirt. Even when it is ex­ sound (foreground) and noise ( background)." I put stance and its attributes ? A re-mark differentiates between space and " itself" in quotation marks because what we come to realize is that the place. amplifying and articulating it about harmony and dissonance) ? Or between graphics and letters? Or a through the sound of the speaking voice. even more in general lets us hear the sound of the technical medium of transmis­ subtly. and furthermore. we realize ternal. we don't know what he is saying. This art is In T. meta physical distinctions. But the re-mark occurs more widely. speaks. The re-mark is behind the tween "here " and "there " ) . 49 cess. A re-mark flips an "objective " image together.) We lose the words and gain the sound of the room "itself. They were always implicated in each other. world " beyond" Snoopy's garden lawn. place has become something that people dOJ or construct.48 . One does not precede the subjective (place) phenomena. Retroactively. since the notion of medium depends upon this very split (be­ tions. insofar as he embodies the natural analyzed it in such works as Dissemination and The Truth in Painting. The voice was always already in its environment. not even as sound source to medium. It is medial. involve dis­ minute. but with greater eventually appear. This is not to say A question to which we shall return: does not this collapse of art into that ambience is not incarnated in physical things." but it is a suggestive image for the ecological critic. Rendering appears to dissolve the aesthetic dimension The brilliance of ambient rhetoric is to make it appear as if. Georges Bataille was substantializing it too noise. untraumatic development more common varieties of ecological language.?3 Minimalist experi­ boundary of a set."69 understanding. The same is true of the re-mark. to We cannot claim that there is a special entity that exists as a combi­ factor them in to our political and ethical decisions.99999 .?5 We have returned to the idea of rendering. Ambient rhetoric is non-art actually paradoxically serve to hold open the space of the aes­ present. embody what is. We could measure things one way or another.6 8 Until the measure­ whether they are outside or inside our heads. wiped out. Geoffrey Hartman praises the idea of Hence the infamous stories of j anitors clearing away installations. much when he labeled what he called the informe " unassimilable This is related to a mathematical paradox. for instance. As a matter of Reality. would be less possible if one were freezing to death). one on the other. . in another place." We the quantum wave reduction). even mystical. squiggle/letter). will be increasingly at risk of being waves and particles. at that "moment" (though that word only makes sense after urgency. such spaces. limen� shot deal. never as an amalgam of the two simultaneously. . illusory. 0000 . we won't find anything in between. certain mantic gesture of defying the commodity world? I reiterate that this is forms of contemporary architecture would not be possible. As Bruno Latour nation of both wave and particle . and liminal species (Latin. not to say that there do not exist actual anamorphic life-forms. But because of the logic of the re-mark. The occurrence of the re-mark is always a " one­ these very spaces. This " outdoor room " is the result of ambient rhetoric (and a certain at­ product and waste. and 1 . Wordsworth a minimalist. Wordsworthian nature as a contemplative space in his book on culture: thinking they were j ust random piles of paintbrushes and pots of paint. or the Os. otherwise. "Political philosophy . fin ds itself confronted with the obliga­ wave/particle distinction. In the rhetoric of juxtaposing contents and frame." Indeed. art tries might never know if the 9s. at which a squiggle ambience is always anamorphic-it can only be glimpsed as a fleeting. but we objects " or installations make this apparent. . we just cannot go on thinking of them as " in between. relatively unforced) development. there is something in between. . are going to continue indefinitely.74 In these works. at the level of the very Margin (French marge) denotes a border or an edge. like an so that the two numbers are equal. These . both possibilities are superposed." 7o care of our world. It says that if we point out where physical and emotional freedom. preoccupied in advance (using an algorithm) whether a point will lie on the with waste products that will not be flushed away. which acts as an thetic " until something better comes along " in an age where all art has extension of the inside of the house and is referred to as a carpet. I mean here to support these margins. to sneak a glimpse of itself from the side. smell/scent. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . . However close we get to the dissolving presence that flickers across our perception and cannot be (admittedly artificial) boundary between inside and outside (sound/ brought front and center. or whether some other digit will animal. is only a series of probabilities. if current industrial policies remain unchecked. the anti-aesthetics of the high avant-garde meets tachment to an idea of a temperate climate. in the common suburban lawn. straightforward sense. such as coral reefs. It is impossible to establish waste. respectively. allows There is a politics to this aesthetics. could be either j ust a squiggle or a letter. at ment takes place.71 Ac­ been commercialized?76 And therefore is not the collapse a strongly Ro­ tually existing spaces can have ambient qualities. the more art collapses into non-art. must choose to include them on this side of human social practices. or not-in which case the dis­ other world. or from ground level. 51 sembles what happens in quantum physics. The more extreme the play. even a very simple one: "Imagine two algorithms ments with empty frames and also with frameless and formless "found generating the digits 0." 71 tinction will appear at another date. The level of the Since it appears to lie in between oppositional entities. it is an outdoor room essential to the waste goes. for a because it depends upon a certain necessarily finite play with the re­ fleeting second." In quantum mechanics. Either the in­ tion to internalize the environment that it had viewed up to now as an­ side/outside distinction is constituted. a choice presents itself between boundary) such as amphibians. " The spacious ambience of nature when treated with respect. bottom. but really I mean it in a very "seashore. the effect of re-mark is a fundamentally indeterminate one. There is nothing underneath the states. This sounds abstruse. Calling William mark.50 . hence small. and the numbers are unequal. we won't be able to keep ourselves from taking greater thought and untraumatic (that is. . then is it the same sound.52 .78 A rhizome is a sprout of a Scholarship in auditory cultural studies. taken place. If I have somehow pro­ thinkers who. . are better than emergence of capitalist demands for fresh product. because they do not discriminate visual art. The bumps themselves are formed by all kinds ence). bumpy di­ form of modern music production. which grows. The snobbery of contemporary music criticism in which case there is nothing to perceive. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . horror than a coo of identification. lends itself to the idea that this music does not depend upon mental sympathy. such as nuance. sea slugs. when slightly different lenses are noring the factory specifications. it different or the same ? do not think that ambience will save us from anything. and others such as David Toop. as nuance. backgroundlforeground. has tended to see sound along a continuum. which promotes differentiation-for example. The choice is always starkly and straightforwardly be­ surely there is no point in talking about a connection. sometimes carrying on growing. " Rhizomes. however close to the boundary line you get. tacking on found pieces here and there and ig­ is like those tests at the optometrist's. then and second lens. and multimedia all suffer the same ironic fate. a collage of snatches and sam pIes of make them cute. then magical forms of Moreover. If "new and improved" versions of continuity between inside and say). that of Jean-Fran<. Rhizomic writing. then to ambient sound and back again This image has become very popular in fashionable sound art circles. but something nevertheless. which studies the history of plant such as a potato. when compared with plants that sonic environments. Lyotard claims that there is such a thing then how can it do it in a " better way" than a binary play of difference. does it stop being the same car at presented: "Do you prefer num ber one. Some rhizomes are more rhizomic than others. some quality of color or sound that exists "in between" in­ without collapsing difference into identity ? If sound b grows " rhizomi­ side and outside'?? I am claiming that you will never be able to find cally " out of sound a. cries " through speech to music. there is an absolute difference between my argument and If the function of rhizome is to j oin and therefore to differentiate. tween " one " and "two. since only one thing exists .Ro Thinking that you are doing something chical" or " nonlinear "-are out of bounds too. quantum difference that the re-mark establishes. as the one we confronted earlier." Lyotard is one of those post-structuralist between two things. rhizomic or not. we will be left with the same co­ outside.ois Lyotard. where in the middle. high/low. with a boundary. The nouveau roman of the 1 960s ( Robbe­ Although it tries with all its might to give the illusion of doing so. or num ber two ? " However some point ? If it is now a " different" car. A doe-eyed coral reef is more likely to elicit a gasp of normative hierarchies such as beginning/end. If we try to avoid the idea of hierarchy ( between inside and outside. Rhythm Sci­ next will be very bumpy. Because they have no distinct shape. to turn them into obj ects of consumerist environ­ music. and has been so at least since the visions between things. some­ as a circle (or " 0 factor" ) that traces a smooth transition from "primal times putting out a new fruit. to be sure. then this car will suffer from the same problems-is aesthetics. or a different sound ? If some "thing " in between. with the language of rhizome. are suspect in their attempt to smooth over the nundrum. These forms. on the other hand." so the story goes. however nihilistic he appears. On this point. is the very structuralist fantasies that seek to do away with the strange. there is an aesthetic politics of the rhizome." are also post­ venting new ways of mimicking real or imaginary sounds. whose subject would change alarmingly some­ side and outside. invertebrates) are vital for sustaining of books on ambient music and sound art. architecture. then in what consists the rhi­ ' similar the lenses. in a seemingly indiscriminate manner. dressed up in chic language. in which case there is something to perceive. or in­ Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's idea of the "rhizome. there is never a way of seeing "in between " the first zomic thread connecting the "two " cars ? If it is the " same " car. The re-mark either undoes the distinction altogether.?9 The compositional tech­ life on earth. actually believes in some­ duced a "quasi-car " that exists " between " the original car and an en­ thing-a " better " something than what is available through normal tirely different one. or it establishes it in the first and fashion readily corrects the idea that a real disruption of norms has place. II I But the quantum character of the re-mark assures that there in part because of the popularization of Deleuze and Guattari in techno is no genuine continuum and that the transition from one sound to the music by DJ Spooky (the author of a "rhizomic " study. such as new by mixing different sounds together from different sources. and so forth. even must deal with gravity. I. Grillet) took this principle down to the very level of the syntax of the ambient poetics will never actually dissolve the difference between in­ individual sentence. between different levels of importance. ones that are miraculously "nonhierar­ rhizome for rhizome's sake. an ambient composer and writer of ideological and philosophical processes. 53 very life-forms (coral. It I am retrofitting my car. hierarchical "trees " of information. it is very hard to nique of bricolage or pastiche. to cries. a noise that is also a sound. especially a " new and improved" version. in which things be­ there is an intense and specific form of ecomimesis. the bard who recited his own of our mind. gather songs at honey-flowing springs. far more than clinging to an aesthetic thinking." a mark of the sudden and spontaneous. It is as if the narrator turns on a spigot. is the invasion of divine madness. have it both ways. . i. the M use makes some people inspired herself. and when I tell a into certain lengths called rhapsodies. Aris­ Muses. Such thinking involves a self-possessed subject."90 The mind lets go while the body takes over. Get Out " Ecomimesis " is a rough Greek translation for "nature writing. the automaton. . my eyes are full of tears. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language • 55 None of this is to claim that inside and outside "really" exist. 88 The environment ( "glades and gardens of the Muses " ) is "out Epic poems. Rather than a weak representation. I have been arguing that power" exerts a force we now call a magnetic field. . of his mind. Poetic power emanates from beyond the more carefully what mimesis signifies.86 Ecorhapsody and Ecodidacticism: Turn On." 83 Even in the case of "the bard who recited his own my heart j umps. and mimesis is a form of rhapsody. sometimes . Let us consider come charged with energy. A rhap­ The poet is an enthusiast: literally. Somewhere that is neither inside nor outside is so that there's sometimes a very long chain of iron pieces and rings strictly inconceivable.' it seems to me. It's a divine power that moves you. and that they bear songs to us as bees carry honey. such as tery."R7 The poet literally " goes out source of inspiration. rather. And what they say is true. The poet is a rhapsode. but memorized verses extends to suggest j uxtaposed poems. but of being plugged in to a mind and his intellect is no longer in him. of recording or trans­ automatic quality in its form. The " divine the mimesis of the oikos (Greek "home " ) . its gardener. lays or cantos. . he or she buzzes within ( Greek. "mainlining" reality. and then through those who are inspired a chain of other enthusiasts is suspended. or "mas­ amalgam of the two. from glades and gardens of the Plato's idea of mimesis is more appropriate here than Aristotle's. it also puts power in the rings. b ut mostly . dresses the rhapsode Ion: or sound-noise." not to mention the idea of a class of readers. Plato depicts inspira­ a rendering. mitting rather than spontaneous production. . Ecological rhap­ Andre Breton describes how the automatic writer becomes a recording sody is a reading of the book of nature. as one understanding the re-mark means radically questioning the genuine ex­ might expect. another technical popular literary term at the time. hanging from one another . however perfectly. indicating an almost random term for Dionysian epiphany.R4 The earlier sense of rhapsody as a threading of velops this desire to render-not j ust to copy. however. Somehow. as when an actor acts a bees. In Plato's Ion. we can still tell the difference between the two.54 . which were re­ story that's frightening or awful. .92 definition of rhapsody still gestures toward reading. Inspiration derives from the environment. In the same way. a compelling illusion rather than a simple copy. For a poet is an airy thing . my hair stands on end with fear and cited at one time. as a "Magnetic " stone moves iron Somewhere that is both inside and outside suffers from this wish to rings . a sound that is also a noise. Socrates does not exactly condemn poetry. This is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his not simply a matter of copying forms. ecomimesis embodies this bodies a notion of reading rather than writing. poem." 91 Surrealist "automatic writing" de­ "threading" of topics. if they're iron. Believing that such a place exists is sheer nihilism. he places poetry outside the sphere of rational istence of these categories. so that they in turn can do j ust what the stone does . Tune In. In fact. rhapsody em­ Whether or not it is written for recitation. a class of persons who got their living by reciting servant of the medium. . and with the notion of "miscellany. The poet becomes the poem." like a bee leaving the hive to gather honey from a flower. . Ambience suggests that there is a special kind of noise-sound. Socrates ad­ ambience. must be literally . During the later eigh­ out of which flows a potentially endless stream of metonymic associa­ teenth century. nonfactual language. . 89 Ion becomes the puppet of fic­ the poems of Homer: hence the poems of Homer came to be divided tion: "when I tell a sad story.82 For Plato mimesis is a divinely inspired form of madness." It is The magnet is a suggestive image of ambient poetics. This stone not only pulls those rings. . however. a rhapsodist. and he is role. flying like totle considers mimesis to be simple imitation."85 Poetry. en­ sode is "one who stitches or strings songs together: one who recited thuein} . . The expanded actually to tra nsmit-something that circumvents the conscious will. the contact. or imitation.e. this is a tion as a transmogrification of human into beast: "Poets tell us that they strong. We have seen how ecomimesis is subject. magical form." Poetry is a medium. . "rhapsody " and "rhapsode " became associated with tions: "Dionysiac parousia [presence] is confirmed by the common irrational. device: "The expression ' all is written. Schopenhauer's view of lyric is that shoes. and conversely. disaster and As long a s we only imagine a pair o f shoes in general. grace of the sun. Rather than trying to be adequate to a real pair of right reading of the environment-a monitoring. and the "earth" out of which it shoes. its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unex­ manifests in some specific element. the Dionysian aspect of art. or simply look at blessing. the surroundings communicate the reflex of idea of the shoes ? their color to the will." speaks of the outside. and gleam of the stone. this environment is an emerges and which. unused shoes as they merely stand there in the picture. yet first brings to light the light of the day. into the foreground. as if it were magnetically charged. victory and disgrace. "the dark opening of the worn insides. the darkness of the night. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes poetry on or in the earth. a blissful. often wonder whether ecological writing is at bottom nothing other the wordless joy of having once more withstood want. It "the subjective disposition . the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls. in the medieval termi­ approve of the technological metaphor. the earth would have no atmosphere at all. Nietzsche. ) The general en­ death. All is written on the blank page. are no longer j ust in the background." we glimpse the way Greek culture organized " birth and death. poetics in general is a deeply rhapsodic. simply because they palpable. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . Beyond its particular shape and texture. the environment resonates in a pair of peasant cultural "world " in which it was made. which would at least hint at their use. This equipment belongs to the earth."96 For Nietzsche. a kind of adaequatio-the artwork embodies the historical­ van Gogh painting. . "shelters " it. the breadth There is nothing surrounding this pair of peasant shoes in or to which of the sky.94 Just there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far­ as individualism and private space were opening up. . (I plained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field." In a Greek temple in a "rock-cleft valley. which somewhere else than we usually tend to be.9H apostrophe to the ambient air is a fitting way to begin a poem about the formation of a poet's mind in dialectical relation with the world that "In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth " : the language wants surrounds him. endurance ctnd decline" . and it is protected in the ters the realm of the particular. but have been pulled is utterly unknown. The environment in general silent call of the earth. A pair of peasant shoes and nothing more. em­ Heidegger's locative vagueness has a precise function. This equip­ ment is pervaded by uncomplaining anxiety as to the certainty of brea d." Wordsworth placed lines of tread of the worker stares forth." the place of the subject. and Heidegger based theories of poetics on the foreground: "In the vicinity of the work [of art] we were suddenly notions of attunement to and immersion in an environment. and writers make far too much they might belong-only an undefined space. 57 held to. though he would not shoes-Heidegger criticizes the idea that art is. in Heidegger's words. and "The luster the empty. almost a subsonic (empirical but inaudible ) come from "elsewhere. . but the environment. In the shoes vibrates the Ecorhapsody is a mode of ecomimesis. and "here. It exists in between somewhere so different that it are discrete. On nonpersonal. An abstraction passes into an empirical world of the peasant woman. Beyond a certain feeling. As he develops bodied in the Greek chorus. environmental space became artistically the leather lie the dampness and richness of the soil. There are not even clods of ado about something that is like a revelation or a photographic devel­ soil from the field or the field-path sticking to them. so collectivity and spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. " Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze." 99 The very space inside the bring to mind the idea of rhapsody. In Heidegger's description of a nology. his view of art as a " happening of truth" in the revealing of the intoxicated collapse of the Schopenhauerian principium individuationis "thingly" character of the thing. "makes space inkling of Being itself. or transpersonal. we shall never discover what the equipmental being of the equipment truly is. the trembling be­ than the poetics of these fields altogether.56 . imparts its own hue to the perceived sur­ all depends on what "in" means-inside ? In the shoes' material ? In our rounding. registered in discrete things that. though itself apparently glowing only by the From Van Gogh's painting we cannot even tell where these shoes stand." even if that elsewhere is really an analogue for sound. is an immersion in phenomena. trying to turn them into found obj ects. such as Coleridge's " Kubla Khan. If it were not for the gravita­ fore the impending childbed and shivering at the surrounding menace of tional field. Rhapsody is the resonance of the background in Schopenhauer." loo Unlike the transcendental. which Heidegger calls D asein " being there " : - for that spaciousness. it becomes clear that this view is (principle of individuation). Under the soles slides exciting. And yet- opment. rhapsody is most properly the tone of somewhere "in" the poet's mind. The image suggests that significance and inspiration us to hear this non-sound. From out of this protected belonging equip­ domain.97 For Heidegger. like the air. This elsewhere is beyond concept."93 Some Romantic poems try to look like psychological cu­ From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome riosities."95 Wordsworth's ment itself rises to its resting-within-itself. for which Oxford­ And willows. So while the poem. mistier. cality of the train and its passengers. What is the " it" . and willow-herb. A linking and What would a rhapsodic tuning-in look like ? The environment pro­ a de-linking. what is ob­ The sheer name of a train station gives rise to a whole sequence of sur­ scure ( beyond) opens up the possibility of a threatening void. lo5 which wants to convey both here and a sense of beyond. Someone cleared his throat. before the paratactic rhapsody beginning with "And" ( 9 ) an attunement to the animal aspects of human being. widens out to No one left and no one came include this environment. It was late June." 103 tion. however one thinks of animals. intimate/panoramic). and grass. The poem itself has an "elsewhere " whence it arises. dustry/nature. humans to animals: man is the "most imitative of creatures. " farther and far­ Than the high cloudlets in the sky. The name. Emmanuel Levinas has examined the ef­ Close by. and haycocks dry. unmarked with words. Plato's view of rhapsody removes humans from the poem was already an answer to a question hanging in the air: " Yes. the title were the name of a boat." "It was late June " (4): the innocent-seeming "It was " contains its And for tha t minute a blackbird sang own haunting rhapsodic tone.58 . They are functions of the physi­ paint over.101 Aristotle's pragmatic definition of mimesis links quantity" described earlier as a feature of ambient tone. in the definite yet nonconceptual sense outlined earlier. It distin­ more conscious and less attuned to the world. station name. shire and Gloucestershire are in some ways j ust analogues. No wonder ecopoetics. We can only know duces a certain tone inside a railway carriage in Edward Thomas's it after the fact. a name that also refers to the envi­ The steam hissed. ronment around it. there is an uncanny sense of something bience as a function of automation in the following chapter. I re­ animal realm. to which representation can only be adequate. The first seem insignificant. ther. moving forward. Likewise. fect of the "there is " (French if y a. German Es gibt). because one afternoon Ian Hamilton Finlay's sculpture Starlit Waters ( 1 967) consists of the Of heat the express-train drew up there carved wooden phrase " Starlit Waters " enveloped by a fishing net. all the birds degger posits a beyond that is also right here. I remember Adlestrop. the Yes. we see that there al­ On the bare platform. a romanticized worker whose job is came / On the bare platform" ( 6-7). It is as if we Was Adlestrop-only the name had never left. "Adlestrop. or more sensitive to the guishes the inside from the outside and their attendant associations (in­ world and less conscious. This sensation creeps up on us uncannily." 102 We look back at the beginning of the poem-one of the features of Ecorhapsody can also mobilize species. In the same way. For Hei­ lurking j ust beyond our ken. "Adlestrop " always already existed within a larger tex­ "Adlestrop " : tual field. Whether or not the narrator posed the ques­ precisely a sense of their environment as a surrounding "world. if we look backward." always existed within a wider environment. stillness/movement. Before we get a positive descrip­ Ecorhapsody mobilizes class. a good example of the "negative to hold it in mind. the "Yes " medially acknowledges the communication dimension. David Abram has tried to link environmental poetics to Moreover. The medium that contains the poem. a spacing. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . But as we saw in the analysis of the Aeolian. It is a present absence made vivid by the degger "man is the shepherd of Being" -he might as well have said "don't think of a pink elephant" quality of " No one left and no one that man is the rhapsode of being. It serves a s the re-mark sum game going on here. What I saw ready was one. and round him. as we shall see when we examine am­ tion of the surrounding world. an inert rounding impressions. And meadowsweet. Either one is that opens the inside of the carriage to the outside world. Heidegger said explicitly that animals lacked member Adlestrop " ( 1 ) . Hei­ Farther and farther. Of Oxfords hire and Gloucestershire. That " and" in the third verse amplifies the reader's awareness out of No whit less still and lonely fair the carriage to include a widening circle of things. More recently. opens up before we know it. The poets to bees.104 There is a zero­ there i s a blank space. The hissing steam or dark spot that fascinates ecopoetics and which ecopoetics wants to and the clearing throat are timbral. Despite his comparison of silent reading is that we can scan backward-and find it changed. often looks to Heidegger. 59 Neoplatonic realm. tugs at us. as if Unwontedly. " the narrator tence. They can also have varied There is "transcends inwardness as well as exteriority. perhaps unintended consequence of an intention­ meant to teach us something. ll o Likewise. "a pres­ Schopenhauer to Allen Grossman have observed� is the ego ence of absence. Coleridge ap­ one. Levertov's poem has intense tone. undermining the distance and mastery of the anthropocentric human subject. this silence. whether one eating of Orphic substances in "Kubla Khan" turns the poet into the wants to or not. a Cartesian world. There is. In "Adlestrop. depersonalized. There is no discourse. since it is repeated: night. without having taken the initiative." the product of fled by it. each phrase trying to coax dread. who wrote of Cartesian space that its silence filled him with shines in the particular after a lot of rubbing. Levinas writes: from "elsewhere" within the text itself. anonymously. Ecorhapsodic lists are suffused with enjoyment. Coleridge opts radically for "hot" rather this term. The disappearance of a ll things and of the I leaves what cannot eighteenth-century aesthetic development. is horror." subject and moments of intensity or tone." ( 5 1-52 ) ) . invaded. There are poetic traditions It is or there is makes us aware of tone. which is it is the objectified. ecomimesis makes us exclaim. . an absolutely unavoidable presence. It is no longer given." But this universal absence is producing a rhythmical slowing-down that echoes the way the image in its turn a presence. invades like "the sea is turning its dark pages. There may be turning inside out the normative subject of lyric which. Its than "cool" ( aesthetic) contemplation in The Ancient Mariner. . as writers from explicit instructions about how to look for natural things. Levertov figures nature as a series of reading-writing ness outside the railway carriage eventually makes us aware of the processes continuing in some other key. It is not the di­ coagulates and hangs at the bottom of the poem. proaches hyperbolic enjoyment. like a heavy atmosphere belonging to no close your eyes with holy dread. if we are to believe his citation of Ecorhapsody operates through parataxis and metonymy. 1 07 a new sparkle. which is neither an object nor the quality of an object. Shifts in phase and tone evoke a force object. No longer are we in a reading the written text. The exterior-if one insists on this term-remains un cor­ the Mariner "loses himself" rhapsodically in the water snakes (4. anything. / turning / its dark pages " ( 8. Ecology witho ut Nature The Art of Environmental Language . There is no longer this or that. there is not "something. b ut able. The general Pascal. Three stanzas of similar length accumulate three strong images ." 1 0 8 Levinas's onomatopoeia is disem­ Ecodidacticism is an often deliberately oblique quality by which bodied. highly significant place charged with national identity. of the there is . In the night." since it cannot exist on its own. returning in the midst of the negation which put it aside. When the forms of things are dissolved in the night. B ut this nothing is not tha t of pure nothingness. and in all the powers to which tha t negation may be multiplied. The there is is an automated process. It is no longer a world. of " I. without our intention. alectical counterpart of absence. without o ur being a ble to fix a substantive to enables the sliding of desire. This is the horror of what Levinas characterizes as experience in forces us to attune to it. Nothing responds to us. For instance. universal. off to the side. Or didacticism.1 0 ) . The mind does not find itself faced with an appre­ hended exterior. Instead of here is. the proximity of the disgusting objeLt punctures the normative we call the I is itself submerged by the night." the expansion of aware­ intention's echo. j ust around the corner.1 06 For Levinas the it is ( Grossman's suggestive phrase is "the genre of the other mind" l o9 In­ the horrifying-that is. we can always admire but never touch. the poem says there is. Ecomimesis points us in the direction of nature. like a field of forces. There is is an impersonal form. The earth ( in Heidegger's sense) continues be­ purely abstract space of hissing and throat clearing J but we are in a hind our backs. literally flesh-creeping-quality of sheer exis­ stead of getting to know the narrator's sense of self. like in it rains. a presence. What 2 8 7). / And remains. ." Levertov makes a poem about that. the sheer fact of being in which one participates. "over there.60 . around and beyond the act of counties of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. There is more or less tension in the environment: "The rustling ecomimesis. One lence of those infinite spaces Pascal speaks of. the voice of this silence is understood and frightens like the si­ In ecorhapsodic mimesis. where we are riven to it. and we do not grasp it through a thought. sti­ aesthetic distance associated with " good taste. both inside and outside our within Romanticism that run counter to the expectations of bodies . the drinking and disappear. or it is warm. 1 11 Like Keats.272- related with an interior. Being target of a ritualized disgust ( "Weave a circle round him thrice. in the next item on the list. the darkness of the The final image has a slower phase than the others. Lists have a tempo or phase. " Oh! Nature ! " There are two levels of The environment j ust happens around us. in general. without way to radicalize ecorhapsody is to shatter the aesthetic distance that it mattering what there is. 61 when we say "it is raining " ? The " it " is Being for Heidegger. never directly avail­ It is immediately there. we are not dealing with Our eyes must "turn " from one line to the next to follow the syntax. When anonymity is essential. despite himself. -no. like the skull in Hans Holbein's painting The Am­ globe. the rhetoric evokes an utterly pristine zone. or token of good luck.-not his Mother Earth that we have heard of. It was not lawn. nor woodland.-so Nature made it. There is a very intense moment of ecodidacticism in Thoreau's The What is this titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries ! Think of Maine "\foods.<Contact! Contact! �').-that my body might. I fear not spirits. vast. may contain another command. that this is " primeval. to teach us in its home ! I stand in awe of my body. Here was no man's garden. one that does not involve instruments or an offering inaugurating the new year. It is supposed not j ust to describe. a veritable forest of phrases our life in nature. if only. unless we have seen her thus vast and drear and inhuman. inviting the reader to imagine his or her vocal muscles a powerfully nonhuman realm: tightening. associated with it. This " shapeless say. To read an inj unction to stop reading is paradoxical.62 . But ecomimesis (earnest money). or Earth. of which I am the Kantian aesthetic of purposiveness without a purpose. as an offering that inaugurates something binoculars-so as to see birds or flowers more vividly. as Wordsworth's "The Tables Turned " more modern (Enlightenment) gods of "Nature . The high ecomimetic tone. wind on our cheeks ! the solid earth! the actual world! the that stretches over the best part of the first hundred pages in the Pen­ common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we ? Where are we ? I 1 S guin edition.-rocks. Despite the wealth of texts on the Maine though in the midst of cities. Textual pressure ren­ p ure Nature. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet only glimpse it anamorphically-as a distortion. nor pasture. a first installment. though beautiful. " 1 1 2 Thoreau mythologizes the mountain as heightened tone. vital to The Greek Titans (Chaos. We ha bitually Maine Woods we are embedded in the "contact" of a text. ghosts. but also seded. some hard matter mental nature is for something. trees. They put our body into the text. some glish noun for money or a gift. as Thoreau's rhetoric injects the More Interesting Instead? Of course. with its basic feature o f the re-mark. something that many previous societies super­ tween nature and ourselves. and here we presume his presence and influence everywhere. the form and fashion and material of narrator is apparently screaming in our face (. to see a myriad of particular Chapter 2 ) . Neces­ puts it. to come into contact with it. as he narrates the descent of Mount Katahdin. Don�t You Just Turn off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Didacticism blends with rhapsody. and man may use it if he can. made out of message hovers off to one side. the their work. We can ara ble.116 Even when the what the Powers had made there. Matter . This far into The It is difficult to conceive of a region uninhabited by man. . The injunction is to a precapitalist term from old-fashioned rituals is inappropriate. one. . Even order to stop reading and " go out into" nature. or be b uried in. as a shapeless thing. A 1 9 70s sity and Fate " lose something in this linguistic transaction. "Unhandseled" is the key word. The "Look up ! " from one's book. And there is always some instrumentality-this noninstru­ things.-daily to be shown matter. but the unhandseled different dimension. nor mead.. a luckpenny. of Ne­ Ecominlesis as Fantasy: Are You Experience d ? cessity and Fate . . untamed. They announce a forever untamable Nature. which had been gliding along of its own accord for almost a hundred pages. This is the wilderness as never having entered into any economic transaction. nor lea. Nature loses its nature when we look at it head on. this matter to which I am bound the value of the noninstrumental. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on. It appears to inhabit an entirely Chaos and Old Night. we as the way in which other things lose their shape. This was that earth of which we have heard. this. it was always more interesting to feel of nonhuman nature into our very minds: watch other people doing it on the TV (see " Reality Writing" in What is it to be admitted to a museum. . It was Matter. not for him to tread on. ders an environmental one. 1 14 Thoreau describes the but evokes nature as noninstrumental or anti-technological. as it was made forever and ever.-the home.-but I fear bodies. finally gives way to Thoreau's realization. Ecodidacticism thus participates in has become so strange to me. nor waste land. l 13 Why i s ambient rhetoric. Man was not to be thing" is the very form of ecological writing. Nature was here something savage and awful. They lose all children's television program in the United Kingdom was called Why trace of rationality. or bassadors. and The italics at the end perform the role of the re-mark. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language • 63 we could be advised on how to set up our equipment-a tent. terrific.-to be the dwelling of man. It is derived from an Old Eri. And yet we have not seen � are made to wonder at how far in we have gone. I tremble to meet them. it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there. to see Woods. Night) bestow upon this wilderness a sense ecomimesis ? Ecological writing wants to undo habitual distinctions be­ of something primitive. compared with being shown some star's surface. to provide a working model for a dissolving of the difference between . in a circular fashion. . if not merely figure out but actually experience the fact that we were em­ you are lucky. although these in turn have their negoti­ that it has usually considered the West to be hopelessly mired in Carte­ ated spaces and species successions throughout the year. As dusk gathers beyond my desk and the light glows noninstrumental quality to the whole thing. Then. It is more like a jungle of writing. in May or June. seductively power of place. reflecting back to us only the echo of our own desires." inside. It evokes the enchant­ (ekphrasis )." 1 1 9 The effect o f the passage i s cumulative: monologue. or to catch it in the act of betraying itself. The sound is almost the playground in which the ideas in the book appear incarnated. while other. it seems. this dusk song gives way to making it aesthetically appealing. If we could Pinkwood flowers. each drone." outside. the forest around me comes alive with a sublime and delicate sound the end of Plumwood's book? It is providing a fantasYJ an aesthetic like the chiming of countless little silver bells. But from mid­ sian dualism. November to Jan­ tivity and intentionality of more-than-human others is often the key to the uary is the best time for. is not itself a dialogue.64 . a dualism seen as the fundamental philosophical the squeals of the Little Red Flying Foxes feeding on nectar-filled white reason for human beings' destruction of the environment. the cycle starts once more as Val Plumwood's Environmental CultureJ a philosophical text. experience of the natural world." The chapter con­ cludes Plumwood's investigation of how notions of reason should be re­ The idea of dialogue. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language • 65 subj ect and obj ect. ghostly. and for the outside. The communica­ of instrumental didacticism: "you should listen . a literary only sign to human senses of the innumerable tiny rainforest tree crickets gravitational field generated by the sheer quantity of vivid description who rub their wings and legs together to make it. foreshadowing their cheerful but impassioned mating Indeed. Plumwood tries to find Ha bermas in equal measure. the new ecological view derives from an aesthetic with an ear-splitting vibrator designed to guide in a flying evening mate. the silence may be broke by a Lyrebird calling late from nest or perch. in regular succession. What is it doing almost at green. The subject is "this. Plumwood's ecomimesis is am bient in relation to the main ment of late summer in the cool. There is no logical conclusion. you should subject-obj ect dualism depends upon a distinction between inside and listen for the Sooty Owl's shuddering. in the chilly violet twilights of late autumn. while the " over there. But the form an "alternative paradigm " to Lockean theories of land ownership in a this particular passage takes. This passage is not a monologue. con­ the gentle love-songs of the dew-crickets fill the twilight a utumn air aga in tains ecomimesis. is posited as the pinnacle of self-realization. even as it demonstrates a dialogue with sense of communication: " making ownership out in the essentially nar­ other sentient beings. . and not just in the West. equipped mised beyond repair. 1 1 s When they too begin to retire in February. twisting. others. you may hear a distant Powerful Owl hoot and cry for love. for the twilight is a sensory and communica­ We might think that Plumwood's rhetoric is just a special feature of a tive space of much significance for forest dwellers. As the year turns. Or. then we would be less likely to destroy it. November to January is the best time for the great frog choruses. ways that show a deep and loving acquaintance with it and a history of for example. misty mountain forest of my Australian argument. The erotic tinkling of religious form of ecological discourse. in telling its story in against Plumwood's thesis. . We might think that it need not the crickets holds the space until the first cool weather. . it has been a function of the orientalism of ecological criticism operettas of September and October. more exotic or primitive cultures benefit summer onwards the lusty tree frogs retire and dewfall brings out the from a more embedded view." questing bass of a mal Barking Owl from June to August. that signal spring. None is more sustained than a passage from the until the first cold spell. This is not to argue rative terms of naming and interpreting in the land. monological and commodity thinking creates. Various metaphysical systems support this dis­ courting Mountain Thrushes still play their early evening flutes. by finding that this is actually an example of individualist dialogical interaction. There are notes silent o bjects exclusionary. That is the time for concern us very much. bedded in our world. . " But there is an overwhelming. 1 20 chapter "Towards a Materialist Spirituality of Place. scream. It hovers to one side of it. It requires more and more richer and more exciting than the self-enclosed world of meaningless and of itself to justify itself. taken from Mikhail Bakhtin and Jurgen fashioned to suit a moment of ecological crisis. and writhing to such an extent that it almost appears A world perceived in communicative and narrative terms is certainly far autonomous from the text that surrounds it.1 1? Since our thinking appears compro­ whole droning orchestras of mole crickets. any photo­ graph. But . August tinction. if we are ready to take it with a pinch of salt. The In the frosty stillness of moon-silver night. not directly supporting it but home more richly and sensually than any h uman description. map or calendar. ." " over here. is important to Plumwood.. The Hindu idea of tat tvam asi for brings forth the first Boo brook Owl duets-his baritone to her soprano­ instance ( " thou art that"). the object is "that. Ambience. Imagine the sinthome not as figure perhaps even because of it.66 . Within every field is a symptom. . But despite this. that it does not really collapse the subject-object I tune that out. for ments. times. mo­ discursive ideological field. eras. ." I have modified the term sinthome. I can smell woodsmoke. Looking for fires I open the front door. But Lyotard asserts that nuance is beyond normal over rooftops . meaningless. Take a look at the sophisti­ oric tries to blur inside and outside. Moreover. 1 2 1 This paradoxical act of identification with the fantasy object of ide­ ology could be mirrored in critical analysis. might be an image of the "queer. Ambience is what Jacques Lacan would have called cally connected." Plumwood's. The snow has sions of the aesthetic. It is commonly squabbling in the fig tree and from behind me I can hear swifts wheeling called the aesthetic. He is both rhapsodic and didactic-" Sound them. stripped of context. and and passed. into a concentrated essence of my existence in the instance. either by reconciling subject to object. As befits an altered state. space. unbidden. I have glided from coma into a sonic simulation of past. conflated from seasons. rendering. What ally existing "soundscape. immensity of the universe even when I have no wish to look or a bsorb. Toop does not argue. thentication. the memories have been super­ inconsistent kernel of " idiotic enjoyment " that sustains an otherwise imposed. but ren­ reading of texts. plugged and electroni­ sible to do critique. not in order to achieve some tasteful distance toward ders. the everywhere. " dissect." Whether the space being evoked is supposed a wound that is also a space. I can touch within a limited radius. . get out that door . ecocritique must be self-critical. or abolish them. b urning dust. the neighbours aesthetic categories and hence. even fictions. at the very beginning of David them. passes from behind the left centre of my head to starboard front. high summer in the afternoon. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language • 67 this language demands a genuine response. So tranquil. peer into the shining dark and hear stillness. starlings are should be beginning to recognize what is going on here. full panic mode. In bursting the bubble of the aesthetic. Wired. the passage is compelling. I am listening. Truthfully. fuck you . but precisely in order to "mess around" with them. The ambient hum of night air and low frequency motor dualism. Students of literature my small female cat on to the polished wood floor. By assuming with pride the word queer. a sinthome. I didn't . sound-world. This " in between" is better described as Sitting quietly in never-never land. I am lying in intensive care. Outside . or as my stu­ places us in the real universe.123 When I refer to ambience as a fantasy to be real or taken as unreal. . . then ecomimesis is a form of ideological fantasy."-but the aesthetic: notably. Ecocritique is a suspension and stasis. or in between the nor­ mative notes of a musical scale. The Lacan applies to an objectal substance could apply to surrounding narrator wants us to know that this is a simulation. are "new and improved" ver­ country garden somewhere. or by undoing the dis­ vehicle drone merges with insect hum called back from the 1 9 70s. a tinction altogether. with "nuance " as an aspect of tone. it is strikingly If. This involves an inversion. . sorts it. makes me feel the gay movement disabled the ideological field that sustains homophobia. a glass of beer. the terminology is not quite exact-fantasy space is more like it. we find settled. An ambulance siren. I can smell a body. 1 22 The sinthome of homophobia. non-neutral ground. consisting both in exuberant friendliness and dis- . . potentially even more compelling. . The sinthome is the materially embodied. ." This is a construct. or nuance. he hopes. When ambient rhet­ rather than simply describing something. This would thenticate the "I" by situating it: " Sitting quietly ." al­ square well with the vaginal connotations of the sinthome. and other ambient effects such as If it is to have teeth." or certain kinds of sex act. It strives to au­ but as ground: a potent. life. Looking ahead. it generates an inconsistent "thing. the same rhetorical strategies apply: au­ thing. But sound comes from to vomit forth a sinthome. by the relentless close The passage continues for another page. or superimpose cated evocation of ambient sound. like Plumwood. bubble. the Aeolian. Ideology resides in the distance we assume toward this fantasy object. a giant stain. These sounds reconnect me to a world from which I had disengaged. By collapsing the distance we undermine the potency of the ideological Sound places us in the real universe. and every symptom can be made livened by visually represented obj ects. as demonstrated. says the passage. I a m listening to s ummer fleas j ump off ambience. Experimental art likewise models utopian spaces. Not country stillness but Nevertheless. the fantastic inconsistency of ambience makes it pos­ urban shutdown. I can see a plane en­ field. the dissolution of inside and outside is strictly the same when writing tries to invoke a sheer sense of environment as if impossible-though ecomimesis puts a lot of effort into simulating it­ for its own sake." The imagery is more self-reflexive than dents sometimes say in horror. twofold process. My brain seeks it o ut. The sounds are juxtaposed memories rather than an actu­ A word about " obj ects. in patriarchy beit in "never-never land." Lyotard's "nuance" exists Toop's Ocean of Sound: somewhere "in between " the normative colors. Next door. ourselves in a new. the problems associated with are screaming-" . . Term x dissolves into term YJ but retains the form honesty and hypocrisy. Some nature writers served.12s Merleau-Ponty describes experience with the fantasy that ecomimesis is immediate. In the name of ecology itself. chiasmus : I am you and what I see is me. In this sense. holding the artwork at a disdainful distance. rightly wary of the aesthetic dimen­ narcissism is on the side of the subject who cynically knows "very well " sion. for example. which only gestures toward the real. and in so doing Do we find any inconsistencies in nature writing? There is a pro­ short-circuits the paradoxes of ambient rhetoric. Ecodi­ bivalent poem as read by one of the New Critics like Cleanth Brooks . to hold the last syllables of a verse. Ambient poetics." Ecomimesis wants to deliver nature in the raw. but there is a disj unction with ground. when in also be effective. background and foreground. . ecomimesi s at this point. a phenomenon exploited by Alvin Lucier in VespersJ in which enjoyment? This is where the sinthome. This is a basic mimetic function of some both its terms properly together in our mind ? What if the philosophical animals: the echolocation of bats "sounds out" the dimensions of a musing that chiasmus lets loose concealed a meaningless. is imbued with the uncanny. Chiasmus does not solve anything. We can admit that all we can sense of nature is of term x. Otherwise we would not be able to recognize that it had dis­ an echo of our "sounding out " of it. by that he or she is in an echo chamber. But it also risks cholic delay of the ambient effects out of which it is made. one of phobic dis­ suggests that we can have the real deal. all both terms must be preserved even as they are cancelled at another experience is only passing memory. This immediacy must be as a " chiasm." That to Echo he must remain " faithful " to the fact that she only exists as a is why it is important to go as "far in" to the notion of nature in "faithful " reproduction of his voice. the chiasmus did not want us to solve it. Escher. such as the faces/candlestick. Ecorhapsody casting a negative aura around the aesthetic object. nature as it is. or the desire of the perceiver. 1 26 Such ideas are very suggestive for ecological poetics. but it al­ first level. we perceive a breakdown of our normal distinction between ways arrives with a slight smell of burning. There is a choice between away with another. or a work by M. musicians use electronic devices that emit pulses of sound for the same We are treading a path between saying that something called nature ex­ purpose. pristine nature not " infected" with the conscious­ the front and back faces have the same size. however. This is radically different from a "new historicist" ap­ as immersion in. On the be "natural. In order for the first level to be effective. historicism The exuberant immediacy of ecorhapsody contradicts the melan­ claims that there is no single solid subject of history. but on the second. never before and never at exactly the same time. unless it is deemed to say which face is at the front. the illusion is not an accurate ren­ they provide a way of determining that the self and its world are inter­ dering of the environment. Ecomimesis resists the uncanny. C. the reflective properties of water. arisen. words. And proach. Consider the trope of found inconsistency between ambience. The trick operates on two levels. interferes are me and we are all together. At its best. "sprouting" place. it prizes them apart on another level. the second level must think that they are receiving a direct transmission from nature. The poetics of the echo. And even if successful. this distinction is pre­ Echoes are inescapable features of ambience. dacticism infers that nature and self are connected. with varying degrees sensing. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . It re-creates history in the image of a self-contained. To remain true of ideology. he must love her as the ists. We are not claiming that some trace of his voice reflected in the sheer extension of matter: the vibra­ entity lies between these views. and saying that nothing exists at all. So when nature cissus is only aware of his beloved Echo through the repetition of his writing collapses self and nature. We are dealing with the raw materials tional qualities of air. ironically recreates the very aesthetic distance it is criticizing. because in order to work. even while it con­ tance. in which our own analysis. The approach is not to be confused with nihilism. Nar­ solved! All we would be left with would be term y. I am he as you are he as you and ecomimesis itself. We can only perceive things after they have twined. such that present an original.68 . We posit nature retroactively. another being (called Nature ). the mentality. the stuff that generates seductive images of "nature.127 It becomes impossible to ness. the kernel of idiotic enj oyment." an intertwining of what is sensed with the one who is an illusion that the narrator manages to pull off.124 Narcissism is on the side of self-absorption disguised out all the plugs. the way ecomimesis operates. What is given with one gesture is paradoxically taken fact they are watching a mirror of the mind. or contact with. Narcissism appears on both sides ecomimesis as possible. richly am­ sists of a list of elements. amplifying this level. Think of an optical illusion that confuses background and fore­ quality. This was formalized in Renaissance verse when "Echo" repeats What if. since of success. in its effort to playing with simplistic cubes without proper foreshortening. we should pull of the equation. For Narcissus to love Echo properly. 69 arming skepticism. Kant lodged the sublime-and probably along relentlessly material. . even creative-nay. Adorno's stantly vanishing. from which existential and psychoanalytic ideas. according to inconsistent. By analogy. of life are derived. The past is j ust an illu­ journal. . not to writing is another way of saying artless art. This stuff is always eluding concep­ ture . Dig the present! But when we get there. There is just a vast long periods the feeling of natural beauty intensified with the suffering of proliferation of brushstrokes . . except at the beginning and at the end." to re­ nothingness rather than the " something-ness " I am aiming at here. a Authentic artworks. . to step outside of them­ without end" was borrowed for Gary Snyder's huge poem sequence of selves. The now has come to be associated with a certain meditative calm and more nature we have. "nature " is a gi­ the experience bears the mark of Weltschmerz. jouissance) escapable dimension of time. the pregnant pause: syncope. but appears merely to be a that seeks to sweep away bad Western cunning. on what is mediated. it is the state of ical system. as in the work of Andy Goldsworthy. something artless that falls out of normal conventions of lit­ sion. It is the sinthomic level. and therefore the more "lively expression. Quietness strives toward " lava " of imagination?131 Nature writing is a dense chiasmus. which strives ural process. a sprawl of sheer text. which hold fast to the idea of reconciliation with na­ potentially infinite supply. One would expect a poetics of rendering to be interested in remarks o n the way some art "steps out" into nature.129 Paul Ricoeur's idea of metaphor also leaps to mind. Thoreau's The Maine Woods into the here and now.12S At most points in the giant scroll on which the moun­ lation in first nature . Even Kant had misgivings a bout the art made by human beings and conventionally opposed to na­ gantic swathe of sheer life. Syncope is thus always the effect of For Ricoeur. Since identity is not to be their last word. as if in need of a breath of fresh air. The paradox is present in the very phrase "na­ someone else's. especially creative­ tone-there is always some information (in the cybernetic sense). or stuff. Ricoeur Presence and absence are intertwined in difference. erary narrative. collapsing the employing the sinthome. The form of Chinese painting called "mountains and rivers felt the urge. Over there is the sense that the scroll could go on forever. put it.133 Snyder's poem tries to capture. Ecomimetic states. But nature writing involves us in a basic paradox. as Lamarck pleasant mirror effect of chiasmus itself. we are not far from the no­ of shaping natural materials into sculpture. Instead Western explorations of Buddhism aside."132 This sounds like a positive theory of ecomimesis. "All mimesis. Didacticism becomes an orgasmic peak rather than a we discover that the here and now does not exist either. 71 operates. Yet quiet-even more so silence-is always elsewhere. after all. this quality as an experience of Buddhist shunyata or emptiness. Our conceptual mind keeps slipping off its surface." the quiet. "Lively expression is that which expresses existence as alive." Is nature to be thought of as writing? Or is writing a nat­ tend" ) . The gesture of stepping out into the open is shared . It is more writing we have. have consistently sheer stuff. beyond the state of swelling and opening to the outside-or orgasm. on the world of conventions. " 13 0 tone-the bodily sensation of thereness-is compromised by the in­ Nature writing embodies this orgasmic view of life (French. but because it is artworks of their time. with it all beauty that rises a bove the mere play of form-in nature. Nature. is what sprouts. somewhere else (Cage: " all of the sound we don't in­ ture writing. In the same way.70 . not because it transcends the material realm. in a mystical or primitivist or exoticist gesture does not even try to tell us something. takes place within the horizons of a being-in-the-world which order to differentiate it there must be some roughness. is unmistakable. nounce the hard work of dominating nature in the name of art. Ecological writing may want to drag us in the aesthetic form of endless textuality. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . to render. it makes present. The future is yet to come. The sinthome is necessarily mention literary ones. .B4 Quietness is a common effect of ambient music. which does not make sense but j ust is. some noise. The here and sober reflection. though the term evokes the idea of Adorno asserts that sometimes art needs to "take a breath. eral is sinthomic. of metabolism between the inside and the outside. nature writing in gen­ the subject thrown back on himself in a mangled and administered world. in the sense that Byron meant when he referred to the to be below the threshold of regular listening. The presence of chiasmus should alert to an intense. and in mimesis. There is just so much of it. are appropriate here: wonder what all this nature writing is for. they have sought conso­ the same name. Nature writing tries to evoke this sense of ture by making themselves completely a second nature. There is no genuine material embodiment of an ideolog­ modern (post-Romantic) thinking. . perhaps sculpture should tion of a life-substance that enlerged in Lebensphilosophie in Schelling dissolve back into nature. The syncope . It is not necessarily relaxed or peaceful. A simple way of recognizing the sinthome is to barrier between art and non-art. with the tuality. Quiet is the idea of tone we almost can't perceive. tone that is con­ which wants to fit nature like skin fits a hand-it is the hand. stimulation. Nature and others. The extent to which this taking a breath depends tains and rivers are painted. planning. quiescence is always further to the side of the margin of of repetition brings up another feature of am bient poetics. or listen back. would he stand alone.139 thing still living. no readers-trying to see our own death-is a common eco­ That pauses of deep silence mock'd his skill. as Adorno rec­ philosophy and culture that celebrated the idea of repetition. both hands alectical logic that it would culminate in its origin. the place of process. its rocks. Freud tries to give an ambience to thing new. as after­ what Freud might be suggesting. subj ugating. and echoes loud coming tenser. And Islands of Winander! many a time. " being.140 Repe­ ognized. versus relaxing into an inorganic state (becoming the Redoubled and redoubled. a wild scene environment). or by the glimmering lake. in extremis. Enjoyment itself would be affected. ye kne w him well. he. in that silence.136 Uplifted. rhythm that alternates between incorporating the environment and be­ And long halloos. an experiential quality. Rising or setting. And. Peeping round the corner at a state where there are no Of mirth and j ocund din. he suggests the tension of a sigh or a sob. One can imagine it as an experience rather than as the dissolu­ tition is the subject of Wordsworth's "There was a Boy. who identified countercurrents of European Nirvana has a utopian edge and is relevant in this life. And they would shout nothing must be done. as through an instrument. within the act of reading the poem. to reframe or to alter what we have been perceiying. which used wealth to reproduce want on a larger scale. and screams. pears to float above or behind the sheer linguistic surface. Life yearns toward. Even though Hegel attributes pure repetition to cultures existing We want to experience ourselves as obj ects." might take Beneath the trees. when the stars had j ust begun arable from operating. Quiet itself is stimulating. with quivering peals. Through Duncan-is unbearably tense. where "inertia" would have brought it to a dead stop. "the quies­ retroactively. without any further definition and fulfilment. R ien faire To move along the edges of the hills. In other words. in James Strachey's poetic translation. None of the a bstract Press'd closely palm to palm and lo his mouth concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace. Here I tensa. ye Cliffs to escape want. recalls it. futile nature of all the arrangements hitherto made in order There was a Boy. through time to posit some­ it out of the corners of our eyes. We death." a "lyrical tion of experience: ballad" about a boy who hoots to owls. Would enter unawares into his mind Wordsworth is the Romantic master of tone. Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls Blankness and silence thus convey." BS This haunting phrase is more than itself. in a dialectic of life and death: a Responsive to his call. we know that the narrative has been circling around on cence of the inorganic world. Then. Retroactivity the paper than where we rest our reading gaze. concur with James Snead. 137 When we try to see our own death. the "we " Of mountain torrents. lying on water and looking peacefully at the sky. com me une bete. or the visible scene who are seeing remain alive. when it chanced humans. quiet becomes tightening or relaxing. j ust as its present framework is insep­ At evening. a gentle shock of mild surprize fiction work. either a state in which That they might answer him. But we can still glimpse compels us to look back. sometimes. Across the wat'ry vale and shout again Ecomimesis strains to see outside itself. and so truly keep the promise of di­ And there. The narrative cliche "It's quiet-too simple repetition. however. satisfaction. and the ironic ways in With all its solemn imagery. conscious­ outside his concept of history (such as Africa ). The Last Man. with fingers interwoven. repetition persists ness tries to feel what it is like to be a purely extended thing (res ex­ within the very teleological structures of high Romanticism. " Quiescence " implies some­ image. . while he hung logical fantasy. in Cartesian terms).72 . a physical quiet" speaks the truth that as soon as we perceive it. nothing else. act.us The notion Like death. as if we could experience it on this side. in which the reader gets to contemplate a Has carried far into his heart the voice world without humans. or one in which nothing needs to be done. having one's way. can't be sure that we have been in a suspension until we have left it. Tone ap­ saturated with tone and therefore intense. A mankind which no longer knows want will begin to have an inkling of the delusory. repeating their sounds across a lake . the environment becomes audible as an echo. Likewise. alters it. as Mary Shelley demonstrated very early in her science­ Listening. 73 De Quincey analyzes-the silence in Macbeth after the murder of King which consciousness floats around it. In ambient poetics. We become attuned to this quality before the text is read. Out for a walk one evening with William familiarly strange. like Wordsworth's narrator. This quality fort. based on minimal clues such as the repetition of Wordsworth. boils down to a distinction between proper and improper digestion. at that moment any beau­ a Boy" makes sure that the poem is not j ust a plateau of tone. when he was slowly rising from his ef­ it begins. like medita­ Into the bosom of the steady lake. the retroactivity effect in "There was condition of vigilance should suddenly relax. is a blankness. is carried to the heart with a power not known under other cir­ tual retroactively. 75 Its woods. at the very instant when the some sense. In in final a bandonment of hope for this night. one of surprising surprise. The ultimate un­ the north. tiful.144 And there along that bank when I have pass'd We find out that we have been standing beside the boy's grave all the At evening." if there is one at all. melancholy is more apt. "But" would have should be familiar to anyone who has practiced meditation." Wordsworth declares " 'if. we will look back and all will have changed. or of steady expectation. and penetrated my capacity of apprehension with a Chapter 3 will suggest. his eye caught a bright star that was glittering between the brow of of future anteriority is built into the work-an uncannily proleptic Seat Sandal and of the mighty Helvellyn. receiv'd Wordsworth outlines a minimalist sensory attunement. ' '' This unexpected consequence of a meditative state poem by the subtle use of blank space and lineation. Words­ differentiated things more than "And"-which is why Wordsworth worth explains: does not use it ( 1 6 ) . I am saying "mournful" here. which Keswick road. the attention is energetically braced up to an folding of the t�xt. falling upon The actual "moment." 142 The apophasis familiar. and that in the silence he becomes aware awareness is always uncanny-familiar yet strange. we could never taste it again. before De Quincey continues : " Once. This boy's "mimic hootings " ( 1 0). This is rendered in Wordsworth's cumstances. sweet quiet­ De Quincey was immensely fond of the suspension or parenthesis in the ness. mains surprise because it does not participate in what Wordsworth The vale where he was born: the Church-yard hangs himself called the " gross and violent stimulants " of the poetics of sen­ Upon a slope above the village school.143 happened. gleaming at wide distances from canny experience is recognizing the strange as a familiar feature of the recesses amidst the rocky hills. So the sense is that the change will have occurred. the position of both of which at the ence: "No sound came up through the winding valleys that stretched to ends of lines makes us hang suspended in mid-page. Like a act of steady observation. De Quincey's mind is opened to an awareness of ambi­ "hung " ( 1 8 ) and "hangs " (27). and even more so. echoes of the owls . that near his grave time we were reading of the boy's exploits in the woods. . in order to catch any sound of mourning) . the bright star hanging in the air above those outlines of massy blackness fell sud­ digested the lost object. Looking back from the end of the poem we posit the Mute-for he died when he was ten years old. almost impercep­ of a pink elephant! " tibly. my ear was placed upon the stretch. had long been extinct. Ambient poetics has a mournful quality even when its explicit topic is not mourning ( in fact. we might say-of a surprise that re­ Fair are the woods. as Freud did. I believe. if this intense loud sound heard from far away. We get the uncanny sense that at some time in the un­ under any circumstances.141 boy's death and our identification with him. of his environment. tion. or collection of objects. any impressive visual object. and that uncertain heaven. since it only becomes ac­ the eye. then. Having fully organs of attention were all at once relaxing from their tension . "proper " mourning would always be too late. and beauteous is the spot. sibility. between mourning and melancholia. at the very instant when I raised my head from the ground. "There was a Boy " is a work Just now. and in which we find ourselves. and the few cottage lights. backward glance. Freud explained that the uncanny was associated with the of "no sound" makes us hear the absence of sound-ambient poetics compulsion to repeat. but I am not distin­ of wheels tha t might come down upon the lake of Wythburn from the guishing. in a tranquil.74 • Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . that would not have arrested me under propriate. We can only be­ middle. The whole poem becomes an "echo" of the boy. the uncanny works such that resounds with this logic. to an ecological situation in which the worst has already other circumstances. returning the A full half-hour together I have stood. when we read that the owls sometimes do not respond to the come aware that we were in a space of identification after the fact. even more ethically ap­ pathos and a sense of the infinite. As a section in denly upon my eye. the same as that which applies in "don't think the space-time of the text turns out to have changed. moreover. mains at all representational. as an aesthetic object. even more ironi­ thing-and yet find it sublime . already fully implicated. comes into the orbit of the sublime. no matter how much the au­ their disposition and their division of the body. or even as an ana­ reach our ears after the sound has caused the medium to vibrate. In Galenic medi­ Tone is either too abstract. the genotext is the environment. such as obj ects and pre­ Oedipal relations with parents. but ecomimesis deflects it. The ambient lateness of the way in which things arise. melancholic-qualities of am­ Ecomimesis is a specific rhetoric that generates a fantasy of nature bient poetics are. for ecomimesis. one of the ways in which this happens is This goes for any environment. This lack of believability penetrates to the very core of what Kant calls "mere sensations of an object (gratification or pain). enriched with all sorts of knowledge which we possess ( b ut which is not contained in the direct intuition) . e. plus the ecological thor piles phrase on phrase. That way the ambience of the textual cording to the theory of relativity. merely in terms of what manifests itself to the eye-e. especially for Kristeva herself. naturalness keep dispelling it from within. or Surging. This point becomes very poetics that establishes this experience interferes with attempts to set important when we assess why environmental writing is at such pains up a unified. So the uncanny. 1 45 cally. or. Ac­ logue for the aesthetic altogether. They track the inevitable too­ as a surrounding atmosphere.. all perceptual phenomena exist in environment can have j ust the right amount of a bstraction-too little the past. too much and it turns into something which Newton thought was instantaneous. Wordsworth withdraws this immediacy the very processes that try to convey the illusion of immediacy and even as he appears to offer it. melancholy was the humor that was closest to the earth.. But maintaining the appropriate distance is tricky. transcendent nature that could become a symptomatic to convey a sense of immediacy. Ambience compromises ecomimesis because astonishing bait and switch. In an of this ambient poetics . 1 48 Ironically. Critical close reading elicits the inconsistent properties ecology" wants to hear in the echoes of the owls across the lake. even gravity. one of the principal complaints against establishing a vivid. Kant puts it this way: and social system surrounding the body. or not abstract enough. And. as a clear mirror of water bounded only by the sky. In this sense we never which tries to get around these complications by viewing the environ­ actually have it or inhabit it. The moment of contact is always in the past. as being like an a byss threatening to engulf every­ substantial environmental nature of any kind. ironically in those very texts that try to flatten the distinc­ any concepts of worlds that are inhabited by rational beings. and the constitution of nuclei of meaning in­ how we think it. "language that serves to communicate. reaching our senses at a later date-even light. and it becomes sheer sensation."147 The genotext aquatic creatures. Kant explicitly forbids the sublime to refer to anything Kristeva defines the genotext: " [Genotext] will include semiotic pro­ "teleological. 77 or a character in noir fiction. while separating continents from one another. Instead we must be able to view the ocean cial system surrounding the body" is part of it) . The content of ecomimesis is thus at war solidly real nature "out there " or "over there " is that it j ust fails to be with its form.g. The former includes drives. future­ teleological." 146 ecomimesis. the most potent rhetorical device for establishing a sense of . Tone also threatens to collapse into sheer stimulation. The immediacy is what "Romantic fantasy thing.76 • Ecology without Nature The Art of Environmental Language . am bience is the genotext to the phenotext of ecomimesis. In the language of Julia The sublimity of sheer tone turns out to be dangerous for Kristeva. if it re­ In sum. We posit it afterward. cine. or as the great reservoir supplying the water for the va­ generates the phenotext. dation" of language. ecomimesis ." Thus a text cannot celebrate the environmental capacity cesses but also the advent of the symbolic. convincing. It is this very environ­ as poets do. the yet makes possible the greatest communication among them. anterior. An echo can only ment " as poets do "-that is. who believed that the genotext had a revolutionary potential. Ambient poetics complicates and even disables the aims of ecomimesis." Tone tion between subjectivity an obj ectivity. accurate. palpable but shapeless . The latter encompasses the emergence When we j udge the sight of the ocean we must not do so on the basis of of object and subj ect." pors that impregnate the air with clouds for the benefit of the land. pulsing " quanta " (Kristeva's word) are the " underlying foun­ again as an element that. as a vast realm of volving categories : semantic and categorical fields. if it turb ulent. retroactive-and.g. ironically. real or imagined: "when we call the that the Cartesian self that floats above phenomena keeps rearing its sight of the starry sky sublime) we must not base our j udgment upon ugly head. of the environment and remain sublime. for all such matrix in which the subj ect is born and grows ( " the ecological and so­ j udgments will be teleological. if we ment that inhibits ecomimesis from firmly establishing an essential or observe it while it is calm. as Leo Spitzer demonstrated. In a world properly attuned to the environment. it Even the elementary concepts of time and space have is wrong to claim that there is something more real beyond inside and begun to vacillate." l The final line of the haiku mimics-evokes the plop of the frog. ensure that ecomimesis fails to deliver.78 . Any formalist definition of literary effects can be broadly ap­ plied. its funda­ mental component. And almost any text contains weak ecomimesis. is an aspect of every text. we would read poems with an eye to ecology. The inherent instability of language. I can smell the German equally wrong to say that there is nothing. Even now. graphics/sign. smell/scent). the presence of an ear and a mind that hears. or more. all contained in a "world. Contextualization is necessarily incomplete: there is always more where that came from. The associated distinc­ tions ( backgroundlforeground. and of the human and C H A PT E R TWO nonhuman worlds." as it linden trees. the texture of ecomimesis. Not that the distinction is real.HEINRICH HEINE side. And if ambience were not a feature of rhetorical and artistic pro­ duction in general. am bience. and the only reason why I can write this book at all. ex­ citing." Our sense of the broad scope of ambience is right and proper. no matter what their content. Getting used to that could take a lifetime. and in particular the function of the re-mark. Since all texts coordinate relationships between inside and outside. outside ! ) the inside-outside dis­ tinction. We can expect to find ambient qualities in any artwork whatsoever. sound/noise. The universality of ambient poetics is also a condition of the very long history of ideas such as milieu and ambience. Consider Basho: "The frog j umps into the old pond / The sound of the water. the trace of the sound. I feel outside. Yet it is vancing on Paris. We now begin to contextualize ambience. Space is killed by the railways. We need not restrict ourselves to works that are specifically ambient. Thus. Spitzer painstakingly charts a long reduction of ambi- . whether that thing is a world of (sacred) nature (traditional as if the mountains and forests of all countries were ad­ ecological language ) or machines (Deleuze and Guattari world). one-pure nihilism. Ecology without Nature nature. We can safely conclude that ecomimesis exists in various cultures. and to say that he or she who has the best argument is the right against my door. the North Sea's breakers are rolling were. this study would have no basis. it is entirely spurious. There is not even nothing beyond inside and out­ . and especially not that subset of works that contain ecomimesis. fall into place " after" the text has esta blished this basic relationship. The Romanticism and the problem comes when we start to think that there is something behind Environmental Subj ect or beyond or above (in other words. Let me say right here that the attempt to forge art and concepts that lie "in between " traditional ideas of inside and outside is noble. to " believe in nothing. genealogies. content. ' " The Greek periechon This chapter contains three different kinds of historical account. The replacement of this notion with body. constituting it as space itself. which makes much of space and environment. This is rather curious. which (surrounding "air" or atmosphere) had a spiritual quality. porary art. a retroactive effect of our par­ tion depends not j ust upon the content and form of an artwork or ticular moment. from which all other points of view are equally (in)signifi­ its boundaries. but also upon the subject position that it establishes. The Renaissance was posited retroac­ idea that "there is no metalanguage " is posed from this "point of tively. Ideological determina­ versality of ambience is itself historical. at exactly the moment at which "the environment" rears its ugly. works backward.3 This vastness subverts the significant. Spitzer begins with the in­ even if we resort to flashy new words like "network" or "web. and hurt not. ideas of numerous. In Chapter 3 these cant. When we praise of the island in The Tempest: consider the relationships of subj ectivity to ambient poetics. Next comes a his­ matic Aristotle still used periechon to suggest that all things had their tory of ideas. Ironi­ Sounds and sweet airs. Plato and in turn read the form. I then investigate the idea of a certain subjectJ emerging in the Ro­ one of abstract space has developed in natural philosophy since the mantic period: the beautiful soul. one that suggests the form of "new and improved" way of talking about the local. and place. We will revisit the "encounter something discarded in post-Cartesian thinking." The gradual divestment of the aura of ambience is precisely the story forward.80 • Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ect . These distortions reappear particular." Rather tuition that ambience tries to name " an anti-Cartesian desire to pene­ than nature. by Spitzer himself at the start of the essay. if we accept the common idea expressed provide a historical background for the speculations of the following one. their specific surroundings. which explores future possibilities. A historical perspective can induce a Renaissance. revealing its ambient qualities. that ambience fills a need for It delves further into what nature might be. begins to become ture cannot remain itself-it is the flickering shapes on the edges of our increasingly fraught with difficulty. ities. It sounds a note we with nonidentity" spoken of previously. Restaurants have am bience. local embeddedness that ecological writing tries to bring here in more conscious form. and in general. But the idea of a specific surrounding medium was even certain feeling of distance. but also undermining its coherence. that give delight. Ambience is what environmental writing discovered-vast empty space. and lineages. toxic head. the strangers who disturb us with their proximity. even smugness. Chapter 2 does not just ether) . the ma­ local. the commodity. and sometime voices. I am thus not confident that we can invent a Enlightenment idea of milieu). back.4 Even postmodern chines whose monstrosity inspires revulsion. Ecology without Nature gradu­ will hear again: we cannot ignore Descartes.2 ally amplifies this encounter. it is the subject with which this chapter concludes. we will The isle is full of noises. We cannot trace its history back to a single origin and then run view. 130-1 3 3 )5 . establishing a certain range of attitudes. The very humanities. as ghosts and machines. Contem­ ecomimesis. Will hum a bout mine ears. possibly infinite. The more prag­ ciety. at least in the ra ble and discrete appear against this general background. Consider Caliban's The artwork hails us. 81 ence from a spiritual term to a scientific and sociological notion (the irradiated. not j ust socially but also philosophically. cally. animals. the thought of something " in between" beings becomes hard to Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments think. discover consistent veins of historical and ideological patterning. Na­ within a horizon which are unequal but significant. in which I explore the terms worldJ stateJ systemJ field. is after. That is why this book has a present in Descartes (the matiere subtile adopted in Newton's idea of third chapter. The uni­ tions and em phases. The global starts to pervade the perception. or embeddedness. and subject positions of contemporary so­ Sextus Empiricus considered it to be an active force. All art can now be assessed for its environmental qual­ rhetorical device. Marx delineates the social and economic form. This is even true of those historical moments that why it is a good term to use in searching out the inconsistencies of name themselves. (111. and ambience is its ultimate nemesis. trate 'les sombres tunnels de l' inexprima ble. to protect us against what they have clearly hard to maintain a solid center. and finally. as "strangers "-human others. such as Romanticism and postmodernism. viewpoints that are incommensu­ We begin with a Hegelian observation that causality. for ambient poetic effects.2. Once we accept that there is an " impossible point of view" of and other beings who wander into and out of the world. It appeared in Chapter 1 as the way in Spitzer argues that the very thinkers whose ideas undermine these which environmental writing establishes corners and edges that make it usages introduce them. imagining that there are (however many) unique viewpoints from strangers will take an even stranger form. retroactively None of this gets rid of the need to trace precise historical determina­ reconfigures all previous art. This capacity to imagine a world is not unconnected to aesthetics are coming under the sign of the environment. The trouble is not that these legacies are obscure." "Bow-wow" ( 3 82.9 sure sign that we are in the warped space of ideology. prehistoric rather than historical. the tory (as writing) has tuned in to the idea of world: of a surrounding en­ birth of consumerism coincided with ( and to some extent was) the Ro­ vironment or culture. Science.2 . It eventually becomes pos­ modernism. the moment at which society began to become re­ Just as history (as a sequence of events ) has been becoming more flexive about consumption-when it began properly to recognize that it global since the early modern period and the rise of capitalism. with its their Romantic moment at different times. since we are talking about socially significant moments rather ering historical change. 3 86." complete with an echoing chorus of and has recently developed forms of auditory history and cultural ringing bells and barking dogs: "Ding dong bell. S. and making.8 The turn to phenomenology-literally. might eventually sible to sing a song called "We Are the World. singing a song of how the matter the age. feeling subj ect into a world to the rise of commercial capitalism. The Romantic term cultureJ hovering somewhere between nature and nurture. evokes The Continual Whirr o f Machines: World Literature. Eliot's current economic conditions. Romantic history emerged. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject . history itself has taken on ambient qualities. so his­ was a consumer society-was decisive. resembles what Gandhi said of In The Communist ManifestoJ Marx and Engels state that under the Western civilization: "I think it would be an excellent idea. it must include the idea that writing in Moreover. 83 Caliban is describing the magic of the island as the presence of Aeolian thinking. Such "primitive" societies There are legacies of Romanticism in current environmental move­ belonged to a " lost world" where writing. Furthermore. doing. national and local literatures. and from the numerous while supposedly descriptive rather than normative. Collingwood. evoking the spirit of Ferdinand "on the waters" (1. The phenomenological approach to history has had a long run. "Culture. there historiaJ which means both historical events and their inscription) was are too many connections. and world as such. Phenomenology is a philosoph­ Still. Anthropology. newly arisen in the Romantic period. studies that seek to imagine what the " soundscape " of a particular pe­ 3 84. " Into something rich and strange." same thing in the same ways. dynamic. the science of phe­ When did the contemporary emerge in this respect? I date its emergence nomena-attempts to insert the conscious. In particular. a Romantic period the beginning of "environmental " ways of under­ spirit of the elements.82 . riod might have been: ambient history. under certain circumstances. has a utopian ring.? Ecology has inherited the lan­ idea is to mean more than people from several countries writing the guages of G'wholeness " and "life." T. the ZeitgeistJ the flavor of a culture at a particular moment in of Ferdinand's dead father is transformed by the medium of the ocean time." like "na­ ture " (the terms are intimately related)." and wince about it. and to the rise of consumer so­ with which it interacts. rather. and therefore history (Greek ments." .3 9 1 ). or to appear as a moment in the process of including the environment in see the many levels of painful irony within the phrase " United Nations. Stating that the ical movement that emerges in Hegel and continues through philoso­ causality is retroactive from the moment at which environmental quali­ phers of history such as Dilthey."1o If this in a world that is not hale and hearty. How do we account for what we mean by "contemporary" ? rida). even Der­ ther. Heidegger." mindedness become more and more impossible. The relationships are overdetermined-a unknown. 4 0 1 . "National one-sidedness and narrow­ and Raymond Williams's idea of "culture " as "a whole way of life.6 Different European and American societies have had Umwelt. to produce acousmatic music that "creeps by" standing and acting. politics. this " fact" has been imbued with World History. But this is of little conse­ synchronistic style of looking at a particular culture without consid­ quence. one cannot dodge the question o f origin. what German thinking calls Lebenswelt or mantic period. ethics. and good for you. Even post­ the globalization of specific kinds of misery. held in suspicion by much ecocriticism. People may eventually recognize in the voices. Prospero the magician himself employs the disembodied Ariel. 4 03-404 ) . As I have argued elsewhere. valued societies that appeared static rather than than mechanical. there arises a world literature. and later incarnations in ties become artistic material only pushes the problem back a stage fur­ the twentieth century (Husserl. World Philosophy "value"-culture was good. Merleau-Ponty. a surrounding world. obj ectified time. and there is a general can. ciety. meditate upon the idea of history to be told of how it has done so. And no matter where in the world capitalism ports. and in general the Romantic attitude to nature prevalent today. "Junkspace is best enjoyed in a state of postrevolutionary tended consequences plays out in industrial society such that. machines. Moreover. the coefficient of as "nature" or the ecofeminist/Lovelockian image of Gaia. Materialism puts paid to "nature. are j ust the Romantic and ecocritical thinking. not only is there no placeJ but there key terms in Romantic ecocriticism's rage. Ernst Bloch asserted that "where technology has achieved Greece.ll Far from needing filling out with some positive "thing " such an apparent victory over the limits of nature . Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ect ." Ironically. and predicted by rather than a theoretical breakthrough. factory buildings and containers are only of use in the oning. and. time "-and then to collapse time itself. Rem Koolhaas's change both organism and environment means that nothing in eco­ "junkspace" is distinctive. and are ready . political. such as space and time. the equality dreamt of in theses . factory and nation­ cloud. talism and its ideologies. the Asian " brown point.84 . Place." itself an capitalism discards in its furious progress. we share the parenthesis is not just a case of vast airports. Place and the local." 18 So we are not j ust dealing with the kinds of supermodern class differences. observes Beck." all the environmental multimedia installations. environmental phenomena par­ productive forces " do j ust the same thing. giving rise to the recent illusion of a "post-industrial" tools and buildings: landscape. positions-places from which Romantic ideas of place make sense. it is all the more important to consider deeply the idea of kinds of space and spatiotemporal relations. this is hap­ ready visible in the Romantic period in the form of global epidemics pening at a moment when sciences of "nature without people" make it such as yellow fever. and aesthetic accounts of "miasma. They are identical because. In a bitter irony." and toxic events such as Chernobyl. In the category of spaces unique to capitalism. if only in the in the name of a brighter day." ]9 (Note the similarity to De Quincey's trope of parenthesisJ the 1 790s has come to pass-we are all (almost) equally at risk from the which the previous chapter noted as a figure of ambience. Such phenomena were al­ state. The melancholy truth of high postmodernism is that all its talk mined any coherent sense of place. posited. that is an argument within of "space.17 Space itself becomes one of the things that systems remains the same. Marx describes how capitalism affects not only people. as impotent as it is loud­ is also no space. and even the borders between continents. Radiation is ig­ "non-place " analyzed by Marc Auge. the this impotent rage is itself an ironic barrier to the kind of genuine (sense postmodern insistence on space is a high-cultural denial. early materialist term. flat-out contradicting objective ecological thinking. forever revolutionizing itself. Such thinking aims to conserve a same as the lowbrow eco-schmalz that high environmental art wants to piece of the world or subjectivity from the ravages of industrial capi­ eschew (the art of place rather than space). a mystification of) interrelationship between beings desired. "highly developed nuclear and chemical negative. tionately. but also of abandoned air­ toxic legacy of Chernobyl. Alan Bewell's penetrating ecocritical study R o ­ difficult to imagine how we might address this abolition.]2 manticism and Colonial Disease shows how such forms inspired writers "Modernization" itself. it creates actually existing. unknown danger has increased propor­ awareness is j ust what we need. and in particular the local.15 When we consider it thus. this negative known. . They "abolish the foundations ticipate in dialectical interplay insofar as they bring an awareness of en­ and categories according to which we have thought and acted to this vironmental negatives such as global warming. but another name is Environmental Romanticism argues that globalization has under­ ecology. simply construct ideas about space. Contemporary capitalism seeks to " annihilate space by rhetorical affect is in direct proportion to marginalization. but also puts its industry. risk becomes increasingly democratic. In material historical terms. concrete The fact that metabolic processes create dynamic conditions that spaces. Ulrich Beck has observed that the logic of unin­ Thus." a bio­ becoming its own theme. work and leisure time. all societies are affected. While nature writing claims to break down subject-object dualism labour process as long as they keep their original shape. who calls them "immense paren­ norant of national boundaries. more significantly. . despite gawking. At least." 14 One name for this is postmodernism.16 Capitalism does not place. For Henri Lefebvre pioneered the idea that capitalism produced certain this reason. No wonder ambient poetics has arisen to point out utopias and dystopias that lie j ust beyond our reck­ Tools. ) Concrete environment itself. 85 Ecology has reminded us that in fact we are the world. "is becoming reflexivej it is to make ethical. have become under current economic conditions. entail subject conditions rather than expressing them. Nationality and class affiliations aside. let alone nation." 1 3 The Frankfurt School had already given logical word that had regained the ethical charge given it in classical voice to this . with other gods or without any gods at all. lawns instance the trem blings and stutterings of an Elvis at the microphone. Capitalism moves onto this empty stage. .26 The section title comes from " Empty" space-space that capitalism has left relatively undevel­ Deleuze and Guattari's perverse ecomimetic hymn to machines: oped-is intrinsic to capitalism. but a function of modernity: "The mous worker in a "sound factory. tools. Consider the idea of peace. Humans distinct from tha t of the product they helped to turn out. and internally. and then the sheep arrive. water. The human being is progressively side­ of machines. and capitalist machinery.86 . with its phan­ my father want? Can he offer me more than that? Impossible. In a human beings off them."25 tial feel of capitalist society. they retain their shape in­ symptom of automation. a new rainforest. . Koolhaas: "Air. as repetitive forms begin to be­ fect metaphor for." generating libidinal pulses in a space last great process of expropriation of the agricultural population from of dancing." ambience i s a lifetime. there persists a curious silence and into the DJ's hand. leaving j unkspace in its wake. on the other hand. in the same way as fairgrounds pro­ the soil is. The way the land appears unoccupied is not a superstar cults. Although some DJs have created izes agricultural space. evoking a sonic absence marked by traces of misery and oppression. a lways continue to lead an existence lined. to relate to them. hanging in galleries around the world as slabs of pigment made of consumption) generates thousands of iterated copies. or hard money. The mortal remains performed directly by machines. becomes a weekend within the weekend. Celestial machines. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ec t • 87 each morning to enter into it in the same form. Marx described how capitalist alien- . but nevertheless evoke the tenderness of the human being: for has become J unkspace.29 cover human manipulations like thick pelts .22 not unlike a worker on a production line. The earth. a space that " bathes" us in potential paradise. he is in the mountains. as in minimalist music. without a father or mother. both externally. dance music specifically designated as serted Village " mark this process. 2 ? But even when things get fixed up nicely. .2s Work your body. a certain erasure and silence is evident. The DJ "mixes " this obj ect with an­ and even nature writing and ecocriticism: "First the labourers are other object. as anyone who has operated a photocopier will affirm . so too after their death. the utopian come the content of art. finally the so-called 'clearing of estates'. the notion of the disco or house DJ is that of an anony­ relic of an ancient prehistoric past."24 Works such as Oliver Goldsmith's "The De­ further extension of automation. there is not enough political will. a heaviness like Levinas's there is) or a Raymond Chan­ Automation affected art. producing am bience. without a family. . the stars or rainbows a ghost town. alpine machines-all of them connected to those of his body. The DJ performs a role face of abstract value. if in the sky. Leave me in tasmagoric carnival. air. foliage as spoilage: Trees are tortured. and waters are so ambient. The use of mar. a space of leisure much potential space. And j ust as during their restaurant to the more general sense o f "aroundness. 2 0 "man" the machines: more than ever. The instru­ ment suffers the same fate as the man. Yves Klein's International Klein artistic production. the sweeping of vide machines for enjoyment rather than work. From the commoditized atmosphere in a spiritual depletion of modernity. i. within the larger leisure space of the rave. as frontiers of progress. a parallel Walden. state of suspension without resolution. that is to say during the labour process." Everything is a machine. human beingness is now revealed as a product of mechanical processes. Plot is a potential space. .e. sprinklers water ac­ Ambience is a symptom of capitalist alienation-not j ust the existen­ cording to mathematical timeta bles.:hines in music they are so much junkspace. actively "disappear" vironmental writing shows. Landscape depth. and puts the pre­ driven from the land. "What does generate value. More and more processes of production are dependently of the product. the record currently playing in the club. a limbo waiting to amid falling snowflakes. a recording of beats and chords. . though that certainly comes into it. that has been developed.2 l The continual whirr of machines. The recordings are often pro­ As Marx puts it. is a per­ cesses are stereotyped. Repetition builds itself into the process of dleresque sense of atmosphere as clue. The leavings of capitalism have a haunting quality. in a pithy sentence that accounts for pastoral poetry duced and packaged anonymously. as mechanical reproduction (and Blue. since the laws of capital may dictate that a vacant lot is more profitable over a certain span of time than one While taking a stroll outdoors. and not so metaphorical embodiment of."23 Capitalism modern­ vious record back in his or her crate.. . workshops etc. and work pro­ precious stone suspended in a commercial medium on canvas. wood: All are en­ generated new forms of subjectivity that do not rely upon an illusion of hanced to produce . with its struggle against what it sees as the the workers who operate it. with nature. An incomplete obj ect passes Before and after the work of capital. in the wake of progress.. as en­ Capitalist thinking. The commodity form has a skeleton in its as Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes. This is certainly the case with the disap­ Monticello was for a seamless "vista flowing from the mansion through pearing process that capitalism carries out on labor." in the commodity form. This idea of ide­ the lawned garden fringed by trees to the foothills of the Blue Ridge ology as externalized was what Marx was after in his theory of capital. The suburban garden lawn's flat. The the way that also gets in the way. the Jeffersonian precinct of the Something has been hidden in full view. capitalism bestows a value on its products acts as if this were not the the streets of an industrial town appear curiously empty: "the members case. The first is that it high abstract expressionism-obscures in plain view the work that goes is a set of conditions that rule our subjectivity-a set of beliefs. Capitalist ideology "knows very fifty years. pervasive as a social form. Commodities behave as if they sprang from United States. and fascinating points of ology resides in the "mouthfeel" of a McDonald's hamburger.38 Their lack of fences dis­ tain an even stronger grip when we have a postmodern. a British national park." which is one reason why it is so difficult to get a sulted in picturesque landscape. the old-school version-the Spice Islands. an operation elegantly evoked by Although ambience is strictly untenable as a concept. of simu­ mental grasp on it-it does not belong to the realm of the mind."·n Engels notes that to the untrained eye. even though they are in­ so many breaths. is simply called "The Lawn. say." Monticello was a republican glimpse of something that cannot quite be seen. Capitalism encrypts labor. almost opaque surface-so like There are at least two ways of looking at ideology. constructed places such as Central Park in New York nowhere.37 In the early modern period lawns were used for sport. 3 D It is ironic that a clothing store that operates using sweatshop of the money aristocracy can take the shortest road through the middle labor from other countries is called Gap. a fantasy space that fuses in­ imagined as a system of movements without a subject: " [the black. But to get to grips with the disappearing worker. Thomas Jefferson's design for ironic attitude toward them. Modern Amer­ we believe in these forms and practices very much. side and outside-all lawns are carpets. steeper. Labor is on the "inside " of capital.88 . Indeed. of all the labouring districts to their places of business."31 The disappearing of the worker is active. playing on the two senses of " in the green floor cloth in the entrance simply elided the outside lawn and the way. something found along refuge from political vicissitudes. because its gaze is fixed spontaneously toward the consumer. surrealist miles away. But there is an invisible gap be­ had not been for Wordsworthian Romanticism and such seminal texts tween inside and outside. the way view. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject . the martial struggle of public life. and so on. The other way pressionism turned the dissolution of lyrical distance into a profitable is as part of obj ective social conditions. In this model of globalization. The worker's body is indoor carpet. "hardwired " fantasies. walk so many steps. breathe tored out of the process of value generation. as relief men hold open doors for women. would not have existed if it the "outside. but for a more limited audience. and live an average. of trinsic to it. This is an open secret. Ideology resides "out there " enterprise. more distant things. he is made to strike so many more blows. if not from outer space. This is the force of Amiri University of Virginia. produce so much work." 3 9 In a fitting minimalism. a skeleton that the detective fiction of Capital uncovers through those responsible for establishing the national park system in the painstaking work. Ideology shapes the actual physical world. they main­ ican lawns emerged in the Romantic period. from which Monticello itself is visible thirty Baraka's "Something in the Way of Things. the production of distance. The lawn creates ambience. But the objective system by which altogether a fourth of his life. from some wheel of fortune in outer space." a paranoiac. or more into itJ) Just like the lawn. It doesn't matter whether from smoke and other people. cynical or tinguished them from English ones. then from on higher. . to walk so many well " that la bor produces value. Ide­ lated fusions of tameness and wildness. abstract ex­ strongly. and it even appears that way on The Lake District. and as power on display. it is valid and the word gap."33 level. think only of the in the commercial eighteenth century imagines commodities flowing common lawn-so much ecocriticism does not. one of closet. a series of unconscious. and to increase and Ricardo plainly demonstrate. without ever ' labor is what gets "outsourced" and vanishes almost without trace. as Adam Smith more steps. 89 ation is fundamentally how human labor power and labor time get fac­ smith] can strike so many blows per day. to breathe so many more breaths per day. Mountains.36 The lawn expresses the disappearing of the worker that re­ rather than " in here. seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the Marx shows how capitalism performs this operation on a much deeper right and the left.34 Frederick Law Olmsted. in every monetary transaction. Capitalist poetics City. "43 In Keats's fine instance of Romantic nair an idealized All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art. an environment long-lasting sources of that fertility. j ust as the creations of Deadalus moved of themselves. both black and white.40 but also cast aside. Oh those heathens! They understood nothing of political economy planes of the carpenters and joiners. declared: eventual appearance of labor and race requires a dimensional disorien­ 'The minimum of air for each adult ought to be in a sleeping room 300. As daylight faded." And Antipater. as in the commodity form. The more a country proceeds from drained of psychic significance. Monticello's Web site persists in describing activity when summoned. chilling. especially the spiritual kind. But capitalism holds no re­ ished product and its various and diverse elements makes it a matter of spect for matter. the water-wheel for grinding corn. Never- . Rachel Carson's Silent Spring that deals most directly with lawns is en­ The immiseration of the worker is in parallel with ecological devasta­ titled "And No Birds Sing " : an allusion to John Keats's "La Belle Dame tion."41 The lawnmower relieved the need for whose exploitation of tone is a nlatter of quantity rather than q uality. a feature of the hiding of labor through the construc­ tha t befits it. that most basic form of all productive ma­ hammers of fourteen nailmakers rang on anvils near the roaring forge of chinery. as the liberator of female slaves and the restorer of the golden the blacksmith. Side paths prevented them from being seen in their traffic to and "If. the shops grew silent and Humans become " an appendage of flesh on a machine of iron. only develops the techniques and the degree of Groups of workers on the same project do not need to inhabit the combination of the social process of production by simultaneously under­ same space. While lords. In truth it looks much more like an idealism gone mad. The chapter of j unkspace. Consulting Physician of the Board of Health. therefore. for ambient poetics. Mulberry Row would have been humming with need either of apprentices for the master craftsmen. the "indecorous" presence of animal labor. a Greek poet of the time of Cicero. and charcoal for the forges . For Thorstein Veblen lawns and in a dwelling room 500 cubic feet. generating the aesthetic equivalent of phosis) is a consistent feature of lawn representation. could do the work without actors. ' "47 The use of numbers is must not appear like a working farm: "The vulgar suggestion of thrift. from the house. is a standing objection to the Times unforgettably puts it. 91 Monticello's open lawn. . castigates capitalism them into one mechanical whole. . humans are essential cello's workers. but of robbing the soil. and two sawyers worked a pit saw and Christianity . the more rapid is this process of destruction. therefore. all progress in increasing the tortion. decorative use of this animal. This external relation between the fin­ and industrialism for being materialistic. despite the ruthless demystification it imposes on the chance .45 plantation "street" bringing barrels of water."46 In the the dwellings on Mulberry Row were animated by the return of Monti­ production process. let alone a place invested with subj ective warmth: " Only a mining the original sources of all wealth-the soil and the worker .90 • Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ect . Mule-drawn carts rattled up and down this chinery is the surest means of lengthening the working day. This is an age of sheer quantity-"facts. with over thirty people at work in its shops and yards. hailed the linens boiled in the wash house and milkpans clattered in the dairy. also hid a plantation full of slaves. the United States.49 few parts of the watch pass through several hands.42 Distortion (anamor­ and absence rather than presence. They did not. whether the specialized workers are brought together in one world." dreamed Aristotle. not only of femme fatale appears to her hapless courtly lover as a "sidelong" dis­ robbing the worker. as in the case of will lead to a literal drainage of the environment. The opening and closing refrains depict the lover's depression fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more in a bleak terra nullius in which "no birds sing" (4 ). as if part of a background. firewood for the kitchens. tation from Monticello to Mulberry Row. comprehend that ma­ slowly through a cherry log. or even by intelligent anticipation. as Marx observes: sans Merci. Letheby. the greatest thinker of antiquity." as Dickens's Hard which is nearly inseparable from the cow. Capitalist production.4R It is ripe. then there would be no During Jefferson's time. Carson implies that the toxic quick fix large-scale industry as the background of its development. . for example. literally squeezed into the tiniest possible space: Work j ust "happens " in a middle voice. or of slaves for the activity. and all these membra disjecta come together for the first time in the hand that binds Ecological criticism. however. workshop or not."44 Marx views machines and automation as ab­ and was designed explicitly to exclude the sight of slaves from the front solutely alienating: view. . or the tion of empty space: tripods of Hephaestus went of their own accord to their sacred work. if the weavers' shuttles were to weave of themselves. Wood chips and shavings were scattered by the axes and age. " if every tool. The "Dr. soaked with desire. embodied. Ecology withou t Nature Romanticism and the Environmental S ubject ." The naturalized ecopoetics of Ireland was the test case. Bill ings. What if we widened the lens describing value. or trying to global environmental awareness in a poetic mode I have elsewhere de­ suggest another way of being. global flows of trade are represented as flows of spicy odor italist enjoyment. Portuguese. not caught up in the logic of war. Powerfully depicted in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. the intangible spacious n ess coded into the language and ideology of ecomimesis. but there is no label or concept for this yet. and French psychic and po­ happen." The poetics of spice cre­ capitalism moved from its colonialist to its imperialist phase. neously. India. a realm in which events have room to Europe was thinking. It is an atmosphere. Language blanketed places from Kingston. so by "environment" or "ecosystem. It can be salvational. the kind of thing you pay an interior designer a lot of to encompass an expanded view that did not take the aikas of ecology money to achieve. They are en­ stract. When we widen our view. promising a quasi-religious tion. This embodied space resembles what is meant peared: unfeasible ecosystems where business produces only one crop. neither full nor litical maps of the world included open. u In our time this objectification has reached the limit of life­ . both marginalized riod. the commodity. Romanticist ecocriticism. subj ectivity and the environment." "the Indies. as we shall explore in the next chapter. including Wordsworth. or Western social norms ). scribed as "the poetics of spice. This oppositional quality insides of life-forms provide new products such as patented genomes in can take many forms. ironically creates America. It can be avant-garde. Monocultures ap­ negative and positive. heightened atmosphere. Good restaurants have it-often without a quali­ in the sense of home or dwelling as its center ? In the Romantic period. but it is only the Being Environmental most recent form of social processes that existed in the Romantic pe­ In such an age. There are several reasons for dating the cause it's there" attitude of Everest climbers: imperialism in the ab­ rise of environmental art to capitalism and consumerism. producing goods sponta.92 . Whatever form it takes. plunder. Rainforests are ransacked for biotechnology. countless people died or emigrated to Smith (especially in Beachy Head). rather than some feudal or earlier idyll. cism in general. not nothingness. Global commerce itself gave rise to poetry that cele­ brated the global." This alone indicates how temple. English. The primary in­ forms themselves. gave the first inklings of trying to supplement it with something lacking in society. the attempt to grasp the pure space. empty places (empty of society empty. Romantic-period writers. assumes that toward the nose of the consumer. Intense ates an embodied space.51 David Simpson has argued that the empty. Jamaica. frequently find themselves brought together in concep­ wilderness spaces owe something to imperial geography and the " be­ tions of other possible worlds. There is a sense of potential: something is "about" to happen. past . Ro­ (Romantic) version of the imperialist conquest and objectification of mantic artistic and philosophical practices and theories are preserved the world . a thick. either The very form of alienation. to spaces similar to those perfumed by a cloud of incense in a church or Calicut. But the reverse was the case. j ust as they can have "class. Coleridge. there emerge continuities in Antarctic wilderness toward which the Mariner voyages is an aesthetic the discourses of ecology like layers of color in a slice of rock. We think of globalization as new. Presence and absence. that en­ ecological destruction. for example. it is the society of pure space. attacking society and aes­ what ecofeminist Vandana Shiv a describes as another wave of coloniza­ thetic norms head on. and of ecocriti­ of the environment. Charlotte In the resulting Potato Famine. within contemporary ecological languages and beliefs. as "spice islands. fying adjective. Ambience has become a way of of capitalism. art since Romanticism comes with an ex­ Clinton compared the first coding of the human genome with the plicit or implicit manifesto attached to it.S4 sorbed into the social matrix. in a form of ekphrasis (vivid descrip­ it is recapitulating the resistance of Romantic poetry to the technologies tion) that is very often deeply ambient. a bles genuine cooperation. and the stances are views of the critical aspect of art. its potatoes transplanted from South America. Nevertheless. empty and exploited. and Landon. Art has an edge not fully ab­ travels of Lewis and Clark across the frontiers of America. of " disappearing" the worker. 93 theless. you did not have to oppose capitalism to have environ­ mental awareness. and slavery spread over the earth." In this early form of advertising lan­ A common view is that Romantic culture rej ected the fantasy of cap­ guage. It stands awkwardly outside it. Poetry caught wind of the coordination of imperialism and and encrypting labor. s 3 In the language of the exhilarating rush to the new genetic fron­ transcendence or escape from social and aesthetic dilemmas and suffer­ tier it is not hard to detect the strains of the Romantic voyage. while utopian forms of based environmental politics. field. Franco "noise. discursive thoughts and memory traces. In culture. In contrast. no-nonsense way. system. As these ideas are caught up in notions of the aes­ us. this sense of world emerges against the Primitivist environmentalisms crave a lost golden age of interconnect­ background of mechanical. Some ecological movements have since been trying to get it banization and factories. There is something ecological in the history of "soundscapes. Ecology withou t Nature Romanticism and the Environmental S u bj ect . despite the preponder­ sound like in Shakespeare's age ?57 Perhaps because it is more physically ance of cell phones and the Internet. A soundscape has been framed. while place. In returning to Romanticism. in the tradition of William Blake and the Shelleys . a nar­ may sound. reading" (it is not clear why we cannot also search for signs of the such significances would already be caught in the paradoxes of the echo. as the suffix "scape " warns cism and holism. after all. eco­ Gemeinschaft. . futurist environmentalisms are based on the notion that the golden age and this is a textual village that provides an aesthetic. we need a more scientific. obliterating feudal and communal relationships with rhythms of an English village measured against the abstract time of ur­ the earth. in relation to a more general view. We will concentrate on the ideas of Sonic history is actually the symptom of a radical loss of place-if we world. space are generated alongside capitalist space." a tion. nificance . distributes places and space. alternative forms of involving than vision (sound waves vibrate air. Capitalism compressed time and space. On the other hand. state. tent. There is a sonic equivalent of a frame or a pane of glass sep­ arating the historians from the time they are evoking. and body. Enclosure privatized land rative of stasis and suspension in which cyclic techniques render the held in common." It would be less seductive. and in particular. ideas of organi­ had such a thing at all." After the fact. before the village novels of the glamour. the aesthetic will become our focus. space became po­ Our Village tries to encapsulate the feel of a social milieu. industry. a distance. industrial Gesellschaft. In environmental and other forms of "mili­ body). distanced inti­ has not yet happened. which vibrates the place and space appeared. Auditory history has sometimes joined with actual place­ ideology of place has become more trenchant. most people never had much of a relationship with their land nineteenth century appeared. During the Napoleonic Wars. These environmentalisms are also distinc­ according to rigorous principles. and the sense of place. and science. Moretti applies this technique in mapping the tained within this space. differentiating between what is inside and what is outside the Geography has recently provided ways of talking about interactions be­ soundscape.56 He could also have analyzed Private property aided ecological awareness." such as the Zapatista movement in Mexico. Likewise. Our Village is a vivid example of late-Romantic ambience. pasts to discover forms of primitive communism. sometimes pre­ since the novel was serialized and mechanically reproduced. capitalism. Localism was already a construction tively Romantic. phenomenological history endeavors to render the experience of the That place has become endangered. Partici­ historic. but it ways in which a very significant novel. Mitford. Our Village by Mary Russell is a compelling fantasy. materially and sym bolically. Let us investigate the ways in which the culture and national parks' land and air is aided by accounts of what the Rockies philosophy that derived from Romanticism deal with the realities of sounded like a century ago before the internal combustion engine. such as the "thick space " where campaigns to ban military aircraft and snowmobiles from the of ambient poetics. is what Heidegger means when he talks about the way in which symptom of a wish to recover a vivid sense of place-what did England modern culture knows nothing about nearness. became potent in its absence. to call the sound world a Moretti has proposed that in order to study "world literature " prop­ " noise-scape. This "thick" space is strictly impossible. edness with the environment. in the American West. pating in the time of the novel meant waiting for the next installment. It implies thetic. of rich. The re-mark is in World play. however strange that time.94 . for example. Reading Our Village recovers a sense of back. and partakes of it. 95 and future events. A landscape is a painting. It aestheticizes place. the Ordnance Survey had mapped Britain under a feudal hierarchy.55 Conversely. They acknowledge that despite the medievalist macy. like a species on the edge of extinc­ past. are con­ global in the small print). the tional history. They look to pre-feudal. quantitative way of reading. " distant charged with significances that it did not have at the time-even if it did. sonic history tries for a more vivid rendering of place than tradi­ tant particularism. satisfying human interactions in a world of sig­ criticism highlights the yearning for a bygone life of feudal hierarchy. and between what counts as "sound" and what counts as tween space and place in a materialist. the clip clopping of horses becomes erly. In eighteenth-century Britain. certain kinds of un­ bodied space of nationalist representation hopelessly saturated with known.61 This is the . Heimat� demanded a poetic rendering as an ambient realm of swaying This brings to mind the found object. a quintessentially Romantic ideology. R. What is the difference between ambient art. say. "knowing " the un­ suburbanite. shining seas. We cannot understand it. beliefs. the sounds of a flying saucer. this is it. realist fictions generating sonic microphones to record the sound of standing waves of air pres­ an entire world in a bubble of past-tense narrative. Frankenstein would benefit stand what the animals are saying. Nationalism has always appealed to the sensory "world" as real. this " unknown " is already accounted for. setting up some sub­ Walter Scott's invention of historical novels. 97 " Environmental" or " soundscape" recordings of the 1 970s prefig­ of compost. and practices. but we know that we will ideological content? be getting whale sounds and not. irreducible rounding world. and sheer scientific experiment. opacity is the environmental quality.5 8 These recordings are medial. even pre-human past. even whether they are saying any­ from a more rational and planned social structure that treated all social thing at all. Nestled into the horizon as they are in their bur­ unknown. with records of birdsong and especially the tasy-there 's no arguing with it. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings depicts the we dip a microphone into the ocean. the "little person. Tolkien's work embodies a key nationalist fantasy. a sense of an embodied thing. paints society as a nonsystemic heap of In Heidegger's supremely environmental philosophy. the wider world of global politics is blissfully unavailable to The idea of an aesthetic history is close to that of national identity as them. so The idea of the nation as Deep Voices� a blue whale is sped up to within the range of human "homeland. If ever there was evidence of the persistence of Ro­ to them yet caught up in them. As the idea of world (Welt) be­ ceptible perceptible. a certain horizon and back into the distant. say. tangible yet indeterminate. that peculiarly English manticism. vironmental ambience from its ideological frame ? Or is the thick. Ambient poetics is about making the imper­ state remains a real yet fantastic thing. and mythologies. The Lord of the Rings establishes not seems mysteriously more than the sum of its parts. like sci­ and yet fundamentally beyond representation. stretching beyond the ence. Because we cannot under­ pable of loving his creature spontaneously. we become aware of the communication medium.96 . while retaining the form of its imperceptibility-to came popular in German Romantic idealism. and finally authoritarian fan­ ured soundscape history. Ambient art wants to make the unknown known. strawberries and bluebells. It appears alongside only entire languages. the inaudible audible. in some sense-ambient art misses the genuine seeming environment. Tolkien narrates the victory of the known as a reflex of artistry as opposed to science. the world cannot be totalized though it is a whole) are help from such albums as Songs of the Humpback Whale and Deep slices of Romantic organicism exemplified in Edmund Burke 's reac­ Voices. R." embedded in a tamed yet natural­ known in advance. Like nature. This i s a rich. data collection. checks and balances. It was a suit­ mystifying opacity-otherwise ambient art would in fact be science. form of nature ideology. generating a specific national tone. so the nation-state was make the invisible visible. the free im­ corn. The nation­ than in the background. compelling. if The Shire in J. Inca­ general: animals become part of the weather. conveying a sense of the environment in the Romantic period. em­ Ambient art predicts. able obj ective correlative for the je ne sais quai of nationalist fantasy. but also a sur­ monarchs. The actors as equal participants with equal rights. or mon­ society and technology. continues to mo­ the whales are singing. Nature appeared sublime. But it also wishes to retain the flavor of the unknown. not even in as inhabitants of the earth. the action painting. We cannot control the whale sounds. histories. rows. or sets up the parameters for. As soon as we can figure out what Nationalism. Many environmentalist values (com­ sounds of whales." as in American Homeland Security or the German hearing. the surrounding classes. did as much for en­ sure over the Atlantic as they affect the atmosphere in a city room. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmenta l Subj ect . Can progressive art rescue the aesthetics of en­ itoring ?59 On the other hand. The " Save the Whale " campaign gained enormous plexity is good. On one of the tracks of imagined as a surrounding environment. but we can hear it. But environmentalism need not be organicist. or stately forests. which would consist of radical nonidentity. Organicism. Englishness of images-an anamorphic form. In both cases-preserving the un­ world-bubble as an organic village. as ramshackle and spontaneous as a pile ambience created by Tolkien's narrative is called Umwelt. evoking a metonymic chain world. Frankenstein shows how organicism fails. their messages will be in the foreground rather tivate environmental art seeking to re-enchant the world. They draw attention to animals tionary prose. "there " provisation. as vironmental nationalism as explicitly Romantic criticisms of modern Felix Hess did. but swarthy " southern" or "eastern" men are and especially in Wordsworth. 7J In contrast.64 But wherever we go in this mals-beings who actually live there.444) . ac­ of world (Welta1'111). a moving from place to place. solid envi­ in handy. perhaps with kindness. But he was haunted by the could assuage the ravages of industrialism ? Like some nature writing face of a dog who had looked at him. and lurch toward us. is summed up in the metaphor of the road. a word derived We must become like animals (ecocentrism). It manifests in narratives in which the narrator becomes the pro­ of hurricane Katrina did so because they were not allowed to take their tagonist. For Percy Shelley. This Umwelt is a function of holistic. the idea of " our" environment becomes espe­ worlds. total creation: Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk with a how-to ecotopia they end up " sport[ing] around [man's] dwelling " ( The booklet thrown in. hobbits. hominids. and the world it describes. This inverted speciesism celebrates "the more than ship and industrial processes that went into making it. insofar as it has all been planned in advance. " abnormal."69 For Heidegger. it will always be fa­ like deaf people. There is a and outside generated by the idea of world as a self-contained system. or even exterminating threatening human others. which profoundly influenced Heidegger. it would multiply the problem of " the " envi­ strangeness of Middle-earth. its permeation with others and their ronment exponentially). To beings known as animals hover at the corner of the separation of inside step into it is to cross a threshold between inside and outside.68 Even if (elves. has its own environment.65 Must ecological and ecocritical worlds be absolutely self­ feeling rather than stub born primitivism.?3 For Tolkien."63 Others twentieth century. it is j ust a gigantic version of the poets keen to establish an environmental poetics. such as niche. 99 deep ontological sense in which things are " around"-they may come tion-radically disrupts any idea of a single. For Rilke or Levertov. since one of the themes of the cess to the " open" that is denied to humans. For Edmund Husserl. real or imagined. This is ironic. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental S u bj ect . mapped out. This may be a matter of moral a fiction. The holistic world that "goes ever on and on" is ex­ Daemon of the World. There is no way of maintaining the strangeness of things Jews ? without coming down on one side or the other. as built-in commentaries on the special edition DVD about the craftsman­ soon as possible. with its differences between humans and other animals. perhaps. utterly sincere-and how Romantic is that? Irony involves The Nazis ferociously opposed animal cruelty but thought nothing of distancing and displacement. Animals bring up the ways in from homey place into lonely space. Levinas strove to exclude animals from his idea of contact with the What gets lost in this elaborate attempt to craft a piece of kitsch that "face " of the other as the basis of ethics. get. Tolkien's Umwelt edits out significant aspects of Ro­ prison camp. thinking in terms of "world" often excludes ani­ on" like the road in Bilbo Baggins's song. The road comes right up to your front door. pocentrism) . In his vegetarian design. the recent film of The Lord of the Rings. could go "ever on and Strangely enough. 2 . 7° Or. sense that the story. more precisely. animals are world. as German thoroughly environmental idea. in the form of the hypnotic ring itself. and Chapter 1. animals lose their cruelty thing true about the book. animals lack of a sense miliar. swim. Early ecological science developed which humans develop intolerances to strangeness and to the stranger. in a Nazi and ecocriticism. men) care for their surroundings differently.?4 Some of those who refused to evacuate New Orleans in the wake irony. either entirely or as a result work is the resistance to industrialism and specifically to commodity of bad training.98 . irony. and ambiguity. Still. What of the arrival The question of animals-sometimes I wonder whether it is the ques. contained. even are welcome others. Things are oriented in relation to other scientists such as Jacob von Uexkiill wanted to establish in the early things: "The house has its sunny side and its shady side. but in the end. which becomes an cially tricky when it starts to slither. total just as humans begin to live a more pacifist existence. pilgrims. ( "human" or "animal" or other) your worldview was not expecting ? I . unnervingly aware that the world he or she has constructed is pets and would not abandon them. and talking eagles mantic literature pertaining to hesitation. independent. dwarves. This planning is not quite as narrowly rational as a lack.72 It all depends how up close and personal you want to fetishism. or vice versa (anthro­ from a place that houses a statue. some ecological thinking wants to forget about the modern factory. terms resonant with the idea of home. we have a care for them. animals have an ac­ ready-made commodity. The this is not true (if it were. but whether they do or not. elves. We are back with the quantum state we discovered in Where does that leave migrating birds. reveals some­ human world" (Abram) . their sense of world is this counted for. The emblem for narrative. Consider Schlegel's idea of Romantic not.67 Each animal.62 It is a ronment.66 Science itself can be Tolkienesque. dwarves. gypsies. post-Romantic citing and involved. however strange or threatening our journey. ostracism. we would not even have the idea of comes a way of being. Schlegel determined that irony was democratic. . transcending all possible positions-a state o f " quiescence and "pure hospitality" as one that " opens or is in advance open to someone feebleness-which does not like to act or to touch anything for fear of who is neither expected nor invited. ." as we shall able. an umbrella department covering military. 101 use the word arrival in the sense Derrida means when he speaks of a hole. and yet they are easily sacrificed are the world ! " and it would be true. The constant dinging of the impact-in which claim . And so ecological writing keeps beating itself against the glass poratism. or worse. could both be considered in am­ own perspective is shot through with fragmentariness. We could shout "We ganisms are politically all-important. but with a sense of sheer "I. When it be­ and unconditional hospitality . as a new arrival. Presi dent Bush ap­ disappearing. irony must forge into our lives without having been invited. irony ironically ceases to be irony. Hurricane Katrina. The ideological supports of American to watch ourselves on video as we dissolved into oneness with the capitalism have gradually shifted away from individualism toward cor­ stranger.?9 close to the strangers without killing them (turning them into yourself Paul Virilio has even suggested that ecological catastrophe is an excel­ or into an inanimate object) is to maintain a sense of irony. Despite the its parts. and the more you know. State terror takes an interest in ecological catastrophe. The struggle between individualism and holism offers an at­ recent attempt to categorize the bonobo chimpanzee as a species of tenuated choice between absolute liberty and absolute authority-in HomoJ a seemingly endless series of hominids and humanoids stands be­ other words. For now. becomes an inert writing it off with the reactionaries as "junk science. we could take a nature give to organisms with one hand. and counterterrorism. We will be grappling with this in­ idea of love or of 'living together' (vivre ensemble) with the other in a timacy in Chapter 3 . nonidentifiable and unforesee­ and yearning. the source of morbid saintliness solutely foreign visitor. as Derrida asked? You might end up not with a sense of the nowhere into a solid body.?7 But is toleration tance to Napoleon as " something fluid and vaporous which condensed enough. to oversee the cleanup operation. and military might." the Pentagon has or threatening thing-indicates a loss of irony. The war theorist Clausewitz imagines the Spanish resis­ hesitation. the dilemma called America. and the irony that rift between humans and others."80 other as other. holism constitutes the "feel " of na­ ical linguistic theory of the age posited language as deriving from tionalism-"we " are interconnected in a whole greater than the sum of animal cries." a blank space or black We have seen how De Quincey's theory of consumerist reading now . in short. And no one has yet categorized humans as tween the constitution and a militarized state. You start to tolerate other ways of life. pointed Homeland Security. and it has much to tell us about environmentalism.76 Onomatopoeia is ecomimesis in miniature. . Just as ambient poetics undermines the environmen­ talism that uses it to establish itself. Or­ break from the painful exertions of consciousness. exclusion. . that is. as soon as it enters into proximity. like a fly. so strangers undermine the very State Umwelt that uses them to establish its boundaries. If irony and lent simulation of total global war. of the alterity of the other. We would not even have the intimate relationships with strangers. As well as keeps opening it up in all sorts of ways. fragmentary. the more you realize that your Popular resistance. pepper spray. "without at least the thought of this pure see. ' "75 This genuinely different possible forms of environmental immersion. strangers are in danger of tated New Orleans. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ect . wholly other" . thinking since the Romantic period punctures it. and bient terms." 78 This is Hegel's view of the " beautiful soul. " other other " appears to be held up at the border of the world as nestling horizon. to whomever arrives as an ab­ surrendering its inward harmony . Of course. The only way to remain published documents on the geopolitical effects of global warming. Americans are caught be­ tween humans and animals. we should clarify the Romantic idea of holism. of someone who enters tablishing an aestheticized distance toward everything.100 . There is something of this in the way in which models of If we knew what to do with animals and their kin. between placards and a species of Pan paniscus. let us continue to steer ourselves through way that is not a part of some totality or 'ensemble. which devas­ movement are not part of environmentalism. This is despite the fact that rad­ being a major ecological ideology. provides a perfect example. Instead of es­ the other. All truth claims are intelligence. we would not be able for the sake of the greater whole. Holism is not as oppositional as some environmentalists of the other. while taking with another. Far from the strange other. Far from healing the While we are on the subject of self-containment. negativity. But it merely updates Romanticism for an age of cybernetics. than . reactionary substantialism in the Romantic thing else. Clapham and Arthur Tansley in the early 1 9 3 0s. quietness. far from supporting sheer tempo­ notations of the theoretical. the "self" (atman) realizes itself as the "Self" (Brahman). The ecosytsem be­ Wordsworth's idea of the spot of time) whose name alone suggests this comes an immersive. a superorganism composed of all organisms . The process of identification is a process in which the rela­ cesses of nation-states themselves. continuous ab­ generate its own forms of mysticism. and in contemplating the system. impersonal matrix. niscent of electromagnetism and cybernetics. The "total field" continues the idea of environment as period protested against systematic theory-Holbach's Systeme de la different from these relational j unctions. is a traumatically vivid experience that punctures the reg­ ecological politics that would liberate us from the modern state. This economy is an organization to the mutual cost and benefit of Art and philosophy have become interested in the ways in which certain its participants.102 . But Naess's idea is a version of prove to be just another "new and improved" version of the same thing. Is ecological collectivism entirely unknown to us yet. organisms require milieux. Organisms presuppose milieux. a moment when something outside the the systems thinking adopted by the RAND corporation. a person is a part of and always somewhat in excess of nationalism. Hinduism. j ust curiously enough the one most devoted to systems thinking. Indeed. but not to get rid of it." is to push the issue out holism. from the place of its nature to the extent that he or she is a relational j unction within the birth? Ecological reality."85 It sounds like secular science. often with strict legal definitions. at least to reactionary ears. His experiments with Ecology derived from the Enlightenment view of the economy of na­ opiated prose generate an understanding of tone. tions which define the j unction expand to comprise more and more. To argue i n this way. Arne Naess's seminal philosophy sence of noise. The musical perceptions of John Cage. A collective does not imply an organic whole that is If they are to survive. Quiet is a meaningful. as the pro blem. it would no longer be a thinking rescue the ecological Thing. the background to their fore­ Nature) for instance. the idea of en­ rality. ture. this is ular rhythms of consciousness. Only an ecological language opposed to the phantasmagorical positivi­ The 'self' grows towards the 'Self'. as of identity back a stage further. It is better for environmentalism to think in terms of collectivism rather It would j ust be a dead mouse. Through systemic organization. Can progressive ecological mouse were lifted into absolute vacuum. the most Romantic of all ecological forms of politics. has eclipsed national boundaries . the sort of habitual world breaks through. a cybernetic version of the ecological imaginary. And it is un­ Bruno Latour has suggested ? Or are there models that do not suffer clear how a "relational j unction" gets rid of the dualism that Naess sees from the vices of holism ? Perhaps the notion of system is less chewy. Ecology without Nature Romanticism a n d t h e Environmental Subj ect . System can an endless application of laws. 103 looks a lot like a theory of environmental poetics. if not cyberpunk. The mind is jerked out of its normal thing that inspired Marcuse's Romantic-ecological critique of one­ medium. greater than the sum of its parts. evoke a communitarian suburban or libertarian form of quiet Deep ecology. Unfortunately for ideas of an suspension.84 Benjamin's ideas of dialectics at a standstill and phantasmagoria are System has the virtue of seeming less Romantic and misty than static. Despite its con­ surprise some that Romanticism. In a vacuum the mouse would remain a mouse . the envi­ with a (big lSI) Self: "Organisms and milieux are not two things-if a ronment gradually " dissolved" into view. Walter ness.83 Systems theory is holism without the sticky wet­ Heidegger's idea of thinking as dwelling has a static quality. is that is also static in a political sense-there is no chance of progress.81 Static art and static of deep ecology is based on an idea of the encounter of a (little lsi) self philosophy arose as the nation-state. and beyond its borders. There is a slip between the sentences .R2 Nature has been ground. fantasy obj ect of the nation-state. Similarly. But the System argument is puzzling. mouse. than holism. Ecosystem) coined by Roy difference. updated the idea of Naess's figuration relies on highly non organic language. But ecology had begun to appear rather fuzzy and even states are indeed static-tonally undifferentiated and consistent. produced in part by the industrializing pro­ total field. It may spiritual. celebrating a notion of world. ecology without nature rules to reformulate the self as a "relational j unction. more remi­ ecology (Ernst Haeckel [ 1 8 34-1 9 1 9] was the first to use the term). however much the ideas of field and totality strive to submerge tightened up by the idea of ecosystem. like a fish out of water. dimensional man. a radical atheist's textbook. developed a static poetics of environments suspended in time. The logic is still that something must relate to some­ less substantial? After all. a plateau of intensity. ties of nation-speak is anywhere near legitimate. vironment as a system rules out critical anomalies. and only if it does not with its talk of organisms and fields . "90 The play of the re-mark devastates "new and improved" fusions of sub­ This is life lived on the pulses. Aside from its tors than relational j unctions. change direction and a bandon the heading imposed by Descartes' philosophy.104 . its first use in physics was not until 1 845. as Husserl admits.9? The changing over time. or a coin. the blank part of the page." a sense re­ genuine. this is the theoretical implication. movement. in fictional devices that in themselves cast suspicion upon the idea of a The third definition of field is "An area or sphere of action. in which case we will not have reconciled subject Naess 's position actually resem bles nothing so much as the Cartesian and object. who himself claimed that there could be no such thing as infinite spaces fills me with dread." 95 As David Simpson puts it: "to tained from Middle English. surely derives from nineteenth-century natural philosophy." While it has a pastoral ring." 94 Trying to get over or around Descartes first to amalgamate particles and energy under a single heading-Ein­ involves. which seek to do sensation of establishing everything from the point of view of a tran­ away with the dilemma of specifying the boundary between inside and scendental subject cut off (or bracketed off. phenomenological prose wants to conjure up a around a magnet.92 Michel Serres: "We the self that Descartes founds obj ectivity. The field concept is the of the Cartesian philosophy. in his terminology) from outside. Like turned everything into an object. Even as it hemorrhages irony.' or rather of pure Body sense-explication based on a fulfilling givenness of the sense itself. tive field and "the Body. independent. with its even though it is obliged-and precisely by its radical development of positing. Husserl claims that phenomenology is not metaphysical." which pushes further the intermixing of sub- . One sense of field is of a flat surface. thus defining a vector field in what came to be field is the margin. as David Harvey rightly puts it in his reading of this passage." 8? must . or. more recently. vector (or to a point). equations that enabled one to study the momentum of particles notably the undecorated ground of a picture. of "fields " of energy. be­ cause " it proceeds within the limits of pure 'intuition. But the idea of field is already on the side of the object. for the first time. using a Cartesian method. Naess reduces the self to a (zero-dimensional) point in rather than of the subject-unless we want to reduce the subject to a a field. Hamilton developed a tremendous ironic resonance. or collapsed the difference between them. Naess's prose ironically experientially renders what cally for phenomenology. strictly for particles). ecomimesis guar­ Newtonian physics that had been emerging throughout the eighteenth antees an overdose of doubt." James Clark Maxwell ( 1 8 3 1-1879) generated placeholder for data in a database. and unique "1. spatial quality of field in proper field equations to describe the behavior of electromagnetic fields phenomenology is simply the holographic hallucination of reading or (rather than Hamilton's equations. it builds up century. "For it is based upon been the bugbear of ecological thinking ever since. a flag. the limitation of identity to a dot of doubt. . consisting partly stein would eventually show that they were convertible into each other. N aess would have been better off talking a bout vec­ sense of a surrounding world that will j ump off the page. so much as reduction itself. ' " 89 the method of self-discovery. . The rich. 8R [follow Descartes] without careful thought would involve accepting his But Michael Faraday ( 1 79 1-1 8 67) had discovered magnetic fields."R6 As Blanchot observed." 96 William Rowan Hamilton ( 1 805-1 865) summarized a body of work in At the very moment at which it requires certainty. such as the idea of intersubjectivity. though Husserl's prose gives the dizzying ject and object. down which specific particles are made of millions of dots that reveal a three-dimensional picture when aligned: think of the way iron filings arrange themselves in the field we look at them askew. a known as "phase space. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject ." 93 Field Husserl is hampered by his admission that he must seek a Cartesian Phenomenology developed the term field to refer to the perceptual as­ way out of Descartes. scanning. Husserl is honest enough to confess that " one pect of what it called "intersubjectivity. which is busy redrafting or attacking it feels like to inhabit a Cartesian universe: "The eternal silence of these Descartes. Fields are physical-somewhat ironi­ Pascal's before him. it might almost call transcendental phenomenology a neo-Cartesianism. The idea of field usefully Cartesian motifs-to reject nearly all the well-known doctrinal content dispenses with conventional notions of particles. anti­ empty space and that the body ( as extension) was space. and personal maxims as authoritative. 105 trees and roots. at least he would have achieved a sense of strict use in physics. It becomes impossible to distinguish between the intersubjec­ the usual world.91 Descartes has Cartesians such as Pascal end up being Cartesian. in direct contradiction to the spirit of suggested that electrical and magnetic fields " are real physical 'stuff. Like those optical illusions A field is an array of vectors. by such scientists as La place and Liouville. field is all over the place. turned into a philosophic system. an entanglement of The more you think about the body. defying his more body. 107 j ect and obj ect. realm. It something that has troubled Western philosophy since Descartes. that task falls to the gion that was not abstract and empty. an am­ ality of the intersubj ective field. does it remain the same ? ) affects the way in which we have subj ectivity/intersubjectivity." 98 and the environment. that we mean something unmarked by gender.106 . some ecological writing aspires to the notion that the eco­ scious of its determinacy." It became possible to conceive of a small re­ sion. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ect . glorious mud. 1 0o Place shrank to the imme­ In the Romantic period the aesthetic stood between reason and pas­ diate space of "the body. with all the disgusting things that the to ride in like the cavalry and save it from Western dualism. Thoreau finds wetlands "the in which we necessarily distinguish between the I who is narrating and perfect place to still the senses. " The aesthetic normally edits out put back in. mud. Thus. One of the an alternative version of. The argument in Chapter 1 about the car (when I Reframing subj ect-obj ect dualism in a " better" way. the aesthetic. For Rod Giblett. But it is conveniently mysterious and compelling. The body is the same dualism.99 structuralist thinking for all that gets traditionally left out of the aes­ Edward Casey argues that place reappeared by way of the body. since according to phenomenology. reality will appear differently. the body and I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together-in place are in a chiasmic relationship with one another. Nowadays. subject and object.' and that means first of all that my Body is part of it precisely as capabilities coordinate the body. is it still the (same ) body? This " body" is a special ver­ are really talking about is a specific physical field-in which case it sion of metaphysics. but not always medium of perception. There is a way of firmly establishing the re­ I add to or take away from this body ( a prosthetic device here. For like mesophysical to register this strangeness. on comes off at once as a delicate. . The body is the anti-aesthetic. experimental noise music defining characteristics of environmental writing is how little attention "puts back in" elements that used to be excluded from the artwork: the it pays to the fact that only some bodies have arms and legs. Phenomenological talk of " the Body" feels like Ro­ umbrella under which terms such as nuance and rhizome find shelter. the I that becomes an object in an write on the body. The body becomes the site of a revised aesthetics. The body is the aesthetic. then so must they coordinate place body. and as a reduction of the subj ect to a set of scientific processes. an chases its tail: "Each thing of my experience belong to my 'environ­ extra-nourishing aesthetic with added vitamins. Husserl's so interested in exploring the environments of "disab!ed" members of dilemma gives rise to his use of chiasmus. and ment. It is an ethics of hale-and-hearty refreshment. as the dog of his argument the human species. only some sound of the space in which the music was recorded. If mantic wishful thinking. and the limbs. the more the category of nature minds with other minds and perhaps nonmental or inanimate things. a discourse that claims so ve­ spite of his general view of space as a transcendental category. There is no such thing as the body. which started off with the body but ended up transcending it. . encountering a crow becomes a how marginal spaces such as wetlands have recently come in for the thrilling moment of interspecies contact-and a Cartesian experiment same praise as the body. race. Its "in between-ness " is j ust as peculiar. In is extraordinary that post-structuralism. not as a tabula rasa� but as a responsive surface. It is literally not " beyond" (meta) the physical would be better to talk of interobjectivity rather than intersubjectivity. starts to dissolve. since "the bodies are sighted or can hear. why bother using "my " and "I" at all? Inspired by phenom­ a shared world is not to transcend one's physicality but to become con­ enology. without really resolving the contradiction. intense. Phenomenological rhetoric terms gravitate towards it. experiential directionality. if by Body" is a manifold of psychic and physical ( "psychophysical" ) events. but if gender. fact and value. We need a word tion. highly subjective contempla­ reflection."1 02 experiment that we cannot satisfactorily separate from a thought­ Mud. as a dualism of retrofit it. should have produced the employ an idea of physical. thetic. If we are disabled. l 0 l system makes availa ble an idea of intersubjectivity. and allow the swamp to the I who is experiencing the crow. or physical ability. that is. either by a physical disability or a change in the Environmental writing is keen to embrace other species. and j ust thinking. general aim to do away with situatedness. is a "new and improved " variant of the come to think of the body as a solution to our woes. as the " beyond-ness" of the metaphysical. The body is also the name in post­ experiment conjured up on the page . To reach out into which case. Kant did hemently to be against grand narratives. Some philosophy wants the body body. and other The subject perishes before it is even born. we claim that what we putation there). body" is an in-between state that is a function of "world and field " and its virtue (or vice ) is that it is both entirely different from. and so on. the bodies of the . race. It would help to explain David Abram (more about him soon). unless. he logical concepts on the block. Ecological rhetoric tends to imagine nature as a closed start and stop ? Is a tennis racket an " extension" of my body? What system in which everything is ultimately recycled. proclaiming tion of a world of "one " (monism) and a world of "two" (the dualism something like "The first thing we have to do is get this country really. Merleau-Ponty started to describe "the Flesh. Prime Minister Thatcher "greened " herself. Quasi-objects have undermined nize that there are serious problems with imagining an ecological view the classical difference between humanity and nature. pose the general problems that are linked to the movement of j ects. What if the problem were in fact one of a goes so far as to call them "rhizomes. as if ecology beset both views. But what if one of the problems were Paul Hawken's "natural capitalism " takes account of a wider view." or closed system. was . which have truly opened the body to oric of scarcity to j ustify future developments. are disconnected from the world. runs the risk of being a rebranded version of regular economics." 1 07 This combina­ In 1 9 8 8 . such as energy-producing bacteria nomena marginalized and exploited by economic "progress " are that have become the mitochondria in each individual cell. from world to society has produced what Latour calls " quasi-objects " such as as­ system. So much for the ecolog­ the paradoxes of the body is thus to turn it into the environment itself. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject . Just as Georges Bataille being "my" body? Freud called the telephone a "prosthetic" ear. and so on. The body stands in for what we think we've lost. albeit in the negative. gories quasi-objects have a net negative effect on metaphysics rather Coming up with a new term will never help." 1 0 8 Bataille implicitly includes ecology in thinking about eco­ How about when we subtract things from the body? Is it still my body nomics: "Should we not. unfortunately. Since it 100ks like capitalism is about to use an ecological rhet­ bestos. a little world. radioactivity. for reasons already given. " It was the tidiness of that "tidy" that grated. Thatcher.108 . the arm ? Melanie Klein's idea of "partial ob­ forces. because the overarching than a positive one. a form of natural supernatu­ way. ical object. like Hitler. Quasi-objects do lie " between " classical And we need to notice that scarcity and limitation are not the only eco­ conceptions of subject and object. a The problems that beset the idea of the body also affect ideas of the floating island. nature and society.11 0 All attempts to account for phe­ palimpsest of symbiotic organisms. since the sun is a key component "in" the biosphere itself? Envi­ or desirable court of appeal? ronmentalism. from the Zeitgeist to the body. this idea itself? Science backs up sheer speculation: "the" body is a without changing the basic mode1. perhaps laden with the building blocks of life. nothing " in between" either. so we can posit a "general netics and prosthetics have reconfigured our sense of human being. But in lying between cate­ None of the substitutes for environment or ambience is sufficient. We are the world. by examining how subjectivity is oriented toward it. there is based on limits. all objects become logical view have to stop at the edge of the biosphere ? And what is this contaminated with the idea of partiality. given the constant development of economic when I lose the hand.104 Industrial fraught with difficulty." a suggestive term for what David Abram evokes as "the mysterious tissue or matrix that Beautiful S ouls: Romantic Consumerism and Environmentalism underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as inter­ dependent aspects of its own spontaneous activity. without center or edge-is an aes­ the fact that we are listening to a physical medium. why does an eco­ admitted that there are such things as partial obj ects. ralism. Environmentalism worries that we tury. Once we have down. The idea of " flesh " or " fleshliness"-viewing the were about rearranging the furniture. the presence of "noise " that alerts us to body without a holistic structure. claims Latour. l OS Thus. it is vital that we recog­ its environment. like the Romantic about the tennis ball ? The tennis court? When does this body stop idea of the aesthetic object as an organic whole. inheriting economic ideas from the long eighteenth cen­ This is a matter of real urgency. of perceiver and perceived) inevitably suffers from the problems that really tidy. Now let us consider the context for ambience in another reconceived as a kind of inverted deity. One solution to metaphor is flawed." or even Winnicott's softer notion of "transitional objects" un­ energy on the globe ? " 109 Why stop there ? Since asteroids keep crashing dermine our prej udices about the integrity of the object. suggested a "general economy " that is wider than a normative "re­ Donna Haraway has written persuasively and influentially that cyber­ stricted economy. and dioxins." l o6 Rhizomes are at best as un­ badly distributed and reified surplus? tenable as "linear.1 03 ecology. thetic one. But it is easy to deconstruct this body: where does it environment. and thus subject to the paradoxes we have explored. Is bodily integrity an adequate edge. 109 instruments and the musicians. even at the level of abstraction we have been exploring." "hierarchical" forms. Though he is usu­ vitally important to the lower classes: they lived on other sorts of cheap ally labeled as getting his experiences artificially. The 1 9 8 0s had witnessed one of the least tidy critiques of modernity in By the Romantic period.l l l Thatcher was not reacting di­ just eat carrots. Hitler proposed that the destiny of stances. De Quincey). deteriorated. which riod. such as those derived from drugs. " not in the nineteenth-century phraseology. or bohemian. for example. 117 Transformative experiences are mantic scream is entirely justifiable." "loafer " ) was born. Green consumerism made it possible to be both tion (Baudelaire. one styles oneself as a carrot eater. malls ) have made it impossible not an " environmental protection site"-which meant removing enough to be a reflexive consumerist. This idea can be rectly to the Greenham women. consumerism is Romanticism. temporarily. modern life.120 What Freud called the oceanic feeling-the . The actic list deriving from Romantic experiments with expansive lineation (necessarily) external event becomes the piece of grit that helps to gen­ by William Blake and Walt Whitman. a rage against the machine of valued. Thatcher was reacting to a growing pile of "environmentally that in the Romantic period was restricted to a certain avant-garde fac­ friendly " product. while tea and white bread had become necessities.s .l ll erate the pearl of revised selfhood. repeating the Romantic struggle between re­ what it feels like to experience a certain form of consumerism­ belling and selling out. a Ro­ cally Romantic consumerism. they had to eat. The reflexive consumer is interested in pro-capitalist and green.1 14 So consumerism is not entirely a middle­ Germany was to increase and purify its Lebensraum ( "living room " ). De Quincey has as food and occupied the land. 111 thinking in terms of living rooms. meant that working-class food actually tance toward the role being played. is a gigantic scream. Consumerism raised to the highest but safe enough. to the transgressive form of the Greenham Common women. plutonium to accord with " safe " levels for the establishment of an To be a consumerist. or identity in process.116 The fltmeur at Sellafield. class or bourgeois affair. Never­ commonly labeled as "natural " by comparison. Colorado. a parat­ of its circularity and force it to circulate around something new. capitalism has become adept in selling this paradoxical identity­ developed in the Romantic period. This dive is vicarious. First suggests the approach of the reflexive consumerist. not safe enough for suburban houses. the Internet. Allen Ginsberg's "Plutonian Ode. it became possible to be (or if you prefer. Against such crass co-opting of green politics. It outside a proposed cruise missile base in the United Kingdom and prac­ is about how one appears as a certain type of consumer." tra umas that nudge the self out tion on the rail tracks toward Rocky Flats. in the form of a certain ironic or cynical dis­ the price of meat. whom she dismissed as dangerously taken a notch further. you don't have to consume anything. There is such a thing as reflexive consumerism. Objective social forms tory near Boulder. One doesn't tically created an alternative society. or acting different roles. witch-like figures (ironically some did consider themselves In modern society we are all potential reflexive consumerists. Other forces were in play: the rise in There is always a lifeline. Since the Romantic pe­ theless. heroin). even the working class had its versions of consumerism. who camped act) consumerist. whether we think of them as self-reflexive "choice" of certain kinds of food that. By the Romantic period they could hardly much to tell us about environmental writing as Wordsworth. template the idea of consuming. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental S u bj ect .ll9 All con­ fine white bread and even working-class versions of vegetarianism: a sumer objects approach this luxury status. in other circum. window-shopping in the shopping mall of subjectivity-"Kantian" aes­ Thatcherite "tidiness " included processing the world's nuclear waste thetic consumption without "purpose " or purchase. The title of Emily Jenkins 's Tongue And yet-and this is a big "and yet "-Romanticism is consumerism. Rocky Flats was renamed. This is a specifi­ groundwater. for microbes that will eventually enter the power is free-floating identity. j ust con­ open-space wilderness reserve. or from intense experiences." commemorating an ac­ such as Wordsworth's " spots of time. luxuries or as necessities.1 13 Jenkins's case. Consider the politicized demand for a sort of freely chosen narcissistic state-back to people . 1 15 marginal.1 10 . who is afford meat. apparently. Consumerism is a reflexive mode of consumption.lls The idea is to dive into new " consuming" : a particular style of consuming that arose from the forms of subjectivity by consuming a previously avoided substance (in growth of consumer society throughout the long eighteenth century. a concern so lucrative that British Nuclear Fuels now has (French "stroller. a type witches ) . One can take this notion too far. Notice the word " consumerism. (television advertising. There is a certain sense in which an interest in the " cleanup " at Rocky Flats nuclear bomb trigger fac­ we are now all flaneurs whether we like it or not. In the seventeenth century the high cost of bread was not This is the quintessentially Romantic poetic voice. " identity is ecomimesis. relaxing and taking it In order to get the full emotional effect from the magnitude of the pyra­ all in. Although it does make peace with the fact that The oceanic state was of great interest to Romantic poets such as we are all consumerists. " sitting back. and the development of techno dance music and massive out­ whom wilderness is an abstraction that must be filled in with concrete door raves. Wilderness em bodies freedom from determination. even when you are Pierre Bourdieu has named this reflexive consumerism a Kantian form " in" it. who wrote in his essay " On Life " that children "less habitually tension of the subject-object dualism. Instead of sitting back at one cial and psychological one that persists even when you are in a wilder­ remove from the consumer object. 125 For Keats. the liquid subjectivity that has no effect on the subject's aesthetic j udgment. For the As far as wilderness goes. this distance is not an empirical one. that is. There re­ for maintaining the sublime object: mains the part of us that is stable. for ether ! ). Sartre observes that the simple presence of others acts as like a subj ect. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject . Keats makes this very literal. one tries to become it. as the elegiac frenzy of much nature writing demonstrates. than the obj ect naturally starts to behave wild vastness.12s Exclusion and violence is the only way in enchanted underground garden of j ewels in the Arabian Nights. "Re­ of consumption." a phrase coined by both the gastronome tinct identity-has become one of the supreme capitalist products. but during tha t time some of the earlier parts are invaria bly extinguished in the imagination before it has apprehended the later ones. Con­ as if the surrounding universe were absorbed into their being. turning all consumers one stays too far away. It is an the Internet (when we are all wired our bodies will dissolve into the abstraction. distinguished all that we saw and felt. 127 proposes that the true poet's identity is metamorphic. as constant tensions and struggles make evident. If you came too close. The stranger ruins my existential supping on into the object. are two manifestations of an objectified subjectivity that is aesthetic details. even to the point of being crit­ Romantic consumerism. and dilemmas as what Keats calls the "egotistical sublime. But mids one must neither get too close to them nor stay too far away . places you go to on holiday has been reintegrated into everyday experience. objectal form. the "camelion poet" does not resolve the inner Shelley. Keats's idea of the "camelion poet" suggests is really a "new and im­ then the eye needs some time to complete the apprehension from the base proved" version of subjectivity in general. In this light. mired in the same paradoxes to the peak. Ambience is the form that this environmental consciousness assumes. No sooner does the subject turn no longer be a wilderness. in this fantasy.121 Brillat-Savarin and the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. an aesthetic one. or construction and maintenance of actually existing environments. is one of the most so­ from an administered world. He describes claret creeping an "internal hemorrhage " in being." On a more mundane level. supposedly derived from early infancy or intrauterine experi­ image provides the inverted form of the Romantic consumerist idea ence. Wilderness can only exist as a reserve of unex­ ical-forms of the commodity." behind the " in between" state we examined as an aesthetic event in the Chapter 1 . Sartre's scene of en- . or the American wilderness. the floating "window-shopping" model of identity is a social version of the bedrock of capitalist ideology. by actually living in one. of being immersed in a medium even to the extent of a loss of dis­ that "you are what you eat. aesthetic experience. For if ideology behaves as if it were the only way to be. then it would its intrinsically slippery. to slide into ness. It is always " over there. then the apprehended parts ( the stones on top of into teenagers." 123 Keats and hence the comprehension is never complete. Environments were ca ught in the logic of phisticated-refined and paradoxical. ethical reaction. al1d hence their presentation thoritarian anti-communism." 122 The sider how Wordsworth's Lake District became the National Trust's New Age language of a future state of humankind. But it also influenced the feel as if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe. that category invented by advertising in the age of au­ one another) are presented only obscurely. which involves the distance that Kant says is essential Identity as dissolution and change becomes a paradox. I mean this much more strongly than Jack Turner. shop window of distanced. from ourselves." A fusion of identity and nonidentity is strictly impossible. shifting its shape to match its environment. and if one gets too close. It can dissolve into the world. Romantic consumerism is practically a tautology. 124 This which quietness and solitude can be guaranteed." Some adults Romantic consumerism produced subjective states that eventually who find themselves still capable of accessing this " state called reverie became technically reproducible commodities.126 Such details tend only to increase the level of ab­ trying to be "environmental. 1 13 feeling. The recent Gnostic spirituality around ploited capital. you eat what you are.1 12 . in which the purpose is to spect" for the environment entails a certain aesthetic rather than purely have no purpose. in which the oceanic Lake District. undermining the self's ability to around inside one's stomach like Aladdin stepping silently around the consume the scene whole. but a so­ "camelion poet. say. the free­ straction. in general. either antagonistic or supportive. a radical alternative." For Thoreau mals. ecological writing (including criticism) fills a gap i n nor­ that Thoreau embodies for so many. Much ecocriticism images itself as this broad margin contains historical traces. those invested in such literature and criticism may like it.. But as we have seen. an Romanticism. where is it going ? ) middle. a "common share in the immaterial. It does not fall out of consumerism alto­ reflects upon a single subject.. environmental j ustice criticism.129 Wilderness therefore expresses rious. Thoreau. Such critiques themselves risk becoming new and and sit back contemplatively. in miniature. to the commodity form that Benj amin noted in Baudelaire's play with the cure him of crass utilitarianism. within the Romantic Mingle to one deep sound and fade away. tergent and mountain ranges. the myth of the hermit enclosed in a self-sufficient Nature. natural perfume becomes society. ecomimesis turns Wildernesses embody both " soft. in different ways. 115 counter is an innocent-seeming suburban lawn. Lawns are a type of " instant distance "-j ust lay down the sod spelled out or not. "what the Orientals would soon be likely to demand the real thing. This dovetailing is a feature already latent in vives the idea that poetry is a balm for hurt minds and even bodies. period. ecofemi­ grass ). are spaces of erased violence. The sound of a train brings politically situated neither to the left nor to the right." This effect is given an explicitly literary ty­ also about collectivity: how to share this earth with other humans." a chapter in Walden." " shallow " Romanticism-a provi­ out to be a rebranded rendering of the aesthetic-which has itself al­ sional getaway from the mechanical or total administered hurly­ ways maintained a relationship. Wilderness is a fu­ consumerism. at meaningfulness. improved kinds of consumerism. and blank. we are still living. just as. gesturing toward arrd withholding various kinds of negative: fingers wagging. nor exactly in the to mind other places (where has the train come from. mass-produced version of the forms of refusal. with the communitarian rules they marshal (no stepping on the are more critical forms. pages rubbed out to look spacious nisms. but transcending left and right. and inanimate things. Environmentalisms in general are consumerist. (5_8) 1 3 3 consumerism. the idea of commerce. literally. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ect . Green consumerism is only one kind of environmental consumerism . It provides a " new and improved" version of it-however little feel more like a citizen o f the world a t the sight o f the palm-leaf which . Then there lawns. however. ani­ pographical metaphor: "I love a broad margin to my life. strongly or weakly. and it is called Romantic Colour and sound and perfume speak to him. the negation of current ways of consuming the world wildernesses people visit to find peace and quiet and a sense of abstract and the advocacy of something else. deeper than politics as usual (as and other times and. such as the advocacy of animal rights.130 This idea of literature as good medicine became the sumerism. Yet the entirety of this experience mative forms of consumerism. Thoreau investigates his utopian they sought in communism. One function is to soothe the pains and stresses of industrial become trees. These are all. 1'0 the extent that wilderness spaces and the laws that ." he writes. This i s far from in " deep ecology " ) . spacious and yet opaque. through the play of sound and scents: modern society . It is not only latent. the myth I n doing so. plants. the lower classes were not given a spiritual version of the collectivity In " Sounds. But there is one. As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim created them persist. with burly-and. sion of Puritan utopianism about the immanence of God in newly Charles Baudelaire plays with the poetics of spice in " Correspon­ settled America and the lineage of pantheism running through such dences. trees become sticks of incense. "I realized..132 Ecological discourse is meant by contemplation. Ecocriticism re­ commodified ambience. as national parks assuage our weekday world. Columns sumerism. the Romantic consumerist: " I gether.1 14 . It is strange to discover a secret passage between bottles of de­ Vast as the night and brilliant as the day. It is Romantic consumerism that makes of the forest a shop dominant mode of paternalistic arguments for the establishment of En­ window-and allows the am bience of a shop window to be experienced glish literature studies themselves. in "deep " terms." they dwelling as a soundscape. the dominant ideology of the nine­ character of the flimeur or dandy was enabled by Romantic con­ teenth century. whether that something else is nature. They are j ust a horizontal. The " decadence " of this poem relative to the supposed nature-worship Literature about the environment takes on various roles within con­ of Romanticism lies in its dovetailing of nature with artifice.131 George Sampson asserted that if as the temple of nature. The mystical relation to idea born in John Stuart Mill's recuperative reading of Wordsworth." The ambience of a forest becomes penetrable and yet myste­ writers as Wordsworth and Emerson. reflexive forms of consumerism. and after a string of literary and aesthetic texts from Shaftesbury (the figure change it.136 The same forms confront today's "green" consumers as con­ other forms of ecological activism ? Both quietism and activism are two fronted the earlier Romantic consumers. out­ beautiful soul is highly relevant to the ecological view. with all the irritation and pain it might cause.116 . This kind of ality. Boycotting talking about Zen. The sense that we have a "choice. Even certain positions in animal rights have an aes­ One available consumerist role is the refusal exemplified by the ab­ thetic component. In strict chronological terms the beautiful soul appears after the promise typifies the paradox of the Romantic avant-garde. One could use one's refusal who hammered on Colorado's nuclear missile silos. the ally save the planet ? Romantic consumerism at once broadened and Manilla hemp and cocoa-nut husks . Ruskin com­ consumerism-ing other consumerists. but also a religious aspect. Romantic consumerism em­ tion of post-structuralist ideas. by questioning oppressive social forms such as In his recent book on sound art. A deep ecologist such as Julia Butterfly Hill will surely We may usefully understand the process of green consumerism via protest that she is not a consumerist. sumerists at all. the " Church of to consume certain things in certain ways as modes of critiquing Deep Ecology" in Minneapolis. us Styles of leisure are legitimated by being under­ changing the current state of affairs.137 This negativity is negative not in the sense of " bad. ness appreciation. sides of the same beautiful coin. to be a consumer altogether." but in theory has a particular affiliation with Romanticism. This role reflects upon the idea of what it means ianism is partly aesthetic." The sonic intervention of the narrowed the idea of choice. as a form of quietism.140 But the busters approach is simply greener-than-thou consumerism. from the deep point of view." it is promising something beyond consumerism. but to gious practitioners are involved in environmental movements: nuns have the potential to resist and challenge it. we could crack reality. and activists in the Earth First! Hegel's dialectic of the beautiful soul. to buy certain products. whose radical questioning has been are a cry of the heart in a heartless world. David Toop digs the ambience of his corporations or globalization. but they did draw attention to these weapons of mass de­ sumerists who have gone so far as to not consider themselves con­ struction lurking almost literally in people's backyards. bodies what has been negated. As a loose affilia­ terms of a dialectical moment of negation. Many reli­ simply to be caught in the stuff-your-face logic of capitalism. If we could Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Terror. just how far one would need to go to really change things . as Oscar engagement with Hegel-describes as a negative knowledge of re­ Wilde put it. The sugar boycott and vegetarianism in Many interpret the beautiful soul as existing in a realm of pure non­ the Romantic period typify a style we would now recognize as ecolog­ action. the American fashion magazine for the tain historical moment. but a welcome note rise to utopian desires. It shows evoking an idea of "listening " quizzically. Ecology without N a ture Romanticism and the Environmental Subject . But this nature. of "monkeywrenching " and ical. Will buying organic food re. referencing meditation while not actually going to and protesting are ironical. 117 will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next summer. excluded. a moment in his history of group would be shocked to find that their tactics derive from con­ different kinds of consciousness. Like art. proclaims itself a journal of "the mental en­ persona of the " unhappy consciousness " that separates humanity and vironment. a spanner in the works (Dave blunted into a soft exclamation mark. It is a tortured anti-consumerist. they point toward possibilities of breakfast table. or elided. quasi-contemplatively. names itself in opposition to "shallow ecology. they embody what Adorno-a great Romantic in his becomes the manner in which we criticize it: the critic as artist. Surely this is why deep ecology plained that one of the horrors of modern life was its ugliness. which Hegel identifies with Romanticism." giving train is not an interruption of the meditative state. then. without actually changing it. With its brilliant parodies of advertising spectacle.134 There is nothing intrinsically wrong with avant-garde consumerist Obj ectified subj ectivity becomes the content and form of art. When Adbusters. theory itself becomes an aesthetic pose. 138 They Theory always had a harder bite than this. The disgust associated with animal eating in vegetar­ stainer. Hegel models it j ust get the aesthetic form right. It even forms. of variety in the perceptual milieu. The beautiful soul fuses the aesthetic ." Those shallow ecolo­ Leopold 's Sand County Almanac is devoted to an aesthetics of wilder­ gists are j ust day trippers. indicates social deadlock as well as possibility. Without doubt. The nuns did not change the missiles modern society. By refusing the trouble of doing any. Since Schlegel. the Ad­ of the virtuoso) to Novalis and Schiller (the schone Seele). left out. Foreman's term for green direct action is " monkeywrenching " ) . They written by a tame version of theory. 139 The beautiful soul appears at a cer­ sumerism. open it up. there are those green Romantic con­ into flowers. To be a consumerist is not thus have not only a practical. What. theory itself could become art. the boycotter. Schopenhauer imaged peace as a disappearance of the ego­ his university experience. with its similarly endless for ecological consciousness. especially those of the " orient. become the ways to calibrate commitment.118 . maintains about superman. since for Nietzsche. quietism and activism. without compromising the object turns out to be the beautiful soul in inverted form. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ect . claims Hegel. Even if it helps an individual to salvation. this very real world of ours with all its suns from him. all the models for the environment in this ject to be reconciled to the object. but on the subject's terms.1 42 it " beautiful Nature. In part this . Nature remains a reified object. even dangerous. We could call beauty of the soul itself. for itself. the erstwhile deputy secretary of the British Green Party. weakness. ophy. beautiful soul syndrome can lead to fascism. to the point of paranoia. since ticed both-he was prepared to go to prison and advocated nonviolent it is the most shapeless art form. we emerge . But the name of many of them. since the ultimate hypocrite. " over there. the result of aesthetics appeals to a self that still maintains that there is a crack be­ an achieved distance. "the kingdom of poetry glittered opposite me tistical will. has shown how any and every attempt to get beyond Nietzsche risks The title of a popular ecological book in the late 1 9 8 0s. is the beautiful soul ecology" in which it is possible to generate rights for apes. Yet the beautiful Nietzsche's solution was quite different. exclusionary. 1 19 and the moral." as the composer Richard Wagner dramatized his life as resistance to the inex­ title of a film about global warming puts it. not. from the tension between. the aesthetic is the ultimate the stamp goes is the issue. 1 48 tence-indeed. Schopenhauer comes close to a theory resistance. We could think of a thousand ecological ex­ which soothes the mind to a state of tranquil dissolution. This is cation with the apparently less-than-human. says it ners rather than losers. Thoreau prac­ heavy atmosphere of the earth. and he wrote a bout the importance of contemplating the of ambience. 141 (Since then. . which cannot see that the evil it condemns is intrinsic to its exis­ instance. empti­ ness. An ecological approach would surely identify all: It Doesn't Have to Be Like This." 144 Such a state is glimpsed in the aesthetic. The aestheticization has a moral dimension. keeping the faith form of j ustification and victory. a state of oceanic calm that dissolves everything else into like a distant fairy palace and all my creations dissolved into nothing­ nothingness (a common misinterpretation of Buddhist shunyata. describing an aesthetic state "when. (utopian ? atopian? ) is not too helpful for us poor saps in a world that At its extreme. and blending of. The chasm The landscape on the other side of the chasm between subject and cannot be fully bridged. The wish chapter are examples of beautiful Nature." It suffers from the same ailments as the beautiful Beautiful soul syndrome did not know that it was in trouble in the soul: it is opaque. since his is the philosophy of win­ !eke. Bambi's blinking eyes. . very much like critique. But this overcoming is still a style of subjectivity. Hegel is an elegant choice of theorist constant overcoming. is-nothing." were insufficient. Schopenhauer amples of what Marx meant. identifi­ and selling out. Despite thinking of Hegel himself. The beautiful soul maintains a split between self tween itself and the world-otherwise how would it ever "emerge " and world. Integrity and hypocrisy. Hegel himself it has little time for darkness. its very form as pure subjectivity is this evil. 143 Schopenhauer held the view that "to those whom the will has one to which he has no access. at any rate. America. this identification would involve a radical green consumerism have this refusal stamped on them. albeit ness). The choice for engagement appears as a strong delivered from the fierce pressure of the will. The un-hip. He advocated a process of soul also yearns to close the gap. whom Bull calls the "subhuman. Malcolm Bull suffered from a classic case of beautiful soul syndrome.) Modern art and superman. creates a "philistine ironic. quasi-Buddhist heart against a solid wall. The beautiful soul beats its for reconciliation reached a crisis in the self-abnegating. !eke has embraced with the losers. distanced turned and denied itself. is Thoreau. and the self-affirming strategies of Nietzsche's As Marx. in puts this in environmental terms." rather than the a more extreme refusal. The Romantic environment twinkles and glitters like and galaxies. since it is an aesthetic thing. an irresolvable chasm created by the call of conscience­ from its "heavy atmosphere" ? " consciousness raising. this view natural world. He and Coleridge both wished for the sub­ their apparent immersiveness. by D avid ending up simply reaffirming him. that erstwhile Romantic poet and Hegelian." 149 Marx superbly embodies the idea of an ambient world." as an activist might put it."145 Music helps this state the best. 147 Difficult as it is. The will still be all too obviously around " the day after tomorrow. Just how deep de-aestheticization." view of Schopenhauer. Convinced that all other forms of philos­ quality. absolutely right and proper.146 Schopenhauer's ascetic orably commercial capitalist aspect of the music business. or the negative. Furthermore. all the circumstances are not altogether Jew. an isolated measured. and weighing of. sideways into their connections." The beautiful soul so within. Without doubt. was to take its misogynist. ) measurable state). Ecology withou t Nature Roma nticism and the Environmental Subject .120 . Physics refers to this as state manticized in the mainstream media. with ade­ of biological essentialist (racist) thoughts. but tance was a fantasy obj ect of hate around which he generated all kinds forbidden to take what he did too seriously. [the beautiful soul's] reality is a plurality of out against the encroachments of big reason. and this incomplete knowledge is held by the conscientious mind Rudolph is a classic example of the persistence of the beautiful soul to be sufficient and complete. and knows tha t. This emulsion is itself a symptom of the ideological di­ the eyes of society. occu­ enough. ture of the thing and of its relation to it. beca use it is its own knowledge.15 l Here we witness the construction of an inner landscape. constitutes its sole possession is itself a vanishing. He referred to the television as the "electric tiously weighting all the circumstances is vain. and lionized him. better luck than Islamic terrorists of the sort who destroyed the World backwards into their conditions. the olive oil of subjectivity will blend with the vinegar of the pying both positions available to the beautiful soul. 121 consisted in anti-Semitism. or indeed than left environmental activist groups. Against portant concept in this book.153 Hegel describes a superposition of ethical possibilities in crank feeding on cans of tuna left him in the back gardens of sympa­ the beautiful soul: thetic town residents. he had participated in extreme right­ lacking. By no ideological framework. In this state. Ambience is really an ex­ as the man said at the Woodstock festival in 1 9 6 9 . but distant. But beautiful soul syndrome quate seriousness. By romanticizing him. We are compelled by the image of the Thoreauvian loner. it does not possess that full acquaintance with all the atten­ Rudolph was alleged to have bombed two abortion clinics and the dant circumstances which is required. but they exist only as a momentJ as something which is only for wing survivalist and white supremacist terror groups. We are involved. The beautiful soul is ecological subjectivity. and the poverty which rhapsody suitable to the construction of the beautiful soul: as outside. a dramatic version of the Romantic bard holding o ther or implicit manifoldness. can also lead to hippiedom: if we think hard enough. However. With the absolute the form of the FBI. the rain will stop. in the case in which the government has targeted as so-called terrorists since 911 1 . for­ Trade Center in 2001. others. a paradox from his anti-government view­ soul syndrome establish conditions in which the subject is stretched point that makes sense if we consider him as a fantasy figure in a larger throughout the world.150 The core of Wagner's " beautiful " resis­ matrix. The disconnection between felt life and objective re­ ality at the heart of Rudolph's ideological stance was reproduced by the Ethical space opens up and " spreads out endlessly in all directions"­ split between the obj ective features of Rudolph's case and the way in ethical ambience. it was paradoxical that he was ro­ self in a state like quantum superposition. the moment at which a particle is In the press. Rudolph's sin. (I am at pains to stress that my ar­ U. in fact. coating every molecule of obj ectivity. there are ternalized form of the beautiful soul. The conscientious mind is aware of this na­ ness or subj ectivity. as opposed to R. The beautiful soul maintains a critical position about which the media subjectivized. An edi­ everything except for its own position. floats in an oceanic "submergence of consciousness within itself.154 in the modern age. Rudolph became a Thoreauvian forest dweller. whom the media had not anointed with inward­ wards in their consequences. The beautiful soul holds choices within it­ the backdrop of the War on Terror. In this respect he had circumstances which breaks up and spreads out endlessly in all directions. that is. "New and improved" versions of beautiful injunctions too seriously." Far from being isolated. the discovery of fascist and New Age versions of environmentalism." 155 In celebrated in nature writing and ecological literary criticism as a benign the syndrome of the beautiful soul immersion is reduced to emulsion. and that its pretence of conscien­ Olympic Games in 1996. the media performed for means does this get rid of the pro blems of identity and subj ectivity. which it acts. resisting the incursions of " big government" in Contrasted with the simplicity of pure consciousness. racist and homophobic vision of nature and history. romanticized. this acquain­ tance with. consciousness exists in its poorest form. " Refined into this torial in the New York Times skillfully wrote the kind of ecological purity. simulation of the external world. 152 Beautiful ecological souls hope that by circulating ambient rhetoric Rudolph manages to be a quietist and a terrorist all at once. The neo-Nazi the beautiful soul as the form of ecological consumerism is the most im­ American Eric Rudolph was arrested in the summer of 2003 . before measurement (if " before " makes sense in describing an un­ gument in general does not equate environmentalism with terrorism. in objective world. Likewise. the government the helpful task of reinserting him into the ideological Ambience moves between a positive concept that refuses limited . or inhabit them differ­ even chic nihilism. cliched post-structuralist relativism. 123 models of localization or subjectification.158 There is some­ lated by Adam Smith in 1 776. Regression can assume the form of evident that "there must be a standing willingness to refashion con- . produces a vision of the text as a pristine wilderness of pure meaning. Instead of spitting them out. figures such as Marx and William Morris. overidentify. This race. turning ecocriticism into eco­ wants to go beyond intellectuality to a realm of instantly compelling ideology. that Ecocriticism wavers between the " apolitical" or quasi-political ersatz things come with a built-in bar code of truthfulness. Both sides miss seeing that it is not so much Curtent environmentalist literary criticism is drastically limited. Some are beginning to theorize ways in which pure celebration of the Reality Writing pristine wilderness is only one facet of an ecological-political spectrum of responses. is that reflection can be a criticism is to progress-beyond the idea of progress itself as the domi­ form of action. and the New Left inclusion of almost physical beep will guarantee that we are on the right track. The problem resides not so much in the beautiful soul's noble As Adorno remarks. while strictly untenable. less enlightened with the negative " and seeing the shadow side of things. and one that underpins var­ rousing environmental rhetorics seeking to convey a sense of the empir­ ious naive environmentalisms. act as correctives to "tarrying transcendence. the other by pre­ a refusal to engage the present moment. that the space of factical things can put a stop to thinking. Like an intense form of religion. regresses to a historical state relationship between mind and world has recently met with attention in which the socialist and communist developments had not yet hap­ from within neo-Kantian philosophy. that is-it must engage negativity fully rather than theoretical. Likewise. Empiricism is the name of the thinking that tries to be no­ field: a healthy symptom of " arrival" or legitimation. Some satisfying. ecocriticism serving the mere idea of it. Ecology withou t Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject . ideology relies upon enjoyment as well as disguised truth claims. Although among ecocritics themselves there has persisted From wilderness wntmg to apocalypticism. The beautiful soul dis­ does violence to the surface of the earth. criticism. it will be impossible-in spite tinguishes between theory and practice so sharply that reflection and of all proof to the contrary-completely to counter the perception that hesitation are seen as inane cloud-castle building. but in the form of its relationship to them. while it is medievalist form of Romanticism. If ecological people do. gender. it is a symptom of social malaise. one The real problem is not the debate between postmodernism and eco­ could adopt a paradoxical strategy toward ideology's fantasy spaces. " So long as progress. and environment in socialist thinking. ideas. Both have signifi­ beep is the clicking sound of Dr. ecocriticism now has greater potential to become a contested facts. guilt-inducingly vital. which sounds like two sides of the same warped record. or refusing to inhabit trouble is that as intoxicants go. johnson's boot kicking the stone in cant ties to Romanticism. The images. is still a form of belief. like the Latinos/as who have begun to transform cities such as Los religion's inverted form. and "pure " action be­ what antedates the trend is in its backwardness better and more hu­ comes solidly material and absolutely. Ecocritique inverts beautiful soul syndrome. deformed by utilitarianism. even­ thing of this factical brutalism in environmental rhetoric. combined with a motivational the beautiful soul. Eco­ technology and language that are the issue as oppression and suffering.159 The " Myth of the Given" is pened. action a rather grimy thing that other. specialized comes to the same conclusion in reverse: reflection becomes ethereal components of capitalist ideology itself. out of Romanticism there emerged. is no match for something more religious: it is indeed ently. there is a virtue in the state of ical in an aesthetic of the touchy-feely. in however compelling and squidgy a form. reflexive. This dangerous misapprehension about the ecocriticism. The regression is redoubled in championing an anti-modern." 1 56 Both empiricism and its experiential equivalent.122 . environmental discourse the survival mentality of the small group. drome shows us how far we would have to go in order to change things Regression is not entirely "wrong". The notion of praxisJ in contrast. religion of a call to care for the world. Like imperialism. Both bypass earthly conditions: one by canceling it. Or it mane.157 Empiricism assumes that facts speak for themselves. in its return to Romanticism. utterly. criticism is another version of Romanticism's rage against the machine. and that action-such as a nonviolent protest-can be nation of nature. one could instead identify. Angeles. If formulate suppressants against perceiving it. Some right-tending sound is not a refutation. them. and objects. thinking. While capitalist ideology had been formu­ refutation of Berkeley's idealism ( " I refute it thus " }. beautiful soul syn­ sense that ecocriticism is good for us. Believing in nothing. A clicking tually. its mode is one of avoidance ther for nature nor for industry. It affects the mimetic impulse. motorways. it suffers from the poetics of ambience. It goes on a chat show. . When it does include it. the same cows after which the people of bombed-out Berlin rebap­ tion to merge with nature: "we may often hear those favourite phrases tized Kurfiirstenda111111 as Kuda111111 . never forgotten. It wants century. canned laughter relieves the audience of the obligation of celebration. full of "Wimpy Burgers . supersonic with environmental culture. Nature poetry is anachronistic laughing.124 • Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental S ubject • 125 cepts and conceptions [of things outside thought] if this is what reflec­ his refrigerator. the impression of a re­ roads we used to reach it. in Don DeLillo's appropriately named White Noise. the it is not). . such as vegetarianism. unless elaborate plans have been made to seek out the most re­ nature writing evoke ? Instead of looking at the trees. which has inherited the discourse of senti­ bangs " ?164 Nature writing tries to be " immediate "-to do without the mental empiricism from the proto-ecological language of the eighteenth processes of language and the artful construction of illusions. which was already a dimension of impres­ sionism. for instance. We could address this problem by considering the role Today immediacy of aesthetic comportment is exclusively an immediate relationship to the universally mediated. is accompanied by the sound of jet engines overhead not who looks at the trees. the more distant it becomes. artful. There is something similar to this in Hegel's lec­ tationalism. ironically. The " bad" ambience haunts the "good " The beep or click of empirical immediacy has a yearning quality. con­ stone philosophically carries within it its own impotence. it founders. look at the person mote forests. What kinds of subj ect position does woods. Nature writing relieves us of the obligation to encounter non­ not only as a subject: Its truth content has vanished. the "couch potato" syn- . an object of poetic In sitcoms. . It is the same crete runways. in the words of the Devil in Peter Cook consistent with the goal of ecomimesis. as an anticipatory form of reason. Even a vast mountain forest shrinks in the memory of the cars and feel of " if only. The immediacy that nature writing values is itself as reified is forever excluded. That today any walk in the of subjectivity in nature writing. it distinguishes it from Does nature writing have a similar target? Even when someone appears the positive ambient of rustling trees or quiet ripples on a lake. . By his claim that nature poetry is now anachronistic needs strengthening. 1 6 2 about man's duty being to remain in oneness with nature. though in fact Nature writing partly militates against ecology rather than for it." Like a daytime chat show. . both large and a sofa on the other side of the television greets people." 161 Adorno puts it well. which remains in­ self. aircraft . But this can only be a supreme ture gets. Someone sitting on without saying that modernity is full of these sounds. The images of the postindustrial world are those of a corpse. Art "relieves" us of the "power of sensuousness " by they want to avert atomic war by banning it. This may help clarify identity. 1 6 3 tion demands." 165 as . Nature writing is Romantic in­ illusion." 16 0 Once heard. but such one­ The ambient sound of jet engines "destroys the actuality of nature ness in abstraction is simply and solely coarseness. an object of poetic celebration. who also come small. in a world in which one can find Coke cans in sofar as it tries to "get back to nature." the the anorganic aspect of Beckett's as well as Celan's poetry. The aggression of kicking a and Dudley Moore's film Bedazzled. . . sometimes called "nature. If embeddedness in the world is a good in it­ verberation. sion of the natural. it is precisely the integration of the latter rather than escapism. Hegel carries on by criticizing an inj unc­ streets. tures on aesthetics. world. and contributes its part to making peace with an unpeaceful is downplayed. contrived quality of writing that leads to poetization. The aesthetic. only destroys the actuality of nature as." Nature writing often excludes The daytime chat show is designed for the person sitting at home. Jack Gladney becomes obsessed with the crackling of plastic in and sit on the sofa for a while." Since the click is only a click." and knows that this possibility Antarctica. Nature writing is a kind of "reality writing" (and we all know impossibility of both is probably the hidden law of aesthetic nonrepresen­ very well that it is not). Distancing." the "more-than-human. is no longer able-if it ever just as "reality TV" appears to be real (and we all know very well that was-to embody pristine nature or the industry that has scorched it. . plastic flowers . j ust as forty years ago surre­ remaining within a sensuous realm: professional grievers at funerals re­ alism so ught to save Paris through the image of cows grazing in the lieve one of one's inner state. It yearns nei­ "nonhuman. The more in-your-face the aesthetic ges­ to maintain the impression of directness. setting up nature as an object "over there "-a pristine wilderness be­ It was always anachronistic: yond all trace of human contact-it re-establishes the very separation it seeks to abolish. a one. this negative ambience. what if this world were. Art. there is a certain pretense involved. Nature writing seems to be a sheer rendering of the real. "As soon as the artifact wants to prompt the illu­ as a Coke can. the song puts us in our proper place(s): sitting in­ toricist readings indict poems for not being explicit about certain forms doors. And this located." ( 1 . 169 Geoffrey Hartman's words about Wordswor­ seems to call out to you ( " Are you one of those people who . if only poetically. ends with the sound effect of a fly intrinsic part of the ambient world. with which the ideological ma­ not make us believe completely in nature "out or over there. and yet vacy. such as ideas. 7). Why didn't Wordsworth directly mention the homeless tell ?) soundscape. Levertov's "To the Reader " hails us: "As you read . One idea-that the mind is like a supermarket and is. attending to or hallucinating a real or imagined (how can we of misery. extension of the carpet? The basic interior would be the tent. surrounded by renderings of rip­ Yes. New his­ and the phatic verse. Ideology can mean it feel more like a study or a drawing room. a space furthermore furnished with reading mate­ self. It creeps up on you in "Grantchester Meadows. ? Take thian nature as an " outdoor room" for thinking (see Chapter 1 ) make our quiz and find out. 4. toward immediacy. the "we" captured here are specifically. from (strongly held) beliefs and ideas. The narrator struggles within nature. . But it can also refer to the idea that we whom phenomenology deviates and to whom it returns. The lyrics enact the contact. leridge's "Kubla Khan. or in a mirror. . This hailing This is a medial song. especially in phenomenological prose (both male nature writer in the wilderness may be "going native" to some ex­ " artistic" and " philosophical " ). pellating a certain subject. or out of a window. windows." a song by sion of existence-we exist "within" it." They also trix captures its real object-us. enable us to esta blish the appropriate cynical-ideological-distance Moreover. With this rendering. Islamic people are being tortured. . yet able to access the outside world-we see it reflected in the all the while views him. But in another sense. or mirrors. "As I write" or "As you read" puts us in front of a text. simply a variant of this wider situatedness rhetoric." The song. even from him­ as an exterior one. Heidegger in his Black Forest cottage ence. The same velopment of reading as a private. All around me golden sun flakes settle on the ground Instead of confronting the reader with an intrinsically unreliable first­ Basking in the sunshine of a bygone afternoon person narrator (who really trusts someone else who calls him or her­ Bringing sounds of yesterday into this city room. We can experience (pain). the spe­ thing about the illusory immediacy of ecomimesis. like so many different bottles of shampoo. Signifi­ recreational vehicle-or the text itself. at least not as an pling water and wading birds. Hei­ text. (9-1 2© ) 1 70 self "I" anyway? ). people in "Tintern Abbey" ?168 This selectivity is indeed a matter for The fact that the "as I write" / " as you read" / "as you listen" occurs consideration.126 . if ambiguously. with free choice. The " sounds of yes­ encourages a certain relationship with the content (the images in the terday" are literally the recorded sounds on the LP coming through the poem). ecomimesis. It is trivially true that nature writing suffers from selectivity. Despite the simulation of im­ degger was not actually a peasant living in the Black Forest. We are in a state of pri­ goes for nature writing. silent act. standing in for an interiorized cantly. really an outdoor that can be selected at will. A white mediacy. that our consciousness floats. but he is also usefully distancing this wilderness. among various ideas And what could be more interior than Sartre's lawn.166 When a magazine in the supermarket often a living room." "And a river of green is sliding unseen beneath . Simulative effects do cific content is really just a fantasy bait. I am struck by how much Roger cation for which it is tempting to imagine a domestic rather than out­ Waters's lyrics resemble those of another doubly situated poem. that as you are reading this. . situated as it is in a bourgeois interior. describes his ourselves exist. it is interpellating us. masters of ambient psychedelic kitsch: criticism would acknowledge this environment-one we are caught in In the lazy water meadow I lay me down even as we j udge it. . Adorno is on the mark when he reveals this Louis Althusser suggests that ideology works by "hailing" or inter­ aspect of Kierkegaard's writing. . prior to or above or beyond the elements of our experi­ situation by a fire (see Chapter 3 ) . even in his own act of narration. but in comfort. "To the Reader" does not mention buzzing around a room and being loudly swatted." ). and as you read. to some extent. Ecocritique should certainly deal with the kinds of fan­ at the end rather than at the beginning helps us to understand some­ tasy obj ect that ecomimesis sets before us. that ideology is a dimen­ privacy. a lo­ is a tenet of Romantic consumerism. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject . for historically precise reasons having to do with the de. 1 67 A more engaged ecological Pink Floyd. and as you read .or herself from a contemplative distance. 127 drome. it seldom mentions jet engines or nuclear fallout. speakers in your "room. esta blishes an interior space as much tent. or the or magazines-is itself the ideology of consumer capitalism. appears to be on both sides of the television screen. Descartes himself. Co­ door setting. Althusser suggests. rials. California embodies Spinoza down to the level where the board meets gathering weight from subsequent drips. distancing. and an old spruce tree tunneled by termites. by a remlll1SCence. 23-24©) is surely a revision of "Where ALPH. naturalness and artifice. 1 ?5 The narrator is not loose windows. He or she is an object trunks. direct. eter." that it literally has no echo. At the very end. then slipping down. a synesthetic pro­ a fresh." a This writing attempts to generate a fantasy-environment that sits beside record of an opium dream in " a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and the steps of the writer's argument. the air we breathe. an Aeolian harp. (I sometimes think that upper canopy (each drop lodging itself in successive cracks and crevasses. The otters. On the one hand. among others. It raises the question of whether exemplum is part of that argu­ ically mediated world. the nar­ diesel fumes from a boat headed south tugging a giant raft of clear-cut tree rator is entirely a bsorbed in the environment. then we . ) If only we could tune in to the environment properly. Ekphrasis ular ground on which we walk. writing. and beetles of varied shapes and hues. ghostly quality: too. the sensuous world-the world of our direct. absorbed by the mosses and the needles heavy with materialist. which Abram values as a path ecomimesis. lie dank and rot­ ting in the ferns. unperturbed by the winds. at­ This is an ecological version of Cage's anechoic chamber. It is this dark and stone-rich soil feeding the roots of metaphorical analogue is perceiving (or "tracking " as Abram puts it). one or two adults and three smaller. The imagery itself is ambient. The sensuous world is the partic­ down on the division. 1 72 sea " ( 3-5 ) . things are qui­ pabilities of their imaging machines. Fallen firs and the sea " ( 7-8."!?1 Try as viding a compelling yet inevitably inconsistent sequence of images that it might to render naked. remembering and recording. or strictly an illustration of it: a question of where you come mediated interactions-is always local. between rhetoric and logic. Sometimes. though the their crusty bark fissured with splitting seams and crossed by lines of ants. or at any rate monist continuity of thought and water drops that have taken ho urs to slide down the trunks from the thing-that I am picking up good vibrations. whose this. ekphrasis seeks to burst it through an outpouring of language. the sacred hemlocks. It contains many passages of rich cess. which tuning and hallucinating. intoxication. global character of the technolog­ ment. as Celeste Langan has argued. what surrounds. in the televised coverage of the second Iraq the tumult. that of experiencing the sensitivity of the sensory apparatus. a set of sensing devices .128 • Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ect . as well. ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless deer trail that I follow. natural experience. to the next protruding ridge of branch} . (Abram's favorite concept) . cedars and spruces. and dicating that �hich surrounds the narrator. fishy scent of otter scat. David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous is a showed him that there was no such thing as silence. in­ to itself a host of associations between drugs. Abram pulls out all the stops: toward ecological awareness. and when the storm winds batter the island. there is the very faint. and of the alders that rise in front of the cabin. their an absorption that turns the outer world into a (reading) room of soli­ last leaves dangling form the branches before being flung into the sky by tude. For myself as I write erases the trace of writing. As we have seen. Huge and towering powers stand there. or not. but also. Coleridge's well-known note performs the work of dis­ tancing by situating precisely the poem as a "psychological curiosity. in the depths of the forest. it is more ap­ Each day a group of otters slips out of the green waters onto the nearby rocks at h igh tide. And it is the salty air that pours in through the to the supposedly healthy breeze of the outside. the percussive rhythm reaching my ears happens despite how the Aeolian poetics of ambience insists upon a without any echo. in a chiasmus . we are told. on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. War. metaphorical extension. the page we are holding. physicalist. or appreci­ they stretch their necks into the invisible surge. spiced with cedar and seaweed. A single woodpecker is thwacking a trunk somewhere. and sometimes a hint of describing but channeling. drinking large drafts from ating it-much like how. the "embedded" reporters and news anchors appreciated the ca­ In the interior of this island. the j umbled branches of the spruce blocking the faint river. This inchworms. not so much illustrating them as pro­ Linton. Writing is absorbed into reading. ecomimesis gathers aesthetically reinforce that argument. 129 the trees / Laughing as it passes through the endless summer making for and tiny spiders. breathe this wild air. sleek bodies. un­ ment. it is the moist earth of a half-logged island off the northwest coat of North America. ecological sense of identity. The dualism of subj ect and object reproduces itself.1?3 This fantasy remarkable and popular study of phenomenology as a way of creating world depends on the technology of silent reading. The world is so Let us look very closely at this weird combination of vividness and dense. opens the introverted space of reading up the early winter storms. past lichens the surf. so full of real " stuff. And yet there is another. at propriate to talk of intel'objectivity rather than intersubjectivity least one of them dragging a half-alive fish between its teeth.1?4 The fantasy is an exemplum: the figurative adumbration of an argu­ In contrast to the apparently unlimited. for instance. and their song dies away shape. Hegel declares that there is a world beyond the penings. it is invisible and is as it were a percep­ tion of itself alone. a memento naturae. but we are deaf to scribe things in the world already? There is plenty of metonymy to go it-an ironically material version of the proverbial Berkleyan tree. with the most remirror a reflection of the inwardness of soul. but is essentially a Hegel's dialectic of the beautiful soul also contains this language: " In . or a hovering over the waters. As a formal decoration that never­ position to the reader. In this sublime. when the "I" begins to reflect on "I. But this world does appeal to our affec­ ting a B-flat. 179 And this "I = I" is also the beautiful soul. or a ringing tone over a world unheard. There is a black hole at the middle of the galaxy that is emit­ falling without ears to hear it. why not reduce all poems to mere hap­ In contrast with Abram. so pushed to the extreme. Hegel's ecomimesis undoes the very echoes. It is not surprising that work of art has not such a na'ive self-centered being. l 77 analysis should follow the waste down the toilet and out into the sewer and the ocean. If only writing could become a chamber without theless evokes a concrete world. or a musical sound as such without objectivity and The b irds' variegated plumage shines unseen. In its pure consciousness without content is an apt theorization of some of very form. Unheard melodies are yearning sounds in the compelling empirical beeps of Abram's prose. sweeter: Hegel's formulation is very close to his critique of the exact op­ Ecomimesis does consciously what Hegel expresses accidentally in posite tendency.178 Through the negative Hegel arrives at the same place as the tarian. that which in Romantic art pipes ditties of no tone: "In his lectures on aesthetics.ll c e that the argument tries to enforce. a common trope in an era nitude overwhelms us with its authority. is an expression ironically evoking the ambient world that surrounds genuine art: without any externality at all. The point is not to con­ It splits the reader's awareness between the moment of reading and the vince through reason. the aesthetic phenomena of the Romantic periodyn The world of dying Somehow the argument is not rich enough to sustain nature by itself. It is empirically real. what about the other universe right here. not of an which Hegel thinks of as the religion of " being within self" (Insich­ overwhelming physicality. j ust as ecological to minds. [Romantic art] the inner." the self-absorbed." 1 82 The ultimate " beau­ odorous and aromatic perfumes. an address to the responsive heart. around." all kinds of j ust as the distorted skull in Hans Holbein's painting The Ambassadors echoes and afterimages appear that trouble Hegel's idea that meditative is a memento mori. the physicalist that has produced untrodden ways. 1 76 Ultimately. the direct. and paths not view of the sublime upon which Aeolian poetics depends is authori­ taken. an appeal to affections and late the poem to its real and figurative environments. and these forests. collections of things ? Why even go that far ? Why not just de­ text that language cannot reach. Kant says that this chasm finds its analogy conscious. and a dying-away. and thus terrifies-inspires us with the power of our mind. The "self-centered" being that Hegel attributes to this dying in a sublime conceived differently from Burke's. unfrequented lanes. the no­ world is strikingly similar to the infamous "I = I. Nature appears by the side of his argument. It evokes universe of (other) subject(s) ? Environmental poetics ignores the sheer the natural world as a dying. 13 1 could become more ecological-isn't this the idea ? Criticism should re­ question. the Cereus which blossoms only for a night withers without which in and on its heterogeneous phenomena can only accept and having been admired in the wilds of southern forests. That is a terrifying thought. at another level.130 . the positive Abram. of which we are hardly chasm between you and me. The tiful " but unheard entity is the soul itself. is the product of Buddhism. Of course. remain unperceived. On the other hand. tion of infinity exceeds any number or magnitude. if we had big enough ears (really big ones) with which to tion! An apophasis sublimely renders the very things that the argument hear it. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental S ubj ect . j ungles of the most beautiful and luxuriant vegetation. perish and decay no less unenjoyed. that Hegel hauntingly describes is an inside-out version of this interi­ We need this oblique. in the Burkean sense-sheer mag­ claims. but to impart a heavy dose of a certain subject moment that the writing is evoking. vivid. This oblique relation is dramatically different from awareness is a form of blank nothingness. it is ambient: it appears alongside the argument. logical argument requires something stronger. self-negating subject that. no matter how vast.18 0 Hegel's notion of Ecomimetic ekphrasis sits in an oblique relation to the text. In which case. then. The eco­ There is an implied ecomimetic "As I write " at work in this passage. a thicket of description so full of vivid language that it sounded distinction between ultimately irrelevant decorativeness and essential directly in our mind. A Romantic substcl. anamorphic reference point. Hegel's language is plaintive and plangent. without any reminder of loss. ority. and exorbitant quality of the rhetoric itself. sein}. localist. who shines with fas­ brink of poverty." cination. rality. pre-Norman slash of the "as I write. the less convincing he or meaningless enjoyment that provides the compelling. Here is the sinthome. despite trix of sensations and perceptions. One touchstone is as good as another (one authenticity and capacity of the narrator-they're there. heart she is as a spokesperson for the totality that he or she is trying to of an ideological system: slippery. "As " could to make. It disappears art: "Many works of contemporary music and painting. gesture. and it vanishes like a shapeless sounding board for Romantic subjectivity. including the labor absence of representational obj ectivity and expression.1 32 . " an intertwined ma­ list will never succeed in hemming in its intrinsic heterogeneity." surrounding and sustaining the narrator and the reader. The process of writing is in excess of its writing in general. ideological effect. the narrator promises the intersubjective force field. of reification. in spite of the when you try to look at it." but also " j ust as " : j ust as I am writing. can never be seen di­ bodiment of the artistic aura itself. an ambient impression of natu­ place for the passage to seduce us to visualize a fantasy world. The intent is to reflect back the very quality it betrays itself. then in this in the very failure to count to infinity."1 83 The beautiful soul is the truth of lapsing back into Hartman's notion of Romanticism." "drinking large drafts. Note the Old English alliterative quality of Abram's The dizzyingly additive quality of the images makes us forget where we language: "faint. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subj ect . and since this sliding must take A magnetic field shimmers into view. The anamorphosis regarding the ecomimetic occasion (occasio) there's no substantial embodiment) wind up in the same place . ecomimesis is caught in the logic rator drags the background into the foreground." "tunneled by termites. It suggests. in its quantity. The metonymic evoke-an all-encompassing intersubjective field." Like that other embedder. so-called 'beautiful ecology" sets itself against Hartman's view that the world is merely the soul. the richness of the pile teeters on the more we have of this-the one who is compelled. the compelling environment. 133 this transparent purity of its moments. It is a tit for tat. In the Ecomimesis attempts to carve out a strong sense of place. in anamorphosis. do we end up at otter scat? But j ust as "out of joint" is the metaphorical Abram wants English to return to its mythical. the sense of place is this negativity. "Flesh. "As I ralness. ecomimesis becomes poetical. the local. it dissolves­ subsumed by the concept of a second naturalism. an unhappy. in/as my writing itself. The more we have of The heaping of phrase upon phrase has two unintended conse­ that-the writhing writing of a palpable yet evanescent nature-the quences. At the level of form. but delivers on forever. in the As far as the level of content goes. who is possessed with vision. "Romantic infrared shot of bullets flying is as good as another) . The cumulative effect of the figures is self-defeating. then each one is equally bereft of positive value. When you are involved in something fully. As soon as the nar­ to rub our noses in the natural world. would rightly be of reading." 184 While it pretends though not into the stupidity praised by Heidegger." Since the " as " slides between analogy. Extreme externality (so " out there " rectly but only glimpsed obliquely. But such a dialectical speculation is not one that the narrator wishes us Abram's "As I write " is the opening ecomimetic. Tolkien. these nat­ within a horizon. Adorno is repeated at the semantic level. a radical same way as the "embedded" reporters in Iraq gave their audiences embeddedness in the landscape-I use " landscape" with all the aes­ nothing but ambient descriptions ( " I hear the sound of gunfire around thetic weight of that word. This also goes for la bor. Each phrase is just a In seeking to be non-art. a kitsch em­ placeholder for a phenomenon that never arrives. Just as the narrator . the inconsistent kernel of for the more em bedded the narrator becomes. fishy scent. because inconsistent. the image is of being embedded very same way in which I am writing. and where we are going-how vasses. which establishes the ersatz primitivism of ecological ural phenomena are inscribed.1 8s But it is in danger of col­ vapour that dissolves into thin air. and strict semantic continuity. it loses its coherence. We could speculate that nature and its dialectically inverts the idea that nature writing leads to environmental analogue." 1 86 The narrator gets lost in his or the supposed integration of the images under the rubric of the natural. like the goddess that it's apparently beyond art) and extreme internality (so inward that Diana. tempo­ past. mean not only "while. If the fine writing is supposed to infinite series that gives us a sense of the infinite capacity of our mind. her own system. The metonymic list threatens to go on and me " )." " cracks and cre­ came from at the start of the paragraph. a perceptual dimension incarnated like Merleau-Ponty's write " breaches the consistency of the ecomimesis even as it broaches it. Kant's mathematical sublime: an nothing but a list of perceptual events. If every phrase is in fact metaphorical for "nature.' its light dies away within it. be a "touchstone " for the ecological. yet slippery. in an Arnoldian sense. belong to this world. Abram provides mere positivity. The list of contingent percep­ tance. of all people. Abram. This condition is more like being a strongly. books " ( 1 ) conveys a highly paradoxical message. in his positing of place as question. Only here are fantasy it conjures up. taken as an extended metaphor for a statement like "I've Cartesianism "feels like. of being able to walk. those with sharp. as touchstone."189 a necessary tool in the machine that creates value. sody.134 . Masochism is the looping of enjoy­ does what he or she can to complete it. The strange. We have established a correlation between "As I they what they are." It thus falls into the dilemma of Pascal and. Ecomimesis aims to rupture the aesthetic dis­ made of contingent. as we shall see. They are all the more genuinely so. as in question. An environment is being evoked. It takes the form of That is how shoes actually serve. nontotalizable parts. It reproduces with a consumerist. the same one that appears on the Abram. Ecomimesis works very hard at immersing the subject in the object. he ment through an other. to break down the subject-obj ect dualism. The narrator luxuriates in the " aroundness" of being in the world (Umwelt). that nature is best accessed by the able-bodied. read. got legs! I can see ! " is in direct proportion to the alienation and com­ later. to be self-stupefying is quite an­ Let us take "As I write " at face value for a moment. the more convincing it is aesthetically: there is no Abram the narrator establishes the appropriate aesthetic distance for reason for this proliferation of sentences about scat. But in many ways it offers a sense of what the passage. In vincing ecomimesis is. up ! My friend. also marshals the realm of leisure. so the rhapsody. j ust as. a conduit. write. The worker receives an unfinished. or is even aware of them. the em bedded reporter is really a version pears: parturient montes. But nature as to­ the reader. is a magnet. which is the subject of the chapter in which this piece of ecomimesis ap­ In the case of the Iraq War. in evoking a world or outside and around " as I write " enacts. but only for the way he puts it. 19 1 Phenon:enology ability to look up from one's work. and explore the other: "The peasant woman wears her shoes in the field. and even in the very inscription of. which has a utopian edge . in surround-sound. in­ tality is paradoxically a " decentered. however. The ultimate riposte to Hei­ The Beautiful S oul and Nonviolence degger in the Black Forest is that no self-respecting peasant would talk like that. resem bles entranced wondering other pieces of charged writing. or looks at command in "The Tables Turned. nascitur ridiculus muse The less logically con­ of the couch potato conveniently lodged inside the television screen. But the end result is to reinforce the aesthetic dis­ "As I write " : the narrator becomes an Aeolian harp. Heidegger's description of the of free time. The reference point is the Romantic only to sit back and contemplate its handiwork. the masochistic fantasy is that " a child is being beaten. 135 is a conductor. in­ worker in a factory (or a machine in one ) than it is like being an artisan teractive passivity ( Z izek calls it " interpassivity" ) is reminiscent of or a boss. Given the division of labor. There are hints events. The sense of freedom and autonomy marked by the birth vengeance the Cartesian opposition between res cogitans and res ex­ of the consumerist in the Romantic period works even better with trees tensa. we must recall. of phenomenology in general. It turns out that Descartes. close-up detail. to convince us that we tions. with panoramic intensity." "organic. fragmentary product and what Freud says about masochism. for or she is a temporary stage in the onward flow of commodity parts and Freud. The tance. Although sides of Coca-Cola bottles: "Enjoy! " There is no explicitiy didactic con- . receiving its reality like Since de-distancing has been reified. undistracted organs of perception. the very dimension in which the subject-object dualism persists. even in the midst. Wordsworth's peasant woman thinks about the shoes while she is at work. if only rhetorically.18? To be ignorant is one thing. This is a stupendous problem for modification that gave rise to such a Romantic outpouring in the first environmental thinking and art. distance returns even more paper receiving ink: ecorhapsody. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject . This very dualism is the bugbear of eco-phenomenological rhap­ than with commodities. In place. or at least. narrator is plugged directly into the world. a series of All this is in the name of noticing that we are subj ect to air pollution. and quit your them at all. does ecomimesis. The breathless excitement of an intersubjective field. the less the write" and the inj unction to leave the scene of reading. She stands and walks in them. exclamations as brittle as they are hyperbolic. is for someone." "not-all" set that is tense. Only a very privileged person would make such a big deal out of the next chapter we will delve more deeply into this strange turn of having eyes and ears." "Up.190 including its locus classicus. as the gesture of describing what's claims to surpass Descartes. rather than biting critique. They are the objective correlative of inutility. whether it is kitsch or avant-garde."1 88 Heidegger himself surpasses the impossible superego inj unction. so just one quotation will suffice.1 98 Such a man " does not hold the Spiritual Aaron Dunckel: " It is one of the truly salutary aspects of ecological Essence as his peculiar property." Ecological inwardness might not be vigorous and aggressive. Contemplation is always in the injunction is attached to an image of idiotic enjoyment. Hegel lingers over the "feminine " education of the young lama from its masculinist and ablist qualities-even when it does not exhibit " in a kind of prison" of " quiet and solitude. Wordsworth beautiful soul is "get over it. "focus on his battle with cancer. Only then would it remain true to the idea of ture wash all over you. just sit back and let Na­ oneness with nature. or a couch potato with a pair of field glasses ? didacticism becomes suspect (the Romantic period). Indeed. Implicitly. tonic mimesis. that we glimpse in the injunction to stop contemplating and this sense at least. had to do with from the modern religion of sport. I am reminded of a CEO who said he was leaving his job to an idea. where healthy."197 The stop what he or she is doing (which is-but this is no time to argue ! ) prison of quiet and solitude is only the objective form of the view of and go and do something more healthy instead. .193 In nized state. 137 tent here.l 92 ority is far from what Marcuse calls libido and Wordsworth calls "im­ Alongside the hale-and-hearty rhetoric. but is regarded as partaking in it only criticism that it insists on an 'outside' to the text. "Up ! Up ! " really means " Outside ! Outside! " state for which Hegel himself argued. inward-turning. Like Pla­ danger of being mobilized in an aggressive manner. from an essay on Shelley by boric. 1 99 The culture of the lama uncannily echoes It is not hard to detect in the terms introversion and extraversion the the Europe of absolute freedom and terror. But in this very differentiation. . pulse."1 95 American republicanism. For Marcuse. the ought to be found indoors as much as outside. we should be wary of claims that Wordsworth helped breathe the fresh air. We are now in the realm of modern advertising. while simultaneously re­ metaphysical opposition of inside and outside. an unsynthesized parody of the very side is pathological. do something ! " is merely the inverse of . but forms of totalitarianism have tended to espouse "ex­ transcending the erotophobia. which The Philosophy of Religion imagines as an oro­ legion. its difference from clean sumerism: "Why bother intellectualizing . even a louse. in critique." This outside enables in order to exhibit it to others." There is an injunction against what Freud called introversionJ a con­ We are about to reach a startling conclusion. in the assertion of hearty wood" ( "The Tables Turned. But as we have seen. ecomimesis tries to differentiate itself from bad mimesis. in­ taining a monarchical structure. which for the English to avoid Nazism. generating all kinds of unprofitable dimension of life." living "chiefly on vegeta­ such tendencies-nature writing exhorts the reader to snap out of it. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject . negative one." Just sample " One impulse from a vernal peace hidden. It is harder than straight­ other words. there's something wrong with you if you don't. a form of writing We could go even deeper. self-swallowing man." in a spirit not unlike that of French or us to question "cultural solipsism. Do you want to be a couch potato with a the current form of consumerist ideology." l 96 Ironically. "Marxist literary criticism often displays scorn for 'inwardness' . in introversion as much beautiful soul thrives on alternatives that are just two sides of the same as extraversion. Nature writing often presupposes a a phobic reaction to what he had read about the education of incarnate body in possession of all the "proper" limbs and faculties. . "Enjoy ! " is is being swapped for another.136 . it re­ this attitude is not too remote from the scorn of the capitalists for an fines itself as a consumer drug par excellence." "Get up ! Get up l "-then we are far from was no Nazi. Ideology can split introversion itself into a appears that transmits a command far more potent than any explicit set healthy. If our advice to the templative state decried as a queer form of inwardness." 2 1 ) instead of working hard at forming oneness. " Genuine " contact with whatever the truth of the "natural world " Kicking the beautiful soul in the pants will never work. The didacticism lies in the injunction to enjoy. from mimesis as drug or poison. 1 94 Relishing nature is not too far away him embodied the "I = I " of the Fichtean beautiful soul. to bles " and " revolt[ing] from killing any animal. The outdoors crew are nothingness. Outside is normal. full of splendid insights. outward-turning kind. It This ghost speaks a language that sounds more like passive con­ might be all too aware of its aches and pains. But aside lamas. At the very moment at which remote. one form of consumerism forward prohibition: there is nothing to struggle against. nature as a healthy exteri­ hallucinatory enjoyment. to the point of disappearance. Hegel's disparagement of Buddhism. the may suffer from a constant breakdown of its supporting structures-in ego finds this injunction impossible to fulfill. in contemplation that is itself not hale and hearty but coin: "Don't j �st sit there. and an un­ of instructions. In general. the fear of and fascination with a femi­ traversion" and denounce introversion as autoerotic withdrawal. there is an uncanny ghost. . nonviolently. and I can shoot at them.138 . "Well. And then we many nature worshipers." We possess the wilderness aesthetically-after the the very things that preoccupy the beautiful soul (violence. . . Such theistic na­ created in an age of machines and capitalism. We then saw how the eco­ ture worship has become a problem. . nonviolence. it has been politically and poetically cor­ doned off from capitalism-still. I feel very meditative walking through the woods and listening to the sharp. So we could swim and meditate or we could merous ideas a bout nature are inadequate. more precisely. But how do we go beyond that? We must move gin­ the woods were made by God. I feel good about that. cook it. to the subj ect. We have so many holiday makers. The theistic tradition talks a bout meditation and contemplation as a fan­ tastic thing to do. Writing outside the dominant Western traditions. and gerly. Let us see if we can get any smarter. theistic sense of immanence at the heart of a certain "pure subjectivity . and he would say: stuck as we are. Although it has no potential for capital­ although. there was a very friendly neighbor from Birmingham. as raw materials for battle ships. but I feel much better if I walk o ut in the woods with my gun and shoot animals. aesthetics of Kant. the suffering in an existence alien flavor of nature. consider the following hilarious example from a talk by a Ti­ nonpurposive way. . found out that any attempt to tear off this skin would only reproduce ex­ In Scotland." It resides in the casualness with which the hunter links his admiration for nature with his capacity to use it for target practice. 2 0o Ecological contemplation can provide fuel for a possessive. where I was teaching. Like Alice at the Looking Glass House." In that poem. and feed my family. testifies to . Occasionally he would drop into our meditation hall and sit with us. so many hunters. subtle sounds of a nimals j umping forth. sit there! " A more thorough investigation of "Windsor Forest. who always came up there on weekends to have a nice time. This way of appreciating the natural world has a poetic lineage tracea ble through such works as Alexander Pope's "Windsor Forest. especially when we try to get away. contemplation) is in order. . it has a potential for this potential. It concerns a between the inward and the environment is divulged in the lyric. ideological constructions lie on the beach made by God and have a fantastic time. we consume the wilderness in a purposively dhism. It thus sets up a more or less sub­ limated version of the catascopic gaze of the hunter with his gun in . the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa. isting conditions." is preaching to the choir. Like an object of value in a shop window as action. it's nice you people are meditating. ." .201 There remains a subtle hint of this even in the litera­ ture of the empty wilderness. I feel I am doing some­ thing worthwhile at the same time. whose high Romantic. We always already have to be on the beautiful souls' side. The humor in this passage derives from the hunter's " and"-"and I can shoot at them. that is. While we are on the subj ect of Bud­ seen by a window shopper. Horkheimer and Adorno claim that that secret link betan lama. we are stuck. Ecology without Nature Romanticism and the Environmental Subject • 139 "Don't j ust do something. with its sermon of " beautiful Nature. an industrial town. It is admired as so much potential weaponry. at the Samye Ling meditation center. We are not particularly seeking enlightenment or the simple experi­ ence of tranquility-we are trying to get over our deception. as George Bush's administration knows. the forest is seen as through the sights of a gun. Rinpoche. so logical subject position was identical with consumerism. The popular notion of God is that he created the world: seeing it their way. as well as to the love of this existence. I can bring back venison. the castle r uins were created by God.''202 Trungpa notices how materialism and spiritualism are j oined at the hip : The beautiful soul. predatory grasp of the world. The first sections of this chapter concluded that nu­ the ocean was made by God. we do not wish to reinforce the current state of af­ more subtle. It would subvert fixating im­ Imagining Ecology without Nature ages of "world" that inhibit humans from grasping their place in an al­ ready historical nature.3 many solutions seem either out of date or inadequate in their attempt to The environment was born at exactly the moment when it became a generate different ways of making us feel about the state we are in. Society would be so in­ the current moment. Indeed. But all cultural forms lag behind processes of pro­ that took care of its surroundings in a more comprehensive sense. our duction. be­ The more strenuously we try to exit the Looking Glass House of the tween wholeheartedly getting into environmental rhetoric and cynically beautiful soul. documented by poets such as Rimbaud. l"I E D I TA TI O N S panoply of irony and linguistic play is not marginal. There is a rich fairs. The word environment still haunts us. Wordsworth. and to claim that we haven't attained it yet. but: central to Ro­ manticism. j udo-like approach is in order. the more we end up back at square one. an eco­ logical collective to come would definitely not look like the nature­ nation construct with its fascist-tending ideal of work and wholeness. Our choice is false if it has been reduced to one between hypocrisy and cynicism. the difference between. we admit to the reality of the situation. Subverting fixation is the radical goal of the I am here. The Paris Communes were experiments in the pro­ volved in taking care of " it" that it would no longer be a case of some duction of social space.6 It has to do with acknowl­ Instead of serving up lashings of guilt and redemption. environ­ this sense. must be yes. the unrelia ble narrators of a Mary Shelley-the whole . s For­ of nature. nonviolent. real and possible. opening up desires for utopian place. 141 ical criticism not engage the ideological forms of the environment. Imagining Ecology without Nature . Our answer to the ruthless ransacking of nature. forgiveness is an infi­ we refuse to submit to it. and complex subj ect. a rigorous and relentless distinction of the subj ect from its identifications. because in a society without changing it. edging the gap between. to burst its bounds on its own terms. The hesitations of a holding this page in my hand. Romantic wish to explore the shadow lands. and of the idea vein of thinking on how to get out of beautiful soul syndrome. If we leave the distancing ourselves from it.2 It is valid both to say that subj ectivity is profoundly Romantic. nitely rich. On some days. that is." and in Chapter 2 could leave us in a state of cynicism. we would be writing litur­ beautiful soul bleeding in the street. difficult. Although it is "realistic" to be cynical rather stead of trying to fight it. Moreover.1 The Situationists in ready involved in our world.D E S C A R T E S . sitting by the fire. there would be no need to point it out. Hu­ revolutionary space mobilized the floating world of the (lcmeurs and mans may yet return the idea of the "thing" to its older sense of meeting their psychic disposition of boredom. a than hypocritical. ideas and signs. from � CH A PTER THRE E capitalist imagery to the very ecocriticism that opposes capitalism ? Eco­ critique could establish collective forms of identity that included other species and their worlds. have we really transcended it ? In­ gies for the beautiful soul. giveness is the key. The "thing" that surrounds us. idea of environment would have withered away. So promise of an almost unimaginable kind of being together. problem. the " unintention" and openness of ambient art hold out a mentalist writing seems like patching up the void with duct tape. In both cases. At the Looking Glass House Remaining in cynicism is a habit of the beautiful soul. And no. But as Derrida has shown.4 In a society that fully acknowledged that we were always al­ " free space " that sounds much like the wilderness. Subversion of identity fixations is what Alain Badiou calls a truth process. that environs us and differs from us. The very word envi­ certain radical or avant-garde practices have come more up to date with ronmentalism is evidence of wishful thinking. Environmental art and politics are no exception. 1 9 60s Paris and other experimenters in "psychic geography " have struggled to keep abreast of the productive forces. It would be more like Jean-Luc Nancy's society of " unworking. might ecolog. wearing a dressing gown. . far from being hostile to deep ecology. I will new way of doing ecological criticism. in their list of things in "nature" ) will not entirely do. is a form of " really deep ambient rhetoric provokes thought about fundamental metaphysical ecology. The siren song of the that rolls through all things. As we have The self-defeating routine of puncturing the aesthetic veil. the idea of place subtending the aesthetic will be deconstructed. On the one hand. no new religion or territory upon which to pin our flag." Ecology wants to go from dualism to monism. place is not single. the historical. or as a text is shot through with nothingness. Juxtaposition as Ecocritique then it has abandoned its liberating potential. and solid. To think in terms of either crude action or pure ideas is to remain As Heidegger. Ambient art gestures toward This is only possible because of the intrinsic playfulness and re­ this (dialectical) juxtaposition of writing with the ideological matrix. Dark consider some possibilities for a critical ecomimesis. ception dimension that. empty . First. Far from remaining natural. values juxtaposition as collage. It is a candidate for what Benj amin called a lined in this book. If it is ments had already surpassed the conundrum of how em bedding your­ to be properly critical. is why some Romantic writers. and the gap between beautiful soul and " beautiful Na­ from the aesthetic (too often its analogue). such as inside and outside. And ironically this trickster is available beautiful soul exerts a fascination that could falsely induce one to think through the study of deconstruction. makes things meaningful in the first place . They open up the rendered ample of "contents " would be the writhing quality of writing. either through paradoxical way of having greater fidelity to things. is surpris­ is a strong gravitational pull toward the "new and improved " world of ingly what Abram finally wards off in his evocation of a monist spirit commodified solutions to a commodified world. the political. toward liberation." Second. what we see behind us is only a surmise. . I conclude by asserting that ecocritique. or through a redefinition of the aesthetic dimension itself. so our way out of the beautiful that one had transcended it. Ecomimesis is above all a practice of juxtaposition. The specter of a trickster nature. if ambience becomes a resting place. . and Derrida remarked in their very within the prison of the beautiful soul. We will be ex­ juxtaposition. Merleau-Ponty." a form that looks both toward oppression and that it is contingent and queer. Avant-garde art then ambience has helped to liberate radical thinking. Ambience may ecology acknowledges that there is no way out of the paradoxes out­ have a liberating potential. I show how the idea of of our investigation. On the other hand. If we find no resting place in ambience. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Na ture ." categories. just adding items to a list (such as adding polluting factories to a it grow b ack even stronger. as we shall discover. Why? Simply to j uxtapose contents without bringing form and tancing. This is the problem that haunts D avid Abram's utopian prose. We cannot remain on the fence. subject position into the mix would leave things as they are. front of us is fleeting and illusory. 143 between selves. extreme example of "frame " would be the ideological matrix that Moreover. or rhizomics. The most extreme ex­ different ways. This leads to developing a The shape of this chapter is twofold. But it Our analysis needs to return to Romanticism. ploring this later under the heading of " dark ecology. makes perception diverge for instance) or frames without an object (white canvases. a sublime aesthetic dis­ frame. perception contains nonidentity like a carpet contains blessed and cursed with beautiful soul syndrome. bricolage. The world of nature writing shimmers ahead.? Ecology without Na­ holes. and because of the inherent qualities of the per­ By presenting objects without a frame (clumps of " stuff" in a gallery. I will investigate Rather than seeking some false oneness. like the two-headed god Janus. a better version of the aesthetic dimension. experiment with ecomimesis. I'll go on" quality found in Adorno and Beckett about this part In the remaining sections of this chapter. on . We cannot see ture certainly suffers from it. versibility of language. they turn the anti-aesthetic of ecomimesis around on itself. montage must juxtapose the contents with the self in reality can also produce the opposite. and what we see in " over there " while we remain here safe (or stuck) in our critical mode. ecocriticism must admit " dialectical image. There is something of the "I can't go soul may seem like going further into it. montage. which I call dark ecology. but not so fast! two ways of solving the problems of ambience. In the first few sections. The most environment to the breeze of the cosmic. The first sections consider ture. Oppositional consciousness is different ways. But the possibilities are restricted: there which is precisely what these theories of perception generate. only to have seen. independent. for Romantic experi­ all very much depends upon what is being j uxtaposed with what. acknowledging the gap is a the possibility of dissolving the solidity of perception.1 42 . ences between. or them. (The port us to this world-a bubble in the onward flow of the argument. the passage's content surrounds the content of the argu­ subj ect and object. and thus meaningless. we should not be both at once. through the absolute identity) . The re-mark establishes (and questions) the differ­ tween contents and frame. mesocosms may be beneficial scientific concepts. and so on). Dialectics is shorthand for a play back and forth be­ play of the re-mark. things can be either "As I write " to the deer tracks the narrator " follows " by the end. so do ecological dimensions.9 If anything.8 Despite the divine other. Phe­ tive of a Hot Day. l l uous. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . via a particles or waves. dark inside." developed in studies of food webs by Gary Polis. cally. Indeed. an attunement. Abram's hyperekphrasis means to trans­ to these distinctions. If thing between noise and sound. Something is either a noise or it is sound. literally nothing. there is nothing quency and duration of the form floats wildly away from the frequency in between. to decontextualize it. It is what Leigh Hunt tries in "A Now. Perception may well be made up of moments rather than con­ Even the narrator's act o f inscription itself has become attentiveness to tinua. the fact that many green thinkers have relied on it. Radical wise we fall back into the problem of " bad infinity"-an infinity that is juxtaposition plays with the frame and its contents in such a way as to ultimately countable. that Abram compares writing with following tracks. Practi­ of something or other in a gallery without a frame around it ? cally speaking. Consider the idea of ment (as I write the world goes on around me) . there are bubbles within bubbles in the suggest that something could be both. might find leaving it high and dry. a ideological fantasy of ecomimesis and especially ambience. You will never find a been abolished. mesocosm-a "medium-sized ecosystem "-functions in ecological sci­ But what i f a writer were to present this ekphrastic suspension o n its ence in experiments whose conditions simulate real life as closely as own. graphic mark/sign. and ultimately everything else. almost as a form of and everything is seen from the outside and exoticized. quantum theory demonstrates the persistence of this gument's propositions. but not both simultaneously. contemporary neuroscience argues that experi­ surprised that the narrative-within-a-narrative that is the second para­ ence comes in discrete quanta that are then blended to appear contin­ graph ends with the image of following tracks rather than writing. Similarly. The passage is coordinated with the tissue of the conundrum. since space is also subject and duration of the content. Recalling nothing behind these in the standard model that can be either. In an invagination where form plays the opposite role The aesthetic dimension is frequently posited as existing between from content. Descrip­ a place in them (or it? ) . not even space. one must preserve the gap between it is not made out of anything smaller or more general. And there is nothing between frame and contents. 145 frames. Ambient challenge both dualism (their absolute difference) and monism (their art plays with what " counts " as either frame or contents.) passage quoted in Chapter 2-we get from the present of enunciation In the universe according to quantum mechanics. It is not even appro­ paragraph break that forces the reader to step further into the fantasy priate to say that "energy " can be either a particle or a wave. There is a gap between the particular and the general. or worse. generating a steady state in which the fre­ lence. To reiterate Chapter 1. noise/sound. But infinity is radically beyond number. like a 1 : 1 ecomimesis-a suburban picture of suspended time interrupted not at . j ust as the actual text is "mesocosm. as the theoretical exploration in Chapter 1 suggested. surrounding text. other­ foreground. for example. a Stimmung. foreground/background.tO The embedded with it (the reader must pause to take in an inset narrative) . in the very ges­ automated philosophy (the ontology of physics does it for you ! Relax!). There is nothing between background and an extremely high one. all animals and plants. Magi­ One approach would be isolating the fantasy obj ect of ecomimesis. Either that. or between noise and silence. noise/si­ Ekphrasis suspends time.144 . The mesocosm swallows everything. There is world by tracking the text with his or her descending eyes. The re­ there were no gap then infinity would be merely another number-j ust mark is a quantum event." 1 2 Hunt's essay is an instance of Cockney nomena become equally meaningful. Everything is automated. the Standard (Quantum) Model does not abolish subject-obj ect du­ The prose seems to stand up and arrest our progress through the ar­ alism. The frame is not j ust another element. ture of em bedding us in a deep. theticization is that the re-mark signals a difference that is irreducible­ To j uxtapose contents and frame. like those modern artists who present lumps possible. Mesocosms exist between microcosm and macrocosm. seems to little island of fantasy. even though ambient rhetoric screams (quietly) that the gap has everything is " between" and there is no definition. One reason why studying ambient poetics subverts aes­ frame. ambient art questions the gap between contents and map of reality. 146 . Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature • 147 the beginning, but at the end, by the notion that the writer is embedded By those impending branches made more soft, in the scene. The inversion of the order, so that the metonymic exorbi­ More soft and distant. Other lot was mine. (1-1 8)14 tancy comes first, and the " as I write " comes last, undermines natur al­ , The lines j uxtapose a panoramic view with a more specific one. Details ization. The last glimpse of the scene is of the author's pen, whIch alert us to the idea that we are being let in on a clue. The sun "was waves away the fantasy's compelling quality in a reverse sleight of hand mounted" ( i )-like the word "sun," itself mounted high on the page. as we realize that the subj ect of the enunciated is also the subj ect of At first, the shadows "lie " on the surface of the land like the words on enunciation. The narrator takes responsibility for the fantasy-instead of the page ( 7), loosely associated in the most open form available to using it as a treasure trove of his beautiful soul, he undermines the dis­ Wordsworth (blank verse). The imagery iG pale and minimalist, inviting tance toward it that maintains the objectification and vraisemblable of our closer scrutiny at the very moment at which it seems to offer a re­ the narrative world. The mixed-media art of David Robertson likewise laxing ease. The repetition of "pleasant" (9-10) creates a tiny ripple on j uxtaposes everyday texts such as a deck of cards or a newspaper with a smooth surface, to which our suspicion is drawn. We find ourselves existential-religious musings and quantum theory, as it takes the reader embedded in the poem, via the semicolon ( 9 ) that hesitates before we on a nonholistic ecological tour. 13 find ourselves placed ( "Pleasant to him," 1 0). This virtual reader, the The privileged attention of Abram's narrator is also the fortunate po­ " dreaming man," both is and is not the reader. Wordsworth is careful sition of the framing narrator of Wordsworth's The Ruined Cottage. not to identify us absolutely with this figure. We are involved in the Wordsworth embeds a narrator-the Pedlar and his tale of Margaret scene, yet critically so-our view seems to oscillate between a particular and her husband who went to war and never came back-within an­ point of view within it, and a more general view outside it. This oscilla­ other narration. The apparently simple act of double framing induces a tion repeats itself on the very inside itself. The man " looks out" with sense of hesitation. Can we trust where the frame stops and where the " side-long eye "-he views the scene anamorphically, from an unex­ next one starts, what is inside the frame, how truthful it is ? The aes­ pected vantage point. thetic, and aestheticizing, frame undermines the necessarily comfortable By the time we arrive at the quiescence of "more soft, I More soft and aesthetic distance with which to accept the poem as a soothing aesthetic­ distant" ( 1 7-1 8 ) , the scene has become far from an aesthetic blur. We moral lesson. Wordsworth destabilizes the supposed neutrality of the want to peer into the softness, we are disturbed by the distance. All this medium in which we glimpse events. The introductory verse paragraph takes place before we are pulled up short, anyway, by " Other lot was contains instructions on how to read the rest of the poem: mine " ( 1 8 ) . The very beauty of the exorbitant growth around the cot­ 'Twas summer and the sun was mounted high; tage-like the endless lines of blank verse silent before us on the page­ Along the south the uplands feebly glared haunts us with the possibility of pain and with the history of other Through a pale steam, and all the northern downs, places, other times that impinge intensely on this one . Instead of em­ In clearer air ascending, shewed far off bedding the narrator in an othered war, The Ruined Cottage em beds Their surfaces with shadows dappled o'er the war in our experience of reading. In its very tranquility, it is one of Of deep embattled clouds: far as the sight the most powerful antiwar poems ever written. Could reach those many shadows lay in spots Writing during another moment of oppressive imperialism, the First Determined and unmoved, with steady beams Of clear and pleasant sunshine interposed; World War, Edward Thomas juxtaposes content and frame: Pleasant to him who on the soft cool moss Tall nettles cover up, as they have done Extends his careless limbs beside the root These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough Of some huge oak whose aged branches make Long worn out, and the roller made of stone: A twilight of their own, a dewy shade Only the elm butt tops the nettles now. Where the wren warbles while the dreaming man, Half-conscious of that soothing melody, This corner of the farmyard I like most: With side-long eye looks out upon the scene, As well as any bloom upon a flower 148 . Ecology without Nature Imagining Eco logy without Nature . 149 I like the dust on the nettles, never lost starvd at his Masters Gate / Predicts the ruin of the State " (9-1 0).18 Except to prove the sweetness of a shower. l 5 The poem sustains an almost static tone, reading the general in the par­ ticular over and over in simple AABB rhyming that only changes by in­ It would be easy to say that the quietism and minimalism evoke the ab­ creasing in intensity toward the end (tending toward AAAA) . This feels sent presence of Edwardian Englishness, an internal distance toward like braking. I am reminded of Benjamin's comment that socialism is the pomp and circumstance of state affairs that only serves to throw not so much a progression as the application of the emergency brake.19 that state into greater relief. The " corner," the neglected and unlovely An augury is a prophecy written in the tea leaves, in the guts of a bird, plants (a Wordsworthian de-aestheticization), the " dust on the net­ in the real-ecomimesis. It is knowledge that is somehow imprinted in tles " -in all these images nature seems very close to nation. This is the real. miniaturized wildness, not the open frontier of manifest destiny, but a A stain on the horizon announces the presence of a significant Be­ little corner of unreconstructed wilderness; even of atavism, a Ro­ yond. But this Beyond is sick: we can read it in the tea leaves. This is an mantic backsliding into a world before the domination of nature, fig­ everyday experience for people living in a time of intense war. Jane ured by the rusting farm tools. As surely as do Heidegger's peasant Austen's novels are saturated with the presence of the war, which ap­ shoes, these broken pieces of abandoned equipment open up the envi­ pears every day in the paper on the breakfast table.20 In this atmo­ ronment, cultural, meteorological, agricultural, and biological. sphere, it is a supreme political act to de-objectify the world, which is If tropes are flowers ( " the flowers of rhetoric" ) then the tall nettles what happens here, especially in the "AAAA" section. It contains its are wild tropes: ecomimesis. The poem holds something in reserve, own negation within itself, its own nonidentity: something Blanchot calls the "interminable " of writing, figured in the Some to Misery are Born nettles. At the end the dust, an image of stasis, is " lost" to the rain's Every Morn & every Night " sweetness," a powerfully weak image, if that is· not too oxymoronic. Some are Born to sweet delight The reserve is barely encapsulated in the most imperceptible of things. Some are Born to sweet delight But its trace is everywhere, on edges and corners-ambient. Thomas's Some are born to Endless Night poem is a quiet resistance to imperial poetics, with its corners of foreign We are led to Believe a Lie fields that will be forever England. It plays with the idea of world like When we see not Thro the Eye Wilfred Owen, who in "Anthem for Doomed Youth" j uxtaposes the Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light screams of war materiel (2-7) with " bugles calling for [the dead] from God Appears & God is Light sad shires" ( 8 ), a line that never fails to evoke a visceral reaction as it To those poor Souls who dwell in Night suddenly reconfigures the viewpoint from No-Man's Land back to the But does a Human Form Display grieving families: "Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds, / And To those who Dwell in Realms of day ( 1 2 0-1 32 )21 each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds " ( 1 3-1 4).16 The shifts and turns are Wordsworthian, as is the writing of W. G. Sebald, whose On The evocation of the impermanence of perception ( "Which was Born in the Natural History of Destruction positions us in an impossible, al­ a Night to perish in a Night" ) breaks up the rhythm into rapid pyrrhics most unspoken point of view, as fictional as it is urgent, inside Dresden that undermine the solidity of the basic pulse. Seeing becomes not a and Hamburg as they are being bombed to smithereens at the end of view of the Beyond (sick or not) from a local vantage point, for the the Second World War.l? local has swallowed up everything in the human form divine: a hard­ "To see a World in a Grain of Sand" is to j uxtapose the content with won victory in which the narrator generalizes the passionate militancy the frame in a highly critical manner. Writing "Auguries of Innocence " of what is "in his face " against the shadow play of state terror. This is in a time of almost totalitarian surveillance and paranoia, during a par­ ecological politics, and it is no surprise that violence toward animals ticularly oppressive moment of the Napoleonic Wars, Blake imagines makes an appearance as Blake enumerates canaries in the coal mine of how the tiniest particularity can relate to the grandest generality: "A institutionalized violence. Blake's radical leaps are a surprising form of Robin Red breast in a Cage / Puts all Heaven in a Rage " (5-6 ); "A dog realism. In contemporary Colorado, the nuclear "missile field " exists 150 . Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . 151 amidst real estate. Some people actually have missile silos in their back­ ical doctrine o f Being's priority over thought, i n the 'transcendence' of yards, complete with soldiers on hair-trigger alert. The state j ams up Being, the materialist echo reverberates from a vast distance."23 against civil society j ust like the couplets of Blake's poem. Areas such as food studies, emerging by the side of traditional work We have read four war poems that have something to say about to an in the humanities, and sometimes connected to the sciences, are to be age of war against life forms. It is almost possible to show how any text encouraged. A direct approach to the object-where did it come from, could deliver a radical message, not because of the presence of some where is it going ?-will help people understand ecological politics, special property in the text (the literalism of ecomimesis, for example), without appealing to a bstract nature. But this materialism is prone to but because of the absence of one. Almost possible, not only because it monism: reducing the world of two to that of one. Monism is not a seems like hard work getting certain texts to read this way (Mein good solution to dualism. We still need to esta blish a subtler sense of Kampf, a bus ticket), but because this proposition might presuppose the what " body," "mass," and "matter " might mean; and for that matter, very radicalism it is " finding " in the text as an obj ect of ideological en­ materialism.24 Idealism and materialism can both generate flat worlds j oyment. These problems inhere in Benj amin's montage technique. In in which there is no otherness. If ecology without nature has taught us his (non)monumental study of the space of consumerism in early anything, it is that there is a need to acknowledge irreducible otherness, nineteenth-century Paris, the Arcades proj ect, Benjamin shows how whether in poetics, ethics, or politics. sheer j uxtaposition can speak volumes. Benj amin practices a form of Ecomimesis wants us to forget or lay aside the subject-obj ect du­ environmental criticism-not of bunnies and butterflies, but of the dis­ alism. Ecomimesis aims for immediacy. The less thinking or mediating tracting, phantasmagoric spaces produced by modern capital. Yet there we do, the better. Lest we scoff, notice that such notions are present in is a sense of predetermination, of knowing already what we will find. high experimental art, not j ust in kitsch. One of Alvin Lucier's early ex­ The text's non-coincidence with us is what is significant. Likewise, periments involved using electrodes to pick up alpha waves in his brain, the text of nature-it is the silence of the owls that speaks volumes which activated various instruments. Or think of action painting, drip a bout the environment in Wordsworth's " There was a Boy." Neverthe­ painting, happenings. less, these radicalizations of ecomimesis hold open the aesthetic dimen­ A beer mug in the shape of a president's head, a tea cup with a sion even as they seek to abolish aestheticization. In an era when the swastika on it, a tiny ceramic model of a Bambi-eyed fawn; such objects aesthetic has been commodified, and the commodity has been aestheti­ are mind-bogglingly inconsistent, and, as Clement Greenberg pointed cized, an empty frame or frameless unformed stuff retains the possi­ out long ago, can supply the kernel of powerful ideological fantasies, by bility of other ways of being. At a moment such as ours, radical no means limited to fascism.2s Ecomimesis evokes a sense of "sheer ecomimesis can only honestly appear as sheer negativity. stuff," of sprouting enjoyment-the sinthome. Sheer stuff, historically, is for someone: the name we give to it is kitsch, which is really a way of saying " other people's enjoyment." Though the German etymology is Radical Ecological Kitsch obscure, consider the high-handed dictionary definition: "Art or objets Finding out where your breakfast came from can reveal social patterns d J art characterized by worthless pretentiousness."26 I use kitsch in con­ on a global geographical scale. When it comes to delineating the envi­ tradistinction to camp. Some people confuse the two. While camp ronment, simple materialism has a lot going for it. Living beings all ex­ refers to an " ironic" (distanced) appropriation of a bygone aesthetic change substances with their environment(s). Any field of study that commodity, kitsch indicates the unalloyed enjoyment of an obj ect not takes metabolism as one of its objects is bound to generate straightfor­ normally considered aesthetic in a "high" sense. Commodities pass ward environmental images. This includes the study of food and diet. through different phases. Some objects are born camp, some achieve it, " Oh! for a beaker full of the warm south" says Keats ( " Ode to a and some have camp thrust upon them.27 Nightingale," 1 5 ), depicting the idea of terroirJ the notion that grapes Kitsch is unashamed about its status as a mass-produced commodity. taste of where you grow them.22 For all his mysteriousness, Heidegger And many works that have been mechanically reproduced would count offers an ambient materialism in his idea of Umwelt: "in the ontolog- as kitsch. How many student dorm rooms are adorned with that classic There is something of the fetish in kitsch.152 . Kitsch is immersive. is inseparable from the eruption of inhumanity. It nates in the happening. All become art-canvas and mere tones-it becomes its own enemy. where we can see " brighten" the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly al­ leviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and the pipes ? Kitsch exerts a fascinating. a condition of being spell bound between parameters helplessly repress aesthetic semblance and thereby re­ by its dominating quality. Through the tiny gestures of the despite itself. This renewed reifi­ of irony. Yet something frightening lurks in the song of cally to a form of "naturalism.28 For Adorno. Adorno is addressing a consequence he identifies in Ben­ re-mark. "the barbaric literal­ " ambient" music from Muzak. no feeling person in whom something of become popular in British gardens for its sonic properties. The allergy to aura. structed the difference Eno struggles to maintain. Mini­ tence that is both dominating and dominated: "The song of birds is malism is now a way of decorating suburban kitchens. downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and it has no power except for the love we invest in it." produced " in spite of the absence of birds precisely because it is not a song but obeys the spell in which it is representational objectivity and expression " : enmeshed. the European tradition survives fails to be moved by the sound of a Adorno commented on such experimentation by linking it specifi­ robin after a rain shower. which he describes as "familiar tunes ness of what is aesthetically the case." It poses the Decades beforehand. It is often synesthetic. and phantasmagorical guilt are inextricably inter­ gain a purposive aspect that Kant ruled out of the aesthetic proper. Is experimental art already aware that it is ventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of kitsch. in a dialectical twist. twined. Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie had already decon­ problem of how the subject relates to the object in a striking manner. on this view. is the domination of Crudely physicalistic procedures in the material and calcula ble relations nature-but also. to j ump about contemporary avant-garde and pop music. a Monet water lilies painting? How many bient Music retains these qualities. what separates high art from kitsch is often j ust the price of admission High experimental art becomes its opposite-a "second naturalism "­ to a gallery. whereas my ambience is richly ambiguous and full cape." Atmosphere. Nowadays."29 The copying of nature. idiotic pull . "nature " denotes a phase of exis­ eliminated the distinction between high and low sound art. Bam boo has found beautiful by everyone. He likes kitsch. your nature objectification. In its worry about the aura and kitsch. it finds that Brian Eno's Ambient 1 : Music for Airports attempts to distinguish it has reduced itself to an even more reified thing.3 2 only maintains the powers invested in it. Witness the gyrations in The Wire magazine. like a souvenir. the naturalism Adorno speaks about? Or is this kitsch quality a doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music. Ambient Ivlusic is intended to enhance these. and to re­ aesthetically the case. be­ arranged and orchestrated in a lightweight and derivative manner " : comes a specific vibration. veal the truth of their positedness.31 nearest thing in modern culture to the shamanic ritual object. high environmental art polices the boundaries between itself jamin's criticism of the "aura" of high art. for instance-are regulating environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncracies. The journal mode tries to drop out of the aesthetic dimension cation. Kitsch is the and a space to think . art tries to de-reify itself. The sleeve notes to off the canvas and out of the concert hall. Ecology witho ut Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature • 153 example of ecomimesis. the di­ that prose and all those illustrations in A Sand County Almanac are rect and false continuation of purposeful rationality. Am. It is a labor of love: you have to "get into it. and thus on the and music software such as Pro Tools and Reason have reduced or notion of ecomimesis. not even a recherche one. My Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of own procedures-a literalist view of what tone is. This tendency culmi­ meant to melt our hearts. The disappearance of this positedness Kitsch is the object of disgust. We could even measure it with subsonic mi­ crophones and speed it up to within the range of human hearing. from which no art today is able to es­ writing is distasteful. As soon as the artwork fears for its purity so fanatically that it loses faith in its possibility and begins to display outwardly what cannot There is a point to nature writing. 3 D It must fall out of the aesthetic for into their autonomous nexus left behind a ura as a reflex of human self­ aesthetic j udgment to mean anything. a journal of lofty and commodified artworks. Powerful computers Kitsch is based on the idea that nature can be copied. retroactive effect? Do some works achieve kitsch while others are j ust . But in doing so. It wants to make us love nature. Whereas con­ hopelessly guilty as charged. And whereas their intention is to modern shopping malls feature a deconstructed look. to subvert the panoply of aesthetic distinctions. the regression of artworks to the barbaric literalness of what is altogether. environment. we should try another approach. to denounce nature doxical one of thoroughly delving into. on this dering nature. a distance that actu­ get out by the roof (high critique such as historicism ) commits us to the ally maintains the object of desire (or disgust) . writing as sheer cheesiness without the " class" of proper (aesthetic) the disgusting-fascinating sinthome of high.1 54 ."33 that kitsch is a "new and improved" version of the aesthetic. Trying to doing so we simply adopt a speculative distance.35 tainly often count as sparkling kitsch fantasy obj ects. Ecology without Nature itself risks becoming a deed that which holds things at a distance. totally fascinating. says Adorno. because the aesthetic is in­ and postmodern kinds). And trying to get out via the cism is in danger of re-establishing the very aesthetic dimension that it basement (delving into kitsch) just widens the aesthetic dimension. The uneasiness this causes flares up only in the face of extreme crudeness. nature writing tries to be a "new and improved" version view." it j ust ends up Nature writing is easy to dismiss as lowbrow. William Blake wrote children's songs and stories that turn out to be for adults. carefully. just a disavowal of kitsch that is. however. it would have to re­ heather are kitsch has a scope reaching far beyond the displayed subject main kitsch. the more secure. ecology is about collapsing distances ( between human and animal. In ren­ There seems to be no getting around it. intensely ings. and poignantly musical. its inner essence. because that would be The hardl y esoteric judgment that paintings of the Matterhorn and purple just another aesthetic pose. Is it about the hypocrisy of high art: possible for sentimentalism and critique to exist together? I am not talking about the ironization of kitsch as camp. whether under­ covers. uncannily. In this way. We are going to have tance-it is locked in a past whose otherness we are obliged to describe to admit it: we're stuck. By holding the art object at a dis­ erating a world of sentimental-sadistic sensations. In general. leaving the tasteful zone of nature imitations all properties. consumerist appreciation for the reified world of contaminating the beautiful art obj ect. For kitsch to be critical. unequivocally. although its distinctly non-mass-produced form denies pass. even identifying with. This denunciation would reproduce aesthetic distancing. With Kitsch. Throw away the Turner paint­ standable nor not. bad taste. matter: what is innervated in the response is. If theory-art. I am trying not to say personal. But in collapsing into the aesthetic. cool. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature • 155 born that way? And can kitsch be radical as kitsch? The liner notes to This is not to say that we should throw away our copies of The my copy of Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room suggest that it is high Norton Anthology of Poetry and start reading books with embossed kitsch: " [it] pulls the listener along with a process that. gen­ considers public enemy number one. The aesthetic itself is. then how much Finnegans Wake. Blake tells the story of a young girl who does not know her place in cleanliness to filter the "poisonous substance " of kitsch out of art. She lives a pastoral existence in a blissful idyllic landscape.3? One of the tests I applied consistently to theories sense does it make to rely on a strategy of reading that keeps re­ under analysis in this study was to ask how they would cope with a establishing (aesthetic) distance ? Adorno makes a poignant observation snow globe of one of the Elves in The Lord of the Rings movies. unhip. along with its objectal beauty cannot be copied. subject and object). its detailed.34 of normal aesthetic forms. Far from ploring all this time. All art becomes (someone else's) Instead of trying to escape kitsch only to be sucked back into its gravi­ kitsch. it is contaminated with aesthetic strategies that erase his­ In its attempt to outflank aestheticized ambience (both the ecocritical tory-its power as an object is magnified. new histori­ distancing that re-establishes the aesthetic. it would ironically become another form of kitsch. kitsch. There appears to be no way out. dust off the cute porcelain models of cows. power to a level of phobic fascination. critical art theory and writing. ultra-improved" version of the syndrome it has been ex­ toricism is exactly the reverse of what ecocriticism is afraid of. The green forest of German impressionism is of no higher Could there be such a thing as critical kitsch ? Children's stories cer­ dignity than those views of the Konigssee painted for hotel lobbies. is common to both "high" and " low" art forms. and not be hollowed out and worn as a design on a T-shirt. Adorno wants to exercise an ecology of it. like Lyotard's "nuance. tational field. but is . so­ Terry Eagleton asks how different literary theories would deal with ciety and natural environment. The Book of Thel ap­ such that the "tasteful zone " of the officially sanctioned aesthetic gets a proaches kitsch. In so doing. But. it raises the object's aesthetic nature. The problem with new his­ " super-new. seems perfectly natural. cartoonish watercolor illustrations. and highly ineffective. as if that would save the earth.36 life. that natural Its sentimental qualities would have to persist. This would be the para­ It would be very easy. the Death Ship takes his men's souls. also have a nonconcep­ ecocritique." the creatures'. 8-1 1 ) ) . They are deceptively "ecologocentric" realm. fascination identity? Here is a paradox. Wordsworth was far from simply disgusted with these immersive into a sound that dies away. . In a paratactic list. Thel is like the beautiful soul. Consumerism ambient. forms of "casual enjoyment. By operating as a modern trick­ stricken with continuation of poisoned life ." In the beautiful soul's world there is a place for is left "Alone. Thel is a ques­ carpet all alive " offers a mundane garden lawn for our close-up inspec­ tion mark amidst affirmative exclamations. The voice into the lawn in the way Wordsworth manages is extraordinary . Is the poem an erotic tuality onto the real. The Mariner's conceptu­ ster. Ambiguity itself can be aes­ tion. insofar as they take delight in the mass entertainment in Leicester Square." 38 She is all dressed up with nowhere to go. a plateau of tone that is a perverse tends to turn every object into the embodiment of the enjoyment of the ecorhapsody. often turning out to be little essays in poetics. This imposition has been read as falling within the version of a " Barbauldian moral hymn" ?39 Or are Thel's disembodied territorializing logic of imperialism (see the discussion of the poem in questions. a reflection in a sessed with phantasmagoria and the lurid kitsch of the Arcades.22 ). everything except uncertainty. and still into ideological consistency by the penetrative hailing of God's word. The "That stupid girl The!.41 clod of clay-describe themselves as natural: "naturally" interpellated Wordsworth maintained that art could be as immersive as this. all. These terms are also For the flcl11eur. . In this tion-the small rather than the outlandishly large. Wordsworth's response to the Panoramas in London deserves compar­ whose certainty Hegel brilliantly describes as " changed immediately ison. to shit or get off the pot. What is the matter with has been deformed into something deceptive. permit one to think and reflect. and the question of her disembodiment. and so did I" melancholia is an ethical act of absolute refusal. ecocritique is paradoxically closer to nature. Alan Bewell argues that colonialism and imperialism in reflections that productively trouble the still waters of ecologocentric the Romantic period produced tremendous anxiety about. But to delve em bodied sound emanating from her grave. . all alone" in a vast. the Mariner gives up the notion of imposing concep­ Midwestern vernacular. . but proximity in which it dissolves into a dancing field of ambiguous signs. The clod of clay "ponders" its existence (5. Thel is a her ? Blake's Thel describes herself in natural terms. something queer. a series of no's that fi­ (4.232 ) . The cloud falls as rain. 42 asks a series of disturbing rhetorical questions that evoke both the ma­ Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner suggests an ecological approach teriality of the body and the deceptiveness of perception.44 The Mariner em bodies all those conscious beings nally erupt in a bloodcurdling scream. deceptive properties. But nature by now ality is resonant in the sliminess of "a thousand thousand slimy . Ecology without Na ture Imagining Ecology without Nature . 157 somehow afflicted with melancholy sadness. from the earth.43 Could kitsch. and desire to dominate the earth's life-forms." gigantic depictions of landscapes without Those with whom Thel converses-a flower. Late Wordsworth poems. glass . like music in the air" ( 1 . in the exhaustion that. Thel is a figure for ecocritique. The Ancient very position of the beautiful soul that she so poignantly articulates. Which side is more "ecological. Thel screams that we could call an ethics of kitsch. Thel describes herself as various tricksterish forms of en­ other-even when it is the consumer's "own " thing. all objects achieve the status of kitsch. this pondering is elevated to a second power as a Heideggerian rumina­ To choose a lawn rather than a mountain range is itself significant-we tion upon destiny.6). destroying the aura of the aesthetic object by bringing it into a thetically contained. In a their miniaturized triteness. Kant's position is that pure art is and flees " back" to her original state (6. This nonconceptuality has been the basis of radical aes­ The juxtaposition of Thel's and her interlocutors' views is a form of thetics. even nonidentity can be made into identity. seem to aim for kitsch from another direc­ Hegelian world. a restricted economy in which elements of the simple. I myself am reconciled to the world with its cy­ Mariner shoots the albatross. enveloping viewers up and down a spiral staircase. "This lawn. and a aesthetic distance. At the end Thel encounters her "own" voice as a dis­ have established that they are the inverse of one another. panoramic ocean ( 4 .1 5 6 . with its affective glow. but those terms are sentimental figure who is nevertheless critical of her ideological world. His style bears uncanny similarities to They know who they are. a worm. in their own insertion into their environments. in fact theoretical Chapter 2 ) . Has nothing changed ? nonconceptual. Mariner deals a swift blow to the aesthetics of wilderness. as in the tual aspect that is even more radical? It is only at the point of utter standard reading. ingrained with figurative. a ecosystem are fed back perfectly into it without excess. alone. a cloud. To condemn Thel would be to inhabit the with. he cles of life and death. paradoxically. or Thel's ? Most readers end up telling Thel. Benj amin was ob­ vironmental anamorphic shape ( " Thel is like .23 8-23 9 ) .40 Her "And a thousand thousand slimy things / Lived on. 159 things. j ectivity (Sartre: "the revenge of the In-itself" ). The bourgeois subj ect would rule forever if fascination and horror Both stories are about excessively material stuff. luxury and cruelty. This involves invoking the underside . but in the 1 990s had been found to leak (the Waste Isolation Pilot sugary death of the For-itself (like that of a wasp which sinks into Project.45 The slimy things absorb the gaze into a teeming infinity his tacky "rime "-sound pattern or hoar frost? The hoary. rein­ we slough off in order to maintain subjects and objects. Sartre declares that the re­ an objectified world. the Mariner experiences some relief from the burden of his guilt: ject. The snakes are still slimy. rather than: "you'll get the fast to look more carefully." As dialup speed to God if you are nice to animals. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . who loveth well / subsequently objectified) . does that problem of what to do with one's slime (one's shit): "The slimy is my­ mean that he appreciates them aesthetically first? Despite his state of self. would have to and Frankenstein are gothic and tacky. tactile. the abj ect. too bright. Nuclear Guardianship politicizes spirituality as not an escape from. and decay. he blesses what before he found slimy and disgusting. itself? One word for this is Kristeva's abject. sticky-compelling our awareness of perception. or subverted in some other way ? I am sucked into a culinary itics is bound up with what to do with pollution. power) and gluchotes (sweetness ). 522 ) .53 But (other people's) kitsch is Shelley: her monster story undermines the myth of Romantic genius. too smelly. a salt deposit that was declared in the 1950s to be venge of the In-itself is threatening to the masculine subject: "the safe. is sliminess not the sacred. miasma. ambient element. of years to cease. 52 aesthetic) property of kitsch: glistening. indeed a spirituality. a formless. shit. Frankenstein trans­ pronounced with the distracted yet ironic casualness of a Californian gresses advanced repu blicanism (the doctor is already one of those) . concept of nature. clear bomb factory at Rocky Flats be swept under the Nevada carpet of also used in his antislavery writing on sugar. is the When the Mariner blesses the snakes " unaware" (4. but they are not to be abjected (and falling in love with your world. Otherwise the ecological collective to come will Nature i s not j ust a n Alpine place where everything i s equally splendid be captured by the fantasies of nation building that have haunted the and sublime. the plutonium whose release of poisoned light takes tens of thousands of This solution is fresh.49 So did Mary dera says that kitsch holds shit at bay. Their sliminess is not only the revenge of ob­ Both man and bird and beast" ( The Ancient Mariner 7 . too dull. glossy green."46 The "whatever" is crucial. bound to hold the slimy in view. Coleridge respected the tacky. beyond being living with whatever is alive. that a culture. is it to infect others ? Coleridge models the ultra-slow-motion way of 2 8 0 ) . declared Sartre and Lacan. art-matter as pure always resulted in spitting out the disgust obj ect. plasticized. in the mid-1 790s. he appreciated the abj ection. and velvet black. 5 1 4. Should radioactive waste from the nu­ between poetic hypsilatos (sublimity.158 . the taboo substance of life mind. In the same way. Is the point to digest his story (moral: don't shoot albatrosses! ) ? Or "Blue. Beyond its cuteness (a reified version of too quiet. schlup. 6 1 2-6 1 3 ) . probably old oak-stump " ( 7 . It goes beyond refraining from shooting albatrosses. the Mariner " accepts his participation as a dialup. artifice. "SO Ultimately. frosty quality and collectivity (Sartre: " a sly solidarity " ).5 1 Ecological pol­ forced. especially as it pertains to Coleridge's Romantic opposition that glisten. / They coiled and swam " (279. The tacky is the anaesthetic (un­ grow up around the tending of this abject substance." Being nice is the fast Stanley Cavell declares. We become infected with Nothingness. moreover.287). to wonder. not smelly enough-subverting aes­ Kantian beauty). should be stored above ground in monitored retrievable sugar with softness. given Coleridge's linkage. Bataille's informe. how­ of the poem is an allegory for the way the environment changes the ob­ ever.48 The Ancient Mariner storage. the "Hermit good" who is already way beyond the church on his " rotted Ecology without nature needs the openness of this whatever. The problem of human beingness. but a taking care of." a register reused in Sartre's disturbingly phobic Being and The Ancient Mariner i s compelled to repeat. At this very moment. Milan Kun­ ethics of calling sugar the crystallized blood of slaves."47 The Mariner's temporary solution to the rods from reactors. "He prayeth well. too loud. the qualities of the world What is the place of the aesthetic here ? Is it being transcended. but also an invitation Love itself i s the true form o f prayer. The " things " become " snakes. it seems. or WIPP) ? How about the planned destination for spent fuel the j am and drowns in it). slime: things reference. Ecological art is duty extension. as op­ Guardianship (advocated by Joanna Macy) assert that substances like posed to the sublime upward gaze of the masculine mountain-climber. inert. high school student. Yucca Mountain in New Mexico ? What does one do problem of his guilt and isolation is an immersion in the aesthetic expe­ with the leakiness of the world? Deep green notions such as Nuclear rience of gluchotes: a sugary sentimentality whose gaze is down. an element in kitsch ecological imagery maintains this thetic propriety. But skepticism does not imagine alternatives. nature is a significance. cellence. beautiful isolation. even when the ideological machinery is running smoothly. 56 sure in it? Delving into ambience is about exploring the aesthetic.1 60 . are all celebrated unequivocally. tends toward biolog­ ative " or " critical" means.54 Ecology without Nature has argued consistently that the phe­ ality. the literal content of the Picking up Bad Vibrations: Environment.60 Ecofeminism. Even ecological apoca­ the earth as impenetrably real. so Ben- . more free and just. Ecological criticism wants desperately to market new brands reading Jane Austen becomes an adaptive survival trait. as the lypticism has a streak of wishful thinking. or has positively shunned. There are some skeptical ment itself entirely runs the risk of beautiful soul syndrome. the pulsing. to focus tance would consist in owning up to the contingency of one's own upon Benj amin. Postmodernism generates a population growth ideas at a distance. Instead of is a field of vectors. Atmosphere text. 161 of ecomimesis.5f! All is nomenological and existential approaches flesh out. The qualities of ecomimesis affect our ideas of what "neg­ a pparently the most progressive ecocritical genre. in Dana Phillips's The Truth of all positions as flawed. safe in the (non)position that is its own resis­ criticism has either not engaged with. potent pitch. This clue is the secret of suffering curled up inside the very dimension of the object. For conservative ecocriticism. Its inconsistency has the quality of a clue." how about is surely better than the rather watered-down Habermasian version that trying a negative path? This is also problematic. The tively. the author. Just as Thomas De Quincey. It could see comments on ecocriticism. of medicine. eco­ fect. the Cartesian view of nature as an automatic machine. shifting qualities of ambient poetics. and as distant and intangible. What better time. radical kitsch exploits dualism. to be able to see the future-an within it makes a success of failure-a Romantic solution that makes augury of experience as opposed to innocence. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . The text's significance is conceived as a scarcity (of course Hegel means this ironically) . The collapse of dis­ "theory"-notably deconstruction. the Romantic consumerist par ex­ idea of field explored in Chapter 2 gains a much more fruitful reso. verse of mechanical reproduction. then. if only Criticism puts it.55 In Derrida's words. as the introduction to Karl Kroeber's Ecological Literary allow speculation on other. Left eco­ the distance." is un­ in the negative. who has been claimed variously by deconstruction and ecological desires. rather than make not lost in a consumerist universe. and al­ modern theorists " needed was a thorough soaking in a midwestern though it has been the tool of many a potent ideology. is ironically a superb theorist of environmental art." The view of nature according to the detects in modern cultural forms is what he and Adorno call force ethics of kitsch has more in common with the standard Cartesian du­ field-a cluster of apparently unrelated elements that resonates with alism than New Age or Deep Ecology. except its own. states of affairs. Marxism. The peculiarly charged atmosphere Benj amin tween "I" and " slimy things. While in these views. The idea of a historical "moment " grasps the im­ trying to melt it away. This is far from saying that it could be our salvation or critically celebrated. since aes­ Conservative ecocriticism translates ecological crisis into a program theticization maintains the beautiful soul-hence its apparent beauty for reading the text. Coupled with this enforcement of reality is a repeti­ ecological art falls short of a nature that necessarily cannot be included tive claim to be a ble to spy ecotopia. as a theorist with whom ecocritique could engage produc­ Benjamin and Adorno raised ambience to a new. if only because the junk that sur­ obsolete. Claiming that valid is now emerging. If all forms of positive ecological poetry are ical essentialism. rather nance i n Benj amin. a uni­ rounds us is so inconsistent. The beautiful soul holds all that must be conserved. Collapse of different and deviant interpretations that must be curbed. and beautiful soul syndrome is cut at the root. tance to coming down firmly somewhere or other. as if what "post­ Although environmental writing is historically determined. for instance. the difference be­ portance of momentum.59 The authority of nature. and remain untouched in per­ Ecology. negative disaster occurring. This argu­ criticisms have not developed properly yet. the referent. who politicizes it: the potential for political action than trying to make pretty or sublime pictures of nature. At least we can witness the modern forces against which it is raging. Is it too much to suggest that we may even take plea­ theology establishes a hyperessential being beyond being itself. Moreover. kitsch ecology establishes an existential life sub­ sphere that erupts out of the "homogeneous empty time " of official re­ stance.57 This Jetztzeit or nowness is an intense signifying atmo­ mysterious harmony. though the radical utopianism of 1 9 70s ecofeminism compromised by setting up an idea of nature "over there. ecomimesis can thunderstorm. A biological basis is sought for social forms: medicine. Aura. Aestheticism is the art-religion of distance. especially of "place. as we can capacious ability to explore all kinds of ways of perceiving war and na­ by an auratic work of art. which attenuates the notion of labor and is a reflec­ prominence. functional-technical ob­ aesthetics and atmosphere. When people are involved in their work."62 All realms of Like the meditation described by Trungpa Rinpoche in Chapter 2. The environment Zerstreuung is the synesthetic mixture of "half-conscious " hearing evoked in nature writing is itself this aura. Wordsworth's narrator which casts its shadow over you. loath to say that Zerstreuung puts back together art and craft. we can be aesthetically captivated by them. It needs to be experience. a quality of . in the medievalism of a William Morris. If. The aura is in peril. since. dissemination. de-distances and thus de­ dispersal. veneration and value in which they are bathed. A rigorous analogy ? ) with an (aesthetic) experience of the natural world. dissolving the subject-object dualism upon tivity or reflexive phenomena such as irony. as manly . distracted in them by story of Margaret and her husband which the poem also includes. Ecocritique needs a figurehead as tion of alienated labor. precisely. for that matter. Benjamin's definition of aura and soft gazing and "careless " physical absorption of the "dreaming is. fascinated with the consumerism that brought De Quincey to work and leisure." I am would develop his key notions of aura and distraction (Zerstreuung). and " schlock".1 62 . you experience the aura of those models for us something that is not so easy to think: an intelligent ab­ mountains. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at distraction. . things At least two terms Benjamin developed are relevant to the study of are not even kitsch. There is no such Age animism). in its day-to-day tasks.65 Zerstreuung is the which depend both aestheticization and the domination of nature. or ZerstreuungJ on the other hand. however Wordsworth shows us how to look " side-long" ( 1 6). of that branch. Ambience. art are affected."61 Benj amin evokes ecological representa­ sorption that inoculates us against the aesthetic moralizing of the awful tion. 63 Heidegger resists the implications of this distraction. kitsch. Zerstreuung is a fundamental quality of Heidegger's DaseinJ but tlingly uncanny. 14. post-Romantic distinction between art. while resting on a summer afternoon. because it decisively altered the audience's distance toward bliss (Simpson: "happy situatedness " ) of Heidegger's peasant woman. being involved in it already. they significant on the left as Heidegger has been on the right. as the unique phenomenon of a distance. says Benj amin. An ecological-critical use of Benj amin jects that are seized and enjoyed and discarded without "respect. . In particular the condition that anthropology applied to the "primitive" other. Since we are not living in the mountains. Zer­ product of contemporary capitalist modes of production and technolo­ streuung also undermines the capitalist-ideological difference between gies. Chaplin lamented the introduction of sound deeply into it. Yet precisely for this reason it holds a utopian aspect. Art as distraction does not obey the normative cUlTed yet. because ture and social conditions. a the film. "thing" as the environment. Sampling and recording has done for music what pho­ Zerstreuung is a way of getting over deception. and produce. is star­ ingly. Involvement the atavistic authority of feudalism or "prehistoric" primitivism (New in the world is a negation process. . very close range by way of its likeness. rather than falling more tography did for painting. a dissolution of able to argue for a progressive view of ecology that does not submit to the reified object and. for craft now has a Romantic aura all its jamin's writing on technical reproducibility use the analogy (but is it an own. also a definition of hypostasized Nature (with a capital n) . evoking nature in describing artifice: "We de­ Cottage ( 1 1 . its reproduction. Zerstreuung thus contrasts sharply with the meditative into cinema. instead. for instance. The aura recycling policy would enable rather than hinder the "disrespectful " is a form of am bience that attaches to works of art. which we explored in Chapter 1. how to maintain a close [the obj ect] may be. is an ally of ecocritique. man" in the evocative opening paragraph of Wordsworth's The Ruined The definition is chiastic. Zerstreuung invites relaxed but critical awareness. fine the aura . an atmosphere of tossing away of ecological schlock. It requires. the reified subject. we are helping people figure out that the ecological "paradise " has not oc­ not separate from it. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . which The tantalizingly brief and very suggestive remarks on aura in Ben­ Romanticism had split apart. but decidedly non-aura tic. . and produce as experience. The Ruined Cottage is a scream whose very " contemporary masses" wish "to bring things 'closer' spatially and hu­ quietness and meditative absorption make it terribly loud. a dissolving.64 Amaz­ role of the acousmatic voice. Zerstreuung does not imply pacifying intellectual produc­ aestheticizes the object. that we be nostalgic for the future. you critical sense even in the very moment of perceiving things as " soft" and follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch "distant" ( 1 7-1 8 )-as auratic and aestheticized. bathing the picture in an aquarium of sound. 1 5 ). can indeed function in a powerfully critical way. 1 63 jamin. irony. ambient music in corporate art demands concentration from the spectator. and especially nonvisual sense organs. A brief tiq ue makes us notice contradictions and inconsistencies.69 This form is soeuvrement) developed in Scott Shershow's reading of Jean-Luc Nancy enabled by two phenomena: synesthesia and the inherent emptiness of and Blanchot. thetic things. has generated ever more virulent forms of aestheticization. if not entirely erased. the theorist of technological development par ex­ that experience is fragmented and inconsistent. Aesthetics derives from perception against the machine-and a quotidian response to modern sensory ( Greek aisthanesthai� "to perceive " ) . Benj amin's argument cellence supplies thinking with resources for ecological critique. summary of these energies would be the notion of " unworking" (de­ The second type of distraction is critical absorption. escapism proves to be more radical contemplating the aesthetics of the panoramic. The aggressive speed of modern failure to grasp something. collectivity. to create a compelling phantasmagorical sheen. including the human species. and other media are fused together looking out for actually existing species. synesthesia makes clear In a splendid irony."6 8 This applies to space) . distrac­ from giving us a smoother ride. in which the productive energies of boredom. all aesthetic solutions to the problems posed by the modern to which here is both objectively and onto logically in question. asserts Ben­ in hand to produce forms that unmercifully de-distance the object. The States has pioneered experiments in j ust how much ignorance people " embedded" reporters in Iraq were virtual couch potatoes passively can tolerate. Dis­ about art in our times works its way through the aesthetic dimension all traction hesitates between a form of politicized consumerism-flaneurs the way to the perceptual level." companiment" that masked the screams in the concentration camps.67 But distraction is nevertheless something we must explore. here " -I put the phrase in quotation marks since we will see the extent Anyway. is the "commonplace " "that the masses seek distraction whereas to reify that very de-distancing (reality TV. and other waste products of capitalism are released. It goes in our mouths sumerism and environmentalism. But re­ world without boundaries. The haunting ambience typified in the space of Benj amin's Arcades is The first type of distraction is the ignorance born of living in a a dialectical image. but "right cept. without goal." is a contemplative approach avoid measuring concepts by the "extremity" that eludes them. ambient sound of bul­ than sheer avoidance. Food is profoundly synesthetic. 1 65 nonstupefied absorption in the environment. Children's toys are good examples of synes­ of a radical openness to other beings. even the " deep " sorts-we could do while we look around the table. and By connecting what ecocriticism forbids us to connect-con­ smell all at once. world end up reproducing the commodity form. Ecocritique should aim not only the object. Far from generating the smoothness of the Wagnerian total at globalized capitalism. been the story of how bodies. evoking a range of responses from eyes. j amin claims that "the tasks which face the human apparatus of per­ There are two types of distraction. Ever since the Romantic period. This makes distraction a very dangerous con­ nature "over there " outside the city or the factory gates. The synesthetic manifold makes it im­ fresh ecological criticism. The most extreme example would be Adorno's: the "musical ac­ ecology and anti-consumerism. conceived not as reified ination between them. Just as the beautiful soul is the subj ective form of ambience. touch. In this state of affairs. ambience. private property. Ignorance is one of the central plex product of automation. only jamin. Technology and ideology strive hand be otherwise. so dis­ have been relegated and gradually forgotten. an impulse that is more arts-and-crafts than Luddite.66 But that is ultimately aesthetic rather than ethical or political-concen­ there is another aspect of ambience. Ben­ traction is the subjective form of the collapse of aesthetic distance. and there is a knife-edge of discrim. The contemporary " slow movement. where music. but also the "Nature " that gets in the way of work of art. Far ally vivid world. awake to the irony that a national park is as possible to achieve the distance necessary to objectify and aestheticize reified as an advertisement for an SUV. The basic complaint against distraction. easy-clean environment. the deceleration process that is ecocri­ tion.1 64 . One glimpses in radical environmental art the possibility the perception dimension. But the history of the aesthetic has input. a com­ channel-surfing. theater. ception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical . Ambience contains unfulfilled promises of a technological existence is destroying the planet as we knew it. At least art offers the possibility that things might lets ripping through human flesh. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . one that precisely points out our trating rather than being distracted. a de-aestheticized but nevertheless perceptu­ clining our aircraft seat to contemplate this is not a good solution. which praises the which he takes as an analogue for the way in which one might try to idea of deceleration in " appreciating life. ears. and new ways in which ideology is enforced in the modern world and the United media. specting other species and ecosystems involves a choice. This choice is Even more strictly. borrowing the Gestalt idea of the phi phenom­ fhanceJ that is." " Reception in a (consistent and unique) because an act of framing differentiates itself state of distraction" would be more akin to walking through a building from the other smells that are pervading the vicinity. would be lost. "Auto­ space with many dimensions. In the perception dimension. like duction of perception to a sequence of dots enables us to demystify it. seeing. But instead of confirming a holistic world in appears utterly direct: this is a red ball. They are mastered gradually the inside of the frame. touching. tasting. But a pro­ which object and subj ect fit each other like a hand in a glove. also appears on summed up by Bruno Latour. Identity means ture " outside the problem of global warming that will come and fill us " being the same as" oneself (Latin idemJ "the same as " ). atmosphere is subj ect to the same paradox as saturated with contingency (it is our choice) and desire (we want some­ identity-it does for the weather what identity does for the idea of self. Thinking like this retains In his project for an aesthetics of nature. This is elegantly entiates between what is inside and outside its frame. A map of atmospheric momentum would exist in a phase to having a better ethical stance toward species and ecosystems. thing to be otherwise ) . the than to contemplating a canvas. at the level of ecology. under the guidance of tactile appropriation. words in a text. but in a paradoxical way. Since an at­ in on how to vote. The neglect of temporality in thinking mated" critique-sitting back. Phenom­ of an illusion of something lying " in between"-a moving stillness. Cli­ have to listen to front and center. both differing and deferment. You cannot take in an installation mate (as in climate change) is a vector field that describes the mo­ like a painting on a wall. and letting the system do it for about the weather is why it is practically impossible to explain to you-is j ust ignorance. Ambient music is music you do not The notion of atmosphere needs to expand to include temporality. which differ­ cannot exist outside the dilemma we are facing. A shower of rain is atmospherically different if you stand in it traction as a special aesthetic appreciation." in the strong Lacanian sense. We could regard dis­ temporal. is not utterly still. which is itself a manifold of bodily sensation and events hap­ itics of distraction. Current neurophysiology is developing a quantum Perception is a process of differentiation. It involves Derridean dif­ theory of perception. This is urgent. Gernot Bohme has sug­ aesthetics as a basis for ethics. since art is now being produced that This is a matter not of ontological nicety. we can't tell what nate conceptual contents. which is read over time. alone. wants to internalize distraction. the first kind of distraction. hovering nicely in between for two hours. Our capacity to " make things The perception dimension is effectively devoid of independent. 70 am bient stasis we were examining in Chapter 1 is yet another example Perceptual events only appear in difference to one another. A cloud of flower scent is only " an" atmosphere by habit. as Bohme allows. something " is " yet. is a phenomenolog­ tion. underpins this directness. gested that " atmosphere " is inherently differential. By moving from the emptiness of perception guarantees that perceptual events are not one atmosphere to another we become aware of them. the re­ cess by which objects of sense perceptions differ from each other. smelling. relaxing. The re-mark. that is a quiet sound. we need to keep looking. And. enology has delineated how perception involves a dynamic relationship Even conventional visual art. writing on the 1997 Kyoto meetings to . A certain passion and desire are associated with percep­ orous enough. as opposed to five minutes. we are being mentum of the atmosphere-the rate at which the atmosphere keeps asked to bathe in the environing ocean of our surroundings as a means changing. it is likely that distraction will become a political pening outside the body-then it is inevitably not only spatial but also version of the "new and improved " syndrome. The "same" atmosphere is aestheticizing objectification and tuning out altogether. There is a quality of "to enon-the way the mind j oins up strobing. Perception the illusion of movement. Ecology has taken us to a place of "no metalan­ mosphere requires a perceiver. its guage. by contemplation.1 66 . but of political urgency. Since atmosphere. belonging has dissolved into longing. j ust as a text requires a reader. At some level. ical thing-since it involves consciousness as well as an object of some Unless we are rigorous about perception and the philosophy and pol­ kind. In this respect. flickering images to obtain come " built into hearing. with its objects. that is. 167 means.?1 This is not rig­ just nothing. There is no place outside the sphere of this con­ For something to resemble itself it must be different-otherwise it tingent choice from which to stand and assess the situation-no "na­ would just be itself and there would be no resem blance. determi­ out" is also an ability to hold things in a beyance. Even the position of knowing that identity is always a matter of resem blance.72 Curiously. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . Any critical bite never the " same" as itself. re­ people that glo bal warming might result in pockets of cooling weather. ."78 Having said all that. The . 169 tackle global warming: "Politics has to get to work without the tran­ If it opens. it opens much too much. in an even more com­ its ultimate paragon. . If atmosphere is a function of rhythm then it is literally a vibe: a mind are not ones of fullness but of emptiness. promoted in medieval Neoplatonic thinking on the nature of God. to match the j ectivity "can break down the hardening of subjectivity . In Romantic. but that dissolves its form. ecology must engage allow the subj ect to catch . but that at least can be made to vibrate. paradoxical champion of verse and combine the fantasy thing of Romantic ecology-the resonant aura. to per­ Raymond Williams points out with great force that the ultimate wilder­ ceive its own limitedness and finitude' and so to experience the critical ness experience is conveyed in Wordsworth's depiction of "a man possibility of thinking otherness. self-preservation fall away. It is time to pay another visit to Martin Heidegger. This takes us to a strange point." What remains after our long delve hands. a tremor of the "1. lyrical atmosphere is a func­ I take my section title from the signs and audio instructions (intoned in tion of rhythm: not j ust sonic and graphic rhythm (the pulse of marks the Queen's English) on the London Underground. swallowing us up . for precisely idea of place with the thinking generated by critical consumerism and - the reason that it may return with a vengeance. at most a subj ective experi­ sphere is the material induction of this shudder. of the possibility of letting countryside. It is as if there is a critical dis­ " 1. the lyrical quintessence of kitsch. in real terms. the end result is abstract boot). to watch the space on the page and sounds in the mouth). cancels the distance held by the subject"-"For a few mo­ about this counterintuitively. however momentarily. Contra Heidegger. an empty or arbitrary demarcation." In the words of Adorno and Robert Kaufman. . then. the earth quakes. modern. in [city] streets.77 that it [the '!'] itself is'. ."75 Casey's The Fate of P lace tells of how place went from being a fully Adorno probably would have gone crazy at the mere thought of it.76 Embodied in the To dissolve the aura."73 quality that Blanchot calls the "earth" of poetry. But it appears so. by making us feel "embedded" in a can't quite get rid of. earth does not stand still in lyric. and take a stroll in the philosophical ments the I becomes aware. . but also the rhythm of imagery. an intersection between Benjamin. setting up a sphere given off by ecomimesis. By collapsing the distance. It started with the idea of infinity. Might one do something per­ relentless critic of the aura. The j uxtapositions in Wordsworth and Blake attention to gaps (including the clothing store we visited in Chapter 2 ) . as if alone. expressionist eco-schlock that would look good on the wall of a bank. Seeing it with clear. and postmodern subject quake. it somehow paradoxically returns aura to art way that does not strengthen its aggressive resolve (like a hammer or a with a vengeance. set up complex rhythms between different kinds and levels of framing "Mind the gap" can also signify that the experiences o f place and of device. But what would a slow-motion approach to aura look like ? We could Mind the Gap : Place in Question start by ruthlessly standing up to the intoxicating atmosphere of aura. wholly different from space. I take it to mean not simply paying the rhythm of concepts."74 In Adorno's words. a careful appreciation of aura laire ? It should not be impossible in principle. But as David Harvey pleads. "culinary" form. analyzing them would rather than a mystical spirit-it is as mystical as a heady perfume or help the critique of the aesthetic beautiful soul. dirt. let us go shudder . If we get rid of aura too fast. as well as the industry. thus permitting 'the "I. the Baude­ modified. "The aesthetic walking. [dissolving] other ways in which the country and the city have been kept apart in 'the subject's petrification in his or her own subjectivity' and hence can poetics and ideology. the De Quincey." once 'shaken. specific frequency and amplitude of vibration. phantasmagoric illusions of city life. in such a world at our fingertips. this tremor of sub­ course of the country and a critical discourse of the city. and noise. It is a material product Since the aesthetic is caught in ideas of place. Adorno insists that we not get rid of aura too soon. ecomimesis is a "new and improved " version of the aesthetic into the fake otherness of ecomimesis is the fragility of an "I" that we aura.1 68 . a place away from the enervating. Strangely. Romantic ecology seeks narcotic fumes. the slightest glimpse beyond that prison with urbanization to have critical relevance in the twenty-first century. even utilitarian eyes. between the platform and the train. to a non­ but I am suggesting here that the strictly vibrational rhythm of atmo­ thing. and Adorno. . the ence rather than a concrete entity. This is the very scendence of nature. fledged philosophical concept. the urban stroller. since nature is already the can open up the Erschiitterung or "shaking" of the subject. It does not reveal a world or a destiny. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . is rigorously to interrogate the atmo­ sonic and graphic materiality of the text. so actual capitalism and colonialism turned feudal and vrement (unworking). to pose a question is to reveal how our bioregionalism and other Romantic 10calisms. mathemat­ tionary wing of ecological criticism. meditation on the work of art as a special place begins. where little fragments of place persist like homeless Instead of running away from Heidegger.1 70 .81 Only then can progres­ sense of place and what we mean by terms such as question) aporia) or sive ecocriticism establish a firm basis for exploring environmental j us­ wonder) are interconnected. but to strengthen it. but that we've been looking and most resistant to modern and postmodern decenterings and decon­ for it-in the wrong place ? structions. If we do not undertake their task. We must put the idea of place complicated? What if we had not exactly lost something? Surely the into question. mono­ Place need not be a thing. mathematical points (Newton. with its necessary abstractions of time and space. But what if the story were more name of a politics and poetics of place. via an ironic nega­ tice issues such as environmental racism. for instance) be­ any chance of success. to de-reify the idea of the thing. a sense of the "thingliness" of things understanding place as a provisional yet real "thing. and in a wider sense ical axioms or empirical obj ects. until now. and Locke). ecological thinking might pose an­ be examined. left scholarship should en­ people huddling against the bleak surfaces of consumerist convenience. Phenomenology has come closest to nomena become available to us. or questioning attitude. If we restrict our examina­ Notice the difference here between stating that place as such does not tion to the citation of ecological " content"-listing what is included exist at all. Heidegger tries and other harmful ecological phenomena. we couldn't lose neath which thinking cannot or should not delve. transformed ob­ themselves. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . colonialism. counter him all the more rigorously in seeking to demystify place. The work of art tells us something Place is caught up in a certain question. Rather than wondering how to bridge the unbridgeable gap between Instead. thorough critique of. and imperialism. at best a dream to which Romantic of being as destiny and project is only undermined when we think of poetry could longingly aspire. or desoeu­ idea of place. 171 evacuation of place reached its apex in the idea of space as a system of which can easily assimilate ecological thinking to its ideological ends. indeed. shopping outlets. The aesthetic. a "place " where phe­ tioning. must not be allowed to fall into the hands of reactionaries. tional ecological criticism. A left ecology must "get" even further " into" place than other kind of question. the central fixations upon which localism bases its claims must the beautiful soul and the world. nuclear radiation. tive path. solidifies this very openness. and to use it in a more codings of place will keep rearing their ugly heads. Place. turning history into thing as a perceptual manifold of substance and accidence. In the rush to em­ place because we never had it in the fist place ? What if the idea of place brace an expanded view." Heidegger has covered over or denied in the notion of the thing as formed matter (a most powerfully described place as open and beyond concept. must form part of the foundation of a thoroughly transna­ our reach. conventionally. if anything. global warming. virulent not in order to discard it. or. if ecological politics has there is a solid metaphysical bedrock (Nature or Life. ideals structurally beyond perception. reading of the peasant shoes poetically renders the way in which these . or the degger. Globalization compels us to rethink the idea of place. delving more deeply. succinctly. mass extinction. But Hei­ derivation.80 Here is the utopian side of ambience's imag­ pre-feudal places into j ust more capital. It takes the form of a ques­ about the nature of the thing. Descartes. It is with the idea of thing that Heidegger's cultures. What if globalization. the aesthetic dimension and even theory itself. revealed that place was never very coherent in the first place? This basis is a strong theoretical approach. and saying that its existence is not as an independent. hence an ecological criticism that resists the idea that loss must at least be recoverable in some way. Just as the concept of space colonized the humans and animals as connected in a profound inactivity. claims Heidegger. exist. defin­ and excluded in the thematics of the (literary) text-we hand over aes­ able object "over there " somewhere. the as a substantial "thing" with clear boundaries was itself in error? Not form of ecological thinking that seems most opposed to globalization that there is no such thing as place at all. Heidegger's destiny and leaving the way open for an extreme right-wing politics. the plangent. pollution. passed original laws to protect animals and (German) forests as ends in and the development of technologies such as mapping. but not in the way in which. from the status of equipment). It is an opening.79 Giorgio Agamben observes. What if. in the It seems we have lost something.the world that brought about mass hunger. The rise of com­ precisely because ecological thinking is highly aestheticized. that this thinking j ective place into a pie in the sky. is slippery be­ thetic form. Indeed. the age of "glocal" ining of rest and relaxation. The Nazis mercial capitalism. to the reac­ cause it exists. infamously. intense rhetoric of localism. He goes so question. Wordsworth's de­ technological telephone call. and to the "world" (the historical/cultural dimension in pastoral/idyllic evocations of place. the " breadth" of the sky." the stoni­ j ourney. Similarly.s3 Poetry is degger's language ) is interrupted. both inside and outside the art­ which the shoes are used and gain significance). which does appear tied to a heavy noise music to Debussy for relaxation). The objective correlative in the poem The shoes are not randomly chosen. Hanging finds an answer to the question of place . is imagined as an all-too­ the first time what it felt like to be lonely in a crowd. however. has an inbuilt questioning quality.86 So Heidegger tries to re-establish the idea of place. the philosopher engrossed in deep ecological assaults on Romantic environmentalism is a flavor of modern consumerist ide­ modern times. thus giving rise to the problem of dirty pair of peasant shoes rather than. for this sense of tentative exploration is the list. in other words. it is the mous station. We cannot help . but the peasant shoes are the ideological fantasy ob­ natural place. Heidegger could have used a pho. since his idea of over the poem. The earth actually in­ Heidegger turns the shoes inside out to reveal the environment in terrupts the world-Heidegger's term is "jut"-so that the more world which they come to exist. pair of sneakers made in a sweatshop and worn in the projects ? The en­ even in this little Edwardian poem about an overlooked place. 1 73 humble things gather together the entire environment. Even if it is tiny or intimate." which allows us to reflect upon temple. brilliantly demonstrated. There is an ideo­ earth. in their very primitivism. then. Place. a declaration that if we j ust think stroying it so effectively. Thomas's poem is an answer to a oeuvre. The poem delves into place is one of the most open and seemingly nonreified ones we could Adlestrop as the question hangs in the air of thought. its eyes getting imagine.ss Heidegger. In some deep sense. it very idea of openness. but an invitation to meditate on the place. the shoes are distinctly modern. the passengers are able to sense the place. for Heidegger. is potentially endless. and over the place. Indeed. a product of the "world " of Greek cultural/historical proj ects. Perhaps all the environmental Meyer Shapiro's argument that these are a city dweller's shoes under­ art being produced both in high art and in kitsch (from experimental mines the lyrical heft of the passage. the Heideggerian call of conscience. Heidegger tends secretly to side with technology rather than logical flavor to the substance of Heidegger's description.1 72 . closes the space. nonhistorical earth. is actually a symptom of the investment in the primitive and the feudal. As Avital Ronell ology. The express train necessarily traverses the space between cities. we could parody his view by Romanticism: countering the displacements of modernity with the pol­ declaring the obvious truth that the environment (earth) has become itics and poetics of place. It is thoroughly urban. When the " express train" stops " unwontedly" at the epony­ ness of the stone. on this view. for Heidegger. anachronism aside. vironmentalness of the shoes is a function of modern capitalist society Art simultaneously opens up the earth and carves out a world in that despite Heidegger's best efforts to disguise this fact." s4 Notice the first wrinkle in the Heideggerian view. something like a box-fresh the ambiguous role of technology.S? Heidegger answer). Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . "Yes " ( 1 ). But even on Heidegger's loss of the existing environment as noncultural. it actually saves the earth­ earth. implied in the first word. Place is the aperture of Being. the ambient sounds of the English countryside. turns out to work for the other side. Heidegger's description opens the ject of a certain regressive strain in nationalism.85 Heidegger. This is ironic. What remains of earth. the poisoned rain of modern life will come to a halt.90 scriptions of London are among the most "environmental" of his entire Now consider a further wrinkle. the social and tograph of a dam.82 In another essay. did he choose a we have. despite his stated intentions. ghostly resonance in the artwork itself. of the peasant woman. sets it "free into its own presencing. place is the very opposite of closing or wider. The gesture is always aware of its futility. even when it is born in the countryside. Place becomes a component of fascist ideology. But why. the Greek work. say. the more earth j uts through. S9 Cities are present in the negative. In fact. is enabled by a train opens the space it inhabits such that we perceive the "earth. Not necessarily a direct far as to state that we could not have space without place: the sureness question ( "What is Adlestrop ? " would be a Jeopardy-style question-as­ of place enables us to glimpse the openness of space itself. j ust as the sense of hearing in the poem expands outward into closure. when. own terms. It is more present precisely because humans have been carving it up and de­ a cry of the heart in a heartless world. the "world " of the train (in Hei­ bridge that makes possible the riverbank as a specific place. shoes to the "earth" (the things that are not worked on by or with Urban modernity and postmodernity are already included even in human hands). is the question. that The poet who told us how to wander lonely as a cloud also told us for which reminds us of our earthbound mission. is really a hard enough. Adlestrop. Edward Thomas's "Adlestrop. It is a form of Being. Beautiful soul syndrome is entangled with ambi­ diator. 93 other counties. a list that gestures toward infinity. where the Even if we are not living in a point-based universe. races and classes. a stretching of the gap centrate on it." here includes a sense of "there. and question mark." It is here.1 74 . logical uses of that) or mystical feudalism (we know the ideological uses open space. Hei­ bient sound. . between way to something more theoretical." idea of here. even as it seems to volved in here that it is constantly dissolving and disappearing. this idea of "there " list ends is telling. genders). Here is not a solid thing. The blankness between the second and third verses cannot ground. thus on no-nature) ? Wherever I look for my self I only encounter a po­ Place has been hollowed out from the inside. the reverse is also true. though this is what we wanted to convey. . and mountains-we lose its envi­ marks the start of ecorhapsody. and it cannot degger's word for the dispersal that fractures Dasein from within. It is the back­ typography. it turns into the foreground. stars. ." Here is precisely not there. We and where it is going. The "textmark " be­ essarily exclude something (cities. Quite the opposite. is radically inde­ birth. Of course. stronger than English skeptical empiricism (we know the ideo­ fordshire and Gloucestershire). parents. such that here is shot itics and philosophy on a view of self. society . questioning-ness . Here becomes an object we are gazing at through the glass "Adlestrop" conjures a metaphysics of place that establishes differ­ shop window of aestheticization. as in the optical illusion of faces and candle­ Simply adding something to the list that ends in an ellipsis and the word stick. . 1 75 wanting to expand this list. a sense of home even though the passengers are ture of distance ! " 92 This idea of distance ultimately aestheticizes the " away. 9 1 But. indeed. word to another in a sentence. We are so in­ ences between inside and outside. It is not erase the boundaries momentarily in its evocation of expanding am­ where we look for it. Wherever terminate-it is intrinsically in question. comes a landmark. and furthermore. But the issue is deeper still. The same goes for nature. I mean this much more so and captures us in a sense of boundary that evokes not just nature strongly than Heidegger when he claims. caught in a relationship with a foreground. by the time we figure out that we passed over ence. We have already lost this vanishing me­ of the beautiful soul. and flies. " that becomes bunny rabbits. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . skyscrapers . . it is the station sign. "Adlestrop " produces an uncertain. my arm. We are The gap enacts the slowing down and expanding perception of the compelled to rely on ecomimesis. this speed bump. because it will nec­ erally. We can be sure that it can never be fully and thoroughly inhabited. This otherness is encoded within the poem's very could name it apophatically. a "vanishing mediator" between ideology (knowing where of that). around it. incarnated in the gap between the verses. history. narrator in the railway carriage. In ecological terms. Ecocriticism's concepts and rhetorics of environment must give you are ) and science (open to new data). The name becomes placed: lit­ peared. As theory puts out its ears. here and there. is what enables the musing mind to read into and around it. It is not-in-the-foreground. Attempts to found a pol­ is intrinsic to "here. rivers. a s in question. pylons. ronmental quality. When I am we look for it. Landmarks become textual. place of Place. meditatively but also scientifically. like a probe newly it retains its fullest existence as questioning-internally fractured by landed on Mars. who tunes in to the surrounding envi­ The environment is the "what-is-it? ". is a question. present place as solid without relying on other places: the wider county. As soon as we con­ be read as "pure " empty space but as a spacing. in some way. into a particular place ? Zerstreuung. "here. . thrown as it is into the world. The name is already the space that gets nature is wrong from the start. Its very blankness and opacity In sum. " The human being is a crea­ but also nation. sheer space-being open-and wondering-the slightest beginnings of We are beginning to see how to sidle out of the Looking Glass House an impulse to get meta physical. As soon as it becomes an exclamation it has been disap­ we notice what lies. Here is a question. even as the poem restricts our ability to do through with there. nature between "name " [the name of the station] and "And willows . It is a synesthetic moment in which the "name " dissolves and question. posted in concrete. And the list itself is perilous in this regard. tentially infinite series of alterities: my body. we encounter j ust a long metonymic string of bunnies. toothbrushes. Moving or as instruction manual (what is the theory behind that dishwasher? ) from one station to the next becomes a metaphor for moving from one but a s question. the sense of " over there" where the train has come from The environment is that which cannot be indicated directly. environment is theory-th� ory not as answer to a question. How about basing ecological poetics and politics on no-self (and it. the objectified version of our ronment. even according to this Edwardian miniature. space. trees. The poem The best environmental art is deconstructed from the inside. however sublimated and radi- . Just before it closes upon the metaphysics of land (Ox­ doubt. The poem knows this even as it disavows it. trees. my ideas. here is question. The politics in widening concentric circles. other. the whipping boy of ecological discourse. "I am here " depends upon a sense of doubt.1 76 . blasphemous. and solitude evoke the difference that is identity. depends upon its environment. 1 77 cally alternative to a Cartesian view. "I think" depends upon the "I am" of The darkness (an objective correlative for the subject itself. somewhere The Meditations climaxes with the cogito. as revolution that discovered the unconscious. we won't find it. scene. pro bably of the home (oikos. Alleviated of suffering. idea that logical thinking tries to smooth over the uncanny. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . The echo effect dis­ volution is eloquent. To reintroduce the uncanny into the poetics holding this page in my hand. whether or body that it bestows ena ble the thinking process to take place. Wasn't it Descartes who helped to get us which is necessitated ironically because humans emerge from the womb into this mess. that is. a form one cannot quite see.97 Perhaps beyond "infantile anxiety. Appreciating strangeness is seeing the very strangeness of logical salt: "I am here. Doubt retroactively corrodes the snug­ exists at the kernel of the self. Utopia and Thomson." Moreover. These " I am here. sitting by the fire. Within a horizon. and was made popular by the poets Pope of place. which prej udice construes as utterly rigid. To see a place in its Place as question is internal to the very question of self. comfortable person may ask. wearing a dressing gown. then."95 I venture the provocative. or at any rate. and Descartes' act could collapse into racism: otherness immigrates and I'm ready with my of situating himself at the start of the Meditations. thought. which Descartes reg­ bility of the unconscious. "This . That is located in place. But the text opens in the seemingly innocent lence. ecological politics should not be about dissolving the dualism into environmental philosophies such as J. We are on a Mobius strip whose either side twists about the tained reading of Descartes' cogito. the question that is place. you can indeed be aware of "another " place now ironically call to mind any phenomenologist worth his or her eco­ over yonder. the radically nonidentical isters by wondering why he shouldn't be dreaming that he is beside a quality of mind itself: "I am not wherever I am the plaything of my fire-surely a question that any satisfied. involve us in an aporia. It is strange in its very homeliness. land is my land " is a symptom of inj ustice. and the Freudian Home is the strangest place. And yet it also undermines the stops to wonder whether it is dreaming or not. ecomimesis ) is a political act. here is strange in itself. though he does say that it has been said. And yet the ulti­ innocent situatedness to a series of doubts that hollow out that com­ mate paradox is that wherever we look for the self. that displaced the earth as the center of the universe. That we won't find the self where we look for it is the message of Bud­ which leads us to the cogito: I think therefore I am (that is here. Cozy eco­ heretical and certainly. in a way that should gun. as so many premature. Lacan as­ of subject and obj ect. I think of what I am where I do not think to think. The self not there is a sound one cannot quite hear. The age of sensibility in the later eighteenth century de­ would thus look more like critique and debate than an affirmation. may have some­ a gap between being human and being a person-by the very culture thing to tell us about place. of that which strangeness is not just to see how it is permeated with otherness . to many ecological ears. which eventually found its way timately. with his idea of the skin-encapsulated ego." si­ phase of radical doubt. Thus. cally prior."94 The con­ relatively unaware of his or her bodily determinacy. the very philosophy of the "new and improved" versions of identity never entirely get rid of the self depends upon this environment. sitting by the fire. as Descartes starts to subject his paradoxes of the idea of self from which they deviate. which is produced by Descartes. the uncanny. Baird Callicott's. into this outrageously convoluted statement that opens up the possi­ The Cartesian situation contains a double-take. darkness. but it is also the message of Lacan's sus­ by a fire) . is a struggle to achieve a state in which the question porters of Spinoza's monism. similarity and familiarity. It should be about conquering aggression and vi­ sociates his complication of Descartes with the Copernican revolution olence. Indeed. Freud observed. can emerge as a question. as beings of flesh without a working sense of self. fortable place by the fire. ecology. darkness and solitude" evoke and ecocritics can agree that they hate Descartes. Place is a function of idea that ecological sympathy ripples out from an equally centered self suffering. where the warm ambience of the fire and the satisfaction to the whether or not there is someone there j ust round the corner. transitioning through a else-this is itself uncanny. Ul­ veloped the image of widening circles. which is a . ecologically minded writers have observed?96 At least post-structuralists Freud never directly says why "silence. we return to the epigraph. centered thing. We cannot designate one (either "self" or "place " ) as ontologi­ Lacan develops the cogito. It is devastating to the idea that the ness of situating oneself beside a fire. the self Cartesian ego is a solid. This image has been defended by sup­ of place. It speaks to the radical way in which displacement cussed in Chapter 1 works here. sitting dhism and deconstruction. "I remember Adlestrop" repeats the title. Imagery.1Oo What is that there is "Something on every side concealed from view" (4 8 6 ) . In "Adlestrop. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature .1 03 The concentric ex­ The poetic version of this feeling is the delight in the fantastic." 1 01 Forests are iterations of trees. So the more access to unmediated nature we have. then we fall into nihilism. and solitude are all good images of ambience. Are we trying to get rid of du­ because repetition evokes strangeness. by the "fitting and fitted " in the Prospectus part of "Home at Grasmere " mountain mist. which is why we say "he can't see the wood for the rator: outrageously. If we turn it into object then we lose its rhythmic: it comes " again and again" when we are " lost in a forest. Darkness. Identity ( being the same as " but"-something is being passed over which returns as a present ab­ yourself) implies difference. Place is question. The sexual innuendo is a sophisti­ the uncanny. in the very face of its own "extra-vagance." a matic element of writing. unspoken. The reverse form of thoughts-also sounds like a fear of "civilized" mind! We fear that of the poem suggests a premonition-we "remember" Adlestrop before we can never surmount entirely this magical mind which acts j ust like a we experience it. But constantly tapping it suggests bankruptcy rather than silence. like a thing that thinks-in short. toward saying. And if we say it is Freud's exemplary image of the uncanny is of being lost in one: "when neither. 99 This is ironic."98 this auto­ Kenneth Johnston describes Wordsworth's "Home at Grasmere. recog­ he reduces the interaction to one between two pieces of jigsaw puzzle­ nizable by some particular landmark. of ecomimesis: "The poem works toward identification with its very has transformed the environment into a gigantic library. Wordsworth suggests as the experience 9f a self and as the experience of a place. introduces a very strong rhythm of world ( "Home at Grasmere. even imagery can have rhythm. has an un­ computer." 8 1 1 ) . A "vibe " or atmosphere is ject then we lose its otherness. Strangeness is associated with rhythm cated response to the problem of nature. When we arrive at "The tive " mind (mimetic mind. "Yes " implies a prior conversation. in the panding circles of home and nation at the end are interrupted by the writerly quality of writing. and especially of repetition. however. When Wordsworth reduces eros to one is lost in a forest in high altitudes. frame or as unframed thing. 1 79 negation process) is a palpable presence. the Cartesian res cogitans. The old metaphor of the book of nature has re­ poem. the textual repetition of the thing. lOS The valley loves the nar­ image of the text. and when every endeavor to find the marked or familiar (Blake: "You shall not bring me down to believe such fitting & fitted" ). ' " 1 04 The dilemma of ecomimesis is that you always need a bit turned. that it could go on forever spawning image first two stanzas.1 78 . writing this texts waiting to be read. a third thing. as a strong form with its three-kilometer ice cores and its close reading of the weather. and so stops being pure nature. that Our very familiarity with Adlestrop has made the cozy concentric cir­ writing and language is a thing that thinks on our behalf Ecomimesis cles of the end impossible! tries to efface. we will suppose. If we say nature is "subject plus obj ect" then we mix alone. because ecological science. like a wave of tone. Familiarity in poetics is repeti­ ality in our urge to get rid of dualis111 ? If we turn all of nature into sub­ tion. poem preoccupied with establishing a sense of place. either as empty richness. As a person. The rhythm of imagery can invoke something extra. came from). To love extension. Even and thus to create it)-that we fear the suggestion of the omnipotence " original" experience is shot through with memory. sence. after image-images that evoke reality better than reality does. 'here am I. Cartesian sense: to respect what is truly other about the Quincey's syncope. which render the whole scene strangely (un)familiar. ac- . trees. to be sure." We are always trying to make forests into wholes. and hence highly uncanny. the valley is God. all nonreified quality. The stichomythia in Macbeth evokes the space of other. rhythm. people are indeed bisected by a series of horror j ust after Duncan's murder. a palimpsest of moment(s) of composition." "and" elides traumatic little pieces of grit that make the pearl of personhood. The Romantic use of simple (familiar ) lan­ Wordsworth talks about "consummating" the marriage of mind and guage. path ends again and again in a return to one and the same spot." lo2 The forest is a quintessential reducing the world to obj ects ( 8 1 6-82 1 ) . the unmixable and relapse into the original dualism. more of it. caught. Freud oscillates between talking about it access to the interminable of writing we have. which mimes reality so perfectly as to be name " this third repetition makes the name familiarly unfamiliar. without an index. is to love the thingly quality of the other. and an interrup­ What Freud says about the fear of the power of a "childlike/primi­ tion. the more In his study of the uncanny. De in the ultimate. canny afterlife that suspends the life of the reader. " in here " and "out there " fold and redouble and entangle and cross There is an overdraft facility of nature here (there 's more where that over themselves in ways that we have noticed to be ambient. Ironically acknowledging thought affects ontology. would be worse. for is well within the parameters of the beautiful soul. Having identified the notion of pleasure as a sig­ and sit by fires. desire. a "what happened here ? " 107 Animism question would be: are animals capa ble of aesthetic contemplation? thus turns out to have a lot in common with an ecology to come. a guilt that view. . (They thus begin by Lingering in the mirror world of the beautiful soul. This would imply that we distinction-is it too outrageous to say that it helps sustain it? The should treat animals and plants as ends in themselves and not as means. Marx explic­ being a world of crazed pleasure. It is some­ hugger. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . distance ? Or is this distance in fact irreducible ? A profound. Place is indeed a questioning. a matter of some " original. Seeing production and consumption as not j ust intertwined but in Relationship involves conflict. Cartesian view. and likewise vegetarianism. It seems obj ectively true: the Third World pro­ thropomorphize in order to love ? Ecological thinking commonly wants duces. is the hard task and perverse act of a genuine " tree humanity. there is no difference Adolph Wagner is radically suggestive because it eliminates a common between a place and the socially reproving and improving stories that distinction between production and consumption. but related. For Marx. television. like whom I am therefore I think. which produces an unmixable asymmetry between sub­ let alone Baudrillard. For example. and the Apache associate with it. there is no nature. The hale-and­ a bout sitting by a fire opens up deep slits in a metaphysical ecological hearty Marxoid version instigates guilt about consumerism. ' Like every animal. they begin by eating. " technology" .ll l This matter separate altogether. of a kind sketched out by some very powerful arguments cially solidified notions of sheer consumption. we discern the key production . has an enlightened. gaining possession of certain things in the external world by their actions. But the remark on Apache's use of narrative in the naming of places. ecologically progressive aspect that sion of the theoretical with the practical. does not even differ all that much from the very shamanism from which you have to satisfy certain needs. Descartes finds himself in advance accord not with Heidegger. de­ in Derrida 's writing on forgiveness. not by 'finding themselves' in a relationship. Eating becomes praxis. and forms of environmentalist lifestyle: ab­ The very small slice of the Meditations in which Descartes talks staining from gasoline. ) "109 For Marx. but by be­ Dark Ecology having actively. In order to be sitting by a fire. treats ob­ a ble to contemplate their needs aesthetically (with distance)." One cannot help anthropomorphism. To love the self as some sense identical abolishes at a stroke the ontology of nature versus res. as thing. . Puritan-derived idea of wilderness is a way of performing abstinence­ But the paradox is that maintaining this view denatures nature. enlightenment escapes. asymmetry.110 Marx's own version is that humans are animals who make their worship. It is supremely important to think our itly associates production with "consumption" : " Men do not in any way through pleasure and consumption. the First consumes. The edifice of aesthetic the separation and the attempt to bridge it suggests an enlightened environmentalism and ambience stands upon philosophically and so­ Cartesianism. and thus. according to Keith Basso's study of the Western own environments-try telling that to an ant. something that might surprise postmodern readers of Keats. In his remarks on Adolph Wagner's economics." " natural" or gap between the human and the nonhuman realms . hence consumerism. drinking . A completely " flat" ap­ thing like what Agamben is after in his citation of Benj amin's celebra­ proach. far from thinking. Is consuming. and politics. to alter only slightly the im­ The debate a bout environment and world-between humans who are mortal words of the Coen Brothers' film The Big Lebowski. l O S On the other hand. Marx's "production" includes the sensation of eating a nificant place in the argument a bout ecology. one that never anthropomorphized and thus kept mind and tion of sexual pleasure as a way out of the human/nature defile. but with an unfamiliar current of Marxist Freud. sensuousness is only barely catered for in modern life. and ani­ j ects like people. place does not exist before we eat and drink in the aesthetic itself. thus satisfying their needs. So ironically the nectarine. consumerism.180 . Environmentalist ethics is predicated on this to claim that the inorganic world is alive. . since shamanism. ethics. we soon discover plea- . There is no more intensely. But not as a human. and in particular the relation­ way begin by 'finding themselves in a theoretical relationship to the ship between sensuousness and the aesthetic dimension. The Apache view is " animal " state which humans then modify or even spoil by achieving much closer to ecology without nature than conventional ecocriticism . must we an­ fined as not-production.106 Indigenous cultures have not much time for nature mals who make do with whatever is around them-is thus a red her­ as imagined in and against modernity. Animism is decidedly not nature ring. a term suggesting the fu­ j ect and obj ect. . or the animal side of us versus the human side. things of the external world. 181 cording to Wordsworth himself. Imagining Ecology without Nature 183 1 82 Ecology without Nature . . sure's apparent opposite, the thing that we want to avoid, like all ani­ about its content. Thinking s o is wishful thinking, otherwise known as mals-pain. Ecomimesis offers the illusion of a false immediacy that is beautiful soul syndrome. The ultimate fantasy of ambience is that we belied by the immersed yet laid-back aesthetic distance it demands. Na­ could actually achieve ecology without a subject. Ecological awareness ture, if it is anything at all, is what is immediately given, which at its would j ust happen to us, as immersively and convincingly as a shower simplest is pain. But in attending to environmental phenomena, aes­ of rain. Experimental art is not all that far from conservative ecocriti­ thetic but not aestheticized, we are never sure whether they are real, cism in this regard. Both crave an automated form of ecological enjoy­ originals, or copies. A melancholy emerges. It is well represented in ment. This automation is called "nature." Ecology without nature must John Carpenter's film The ThingJ where the supposedly horrific alien is come up with something quite different. Ecology without nature is not none other than the reproductive, simulative process of nature itself.1 12 automated. It does not appeal to a continuum that subtends the passing This reproductive process is prefigured by a computer chess program, show of life. Its ethics look more like perversion-or like acknowl­ with which the male protagonist plays, and loses, at the start of the edging the perverse quality of choice in itself-the shutting down of film. Incensed by his loss, he throws a glass of whiskey onto the key­ possibilities, the acceptance of death. It is what Walden calls " liv[ing] board, destroying the computer whom he calls " bitch." When it ap­ deliberately"-without having to retreat to the woods to do SO.l 13 pears, the monster (Latin monstrare: to display), who appears either in This is critical choice. Consumerist ideological choice preserves the the guise of some other whom it has assimilated, or as bursting and idea that we still have a choice. Critical choice shuts down the possi­ pouring out of that guise in an attempt to escape, emits a sound like bility of choosing again. It is a quantum choice, a "wave reduction" of running water, or steam coming out of a hole, which when it gets choices, a one-shot deal. There is a virtue to ambient poetics. It shows louder resembles a melancholy roar. The Thing is destined never to be us as many possibilities as possible, all superposed like Schrodinger's Itself. What is most horrific about it is its physical similarity to the cat, which before we choose to observe it, remains dead and alive at the Nietzschean crew of American explorers who attack it with flame­ same time. As a fantasy form of consumerism, ambience exhibits a be­ throwers, whose screams are indistinguishable from the Thing's slow wildering range of choices. Ambience shows us, as it were, the different yelping, which is never entirely distinct from the sound of a decelerated kinds of shampoo in the supermarket, the supermarket shelves, the voice saying "1." In the sadness of its very capacity not to present im­ walls of the supermarket; the sound of the parking lot outside; the noise mediacy, the aesthetic dimension gives body to the immediacy that of birds and airplanes in the sky; the smell of toxic fumes. The bewil­ hyper-aesthetic ecomimesis, pretending to be anti-aesthetic, wishes to dering quality of ambience intoxicates and renders inoperative the be­ force down our throats. lief that there is a "thing" called nature that is "out there " beyond us. The fragile "I" addresses, or denies, this situation. As I write . . . I am But if we dwell in ambience we make a mistake. If we "choose" it, we immersed in nature. The second phrase is the metaphorical sum of the actually reproduce bohemian Romantic consumerism perfectly. Indeed, endless listing procedures of ecomimesis. "I am immersed in nature " ; "I ideology may have become even stronger than before, since now it has am at one with the cosmos "-these are forms of the Cretan liar par­ been chosen reflexively. If ambience becomes the answer to all our adox, a sentence such as "I am lying," whose truth claim contradicts its problems, ideology really is "new and improved." It might be amusing semantic form. Even if "I" could be immersed in nature, and still exist to think that we have outwitted Heidegger or kitsch environmentalism as an IJ there would remain the I who is telling you this, as opposed to with our inclusion of technological and artificial things in our utopian the I who is immersed. If we are even able to achieve ecology without immersive space. But dwelling in ambience is not an example of critical nature, it will be difficult, if not impossible, and even undesirable, to choice. achieve ecology without a subject. If reason, devoid of sadistic instru­ Critical choice is a precarious leap. We will need to act on global mentality, is openness to nonidentity, that is still a kind of subjectivity. warming, even if we are not strictly " responsible " for it, even if it will We cannot come up with a "new and improved " version of identity that not come about. Critical choice is the way in which the beautiful soul will do without the paradoxes and aporias associated with it. grasps the world it has shunned. There is a note of existentialism here. I am immersed in nature is not a mantra whose repetition brings Kierkegaard describes the beautiful soul in the shockingly intimate fic- 1 84 . Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . 185 tion, the "Seducer's Diary " in Either/Or. l14 The seducer sees love not as o f the contingent and necessarily queer idea that w e want to stay with a a conscious choice, hard and radically contingent, undermining self­ dying world: dark ecology. assurance; but as the am bience in which the ego can bathe. He is ob­ Now is a time for grief to persist, to ring throughout the world. sessed with the atmosphere in which the seducee appears to him as a Modern culture has not yet known what to do with grief. Environmen­ distanced aesthetic object, even and especially when she is sexually inti­ talisms have both stoked and assuaged the crushing feelings that come mate with him. This is not simply a matter for the imagination, but of from a sense of total catastrophe, whether from nuclear bombs and ra­ location in actually existing space: "If one sits in the middle of the diation, or events such as climate change and mass extinction. Ecopsy­ room, in both directions one has a view beyond anything in the fore­ chology, pioneered by Theodore Roszak, is a form of Romantic ecology ground, on both sides one has the endless horizon, one is alone in the that encourages people to situate their individual suffering in a wider wide ocean of the atmosphere." 115 Kierkegaard takes the beautiful soul ecosystemic field: "Let the 'you' become the Earth and all our fellow through a further iteration in the aestheticization of ethics in the later creatures upon it. Only follow where ecological science leads in its section, a series of letters written to the seducer from someone praising honest effort to understand the uncanny intricacy that links us to our the merits of marriage.11 6 Further and further, higher and higher refine­ planetary ha bitat."122 If we get rid of the grief too fast, we eject the very ments of the aesthetic attitude do not hold out any hope that it is going nature we are trying to save. to work well. Even the mystic, who wants to participate directly in the Joanna Macy and others in the nuclear guardianship movement have godhead, j ust as deep ecology wishes to immerse itself in nature, misses suggested that instead of trying to get over grief, to shut off the terrible the object, by abstracting the choice: "his love for God has its highest trauma of the current ecological crisis, we simply stay with it.123 We ac­ expression in a feeling, a mood; in the evening twilight, in the season of knowledge it in all its meaninglessness. Zizek puts it this way in a pro­ mists, he melts with vague movements into one with his God." 1 17 found passage on environmentalism.124 Ecological apocalypticism, The aesthetic is not so easy to shed, however. This problem plagued which closely resembles Kierkegaard's death wish for the planet, risks Kierkegaard himself, who with all his talk of the corruption of "the aes­ shutting down the admission of this meaninglessness: "Aye, let the thetic sphere" used aesthetic forms and who, at the very moment he storm break forth in still greater violence, making an end of life, and of was writing Either/Or) described himself as a flaneur. 1 18 We could do the world . . . and in pent-up resentment sweep away the mountains with a Keirkegaardian revelation of ecological writing's complicity with and the nations and the achievements of culture."125 Apocalypticism an infantilizing aestheticization that paradoxically works for the other tries to see beyond death, to remain sighted after there is nothing left to side, turning the world into manipulable objects. 1 l 9 The aesthetics of see. In ecological apocalyptic fantasies of the last man, everyone dies­ nature writing is based on the ideology of raw materials and property. except for the viewer or the reader. They reproduce a fundamental Nevertheless, in accomplishing his critique of the beautiful soul, Cartesian and semantic split between the "I " who is narrating, and the Kierkegaard shuns the aesthetic dimension too soon) trapping himself "I" who is the subj ect of the story. at the Looking Glass House.12o Instead, we should not give up on the The beautiful soul is dissolved when we recognize that we did it, we aesthetic dimension, which is, ultimately, the reverberation of sentience caused environmental destruction, not you, whoever you are.126 Al­ (pain). If, as Derrida observes, there are only different forms of narcis­ though ecological texts frequently strive to disconfirm the end of the sism rather than narcissism and something else, the true escape from world, their rhetoric of ecological apocalypticism revels in the idea that narcissism would be a dive further into it, and an extension of it (Der­ nature will be permanently "gone." We imagine our own death via na­ rida 's word) to include as many other beings as possible.12 l By height­ ture. This has nothing to do with nature. To truly love nature would ening the dilemma of a body and a material world haunted by mind(s), be to love what is nonidentical with us. What could be less " us " than we care for the ecosystem, which in sum is interconnectedness. The eco­ the Cartesian idea of sheer extension? Instead of trying endlessly to get logical thought, the thinking of interconnectedness, has a dark side em­ rid of the subject-obj ect dualism, dark ecology dances with the bodied not in a hippie aesthetic of life over death, or a sadistic­ subject-obj ect duality: Cartesianism suffused with desire and passion­ sentimental Bambification of sentient beings, but in a "goth" assertion to love the thingness, not in a Heideggerian sense, but actually the 186 . Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . 187 mute, objectified quality of the object, its radical nonidentity. Nature is aporetic in our uncertainty a s to whether animals are human o r not. not a mirror of our mind. Ecological criticism should admit to the un­ They remain analogous to the human, as our words for mimesis naturalness both of the obj ect and of the subj ect: ecological desire is not demonstrate, in their interchangeability with our words for primates chaste. The desire for a "natural" state (natural food, natural relation­ and hominids. This melancholy attitude has an aesthetic form, in nair ships, and so on) masks a compelling enj oyment. stories that establish that the narrator or protagonist is radically in­ In elegy, the person departs and the environment echoes our woe. In volved with his or her world, and thus responsible for it. ecological lament, we fear that we will go on living, while the environ­ Against the affirmative talk of " dwelling " and the false immediacy of ment disappears around us. Ultimately, imagine the very air we breathe ecomimesis, the aesthetic dimension itself does embody, in the negative, vanishing-we will literally be unable to have any more elegies, because an ecology without nature. While the classic Sherlock-Holmes type is we will all be dead. It is strictly impossible for us to mourn this ab­ the detective as the master, floating above the story and knowing the solute, radical loss. It is worse than losing our mother. It resembles the answer beforehand, the nair detective story implicates the detective in heterosexist melancholy that Judith Butler brilliantly outlines in her the plot. The nair detective finds that he is caught in a story that has essay on how the foreclosure of homosexual attachment makes it im­ crept up on him or her from behind his or her back, like history or like possible to mourn for it.127 (In general, a partnership between queer nature. Ecological politics has a nair form. We start by thinking that we theory and ecological criticism is long overdue. ) We can't mourn for the can "save " something called "the world" " over there," but end up real­ environment because we are so deeply attached to it-we are it. Just as izing that we ourselves are implicated. This is the solution to beautiful for Butler "the 'truest' gay male melancholic is the strictly straight soul syndrome: reframing our field of activity as one for which we our­ man," so the truest ecological human is a melancholy dualist. 128 For selves are formally responsible, even guilty.131 It is a kind of "action," Freud, melancholy is a refusal to digest the object, a sticking in the but a theoretical one. Dark ecology undermines the naturalness of the throat, an introjection. Melancholia is an irreducible component of stories we tell about how we are involved in nature. It preserves the subjectivity, rather than one emotion among many, despite recent at­ dark, depressive quality of life in the shadow of ecological catastrophe. tempts to categorize it differently. It is precisely the point at which the Instead of whistling in the dark, insisting that we're part of Gaia, why self is separated from, and forever connected to, the mother. Dark not stay with the darkness ? ecology is based on negative desire rather than positive fulfillment. It is Blade Runner i s the best contemporary reading o f Frankenstein. I n a saturated with unrequited longing. It maintains duality, if not dualism. version of Romantic irony, the detective Deckard becomes implicated Dark ecology is a politicized version of de constructive hesitation or in his analysis of the replicant femme fatale, realizing that he may be aporia. Can we be sure that that's an unfeeling machine "over there," a (may be) a replicant himself. The story has a pervasive atmosphere of vermin, the evil thing ? Dark ecology is a melancholic ethics. Unable undigested grief. Does this atmosphere have anything to benefit ecolog­ fully to introject or digest the idea of the other, we are caught in its ical critique ? In 2019, what makes you human is your emotional re­ headlights, suspended in the possibility of acting without being able to sponse to animal suffering ( " boiled dog," an upturned crab ), while hu­ act. Thus is born the awareness of the intensity and constraint of critical manoid replicants are exploited and " retired" (killed) if they resist. This choice. Reframing the beautiful soul is a profound environmental act. illusion of psychological depth, extracted in face-to-face interviews, is Luc Ferry proposes Kantian-Judaic duty as a way to be kind to ani­ almost an ecomimetic ethics, like the eighteenth-century cult of sensi­ mals. 129 We can because we must. But this decision is always born from bility. The replicants cannot identify with this sensibility, cannot put an irresolvable gap. Bruno Latour defers to Kant on this point: "We can themselves into a cra b's shoes. Yet they weep like little children because define morality as uncertainty about the proper relation between means their emotional age is far younger than their implanted memories and ends, extending Kant's famous definition of the obligation 'not to would suggest. But Deckard profoundly puts himself into the repli­ treat human beings simply as means but always also as ends'-provided cants' shoes. Deckard's uncanny dream, which makes us suspect that it that we extend it to nonhumans as well, something that Kantianism, in is an implanted memory (and hence that he is not a human but a repli­ a typically modernist move, wanted to avoid."130 There is something cant) is of a fantasy animal, a unicorn. Society assumes the replicants animals and too fast (reducing everything to an expression of Gaia ).141 cyborg world. The feel of being matter. chastic (random) processes of composition. fired with a revolutionary politics. aesthetically.188 ." Animals are respected. is a form of new organi­ and ecosystem. This conceptualized how seemingly random events could coalesce "sponta­ could be a violation. The behavior of the stock market comes to resemble that of her. the problems of mech­ Here is the bizarre paradox. This is a political version of the "new and improved" problem. or sto­ tension) now stands at the basis of our models of mind.144 with the sticky mess that we're in and that we are. identifying with ugliness. Marx cism. ant colonies cohere somewhere in between sheer It would acknowledge the objectal quality of the beloved. relax. Since the machine (sheer automated ex­ anization. One could be a .BY Magically. Texas . It is time to modify Donna Haraway's cyborg manifesto. For E. capitalist co­ turn out to be protagonists. chemistry. co-operation itself. but when the stranger is too close for umbilical cord o f his tribe o r community a s a bee has from his hive . mechanical. u s So out with the black clothes. and white makeup. ganization are related to the old-fashioned Romantic organicism. Humanitarianism would leave the environment j ust as it is. But in the story. while the weather stand in for an all-too-human politics. and thus to anarchy and a minimal sense of order. and more profitable. There is a note of modernity tries to torch them in a familiar story of a war against this in Hardt and Negri's Empire. rather like the citizens of love her for herself rather than as a copy of a human. exu­ forced. we can sit back. and risky than a bland extension of humanitarianism to the en­ tain forms of modern biology. It would somehow Frankenstein and Blade Runner are allegories for how to carry on in a spontaneously emerge because it is more logical. coopera­ through with desire. instead. clouds. 142 In an zom bie than a tree huggerYu Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the ultimate aestheticization of politics."143 Cooperation ways be quite the reverse. 189 are " evil. special form of "emergence " (like Lyotard's "nuance " ) resides mysteri­ " I'd rather be a cyborg than a goddess. making thinking The problem of organization and control became a feature of dirtier. notably sociobiology. and physicsYR In mathematics. on with the spangly music: dark ecology. appears as a historical form pe­ they are not people. and let the Dead is a vast chronicle of the undead Native Americans that refuses to automated process of self-organizing la bor do it for us. employing external. comfort. which was also a way of resolving. resembles the feel of consumerism harmful to sentient beings.134 Deep Ecology buries the dead pearing in their uniqueness. and specifically distinguishing. a work of left uplift. operation does not appear as a particular historical form of co­ Frankenstein and Blade Runner enjoin us to love people even when operation.132 I'd rather be a ously "in between " conventional categories of order and chaos. solidarity has. Wilson the humanities and social sciences stack neatly on top of bi­ as an Other "over there." But these theories often repeat capitalist ide­ that to go on and on about how much he loves her would not convince ology. vironment. The old organicism promoted the idea that genius (the Classical sketches the possibility of arriving at a collective rather than a conl 111U ­ notion of a demonic spirit that intervened between the world of gods nity: " [The indigenous farmer] has as little torn himself free from the and that of humans) was now inside the creative artist. animal. "Emergent" forms of or­ phrase) rather than ontology. giving rise to a new organicism." 136 Because of the very same negative conditions. Francis. practicing "hauntology" (Derrida's modern art. neously and naturally. Environmental art. become a choice. eyeliner. In tion "takes place spontaneously and naturally" rather than being en­ order to mean anything at all. The task is to love the automatic as automatic. . Some which still brilliantly articulates the paradoxes of politicized identity. but that to stage the love as a per�erse script would speak the truth.140 There is something of this in the idea of " natural capitalism" Nature and the body have become Donna Haraway's cyborg. culiar to. ." she writes. Meanwhile clouds of radioactive waste haunt the world. he or she becomes threatening. difference." a victim. the capitalist process of Far from being rational self-interest. chaos theory has also femme fatale to say that she loves him and to ask him to kiss her. less the ecologically inclusive St. and strangeness.137 How do collectives emerge ? This is a question of which cer­ berant. We should be finding ways to stick around here is not chosen. unexpectedly. and attuned to the rhythms and resources of the planet. this love must be more excessive. the replicants From the standpoint of the peasant and the artisan. Far from ap­ become a work of mourning for them. a description of which closes the book in an evocation of while we campaign to make our world "cleaner" and less toxic. are fond. our philosophical adventure should in some in its celebration of "irrepressible lightness and j oy. body. Or perhaps it respects the fact that she is a doll. ecological thought is shot production. O. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . So a communist. In Blade Runner Deckard orders the ology. as a sequence of algorithmic processes. upon which depend all other distinctions. genius is relocated outside the artist. The new organicism is possibly even stranger than the old one.150 But in the Romantic period. writers such as Co­ in that word. hum an consciousness itself. the new organicism opens up possibilities for seeing nature as ages of the " invisible hand " of the free market." 147 Organicism values spontaneous generation. The new organicism dis­ generated material theories of consciousness "emerging " from orga­ covers that fancy is really an inverted form of imagination. It seldom. And it values an The new. The new organicism discovers a parallel truth generates its own body like DNA-without the spontaneous between automated artistic production and ecosystems. and that could program itself. Far from escaping Romanticism. which the artist tries to capture. The composition process is as of a life which is able to shape and develop itself from within: the form mechanized as possible. The artist establishes certain pa­ a way in which the natural world is thoroughly automated. and distinguished between imaginationJ which produced organic form by moreover. for instance. Consider a score by La Monte tained a material. pure mechanism."146 Content Maturana and Francisco Varela a way of viewing what are traditionally fits form. as I have already said) the inside-outside technically sophisticated means (subsonic microphones. Romanticism. In the in the recent phenomenon of art that produces "Electronic Life Forms. just as in the old organicism. These creations behaved like growth of flowers or the spread of clouds-depends upon the operation autonomous beings with their own " life. Retroactively. like strong artificial intelligence theory today. "It is because we still belong to the era opened by Romanticism Engine and Analytical Engine) using the mechanical J acq uard looms that our modernity continues to reinvent and reshape itself in Romanti­ that had been doing artisans out of a job. could grow like a cucumber. who be­ algorithmic machine processes resemble the natural world. even mechanical." Organic form was "the sign of some essentially algorithmic process. For our pur­ choice of an " author." . especially as propounded by Coleridge. niques. Aeolian harps were considered lected from a base text: say a combination of letters in a word is demonic in the Middle Ages. In effect. I do not Externalized genius has returned to the idea of the genius lociJ the believe this wishful thinking will hold. occurs to the exponents of corresponds to the life rather than to an external model. One can nized matter. scribing here . he or she and repetitive. It finds in thinkers such as Humberto and the composition finishes when the butterfly flies away. . and then watches to see what will happen. Romantic writers imposed a mechanical form from the outside.1 9 0 . . improvisation) .149 But for reasons given throughout this book. an environmental instrument that pre­ frey Robinson an algorithmic process determines what words are se­ dates the world of the art installation. The genius created works of artJ rather than craftJ opening up a new organicism. 1 9 1 genius. They were "programmed" by cism 's forms. In diastic poetry by Jackson Mac Low or Jef­ nation with the Aeolian harp. rameters. and de­ sure. precisely because they summoned the en­ chosen-the poet finds words in the base text that begin with the letter ergy of (evil) nature. The air is a deformed. In the Romantic period. shapeless. the conductor. ambient organicism inverts the Romantic idea that inner exact fit of content and form. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . As Peter Otto Charles Babbage drew up the first models for computers (the Difference puts it. Turing's trace a poetic lineage from the Romantic period toward postmodernism original idea for computers was for a machine that could become any and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. there is a third term involved: automated capitalismJ and the rav­ tems. that is the idea. exteriorized Coleridge was on to this when he backed away from his initial fasci­ version of the poetic self. the doors and windows may be opened. A poem Byron's daughter Ada. mechanical.148 This idea is attractive to posthuman thinking that is uneasy in the performance area . if ever. If emergent In the new organicism. a compo­ Young. about traditional ideas of nature. stochastic tech­ distinction. There is no predetermined clo­ called subjects and objects as an open system of feedback loops. New York City: "Turn a butterfly (or any number of butterflies) loose tool). then there is comes the facilitator. It is not as if there is anything spirit of the place. contemporary art falls back into its gravitational field." in the real rather than in velops an idea of " autopoesis " close to the revised organicism I am de­ the imaginary. albeit with more beyond or behind (outside."145 the new organicism to reverse the terms of their analogy. given the right conditions. and fancYJ which harp. machine. we discern that organicism always con­ assumes the attitude of the consumerist. one of the inventors of the sound-and-light Dream Syndicate in nent latent in the word organism itself (Greek organonJ machine. But this fit takes place on the " outside. Or at least." In comparing artistic production to natural sys­ poses. had the qualities of an Aeolian finding a form that seamlessly matched its content. "emergent" formal organization-compared with the class distinction at the level of production. Far from flying high in idealist abstraction. leridge and Percy Shelley became intrigued with the idea that art. automated component. S. the idea that an algorithmic process should characterize environmental a radio telescope. a film that Stanley phrase for the agony of choice. " Behold my buying habits and the right to be left alone. unknown. Art becomes a monitoring instrument. As environment is always thematically present. is already evitably kitschy. We are never able to tell. nay consumerism. sus­ that play into an ideological game parle ) pended in some impossible place " in between" production and con­ We are stuck with the perverse necessity of choosing to help the sumption. The radio telescope is tuned to deep space in the expectation this is also an inert "thing that thinks " (res cogitans. this writing. a little boy replicant. Kubrick left to Steven Spielberg to make. Envi­ choice assumed its full being. the genius. " bullshit in. The that certain frequencies will announce the existence of alien beings. If ecosystems operate according to some properly would retain the unknown-ness of the unknown. The artist. or its content. The ultimate they are not themselves any more. but not as an mechanical processes. To tamper with them by bringing them in a scientific manner. but retaining an aura of artistry. But the issue goes beyond that of admired as a form of production. Irony is the refreshing and consistent out there. to be scious " underpins the rights of nature. however. The butterfly is released into the auditorium in the expec­ The story resembles Stravinsky's Petroushka. for whom art was a place where the "violence " of ever associating "mystery" with the ideological power of nature. bullshit and as the "continual whirr of machines" at the disturbing fairgrounds . but with some general principle of cloud formation. the u. there is no mystery to them. is not as seductive as saying that my poem resembles the tidal The mechanical process that "is nature" is monstrous. We are back to beautiful soul syndrome. is there an algorithm for nature as a whole ? Some artists are If art really did become more like science. But this pose is a pose. and more of a willingness to be not in order to compare this piece of music with those particular clouds wrong: to encounter nonidentity. In adopting the scientific language of trajectory of the "new and improved" school of revisionary aesthetics chaos theory and emergent systems. mysterious. is a reader. these cycling processes have a certain right to comes science. They want their consumption. Politically. Under its influence. ambient art be­ the drive. whether the boy machine really has a soul. First. Far from even more generally. It approaches the psychoanalytic idea of drive. albeit one that was redeemed by the spe­ ronmental art seems to want to have it both ways: to be predictable and cial status and qualities of art. which is another other(s) fulfill their drive. in this very gesture acknowl­ If art and nature are both algorithmic. then irony would be less an excited to compare their work with cloud formations." Preserving the invisibility of the invisible would mean dropping are on both sides of the analogy. To see this patterns in San Francisco Bay. schmaltzy movie. A "rights o f the uncon­ very same time. cycling processes that operate sentient beings." cries the DJ. Internet without a copyright fee. They want to be the Ro­ into consciousness (chant this mantra and improve your sex drive! ) mantic genius and the postmodern doorkeeper for the genius loci at the bears the hallmark of fascist organization. pure and simple. Romantic poems appear to read themselves. and. 193 small solar-powered machines that emit sounds and move. Ambient art seeks aesthetlC mystery. or a weather balloon. depicts far-future machines fulfilling the perceived needs (or guage of Donald Rumsfeld. This is the plot of AI. or whether leaves. Secretary of Defense at the time of programmed drives ? ) of a nearer-future machine. tation that the audience will hear noise as music until the butterfly even at the end. There are some further curiosi­ artistic practice. Algorithms out. ties. Spielberg's in­ unknown. as the far-future Ice Age. and together in peace without ideological fixa!ion. Many modern artists pose themselves remain unconscious. a "known unknown" in the horrible lan­ acting. then the unknown-ness of the edging its basic theme of the rights of automated beings. it cannot have it both ways and re­ would transfer art away from objects of desire and toward objects of tain the invisibility of what it discovers. the mysterious quality of idea that music j ust happened directly contradicted the Marxist musi­ nature would disappear. an advance for radical politics: Blake was for­ cology of Adorno. the the invisible footprints of the real. it is the oil that chaotic flows . repetitive. These drives. But as soon as it makes them visible.1 92 . for unconscious images to proliferate and link mixing skills. (We could always make maybe always was. this is a form of libertarianism. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . the invisibility that ambient art tries to glimpse. It is predetermined. with something called nature that emerges out of being a symptom of political or spiritual burn-out. heavy on special effects and low on visible. in Cartesian) . to create mystery machines that can be downloaded off the Comparing an algorithmic process with another algorithmic process. But they do so aesthetic pose. a slogan on a T-shirt. was once said in computer programming circles. Ultimately. noncoincidence of what is in our heads with what is the case. John Cage 's keeps the engine running. Frankenstein's pursuit of him indicates a burning desire. giving the example of extreme forms of justice in animal rights. Essays such the destructive idea of "progress " by paradoxically decadent ethical as "Thinking Like a Mountain " prepare for it. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . art already interrogated the idea of organi­ forms to take place. and the cause it questions the very idea of nature. life­ thetic terms. like a ( "orga " ) enjoyment. lss Criticism Dark ecology." lsl Integrity. rather than seeking to prove their naturalness and authenticity.1S2 Leopold was well acts. and that humanity and posthumanity have from Leopold's conservative " land ethic" : "A thing is right when it no time for what Derrida calls the animal that therefore I am. tends to preserve the integrity. Ecocritique must at­ that his existence subtends our personhood. The presence of " beauty" in the trio normative view. while ciality. throughout the nine­ contingent beings.1S3 His argument is precisely Kantian: "The outstanding renouncing distance from purpose. In a brilliantly contorted . he figures forth an essen­ tend to such auguries of innocence. a kind of decadence-that would deform the eroticized only serves to divert attention from the organicism of integrity and sta­ objectification (what we call "nature :' ) that is the mode of ecologically bility. Does he machines a favor. l s6 The creature wants precisely not to be left alone. this " essence " includes arbitrariness and supplementarity. The task are showing. This is what Adorno sees as the dissolution of of conscious beings and an animated version of ambience. The most ethical act is to love the other precisely in their artifi­ bleeds and speaks plangently of vegetarianism and compassion. [is] the reverse image of the false purposiveness of industry. inert. insisting that humans are a viral the bourgeoisie. 195 at which robots ( "mecha " ) are executed (or dismantled ? ) for human fantasy. Ecological poli­ The creature is made out of any body. We ourselves are "tackily" made of bits and pieces prose. reproducing his drive. but as standing in for an idea of the natural. found in the creature the inconsistent object of racist fuses to digest the obj ect into an ideal form. lution of any resource. We identify with screen. This artificial object of stuff. creation of ecology goes to extremes on this point. Deep teenth century the creature was viewed as the working-class. There would be no need for ducible particularity-and hence ironically generalizing that very beautiful souls without such ugly objects. or toward a humanity to Ecocritique must carefully distinguish the necessity of helping the come ? I often think that the trouble with posthumanism is that we have other(s) fulfill their drive from the reactionary "right to life " and also not yet achieved humanity. Frankenstein's creature tics must constantly and ruthlessly reframe our view of the ecological: is not even an other because he cannot return our gaze or act as blank what was "outside" yesterday will be " inside " today. a piece of butcher's meat with blinking eyes. tialist view of nature. point the way toward a posthuman ecology. stability. in addition. and beauty of the biotic com­ Caring for the creature would acknowledge the monstrosity at the munity. But it is also theoretically present in the deadlock wilderness. If a poisoned rainforest could particularity-the creature represents alienated generality. as an ultimate form of category of the environment pulled around to the "front" of the ecological politics. He is also an object of homophobic fascination: supplement to an organic whole. Leopold's "community" hesitates between an image of a group destructive enjoyment. it would sound like Frankenstein's creature. Deep ecology ironically does not respect the natural world as actual As Franco Moretti and Chris Baldick have argued. but to have someone stay true to his own desire. committing murders and blaming them on his environment-people. becomes to love the disgusting. stability. the pure form of consumerism. even if narrow-minded and willfully characteristic of perception is that it entails no consumption and no di­ obstinate. by contrast. and meaningless. but be­ rible split: the horrific ugliness of alienated social cruelty. In the sense speak. anybody. melancholy ethics that re­ has. to build of an ethics of automation: we won't ever know whether we are doing him a mate so he can leave in peace. the " answer of the real" whose very form embodies a ter­ cause it compels us to care for a preexisting notion of nature. social conditions are not yet established for such "twisted " ethical In the Romantic period. and heart of the idea of nature."ls7 Frankenstein is about how consumerism without consumption. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. Frankenstein's creature is the distorted. Far from standing in for irre­ painful eloquence of enlightened reflection. is a perverse. But insofar as this nature is abject and its stitches The augury of Frankenstein is the reverse of deep ecology. It would involve a fetishist ethics-in the beauty are all aesthetic criteria. aware that he was constrained to argue for environmentalism in aes­ There is beauty in the beautiful soul: "The ideal of complete. He is a horrific abject that speaks beautiful Enlightenment the monstrous thing. ambient cism that came close to a politics of the drive. Frankenstein is an ecological novel precisely not be­ reader's view.194 ." 154 This perception of wild nature is therefore in which everything is for something else. " respect. or sand slimy things. Ironically. the depression (Da-sein). assumes two was the closest to the earth. since we're just "letting whatever occur in uine progress: "Progress means: humanity emerges from its spellbound the frame "-and the frame becomes claustrophobic precisely because state no longer under the spell of progress as well. This in­ ject: appreciating what in us is most objectified. dark ecology diverges from those Romanticisms that follow a Hegelian dialectic. the story of the reconciliation of the self to the other. onists . Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . itself nature. Where there is neither sense of life or j oys. we have the ethical choice as perverse leap: choosing to j amin explores the heavy materialism of the Baroque." This is the truly ecological-ethical act. I am the self-consumer of my woes. This is where John Clare's profound would not expect the frog to turn into a prince as soon as we kissed it. Surely this is where we are now-however huge the earth is. and live with shadows tost tion turns into kindness. from which there is no exit My friends forsake me like a memory lost. ecologically speaking? claustrophobic environment: "I blessed [the monstrous other] un­ Take the poem "I Am . then. is the relentless melancholy of the drama's protag­ ciality of the other and do not try to naturalize or collapse otherness. not as a person in disguise. would have en­ writing going on and on-is in this respect its saving grace. Putting a frame around nothing (minimalism) corresponds to the But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems. most problematic about ecomimesis-the idiotic "extension" of Dark ecology. Ben­ forms. he claims. . a genuine and genuinely dis­ redefined ecology in excess of all its established concepts. In order to be itself." 16o often in spite of it. As long as there really is no exit Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost. the phobic fascina­ And yet I am. the narrator remains. formal way. would entail a need for forgiveness. however vast. by be­ what is outside it is now included.161 Isn't this lingering with something painful. an act that ecological poet of minute particulars. Dark ecology holds open the space of what used to be called is one of the aspects of this "halting. These two moments are the ethical inverse of environmental art. what is bient sounds of ecomimesis. an inconsis­ joined us to love the replicant as replicant and not as potential full sub­ tency that enables us to take it out of the frame called Nature." 15R In with the object. from your state of mind? This is the ocean in The Ancient Mariner.196 . What could be more I AM: yet what I am. profound. part 4. being literally on this earth being tangential to the general nature poetry project. The Ancient Mariner 4 . if it were ever to have been practiced." generating not the relaxing am­ the aesthetic. Clare is usually framed as a proto­ To forgive. its They rise and vanish in oblivious host. The present ecological emergency demands that you need not be com­ by leaving things the way they are. Of all the humors. and can't quite maintain the appropriate aestheticizing its refusal to produce an idea of nature as a way of being. exactly what we need right now. and ultimately. Far from ically being-with the other. Beyond any specific ecological content. until something better comes along. an act of rad­ turbing working-class presence in the revised Romantic canon. indeed. but perversely. grief­ Second. "our fault." aware " ( Coleridge. the "thousand thou­ consistency with its ideological content is why it can be orientalist. placing on the object. but the screeching of the emergency brake. claustrophobic than a realm. In this artificial. on condition that we preserve the artifi­ analogue. we have the spontaneous continuity of fascination in the striking. Adorno describes gen­ second form o f ethical act. disgusting. the continuous attention that awareness keeps Into the nothingness of scorn and noise. 197 sentence. and we can't achieve a sadistic/aesthetic distance. not by turning the other into the self. an equally radical as­ poems are essential to it. And being-here. In his study of German tragic drama. Into the living sea of waking dreams. forgiveness fortable in order to do theory. First. 2 8 5 ) . We are compelled to identify mastery over nature through which nature continues its mastery. Exhibiting a frameless formless thing coming aware of its own indigenousness to nature and by halting the corresponds to -the first ethical choice . as well as "natural. a miniature masterpiece of dialectics.159 It gets over the dilemma of the beautiful soul. Really D eep Ecology who turns out to be the self in disguise. would be a fundamentally ecological act. toxicity makes it very claustrophobic. none cares or knows. dark ecology distance. They stage the idea of being here in its most sumption that whatever is there is our responsibility. poems of depression come to mind. whose emotional identify with the replicant. melancholy Loving the thing as thing. GOD. like barrassed fear that they would despise his work if they knew it was by an Old English riddle in which the poem declares itself to be something him. you are. tial gesture of sensibility. In There to abide with my Creator. the sheer opacity of the poem be. involving u s i n a paradox. local light? I am. not point out the status of the poem itself. . all come to stand in for this sky. or lying " above . confirming Der­ crossed-out words. Behind the vapor and I long for scenes where man has never trod. Clare was writing degger's peasant woman. that quintessen­ A place where woman never smiled or wept. Does "I am" ( 1 ). ." At first. publication. therefore I am. At from traditional. "I Am. that before we get to the grass and tors in London. celebrated in Jonathan Bate's Romantic Ecology. the sky" in heaven ? But the very form of this read the last line of "I Am " literally. Now you might think stract realm beyond grass and sky. organic. even from the point of view of rator is so untogether.198 . or � in Lacanian. its gravita­ The grass below-above the vaulted sky. carries the burden of all that seems wrong about language: . He read his poems anonymously to his relatives out of an em­ exist: it is a "nothingness of scorn and noise" ( 7 ) .166 It had to sound as if it came from somewhere else in order to re­ ( "I am . since i t i s precisely the Are strange-nay. . Writing itself. that this was Cartesian subjectivity at its darkest hour-the subject as connects grass and sky to depression and doubt. even here. 1 67 mantic poem comes curiously close to Mallarme's experiments with It all comes down to the question of writing. an onion" ). The nar­ on Clare's oeuvre. the printed text. capitalist procedures such as Enclosure. We are a long way pure empty self-reference. compared with Hei­ the supposed self-contained. rida's view. It helps us to see how. And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept: making us aware of the throat in which that breath is sticking. Why did we advertently and ironically. I am reminded of Adorno's remarks on the idea of peace. 1 6 2 tional field. perhaps in­ Here they are. feeling like shit. as they say in California. mist we glimpse a dull inertia. but in an extraordinary way. the closest we get to ecology is the last couplet. there­ observation of feudal vestiges of community and custom obliterated by fore I doubt-I wish life were simple. But even when he was writing without a view to publica­ from the narrator's scooped-out insides ( 7-12 ) . The narrator is tion. edi­ The doubt is so very corrosive. filled with ambient noises and Clare seems to embody the latest form of his poetic selfhood as an disturbing otherness. ambient version of an environment formed obliteration. a ceive validation. And you would be right. feudal village. has a retroactively corrosive effect tween lines in order to arrive at the end of the phrase ( 6-7) . The narrator's identity has shrunk to the pure drastic. an inconsistent bunch well aware. Rusticity was itself a poetic trope of which Clare was spectral quasi-object suspended in nothingness. In both cases.Iii5 yearning and impossibility is precisely the most ecological thing about We may now read Clare's ecological-poetic career backward from the the poem. " lack of content" that gives the poem its opacity. right hereJ on the earth. here. startling event of "I Am. and circulation of writing. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . does not allow the doubting part to escape into some ab­ The title's Cartesian reference should be obvious. The poem's inertia. the dash becomes the sheer inert breath between signs. stranger than the rest. which. where the reader's eyes have to conceived as grass and sky. . There is an extraordinary enactment of this be­ empty nothingness that can only yearn for an earth minimalistically tween the first and second stanzas. Wher­ Untroubling and untroubled where I lie. And even here there is an am­ Wordsworth. Clare's work was displaced from the inside by an awareness of the painfully aware that the otherness that surrounds him does not truly other. like a character in a Beckett play looking " toss " themselves into the nothingness between an immense gap be­ out of a window. poetry for another. open empty set of blank consciousness.1 6 4 Clare biguity in the sense of " above " : is the narrator lying with the sky above wants us to stay in the mud. since it ostensibly puts a certain ecology think that the deepest ecological experience would be full of love and firmly at the heart of Clare's poetics-an ecology marked by close. therefore I think. this is exactly where we are. symbolized by the dash. it might appear that "I Am " is a quoted in Chapter 1 . and hence the illusion of deep subjectivity. we have a ghostly. rather than pull ourselves out of it. whose shoes connect her to feudal rhythms. even tragic departure from an original ecological sensibility. If we him." however. where the from the therapeutic poetics of John Stuart Mill's reading of narrator wishes for an impossible relief. therefore I doubt. ever you go. organicist readings of Clare. And his poetic love of nature was itself a displacement from of squiggles that cannot ever know itself as SUCh ? 1 63 This depressive Ro­ normative village life. We are also a long way first glance. 199 And een the dearest-that I love the best­ comes its subject. Bate's biography makes this very point. The existential "thisness " of the glittering cesspools is surely A man like me? an environmental analogue for the anti-aesthetic grotesqueness of the close-up of the mouse and her young. Clare behind or before the corruption of London. capitalism. authentic loneliness and separation. unreflective progress drones in the in­ asylum indicates." a tered in the sun" ( 1 3-14 ) . which has more in common with the un­ those moments when he was angry about grammar. Blake sums it up in "The Fly. Paradoxically. even to kill it. The task is not to bury the which this otherness is perceived as intrinsic to the self. and so forth. The space of the village. as wonder. Clare does not know who he is. the best way to have ecological awareness is to love Clare gives us the feeling of environment as open mind.168 But Bate them. It is quite the op­ posite of what we might expect. as a horribly vivid letter from the Adorno: "The voice of deluded. Environmentalism ready crisscrossed with otherness. which surprises the narrator and For I dance defeats trite ecological sentimentality. water oer the pebbles scarce could run / And broad old cesspools glit­ We are caught on a Mobius strip. and so put us in touch with a surrounding environment. 173 Dark ecology tells on. Faith is no longer a question of Am not I A fly like thee? belief. of cleaving to ideas in your head. while the best way to love a person is to love weird ending of "Mouse's Nest. ungrammatical Clare j ust where we need to be. which Hath brush'd away. an inert. limits of subj ectivity. Consider the the world as a person. but. cost. differential. Clare helps us to stay right here. Environment as theory. 172 And drink & sing Till some blind hand This is incredibly good news for ecocriticism. at a terrible dead but to join them. And the want sinks down into it further than any wishful thinking. any naive concept Of thought is death. how to stick our heads in nature and lose own. in the poisoned mud." which opens up the landscape: "The what is most intimate to them. Doubt-the effect of things ceasing to be what you expect­ My thoughtless hand mingles with a heavy sadness. but gained ecology." 175 ously. 169 A painful aware­ the Woods on a Snowy Evening. if we are to take Clare as an ecopoet seri­ dominating ego. in which. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . This is the place reached in . The poetic language is tied irrevocably to the earth's emotional Little Fly Thy summers play. metonymies (or metaphors ? ) for the spacing and displacing actions us that we can't escape our minds. situates the sonnet in an oppressive summer sunlight." where the very feelings of Recent textual criticism has sought to discover an original.200 . we have lost nature. Which is himself observes that the image of an authentic. "I Am " is the stunning moment at its loss. Shelley's extraordinary essay " On Love. And strength & breath. we find closeness to the earth. discovering a natural Clare beneath the artificiality. in fact. 201 it is never really yours) it is always dispersed. an intense envi­ ronment from which there is no escape. was always al­ horrifying presence and a mechanical repetition. gravity. " Stopping by the primitive becomes an object of consumerism. Nature is what keeps on coming back. Even here. if only symbolically. 170 But this not-knowing is also a hard-won moment of sistence upon [sexual] taboos for the benefit of the unity of the nature­ actual subjectivity. to be bitten by the undead and become them. but of an existential remaining And art not thou in place. 1 74 But dark ecology is no solu­ ness of grammar always bisected Clare's poetics. even (especially) in tion to the problem of nature. This is by no means eco-skepticism-quite the opposite in fact. 171 Clare helps us to feel the existential quality Cartesian meditation: of doubt. even at the Shall brush my wing. right now. There was no there there that was cannot mourn the loss of the environment. even of dread. as If thought is life doubt. corrupted by revision is part of a fantasy of ownership in which Clare "The woods are lovely dark and deep " (Robert Frost. of interconnectedness could push us. a lingering quality. the "thing" em bedded in their makeup. does not achieve escape velocity form the earth. even if it was indeed feudal. rather than fantasies of interconnectedness. dead than with life. for that would be to accept not already aware of another there." 1 3 ). Ecological literary criticism has assumed this task as its to get out of our guilty minds. Far from giving us a liturgy for how of grammar. idea of "man" itself. We should rewrite Freud's Wo Es war. we recognize internal limits." " blind " mechanical operation) they might be. glimpse humans through nonhuman eyes ( 1 03-1 0 6 ) . As I said in the Introduction. If we can find ecology even here. and with the insect. the patient sit down by the window and show him all the pleasant as­ but it is eccentric rather than concentric. Now you're a good child.l78 The dreamy quality of immersion in nature is what keeps is hardly a question of adapting to [the reality the beautiful soul ac­ us separate from it. there Coleridge. 1 82 soli Ich werden ( "Where It (id) was. And that is precisely the slit. we dispel the dream. If we identify with the fly. we get stuck with ecomimesis. The beautiful soul awakens to this the superego . We have worse." his poem about the differences between abstract Nature our ecological life. ' " 18 4 If uses to describe the displaced Cartesian selfYw Blake imagines lions we keep tolerating the distance. but to show it that it is only too well adapted. the space for tion the unconscious. which is only the beginning of the rest of In "Alastor. / If we consumerism gave us the idea. 1 81 50 we have bottomed out. in Blake's own "The Human Abstract " : "Pity would be no more. where nature was. a shutting-down of choice . or even animals. soul. adding 'Go out there. 203 Then am I which ambience does not account. ferocious figure of lost nature. form does not determine our "thought. Perhaps the view should be named A happy fly. like the young Wordsworth and appointing it is to do without the oceanic sway. which is about ation tape remains. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . could then never be sure whether he was a butterfly dreaming that he But " kindness "-tolerating the distance of the beautiful soul-could be was a man. . We have given up obtaining satisfaction from the environment imag­ Instead of imagining limitation outside. with or without certain contents the human becomes a fly. we out of the history it has created. rather. . shall we be. the poem iden­ which we have given up generating ways of being.l77 The beautiful soul cannot go on dreaming which one could make us beautiful souls own up to our complicity: "It endlessly. Instead of bemoaning the fate of living beings with King Lear which remains at best a tenuous advertisement for a state of affairs in ( "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods " (4. Lacan described the j udo with quired to aid the creature. but be- . yet. Rather than taking pity on the and that this mind fantasizes about nature in its struggle to think itself animal world in a soft-focus version of the normal sadistic distance. there is such a thing as consciousness. we have achieved an identity still has a choice-which is no choice at all-the true ecological choice with the fly beyond the usual sentimental identification through dis­ is a form of radical commitment. Rather than the pursuit of the illusion that one hand (Blake's songs are always reversible ). Unfortunately. We are humans dreaming that we are flies. we have forged it via Kant and Descartes. We have admitted that yes." 1 83 This is not fair. the gap. since it assists in Chuang Tzu. At this tance. no one likes it when you men­ are subjects . But unlike many ecological thinkers . Critical choice commits to consciousness. as level. It is a strange ground. . that did not make somebody Poor" ( 1-2 ) . It does not matter whether we live or die. the Cartesian view ( " thought is life "-I think there­ all. since our physical environment. also repeated in philosophical texts. . as waves of radiation from what we ignored for too accepting limitations in a progressive manner-social mediation is re­ long disjoint our bodies and our world. as in Frankenstein. choice and acceptance become the same thing. who. however ecological tifies with the "evil " (the "thoughtless. The last lines twist the logic of the beautiful (such as ideas about ecology) .202 . It runs the risk of calling upon "the obscene. helped thinking to maintain its distance toward the animal and the fore I am) condemns us to be no better than flies. However dis­ We can't quite call this pantheism. 176 5pinozan path. to borrow the language Lacan pects of nature. pflHtfieisH'L It is rather like Spinoza's critique of the anthropomorphic If I live. the conservative ecological ined as an unconscious process. We don't know whether the physical world. like cuses]. 1 . the philosopher who dreamt that he was a butterfly and the construction of that very reality. The fly is not humanized." We are caught in the cycle of Critical choice does not rise a bove consumerism or ideology only to life and death. not because you are saying taboo things. discernible in and as our ex­ and concrete sentient beings. but gained a collective. no such soothing relax­ view. 3 7 ) ) . there shall I (ego) be " ) . . in which there is no other way out . who tread a Or if I die. 1 79 We can have ecological sympathy. we have a mind looking at a poet in a forest clearing. Paradoxically. than to make conscious determination (Begriff). the "pity " that that is contingent upon an imbalance of power. Percy Shelley visualizes an antelope perience of groundlessness. It is ruthless. having sympathy for lost little girls and weeping ruby tears (43-4 8 ) . there is hope. . most of On the one hand. On the other collapse back into it. I SS But this too is more a leap of doubt than a leap of faith. ecological criticism must politicize a vivisectable being to whom we can do infinite sadistic violence as the aesthetic. being a world in which we can immerse ourselves. us and it. Ecology without Nature Imagining Ecology without Nature . Ironically. we will end up caught in our prejudice. When the surest way of relating to the nonhuman. is admitting to the ecologically catastrophic in all its meaningless contingency. sense of humor. This is not the same thing as saying. means being without nature. staring at the doorbell marked species and ecosystems. to contemplate deep green ideas deeply is to let go of the idea of Nature. To be truly theoretical is to doubt. we could hang out in what feels like dualism. the idea of Nature will have disappeared in a puff of smoke. we could j ump down into the mud. We choose this poisoned ground. whether or not "we ourselves " can be proved to be responsible. But it is not Descartes is a Cartesian maneuver. our concept . ac­ cepting responsibility groundlessly." How deep does deep ecology want to go ? In a truly deep green world.204 . Then comes the next step. if it means anything at all.' " and in that phrase we may find the groundless ground of ecology soned chrysalis of the beautiful soul. without nature. than in the outworn creeds of nature. the stage be a more nondual approach. Ecology may be without nature. if to be deep green means to take seriously the idea of philosoph­ ical reflection. But I long to characterize what I am aiming for as "really deep ecology. Can we be environmentalists. in our rush to j oin the nonhuman. You would be forgiven for thinking that this book has read like a cri­ tique of deep ecology. I SS We find ourselves back at the front door of the We choose and accept our own death. Instead. as I observed before. us and "over there. our concept of "them. we can at last shout 'Land the mud. A therefore be vivisected ? 186 How far down into Descartes' thinking does warning to deep ecology: if we aestheticize this acceptance. it stops Instead of positing a nondualistic pot of gold at the end of a rainbow . We will be equal to this "possessors and masters of nature " ? I S7 To introduce doubt about senseless actuality. as nonhuman beings swim into view. and environmentalist writers. If we try to get rid of distance too fast. 205 cause you are depriving the ego of its necessary fantasy support." The only firm ethical option in the current catastrophe. To emerge from the poi­ ho. and environmental art and aesthetics. with the opponents of solutions to global warming. and the fact of mortality among house of so-called Western philosophy. without us. This is the ultimate rationality: holding our Descartes. the one thing that maintains an aesthetic distance between us and them. We must deal with the idea of distance itself. One cannot have a video of one's own extinction. Evolution will Descartes' view of res from the idea that animals have no soul and can not be televised." I have not been writing against a deep green view. and sensitivity to the illusory play of language ? As long as there is environmental pas­ sion. we arrive at this idea go ? Does the approach to nature as res entail thinking of it as fascism. This hanging out would Hegel says that Descartes is the terra firma of philosophy. we admit that we have a choice. that "we need more evidence. against our ideological interests. there also lives more faith in honest doubt about the environ­ ment. without a hemorrhage of irony. The question then becomes: is it possible to separate mind open for the absolutely unknown that is to come. the cult of death. Instead of trying to pull the world out of at which " like the sailor after a long voyage. of distance. we drag it front and center." Hanging out in the distance may be Ecology. Reed. What's Nature Worth?. John Elder. trans. Meyer. 8 . 1 8.: Princeton University Press." i n Joni Adamson. Martin's Press. eds. 200 1 ) . Karl Kroeber. Walter Benn Michaels. Mei Mei Evans. V . eds. Notes Introduction 1. 2000). Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology (New York: St. . Simone de Beauvoir. 6 1-8 1 (62).. 6 . 10. Terre Slatterfield and Scott Slovic. Scott Slovic. Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the En vironmental Tradition (London: Routledge. 1 9 84).: MIT Press. and ed. 1 1 6. and Rachel Stein. repr. Parshley.J. Talking Heads. political Nature. Jonathan Bate. 1 9 94 ) ." in Terre Slatterfield and Scott Slovic. H. 1 9 9 8 ) . 2004). 1993). 147-209. The Shape of the Signifier (Princeton. 3. Stop Making Sense (Sire Records. Terre Slatterfield. The Environmental Jus- . 4. James McKusick. 1 1 8-128. 2004). "Toward an Environmental Justice Ecocriticism. N. and Terry Tempest Williams.: Harvard University Press. 2000). Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind (New York: Columbia University Press. Mass. 2. What's Nature Worth ? Narrative Expressions of Environ­ mental Value (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. John M. "Where the Power Lies: Seeking the Intuitive Language of Story. 22. intro. 5. 7. New York: Knopf. sleeve note. Meyer..: Harvard University Press. "Introduction: What's Nature Worth? " i n Slatterfield and Slovic. 1 1 . Mass. The Second Sex. Reading the Mountains o f Home (Cambridge. M. T . Ibid. Margaret Crosland ( 1 952. Mass. 9. 1 99 1 ) and The Song of the Earth (Cam­ bridge. 1-1 7 ( 14 ) . Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Interpretation of Western Thought (Cambridge. 1 22-1 23 . Timothy W. Alan Bass (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. "Tintern Abbey.: Hackett. 1 971 ). Nationalism a n d the Revolt against Theory Economy." in Poetry in the Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press." 3 4 . 36. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 40. See for example John Milton. 77. and Environment 1 6 . "Nature. London: The Hogarth Press. Robert Hullot-Kentor 22. Notes to Pages 1 0-1 6 Notes to Pages 1 7-24 . Nature Writing and America: Essays upon a Cultural Type tivity in Literature and Literary Theory (Stanford. Literary Theory. 233 . II.208 . 3-70. 2 1 ." in Slatterfield and Slovic." i n Sanford Budicl< versity Press. 2004 ). 1 49-1 50. ed. A. Canghuilhem. . other worlds. 1 2. Bernard Bosanquet." 2 8 . Critique o fJudgment. " The Critic as Artist. Harry Zohn (London: the Sublime and the Beautiful. Religion. trans. second series 4 (July-August 2000) : 49-68 ( 6 8 ) . James Butler and Karen Green (Ithaca. Edmund Burke. Aesthetic Theory.Y. What's Nature Worth?. 4 4 . T. ed. For an account of the tribulations of Spinozism." New Literary History 30. Making Nature Sacred: Literature. and Culture (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.23 . 1 5 7-327. 1 4 9-1 5 1 . 2003 ) ." in Keywords: 3 8 . Walter Benjamin. N. Romanticism. Pluhar 45. mondsworth: Penguin. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press.3 ( 1 99 9 ) : 5 77-602 ( 5 7 8 ) . 1 9 97). Charto and Windus. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. and passim. 43.D. Hannah Arendt. "Globalization and Political Strategy. Ind.J. 222-223 . 1 9 78 ) . Miller. The New Ecological Order. Culture and Society: Coleridge t o Orwell (London: 24. Poetics.23-24 (308-309 ) . Edward Casey. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. "How t o Avoid Speaking: Denials. For a useful discussion of ecocriticism's view of " theory. dissertation. the Envi­ 1 650-1 750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press. trans. Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Bruno Latour. David Simpson. and Pedagogy (Tucson: University of Arizona 29. Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Nega­ 20. See Immanuel Kant. Carol Volk ( Chicago: 32. trans. See for example Ted Hughes. in America from the Puritans to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University trans. 35. A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy. Mass. Ecocritique. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ 3 7. John Gatta. 2004 ) . intro. Werner S. 1 99 3 ). 1 973 ). 1 9. Terre Slatterfield. Donna Haraway. and e d . (Indianapolis. in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. versity of California Press. in Luke. Harcourt. Meyer. Scott Slovic. 1 9 77). Peter H. Theodor Adorno. : Stanford Univer­ (Ames: Iowa State University Press. 31." in Illuminations. Poems. Adorno. trans. "Marcuse and the Politics of Radical Ecology. Aesthetic Theory. Vyvyan Holland (London: trans. See also "Ecology" ( 1 1 0-1 1 1 ).. 25-26. analysis and foreword by J. Raymond Williams. ed. trans. 7-8 . On Beauty a n d Being Just (Princeton. intro. 1 3 5 . Paradise Lost. Princeton University Press. 1 9 9 1 ) . Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. repr. 1 9 67).: nell University Press. Mass. 2 1 9. See for example Elaine Scarry. 3 6. 1 79 7-1 800. and commentary Michael Inwood (Har­ Press.: Harvard University Press. 7 1 . Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature. 3 3 . mental Values. " The \Vork o f Art i n the Age o f Mechanical Reproduc­ 2 7 . Ashton (New York: Hothem. 2001). 233-2 8 8 . a description of 13. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: Uni­ versity Press. Boulton (Oxford: Basil Blackwell." in \Vriting a n d Difference. scription in an Age of Fiction" (Ph. 1 966). and the Truth of 19. and A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana Press. Raymond \Villiams's exploration remains helpful. ronment. Dana Phillips. Critique of Judgment. 1 25-1 62. "Ecocriticism. See Luc Ferry. J. 2003 ) . Kant. 3 1 . and the Future of Imagination (Cambridge. 87. 1 9 8 7) . "The Picturesque and the Production of Space: Landscape De­ Continuum. eds. 147-1 48. 31. 1 7.: Harvard Uni­ 23." New Left Review. 1 0. 1 52). 1969). Adorno. Luke. 6 5 . : Cor­ 1 5 . Israel. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin o f O u r Ideas of tion. 1 60-1 85. and John Daniel. See Georges Writing" (London: Faber and Faber. 1 9 8 7). Angus Fletcher. Luke." in Lyrical Ballads. Theodor \V. 140-1 5 8 . 14. Ecology. 5 ( "Dialectics is the consistent sense of nonidentity" )." see Thomas 1 8 . 24-26. Alastair Fowler (London: Longman. 1 42-1 50. 4. N. William Wordsworth.. Making: An Anthology of Poems and Programmes from "Listening and 26. "From Image to Event: Con­ 30. 8 5-8 8. Political Nature. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. "Violence and Metaphysics. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs. V. xi-xiii. 9 8. trans. Paradise Lost 8 . ed. 39. "Writing about Landscape. 25. 1 009-1 059. Press. Ibid. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democ­ sidering the Relations between Poetry and Prose as Conveyors of Environ­ racy (Cambridge. Fredric Jameson. 1 62-1 79. 1 9 8 8 ). Calif. 1 9 90). trans. Brace and World. 1 3 7-152. Oscar Wilde. 2002). 1 9 73 ). 224. 1 99 7). and Wolfgang Iser. John Locke. 1 95 8 . Peter Fritzell. 1 996). Jacques Derrida. N. 1 979). An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press. 74-86 ( 76 ) . 1 99 3 ). 1 99 7). 1 9 9 5 ). University of Rochester. see Jonathan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. sity Press. This is a perennial theme in Canghuilhem and Foucault.. Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics. E. See Timothy W. 1 996). 79-1 53 ( 1 5 1- Collins. B. The Normal and the Pathological (New York: Zone Books. 4 1 . 209 tice Reader: Politics. 1 9 8 7). People. and Other University of Chicago Press. 98-100. Herbert Marcuse. 1 99 9 ) . Jacques Derrida. 2004 ) . 1 3 8-1 39. for instance. 42. Negative Dialectics. Claudia 1 . SituatednessJ orJ Why We Keep 24. sound. Harmondsworth: Penguin.. repr. Norman Page. 5 7-5 8. A Sand County AlmanacJ and Sketches Here and ThereJ 28. David Toop. What's Nature Worth? Narrative Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. James McKusick. Ann Smock ( 1 955." The Orb. see Scott Cutler versity Press. sleeve note. "Introduction: Into Sound. Angus Fletcher.C." in Essays in Historical Semantics 50. repr. Ocean of Sound: Aether TalkJ Ambient Sound and Imagi­ 5 3 . Dana Phillips. " Art as Technique. Simpson. 6 3-97 (65)." in Thomas Meyer ( 1 854. Audio. i n Terre Slatterfield and Scott Slovic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 45 . The Work and the Gift (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1 9 86). 1 9 77)." 21 7-25 1 .Vision: Sound on ScreenJ ed. Roland Barthes.3. or the Persistence of the Third Critique in 1 7.. 2004 ).. Ambient 1 : Music for Airports (EG Records. Critique o fJudgmentJ 1 08 . 1 8 ." n. Buell. Collection of the artist. and monitors. 28-30. 1 3 . In Toop. ingJ and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge. 1 995). ( 1 948. Martin's Press. variable dimensions. Jacques Derrida." in Raman Selden. 8 . 1 79-3 1 6 . Ibid. 4 7. Leo Spitzer. For further discussion. For further discussion. see David Simpson. Robert Kaufman. 2000). Single-channel video installation with live plants Saying Where We're Coming From (Durham. Aesthetic TheorYJ 3 1 0. The Aesthetic D imension: Toward a Critique o f Marxist 14. 29. 1 94. 9. 2003). 2 3 . 2002). Henry David Thoreau. 1 9 86). The Theory Stephen Heath (London: Fontana. Poems 1 960-1 967J copyright © 1 96 1 by Denise Levertov. America ( Oxford: Oxford University Press. N. "The Work of Art. 1 8 . 2003). Lawrence Buell. 72. Viktor Shklovsky. T. 1 9 8 8 ) . 159. 22. SituatednessJ 14. 1 99 0 ) . and the fers some thoughts on contemporary nature as simulacrum. Mass. Slavoj Zizek. Oxford English DictionarYJ "timbre. 1 2. repr. 1 96 0). B leak HouseJ ed. proprietor. ed. \-Valden and Civil Diso bedienceJ intra. from 2 1 .: MIT Press. Macmillan. 1 0. Haunted WeatherJ 239-240. 20. of English Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2004). 1 99 5 ) and Haunted Weather: MusicJ Silence and Memory (London: Serpent's Tail. 1 0 1 . "Milieu and Ambiance. Terre Slatterfield and Scott Slovic. 25. Herbert Marcuse and Erica Sheraver (Basingstoke: St. Adorno." by Denise Levertov." in Margins ofPhilosophYJ trans. Kant. "To the Reader. 356. color. Style in Language (Cambridge. 6. 1 65-1 82. 7. 1 990). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1 1 7-1 1 8 . 1-1 6. Brian Eno. Lyrical Ballads with Other PoemsJ 2 vols.: Harvard Uni­ New York Press. 1 996). "Tympan. Maurice Blanchot.210 . Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology (New York: AestheticsJ trans. Ibid." in Revenge of the CrystalJ trans. 3 1 . 1 9 82). Michel Chi on. University Press. Charles Dickens. nary Worlds (London: Serpent's Tail. 1 0. 1 98 5 ). N. 307-330 (328 ). 1 . Notes to Pages 25-3 3 Notes to Pages 3 3-40 • 211 4 6 . 1 9 6 9 ). Benj amin. Thoreau.. "Introduction: What's Nature Worth ? " 1. William Wordsworth. Aldo Leopold. Public Image Limited.. The Indivisible R emainder: A n Essay o n Schelling and Re­ 1 9. you're on the air. WaldenJ 1 6 8-1 69. "Mass Media Culture. "Signature Event Context. . of Criticism from Plato to the Present: A Reader (Lo!1don: Longman. Lanham. Jacques Derrida." i n Michael Bull lated Matters (London: Verso. New York: Russell and Russell. repr." in Margins of PhilosophYJ ix-xxix (xvi) . A. A New Theory for American Poetry: DemocracYJ the Envi­ Theory of Literature in German Romanticism (Albany: State University of ronmentJ and the Future of Imagination (Cambridge. 1- 52. 1 98 9 ). 49. : Harvard 33. 274-276 (274). Michael 26. eds. 1 8 00). TV GardenJ 1 982 version. 27. The Art of Environmental Language Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press. ed. 1 09-1 1 1 . 1 5 5-164 ( 1 5 9 ) . Denise Levertov. intro. Mass. 5 . 52." Critical Inquiry 26 (Summer 2000): 682-724.. Rees. "From Work to Text. 1-1 7 ( 1 5 ) . (Harmondsworth: Penguin.. Richard A. See Michael Bull and Les Back. 3. eds. Lxxxiii-xxxiv. The Greatest HitsJ So Far (Virgin. 1 9 82). Longman and O." from "Back Side of the Moon. 5 1 . Roman Jakobson. 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"Ecstatic Dwelling: Cosmopolitan Reinhabita­ Sigmund Freud. 1 9 8 1 ). Jacques Derrida. 19 3-204 ( 1 96). 55. Douglas Khan." sleeve note. 123). For the ways in which poetics took account of 62. Jonty Semper. Critique of judgment. 6. 1 52-1 5 3 (vol.Garde ( Cambridge. 1 52)." in Le seminaire de jacques Lacan. Werner S.. For an example. 1 0-1 3 ) . l'ablme de l'organe feminin". 1 5 . . 24 vols. Celeste Langan. 53. For a con­ ed. A ll Essay COl1ceming Human Understandi11g. trans. trans. 1 9 90). 1 967). " syncope. World. 3 (2004 ) : 427-442.kenotaphion. anapolis. Disseminatio11. 208. Richard Howard ( Cleveland: Case Western Reserve Univer­ 3 . Pluhar (Indi­ 60. in Toril Moi. Oxford English Dictio11ary. "Le reve de l'injection d'Irma. in the Sentimental Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 99-103. Tzvetan Todorov. eds. bility of Ecopoiesis. 3. ed. The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Blackwell. (London: Roudedge and Kegan Paul. in The Standard Edition of tion in Wordsworth's London. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: Univer­ 49. " Studies in Romanticism 40. British Romanticism and the 63. : Johns Hopkins University Press. Burwick). There i s only enough space t o mention briefly Derrida's Glas ( "clang"). "Differance. ed. J. : Hackett. 301-304 (II. 1 79-1 89. 47. see Kate Rigby. 6 1 . 1 996). Critique ofjudgment. see Alan Richardson.22 . Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Gender and Commerce University of Minnesota Press." 1 . 1 1 2-1 1 3. Grevel Lindop. Mass. emerging brain science. See. trans. 1 9 78 ).. Lacan. "On the Knocking at the Gate in MacBeth. Thomas De Quincey." in Poetry. Jacques Derrida. 50. 1 08-109. Ekphrasis: The Illusio11 of the Natural Sign (Baltimore. "Linkage of a Neurological Deficit in Schizo­ Jerome McGann. Robert Freedman et aI. "The Origin of the Work of Art." trans." in The in The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Kant. : MIT 5 7. The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Re­ Md. See for example Andy Goldsworthy. "About Chinese Women. sity Press. Sep­ Strachey. qui en fait aussi versity of Chicago Press. Time (London: Thames and Hudson. 40. Julia Kristeva. "Death in Light of the Phonograph: Raymond Roussel's Adrian Gregory. see Kate Rigby. Radio. Murray Krieger. Sean War. Museum of lated Matters (London: Verso. 2 6 . 2004. second senes 6 (November­ 56. also available at Locus Solus. "Earth. 222. G. 5 2 . for instance. Edmund Baxter. plete and arresting. The Politics of Sensibility: Race. 1 9 96 ) . Science of the Mind ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1 23 ) . Kenotaphion (Locus +/Charrm. 36. 9 7-1 40 (99. I Am Sitting in a Room (Lovely Music. Genre. 38. 4 . The Economy of Character: Novels. 6 1 . Nidditch ( Oxford: Clarendon Press. closed upon the city. sity of Chicago Press. The Interpretation of Dreams. Peter Wollen. 25. James Heffernan. Martin Heidegger. Jacques 5 1 . Deidre Lynch. A Year from Monday (Middletown. insituable. 34-36. Language. 2000). James North American Society for Studies in Romanticism. 59." paper given at the annual conference of the the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud." in Image. 42-43." i n A Th ou­ Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press. "Tuning into London c . 1 . Ibid. 75. the State of Aesthetics. 2000)." in 011 Time and Being. Marcel Detienne. Friedrich Nietzsche. rev. Oxford English Dictionary. 1 9 72 ). Bruce Smith. 1 9 8 9 ) . Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. An aptly ambient example is Andre Breton. Hippias Major. Ibid. Mass. 32. ed." in The 1 00. 1 977). Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari." in Basic Writings. The Sighted Singer. Longinus. ford University Press. 71. Detienne." i n Sean Hand. 95. Horace. Aristotle. Md. Ibid. "Intra-Uterine Life. 2 1 0. 1 03 . "Time and Being. 81. Plato." i n Bull and Back. 49-6 1 (4 9-50). Plato. 8 6. in What Is Surrealism? Selected Writings. The Levinas Reader (Oxford: Blackwell. 1 99 7) . George 80. R." 43. Blackwell. 1-39 ( 5-8 ) . "There Is: Existence without Existents. Rhythm Science (Cambridge. 1 9 8 7). 9 7-109 tectural Press. 39-65. Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth 9 8 . On the Art o f Poetry. Jean-Fran<. Immaculate Conception. 1 9 8 6 ) . Ibid. "Notes on Nuance: Rethinking a Philosophy of Modern Music. 126. 5 8 . 55. ( 1 76 ) . 90. ( 1 9 70) featured a collage of images of people on lawns entitled Ambience 9 4 . ed. 243. trans. Philosophy 125 (May-June 2004 ) : 1 7-28 . 1 9 9 1 ) ." 11. "After the S ublime. : Johns Hopkins University rhapsodes. Poetry for Readers and Writers (Baltimore. 1 1 0. Sadie Plant. 70. 1 9 9 6 ) . 2 1-40.ois Lyotard... 250-25 1 . 1 600. 76. 1 98 1 ). 1 9 90). "make rhizome everywhere. 1 9 1 . 8 8 .D. Ind. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott. 1 9 99). 45. 1 9 9 1 ) . By permission of Ox­ sand Plateaus." Hei­ 78. 2 6 ( 5 34a). Ibid. David Abram." from The University Press. 1 9 6 8 ) . 1 9 8 9). The Fateful Question of Culture (New York: Columbia 92. Plato." Radical 1 02. Dionysos at Large. 30-3 1 . ed. 3 1 . in Classical Literary Criticism: Aristotle. 30. Notes to Pages 49-5 4 Notes to Pages 55-6 1 • 215 which i s i n part a meditation o n the idea of bells and tongues. trans. Mass. Weltarm.org/writings/animaltongues tate. racy (Cambridge. The Prelude 1 . Ibid. bridge. 2004) . Ibid. . 1 08 . 67. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 9 6 . . 26-29. 79. in The Thirteen Book Prelude. Philosophies of Art and Beauty: Selected Readhlgs in Zone Books. " Origin. trans. The Emperor's New Mind: Conceming Computers.. 83.. Arthur Goldhammer (Cam- 68. 5 1 3-514. Martin Heidegger. 35. Emmanuel Levinas. Schizophrenia. : MIT Press. Joan tory Culture Reader. "rhapsody. . William Wordsworth. "The American Lawn: The Surface o f Everyday Life. Slavoj Z izek. 3 5 . Mass. Heidegger. 82. . Nature a11d the Geography of Difference (Oxford: 8 7. 243. 84. 79. 1 . 107. 1 98 3 ). 2 3 1. A Th ousand Plateaus: Capitalism and degger. ed. "Speaking with Animal Tongues. Paul rida. 127-1 3 5 ( 1 3 1. The Birth of Tragedy. Martin Heidegger. and Richard Rand (Lincoln: University Woodruff (Indianapolis..Y. Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Kraus. 66-92. Farrell Krell (New York: Harper and Row. ed. " After Taste: The Aesthetics of Romantic Eating" (Ph.: Cornell University Press. N.. Denise Gigante. Edward Thomas. Ibid. The Archigram Monte Carlo Project (98 ) . 77. Formless: A User's G uide (New York: Richard Kuhns. 1 9 76 ) . trans. http://www. 1 9 84 ) . Andre Breton. 2. Jacques Der­ 8 5 . The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas. and the Laws of Physics (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1 9 7 8 ) . trans. Ibid. 255-256. 1 8 . Richardson. Bruno Latour. John P. David Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity Press. eds. 9 1 . Fighting For? (London: Verso. Glas. 1 9 97). of Nebraska Press. Dionysos at Large. and 109. Aesthetics from Plato to Heidegger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 236. Ibid. 69. Justice.: Hackett. trans. 8 9. have no world." in What Is Surrealism?. 105. Poetry. 1 9 9 8 ) . 1 992). T. See David Cunningham. Georges Teyssot. 248-250. Minds. The Audi­ 106. trans.html. "The Automatic Message.. 500-501 . 3-25.: Harvard University Press. Two Comic Dialogues: 1011. 1 9 . Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Paul Miller. 72. Allen Grossman with Mark Halliday. ed. David Harvey. 74. 99. 5 3 5 . 9 0 . Plato. 1 5 8 ." 33-34. Leavey Jr. Georges Teyssot. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Min­ 104. 3 2 . " Origin. i n Albert Hofstadter and 73. 140. 246. Roger Penrose." in Franklin Rosemont (London: Pluto Press. "poor in world" : "Plant and animal . . 2 1 1 . Geoffrey Hartman. 29-36 ( 3 0 ) . 97." essay for the Acoustic nesota Press. Politics of Nature: How to B ring the Sciences into Democ­ Mark Reed (Ithaca.1 32 ) . Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row. 2004). 35. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel 1 0 1 . The Fragile Absolute: Or. . Zeroes + Ones (London: Fourth Es­ Ecology Institute.: Harvard University Press. The American Lawn (New York: Princeton Archi­ 93. Dorsch (Harmondsworth: Penguin. Aristotle. S. "Letter on Humanism. Mind.acousticecology.. Press. 53. A Greek-E11glish Lexicon.2 1 4 . Two Works 011 a ugmented by Henry Stuart Jones et al. Snead. . Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Interpretation 1 33 . 1 1 8. See Freud 30-3 1 . 143. 1 34.. in and the Invisible. in Byron's Letters and journals. David Wright (Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ibid. 1 9 74). "we call peace what is really desolation" 121.2 1 6 ." Yellow Submarine (EMI. 3. trans. 1 55-15 7 Slavoj Zizek. Margaret Waller. 1-2. B lack Literature and Literary Theory (London: Routledge. trans. 1 32.: MIT Press. 47. who had returned to convince Thomas of His reality. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. 1 99 6 ) . (London: John Murray Publishers. 2000)." in The Visible 1 4 7. that nevertheless results in the framing Gates Jr. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (Cambridge. 1 984). Thoreau. William Wordsworth. E. 1 3 7-1 3 8 . Paul Ricoeur. 1 1 4. 1 977). also squares with Lacan's view of subjecthood as a hole in the real caused 1 4 0 . Paul Magnuson. 746. Ibid. ation of Meaning in Language. Leslie Marchand. Nicholas Factor ( 1 9 9 1 .C. The Beatles. Charles Lock Eastlake (Lon­ 1 23. 75. 76-79. the seventh chapter of Looking Awry is a sustained 1 3 7. 1-3. John M. 1 79 (vol. Critique o fjudgment. The Last Man : By the Author of "Frankenstein. In Hartman's haunting phrase. 1 1 6. : Stanford University Press. Major Works.. 3 4 . ed. 2 1 7 dissertation. 1 9 78 ) . 1 3 0. ed. Wordsworth. the sinthome is neither symptom nor fantasy but "the point 594. 4 1 . Ocean o f Sound. Claude Lefort. " handsel. Meyer. 148. Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts 1 1 9.: MIT Press. Mass. St. Slavoj Z izek. Notes to Pages 6 1 -69 Notes to Pages 69-77 . J. Revolution in Poetic Language. phies). 3 . trans." in Lyrical Ballads. Kant. ( 1 57). Pink Floyd. 144. 1 35-1 3 7. repr. 94. ed. 1 9 73-1 982). James A. Goethe was the first to theorize the notion of the afterimage. The Kristeva Reader. 1 22. Johann Wolf­ what he therefore 'loves more than himself' " ( Zizek. 128.. 1 32." 3 vols. ed. ed.: MIT Press. 135. gang von Goethe." i n Henry Louis by the removal of a "little bit" of it. and Raimonda Modiano (New York: Norton. "The Intertwining-The Chiasm. 2002). 1 3 1 ." in William Wordsworth: The of the risen Christ. Val Plumwood. Thomas De Quincey. The Maine Woods. trans. "There Is N o O n e Narcissism (Autobiophotogra­ 142. 1 1 5. 230. (Stanford. Halmi. of reality (see Jacques-Alain Miller's explanation in Zizek. "There Was a Boy. 1 26. marking the dimension of 'what is in the subject more than himself' and 1 39." i n Zoological Philosophy (Chi­ Raimonda Modiano (New York: Norton. 1 9 84). IL: Moi. Ibid.: 2004) . "Repetition as a Figure o f Black Culture. 76 (on the "Nirvana " principle) . cago: University of Chicago Press. 1-3. Lamarck. Elisabeth Weber. The Maine Woods (Harmondsworth: Penguin. Theory of Colours. analysis of the rhetoric and politics of the sinthome. 1 992)." n. "Note on The Thorn. 1 6 1-199. 1 9 71 ). 1 30. See Douglas Khan. who had to insert his fingers into the gaping wound in the side 1 3 8 . Peggy Kamuf et al. Alfonso Lingis (Evanston. See Jacques Derrida. trans. Ibid. 76. in Coleridge's Poetry and Prose. 1 826). Robert Czerny. Robert Hullot-Kentor of Western Thought (Cambridge. Thoreau and the Maine Woods Narrative Tradition 1 804-1 8 8 6 " (Ph. University of Iowa. Mountains and Rivers with out End (Washington. 1 9 9 7). Adorno. Mass. 93. Sigmund Freud. and ed. For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Rule o f Metaphor." i n Minima Moralia: Reflections from Popular Culture (Cambridge. 1 24. 1 2 1 . 3 . 1 25. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Paul Magnuson. ( Culture. 1 32). 1 994). Henry David Thoreau. The term is a pun on (London: Henry Colburn. trans. 1 994). McLaughlin and John Costello (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. and 1 29. ed. e d . 95. 1 9 84 ) . "Sur l'Eau. Nicholas Halmi. Ibid. with Kathleen 1 1 3. 1 8. 1 9 6 8 ). 1 20. Jephcott (London: Verso. in Standard Edition. 1 1 2. 2001 ). 79 ). Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004 ). 1 1 9-206 ( 1 60). 1 3 1 . 1 967). F. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 8 9-1 3 6 (1 20). N. "Preliminary Discourse." Meddle (EMI. Counterpoint. Oxford English Dictionary. Mary Shelley. 1 3 0-1 55. " Growing Outward into the World: Henry David 18 1 3 . 1 5 . In general. Calif.62. 1 1 7. 111. 215 (199). Looking Awry. November 29.. 43. 1 9 1 ).. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso. Ricoeur. Northwestern University Press. Stanley Allan Tag. It don: Frank Cass. 94-95 ) . Thomas. 1 6-2 8 . Aesthetic Theory." in Points: Interviews. B.D. ed. .. Lord George Gordon Byron. 6 7. 1 9 8 9 ). 63-64. 23 0-23 1 . D. The Rule of Metaph or: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Cre­ 1 9 8 8 ) . Mass. Princeton University. Looking Awry: An Introdu ction to jacques Lacan through 1 3 6. The 1 27. Looking Awry. 74. 1995).. Theodor Adorno. 1 9 6 7). (London: Routledge. 146. "I A m the 145. preface to the Lyrical Ballads. trans. Gary Snyder. 200 1 ) . Slavoj Zizek. William Wordsworth. 1 4 1 . Toop. 1 9 70). See Zizek's discussion of Ridley Scott's film Alien (Sublime Object. 1 2 vols. Damaged Life. 59-80. Letter to Annabella Milbanke. London: Verso. Theodor W. Walrus. Coleridge's Poetry and Prose. 43. Ibid. Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets. "Echoes. 1 9 74-1 994. 1 9 6. Julia Kristeva. For Lacan. dissertation. 244-245. "The Flames o f New York.1 (Spring . 1 9 8 7). 206-207. 6. Ibid. ed. 1 8 . Hurley. New York: Russell and Russell. Risk Society: Towards a New Mode1'11 ity. "The Picturesque ( 1 9 74.. repr. 366-3 67. Ursula K. 2000). Baudrillard (Stanford. : Smithsonian Institution Press. 1 1-53. Karl Marx. 2000). 1 992). Foucault. Seem. 33. 1 850-1 950. J. repr. Selected Writings. Jacques Derrida. second series 6 (November­ 201-207. Phrenology (MCA. Nature and the Geography of Difference (Oxford: 36. trans. Cultural Materialism 011 Raymond Williams (Min­ 29. The Productiol1 of Space. Koolhaas. 1 994): 23-4 8 . Terry Eagelton. "How Did Marx Invent the Social Symptom ? " in The Sub­ University Press. " Come Softly. Ibid. "Junkspace. Clark. 3 vols. O f Grammato!ogy. 39. C. Voicing 'History' . 1 (March 2002): 49-62. 2." boundary 2 30. 1 77. Marx. : Stanford 30. 2002)." in The American Lawn. Md. Oxford: Blackwell. William Shakespeare. 1 9 95). Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental 1 1 . nology: Sartl'e. M. The Condition of the Working Class in England. 1 86-1 8 7. 1 7-1 8. "Something in the Way of Things (in Town)." paper Mass Mediacy in the Paper Age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania given at the MLA Convention. 97-98 . Alexander (London: Collins. 1 3-28 . 1 990). 1 1 1 . : Johns Hopkins University Press. London: The Hogarth Press. 1 995). D . December 27-30. trans. Culture and Society: Coleridge to Orwell (London: of Minnesota Press.. 1 9 94). Alan Bewell. 5. pher Prendergast. trans. Justice. Risk Society. 238. 1 9 89). 1 79. Capital. Timothy Morton. 2. Raymond Williams. repr. 29-49. See Beck. See Matsuo Basho. See Tilottama Raj an. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso. Marx. Hopkins University Press. and H." in Christo­ the 1 9 90s. Ernst Bloch.. in Paperwork: Fiction and 4. 26. The Tempest. The Essen­ 2 0 . 1 95 1 ) . 1 9 1 . Friedrich Engels." The Roots. 3 59-3 60. Ibid. see also 2-3. Slavoj Zizek. 6-1 1 . 234-235. This is one of Basho's most famous haikus. Philadelphia. Capital. Ibid. a modern metaphor for this potential energy. 2. 2000). Ben Fowkes.. 1 9 . John Howe (London: Verso. 1 9 9 6 ) . Den'ida. Henri Lefebvre. 1 96 8 ). "Milieu and Ambiance. 42. 1 0-1 4. (Baltimore. trans. December 2000 ) : 1 3 3 . : Johns Tradition (London: Routledge. Georges Teyssot's The American Lawn (New York: Princeton Architectural 1 2. repr. Population. Romanticism and Colonial D isease (Baltimore. ( 1 948. lime Object of Ideology (London: Verso. 10. I take the name from the famous Sound Factory club in New York City in " Raymond Williams: Feeling for Structures. 234." October 69 (Summer Blackwell. Mau­ 3 1 . mantic Review 1 3 .. part of lawn aesthetics: Alessandra Ponte. 1 9 8 7). 1. Romanticism and the Human Sciences: Poetry. 9.. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ Victor Kiernan ( 1 845. T. and Robert Christgau. Darling. 90-104." New Left Writing on the Lawn. ed. 40. ." 1 86." European Ro­ 1 7. reen McLane. quoted i n Mike Davis. trans. 1 95 8. Culture (London: Fontana Press. 24. Md. 1 5. Romanticism and the Environmental Subject 34. 1 9 77). 3 8 . 2005 ).." October 1 00 (Spring 2002): 1 75-1 90. Lane (Minneapolis: University 7." New Left Review.. 27. 8 6. Ibid. Virginia Scott Jenkins. 224-225 . Deconstruction and the Remainders of Phenome­ Presley. 33-3 5. 8 9-1 1 5 ( 101- Review 12 (November-December 200 1 ) : 34-50 (41 ). Jonathan Bate. ed. 2004. ed. versity Press. 3 2 .2 1 8 . 1 9 9 1 ). Elvis 8 . "Junkspace. 1 999) indicates the frisson of kitsch and high modernism that the (London: Sage. 44-45. Capital. trans. 9-1 0. 30-3 1 . 8 89. 3 1 1 . 348-3 5 1 .. Kevin McLaughlin has explored the role of paper as 3 .200 3 ) : 1 9 9-2 12. Hear What I Say: Listening in a neapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1 83. Karl Marx. 3 5 . 34. Calif. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 241 . Leo Spitzer. 556. 1 99 1 ). Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermoder. 1 99 1 ). Marc Auge. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. 1 98 3 ) . Exotic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Notes to Pages 79-85 Notes to Pages 8 6-89 • 219 nity. Rem Koolhaas. Donald Nicholson-Smith 37. David Harvey. 346-347. Sam Hamill (Boston: Shambhala. Ulrich Beck. 48-62. phrenia. the association between lawn and canvas was 1 3. (Washington. The Lawn: A History of An American Obsession 1 9 . trans. 101-140. Press. 1 02). State of Distraction-A Tribute to the Work of Walter Benjamin. "Professional Pastoral: The 1 4 . 2002) . Peter Wollen. and the production of Space: Suburban Ideology in Austen. "In Defense of Abstract Expressionism. For a comprehensive discussion see Thomas Hothem. Moreover. 22. Lindsay Waters. Chatto and Windus. Peter 2 3 . Amiri Baraka. 28. tial Basho.. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizo­ 1 67-168. See David Simpson. 4 . 1999). 31-32. 1 9 9 1 ). 3 6-6 1 . (Harmondsworth: Penguin. 94. and the Discourse of Species (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press." in Essays i n Historical Semantics 2 1 . in The Complete Works. 1 9 8 7). Heise. R. "Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: A Polemic. 1 6 . lawn produces. Mark Ritter Press. The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the 25. " Blue. Arizona. ed. 57. Deep Voices: Recordings o f Humpback. 2003). Institutions (New York: Dover. 2000. frey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 4 7. Authoritative Texts of the 1 798 and 1 81 7 Ver­ ford University Press. . 45. presented at the annual conference of the North American Society for 4 4 . The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental says from Contemporary Critical Perspectives (Boston: Bedford Books of Phenomenology. Ibid. Heidegger.. 1 9 97 ). St. 43. " Graphs. 1 9 74-1 994. ence and Exploration in the Romantic Era : B odies of Knowledge (Cam­ 6 7. Mariner. The phrase "The Question of the Animal " is the subtitle of Cary Wolfe. 1999). sions with Biographical and Historical Contexts. : Stan­ Ancient Mariner. 53. Tom Fort." in Jennifer Ham and Matthew Senior. Maps. The Susan Ilcan. Critical History. 1 99 5 ) . trans. Martin Heidegger. . and commentary Michael Inwood ( 1 8 86. in Selected Writings. 56." in Poetry. Martin Heidegger. Complete. June 26. "The Poet in the World. repr. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of the 68. 1 07 ( 1 02-1 04) .. Marx. a relentless de­ Points: Interviews. trans. ed. 1 998. Marx." in a creation of "modern technology" rather than capitalism. Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics. 1 (January 2005 ) : 97- HarperCollins. Martin Hei­ al. Donn Welton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Europe. 148-1 6 7 ( 1 5 5-157). David 62. 1 9 94).monticel/o. Hard Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press.' " in Paul H. Fry. 39-43. The Hobbit ( 1 9 3 7. 365. Capital. 532-533.220 . 43. 1 98 7) . 59. 1 9 77). "Radio-Nation: Fichte and the Body of Germany. 462. 900-1 900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press..usatoday. 1 9 77). and Literature in 5 1 . 2004). 9 8 . Harmondsworth: Penguin. London: Unwin. 4 9 ..: Standford University Press. and Debbie Lee." in New and Selected Essays and Row. 65. Calif. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. Vandana Shiva. 63. 1 91-1 92. http://www. 9 6 . 1. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row. David Simpson. Sci­ America (Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lord of the Rings ( 1 954. degger. 1 . 5 0 . Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of trans. 60. html. Heidegger sees this ignorance as 71. 227. vinyl. Marx. trans. Tempe. South End Press.com/life/health/genetics/ See Jacques Derrida." PMLA 120. Geof­ Ihgec068. 2004). with Animals after Levinas. 2004). "On Being 'the Last Kantian in Nazi Germany': Dwelling tory 2. tion/hom e. trans. Trees: Abstract Models for Literary His­ 73. David Toop. " 'Eating Well. Biopiracy: The Plunder o f Nature and Knowledge (Boston: 70. 4 0 . 2000. . 1 992). 1 9 77).. "The Origin of the Work of Art. USA Today. 5 3-54. See also Smith's remarks in McGill-Queen's University Press. eds.. 65-67. ed. B lue a n d Right 4 1 . 94-1 05. In opposition to this. The Complete Poems. Smith. Peter Kitson. Language. 6 3 8 . David Clark. Nearness is not the same as knowledge. 83. 1 999). 200 3 ) . Ibid. 4 1-75. Dana Phillips. bridge: Cambridge University Press. repr. intro.. Martin's Press. Haunted Weather: Music. Ibid. The Open. 1 99 7). 1 65-19 8 . 1 9 9 9 ) . Peggy Kamuf et sire to see and know everything. Bernard Bosanquet. Alfred W. eds . and Es­ 69. 1 9 9 3 ) . Literature. Georg Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel. . Joan Stamba ugh (New York: Harper 72. eds. 1 9 95). pent's Tail.' or. " Some Affinities of Content. Jacques Derrida. to be in all places at once. 2003 ). September 1 4-1 7. 200 1 ) . (Stanford. 4 3 . See Michael Bull and Les Back. Reissued o n C D as Songs of the Humpback Whale (Living Music. "How Marxism Reads 'The Rime of the Ancient introduction powerfully outlines the stakes (ix-xxiii). The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Whales (Living Music. 54. Thought. ed. Joan Stambaugh (Al bany: State 1 99 1 ). John Keats. . Zoontologies (Minneapolis: University o f Minnesota Press. 1 4 9 . 1 9 70). 255-2 8 7 (277). 7. 1 71-1 75. McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edmund Husserl. 55." New Left Review.org/jefferson/planta 58. Tolkien. 2005 ). 77. The Communist Manifesto. Wolfe's 52. 1-21. Peter Kitson. Elisa beth Weber. 82. Capital. a revision appears in Barbara Gabriel and cultural studies is proliferating. 61. Capital. and Selected Essays. The Truth of Ecology: Nature. http://www. ed. John Barnard (Harmondsworth: Pen. Official Monticello website. 1 9 96 ) . Franco Moretti. Kevin Attell (Stanford. Thorstein Veblen. On Time and Being. Postmodemism and the Ethical Subject (Kingston: Auditory Culture Reader (Oxford: Berg. Marx. Heidegger asserts a philosophy of (New York: New Directions. 64.html." paper guin. 4 7-5 7. Ibid. second series 26 (March-April 2004): 79-1 03. 1 2 9-1 3 8 . 29 8-299. Auditory Routledge. 66. 1 97 1 ) . Culture. 1 99 8 ) . repr. Studies in Romanticism. Notes to Pages 8 9-9 5 Notes to Pages 9 6-99 • 221 39. Calif. Silence a n d Memory (London: Ser­ 42. R . B eing and Time. The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending Animal Acts: Configuring the Human i n \\festern History (New York: to the O-Factor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. University of New York Press. 1 9 72). trans. 1 5 5. the Calculation of the Subject. The 4 8 . The Grass Is Greener: O u r Love Affair with the Lawn (London: "Poetry and Theory: A Roundta ble. Crosby. in Tim Fulford. J. 6 1-62. trans. Giorgio Agamben." New opacity and obscurity. Charles Dickens. Denise Levertov. 1 9 93). ed. 70-75. 71 . Marc Redfield. B eing and Time. R . 249. 46.. Bruce R. London: Unwin. See Timothy Luke. 1 85. 1 9 99). Mass. Gil Anidjar (London: Routledge. Luc Ferry.a. Theory. Latour. II." New Literary History 9 (1 9 77-1 978): 1 0 1 nl 0. sity of Chicago Press.. versity of California Press. Pandora's Hope: Essays on and the Laws of Physics (Oxford: Oxford University Press. Givanna Borradori (interviewer). 1 99 3 ).: Harvard University 90. . "Marcuse and the Politics of Radical Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (Cam­ 8 8 . Pen sees. 1 1 3 . 9 8 . J. Roger Penrose. 9 3 . 49-5 5 .222 . Natural Capitalism: William Paulson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1 8 1 ( 1 52). passim but especially 14. Paul Hamilton. The New Ecological Order. Georges Bataille. 50. H . 1 9 73). 1 9 95 ) . 91. 1 3a-c. 21-24. tour. and L. Douglas Kellner ( 1 964. Rod Giblett. 1 0 8 . Michel Serres. Plumb. Cited i n David Simpson. 21 7. The Essential Husserl. 356-420. sion (London: Methuen. Abram. IlL 1 7. Technology. February 22 . One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Ad­ 1 02. 7 7 . Cyborgs. the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge. ed. Simpson. 80-83 . See also Latour. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijho££. Krailsheime (Harmondsworth: Penguin.. 73. 149- Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 59. vol. Elizabeth MacArthur and 1 1 0. 2003). Litertature. . (Cambridge. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a 79. 2002). 1 997). 6 7. 2003). and Descartes' Meditations?" in Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. 8 3 . fornia Press. 140-14 1 . ed. and Lifestyle: A Philosophical Ap­ 1 98 1 ). Popular Defense and Ecological Struggles. Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Boston: Little. of Evolution from Om Microbial Ancestors (Berkeley: University of Cali­ 8 6 . Boston: Beacon Press. 203-210. 1 5 5 . repr. The Natural Contract. 1 977)." n. 56." in Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature." in Acts of Religion. 2. Paul Virilio. Lynn Margulis. Ecology. The Accursed Share: An Essay on G eneral Economy. We Have Never Been Modern. 105. Postmode1'11 \Vetlands: Culture. Dalia J udowitz. See for example Emily Thompson. Metaromanticism: Aesthetics. 23-25. Ecology. Oxford English Dictionary. 1 9 82). Amory Lovins. 1 9 9 7). Woeful Afflictions: Disability and Senti­ 82. Loeb. trans. and J. Ibid. 1 994). 24. Edinburgh University Press. Nationalism a n d the Revolt against Theory mentality in Victorian America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1 986). trans. 1 51-1 6 1 . 8 9 . . trans. The Observer. Symbiosis i n Cell Evolution (New York: W. intro. 2002). 9 2 . 95. More-Than-Human World (New York: Pantheon. Truth of Ecology. repr. 2004. 9 7. Bruno Latour. Mass. Herbert Marcuse. Neil McKendrick. and 61. 8 5 . 94. Blaise Pascal. trans. 101. trans. Essential Husserl. 1 9 95). Oxford English Dictionary." in Simians. Husserl. zotti ( 1 978.. 8 8 . A. History. David Simpson. 109. Edmund Husserl. Mary Klages. Catherine Porter 8 7. Carol Volk (Chicago: Univer­ 1. 99. 76. Descartes' Meditations (Berkeley: University of California Press. Community.. Philosophy in a Time of of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 201 . Edward Casey. 202-203. 53-54. Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the 243-270. 2002 ) . 1 99 1 ). "Is There Radical Dissimulation in ment on hospitality is " Hostipitality. trans. trans. "Putting One's House in Order: The Career o f the 1 1 2. 1 9-26. John Brewer. The Birth o f a Consumer . Collected Poems 1 94 7-1 980 (New York: Harper. Mass. Arne Naess. 159. Donna Haraway. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan. bridge. 78. trans. 122. Derrida's seminal state­ lation can be found in Louis E. Self in Descartes' Method. 72. Essays on intro. "field. 1 3 7-152. Press. Romanticism. 1 06. repr. 8 5-1 72 (129).. Microcosmos: Four Billion Years proach ( Oslo: University of Oslo Press. Press.: Harvard University Press. 261-262. 1 9 8 8 ). 1 9 9 7). 80. Mary Klages has argued that the sentimentalization of disability in the 8 1 . Allen Ginsberg. Husserl. New York: Semiotext(e). The Fate o f Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: Uni­ 1 07. Ecology (Edinburgh: vanced Industrial Society. 1 9 8 8 ) . 70. 1 . 96. Theory (Chi." n. 2004). 34. Lord o f the Rings. Paul Hawken. 166-1 70. 1 9 9 9 ) . 1 99 6 ). cago: University of Chicago Press. 1996). 1 99 0 ). Spell o f the Sensuous. Brown. The possi­ Terror: Dialogues with Jiirgen Habermas and Jacques Den'ida (Chicago: bility that Descartes' use of fiction reflects a deep tendency toward dissimu­ University of Chicago Press. dence of disability. David Abram. The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers. H.: MIT Press. 66. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science. 26-27. 1 9 9 1 ) . 3 6-3 7. and and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Routledge. 23 7. Ann Smock ( 1 955.254. Minds. Freeman. 1 1 1 . 1 9 8 6). Notes to Pages 9 9-1 05 Notes to Pages 1 05-1 1 0 • 223 74. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenome. 1 990). 1 99 9 ) . Mark Poliz­ 1 00. The Soundscape of Modernity (Cam­ nineteenth century has resulted in a view that communication is a transcen­ bridge. 2nd ed. 22-25. The Space of Literature. Phillips. 69. Economy. See also La­ Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Tolkien. 1 74-2 1 5 . "field. 4 7-49 . Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes: The Origins 75. 84. 20. 1 04 . Ibid. Aesthetics. Timothy Morton. Jacques Derrida. Maurice Blanchot. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White.: Harvard University Press. Hegel. 1 9 8 8 ) . The Politics a n d Poetics o f Transgres­ 110 logy. 72. 1 9 9 8 ) . Mass. Natural World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Politics of Nature. 1 0 3 . trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books. Hunter Lovins. 224 • Notes to Pages 1 1 1-1 1 4 Notes to Pages 1 14-12 1 • 225 Society: The Commercialization o f Eighteenth-Century England (Bloom­ 1 3 1 . John Carey, What G ood Are the Arts? (London: Fa ber and Faber, 2005), ington: Indiana University Press, 1 9 82). 3-64. 1 1 4. Morton, Shelley, 1 3-2 1 , 30-3 8 . 1 32. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Basil Black­ 1 1 5. Morton, Poetics o f Spice, 5 , 9-1 1 . well, 1 993), 24-25, 2 8-29. 1 1 6. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction : A Social Critique of the judgement of Taste, 1 3 3 . Charles Baudelaire, " Correspondences," in The Poems a n d Prose Poems of trans. Richard Nice (London: Ro utledge, 1 989), 34-44. Charles Baudelaire, ed. James Huneker (New York: Brentano's, 1 9 1 9 ) . 1 1 7. I develop this term following Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the 1 34. Thoreau, Walden, 1 5 6-168 (my emphasis). Spirit of Modem Consumerism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1 9 8 7); "Under­ 1 3 5 . Toop, Haunted Weather, 45. standing Traditional and Modern Patterns of Consumption in Eighteenth­ 1 36 . Timothy Morton, "Consumption as Performance: The Emergence of the Century England: A Character-Action Approach," in John Brewer and Roy Consumer in the Romantic Period," in Timothy Morton, ed., Cultures of Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism (London: Palgrave, 2004), 1 9 93), 40-57. 1-1 7. 1 1 8 . Emily Jenkins, Tongue First: Adventures in Physical Culture (New York: 1 3 7. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. and ed. Robert Hullot-Kentor Henry Holt, 1 9 9 8 ) . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 9 9 7), 140, 154, 1 5 9. 1 1 9. Timothy Murphy, "William Burroughs Between Indifference and Revaloriza­ 1 3 8 . Karl Marx, "Toward a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduc­ tion: Notes towards a Political Reading," Angelaki 1 . 1 (1993 ) : 1 13-124. tion," in Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford Univer­ 120. Morton, Poetics of Spice, 23. sity Press, 1 9 77), 7 1 . 1 2 1 . Sigmund Freud, Civilization a n d Its Discontents, in The Standard Edition 1 3 9 . Georg \Vilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Phenomenology o f Spirit, trans. of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. A. V. Miller, analysis and foreword by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth, 1 953), 1 1 .64-65. versity Press, 1 9 77), 3 8 3-409. 122. Percy Bysshe Shelley, " On Life," in Shelley'S Prose: 01' The Trumpet of a 140. Moltke S. Gram, "Moral and Literary Ideals in Hegel's Critique of 'The Prophecy, ed. David Lee Clark (London: Fourth Estate, 1 9 8 8 ) , 1 71-1 75 1vIoral World-View,' '' Clio 7.3 ( 1 978 ) : 3 75-402 (390). ( 1 74 ) . 141. David Icke, I t Doesn 't Have to Be Like This: Green Politics Explained 1 2 3 . John Keats, letter t o Richard Woodhouse, October 27, 1 8 1 8 , i n Poetical (London: Green Print, 1 990). Works and Other Writings of Keats, 8 vols. , ed. H. Buxton Forman (New 142. Timothy Morton, "Environmentalism," in Nicholas Roe, ed., Romanti­ York: Phaeton, 1 9 70), 7. 1 29. cism: An Oxford Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), 124. John Keats, letter 1 5 9, in The Letters ofjohn Keats, 1 81 4-1 82 1, 2 vols. , ed. 696-707. Hyder F. Rollins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1 95 8 ); Ara­ 143. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols., bian Nights' Entertainments, ed. Ro bert L. Mack (Oxford: Oxford Univer­ trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1 9 6 9 ) , 4 1 1 . sity Press, 1 9 95), 658-65 9 . 144. Ibid., 412. 125. Ludwig Fe uerbach, Gesammelte Werke II, Kleinere Schriften, ed. Werner 145. Ibid., 390. Schuffenhauer (Berlin: Akadamie-Verlag, 1 9 72), 4.27; Jean-Anthelme 146. The Day after Tomorrow, dir. Roland Emmerich (20th Century Fox, Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, trans. Anne Drayton (Har­ 2004 ) . mondsworth: Penguin, 1 9 70), 1 3 . 1 4 7 . Malcolm Bull, "Where I s the Anti-Nietzsche? " New Left Review, second 126. Jack Turner, The Abstract Wild (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, series 3 (May/June 2000 ) : 1 21-145. 1 9 97), 32. 1 4 8 . Ibid., 1 44-145. 127. Immanuel Kant, Critique of judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indi­ 149. In Marx, Selected Writings, 7-8 . anapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1 9 8 7), 1 08 . 150. James Treadwell, Interpreting Wagner (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University 1 2 8 . Jean-Paul Sartre, B eing and Nothingness: An Essay o n Phenomenological Press, 2003 ), 78-79. Ontology, trans. and ed. Hazel Barnes (New York: The Philosophical Li­ 1 5 1 . Alan Gurganus, "Why We Fed the Bomber," New York Times, June 8, brary, 1 9 6 9 ), 34 1-345 (342). 2003; Jeffrey Gettleman, "Eric Rudolph: America's Terrorist, North Car­ 129. John Gatta, Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment olina's Folk Hero," New York Times, June 2, 2003. in America from the Puritans to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University 1 52. See Phillips, Truth of Ecology, 1 5 9-1 72. Press, 2004 ), 1 5-33, 8 8-99. 153. Penrose, Emperor's New Mind, 25 0-25 1 ; see 23 1-236, 243, 248-250, 130. Bate, Romantic Ecology, 1 4-1 6. 255-256. 226 . Notes to Pages 1 2 1- 1 3 0 Notes t o Pages 1 3 1-1 3 7 . 227 1 54. Hegel, Phenomenology, 3 8 9-390. 1 77. Hegel, Aesthetics, 78 . 1 55. Ibid., 399. 1 78 . The phrases belong to Wordsworth ( "She dwelt among untrodden ways " ), 1 56. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 64. Charlotte Turner Smith (Beachy Head, 349 , in The Poems of Charlotte 1 5 7. Derrida, Of Grammatology, 1 62. Smith, ed. Stuart Curran [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993]), and 158. James Boswell, Boswell's Life of Johnson (London: Oxford University Robert Frost, respectively. Press, 1 9 6 5 ) , 3 3 3 . 1 79. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 1 59. John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Press, 2003 ). Stewart, with the assistance of H. S. Harris (Berkeley: University of Cali­ 1 60. Ibid., 1 2-1 3. fornia Press, 1 9 8 8 ), 25 3-254, 265nn1 8 3 , 1 8 5, 2 66n1 8 8 , 504-505; Georg 161. Adorno, Aesthetic Th eory, 1 79 . Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree, pref­ 1 62. Ibid., 21 9. aces by Charles Hegel and J. Sibree, new introduction by c . J. Friedrich 1 63. Don DeLillo, White Noise (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1 98 6 ), 25 8 . (1 900; repr., New York: Dover Publications, 1 956), 1 71 ; Hegel's Logic, 1 64. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Bedazzled, dir. Stanley Donen (20th Cen­ 3rd ed., trans. William Wallace, foreword by J. N. Findlay ( 1 8 73; repr., tury Fox, 1 967). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 975 ), 125, 127-1 28. 1 65. Hegel, Aesthetics, 54-55 . 1 80. Hegel, Phenomenology, 395, 3 9 8-39 9 . 1 66 . Louis Althusser, " Ideology and the State," in Lenin and Philosophy and 1 8 1 . See David Simpson, "Romanticism, Criticism and Theory," i n Stuart Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, Curran, ed., The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism (Cam­ 1 971 ), 1 76 . bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 9 9 3 ), 10. 1 67. Ibid., 1 73. 1 82. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 2 vols., 1 6 8. Marjorie Levinson, "The New Historicism: Back to the Future," in Mar­ trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1 9 75 ) , 1 .527. jorie Levinson et al., eds., Rethinking Historicism-Critical Readings in Ro­ 1 8 3 . Hegel, Phenomenology, 400. mantic History (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1 9 89), 1 8-63. 1 84. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 1 03. 1 69 . Theodor W. Adorno, Kierkegaard: Construction o f the Aesthetic, trans. 1 85. Bate, Romantic Ecology, 7-8 . and ed. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 1 8 6 . Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, 39. Press, 1 9 99, 40-46. 1 87. See David Simpson, Situatedness, or, Why We Keep Saying Where We're 1 70. Pink Floyd, " Grantchester Meadows," Ummagumma (EMI, 1 9 6 9 ). Words Coming From (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002), 234. and Music by Roger Waters. © Copyright 1 9 70 (Renewed) and 1 9 8 0 1 8 8 . Heidegger, "Origin," 3 3 . Lupus Music Co. Ltd., London, England. TRO-Hampshire House Pub­ 1 8 9 . Sigmund Freud, "A Child I s Being Beaten," i n Standard Edition, 1 7. 1 79- lishing Corp., New York, controls all p ublication rights for the U.S.A. and 204. Canada. Used by Permission. 1 90. Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, 3 1-32, 42-4 3 , 78. 1 71 . Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge's Poetry and Prose, ed. Nicholas Halmi, 191. Heidegger, Being a n d Time, 62, 8 3-94. Paul Magnuson, and Raimonda Modiano (New York: Norton, 2004 ), 1 80. 1 92. See Jacques Derrida, "The Rhetoric of Drugs," in Points, 228-254 (234- 1 72. Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, 266. 235 ). 1 73. John Cage, " Composition as Process," in Silence: Lectures and Writings 193. Carl G. Jung, "The Difference between Eastern and Western Thinking," in (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1 96 1 ), 5 1 . The Portable Jung, ed. and intra. Joseph Campbell, trans. R. F. C. Hull 1 74. Celeste Langan, "Understanding Media i n 1 805: Audiovisual Hallucina­ (Harmondsworth: Viking Penguin, 1 9 71; repr., New York: Penguin, 1 976), tion in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, " Studies in Romanticism 40.1 (Spring 4 8 7. 200 1 ) : 49-70. 1 94. See for example Geoffrey Hartman, The Fateful Question of Culture (New 1 75. Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, 282n2. The anxiety about writing is common York: Columbia University Press, 1 997), 70-7 1 , 1 5 8 . in autobiographical texts. See Paul De Man's interpretation of Proust's in­ 1 95. " 'Mont Blanc': Shelley's Sublime Allegory of the Real," i n Steven versions of inside and outside: "Reading," in Allegories of Reading (New Rosendale, ed., The Greening of Literary Scholarship (Iowa City: Univer­ Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1 979 ), 5 7-78 . sity of Iowa Press, 2002), 207-223 (214, 221 ). 1 76. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of 1 96. Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist the Sublime and the Beautiful, ed. Adam Phillips (Oxford: Oxford Univer­ Aesthetics, trans. Herbert Marcuse and Erica Sheraver (Basingstoke: sity Press, 1 99 8 ), 3 1 . Macmillan, 1 9 8 6 ), 3 7-3 8 . 228 . Notes to Pages 1 3 7- 1 4 4 Notes to Pages 1 44-1 5 1 . 229 1 9 7.Hegel, History, 1 71 . 10. See for example Gary Polis, ed., Food Webs at the Landscape Level (Chi­ 198. Hegel, Religion, 252-254. cago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 1 99 .Hegel, History, 1 71 . 1 1 . That is, with reading. See David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Percep­ 200. Chogyam Trungpa, Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness tion and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Pantheon, (Boston: Shambhala, 1 9 9 3 ) , 3 5-36. 1 996), 1 3 1 , 282n2. 201 . Laura Brawn, Alexander Pope (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1 9 85), 28-45. 12. James Henry Leigh Hunt, "A Now, Descriptive of a Hot Day," The Indi­ 202. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic o f Enlightenment, trans. cator 1 ( 1 820): 300-302. John Cumming (London: Verso, 1 9 79 ), 6 1 . 1 3 . See for example David Robertson, Ecohuman's Four Square Deck/Deal (Davis, Calif.: Printed for the author, 2002 ), a deck of fifty-two cards like a deck of playing cards, which can be shuffled to give various instructions 3 . Imagining Ecology without Nature and observations concerning a tour beginning in Europe and ending in New 1. Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Com­ York City; and Freakin Magic Playing Cards (Davis, Calif.: Printed for the mune (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 9 8 8 ), 4 7-74, 1 02. author, 2003), based on a circumambulation of Yucca Mountain. Or see 2. Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. and http://www.davidrobertson. org/. intra. Peter Hallward (London: Verso, 2001 ) , 40-57. 14. William Wordsworth, ((The Ruined Cottage" and ((The Pedlar," ed. James 3. Scott Shershow has powerfully demonstrated this linkage. The Work and Butler (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1 9 79 ). the Gift (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005 ), 1 9 3-205. See Jean­ 15. Edward Thomas, The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas, ed. R. George Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, trans. Peter Connor et a1. (Min­ Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 9 8 1 ). By permission of Oxford neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 9 9 1 ) . University Press. 4. Martin Heidegger, "Building Dwelling Thinking," i n Poetry, Language, 1 6 . Wilfred Owen, The Complete Poems and Fragments, ed. Jon Stallworthy, 2 Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1 971 ), vols. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1 9 8 3 ) . 1 43-1 6 1 ( 1 53). See also "The Thing," in Poetry, Language, Thought, 1 63- 1 7. W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, trans. Anthea Bell 1 86 ( 1 74). This is not j ust a matter of Old English but also of Latin. The res (1 999; repr., New York: Random House, 2003. in res publica (republic) is the public " thing," that is, the transactions of an 18. William Blake, The Complete Poetry and Prose of William B lake, rev. ed., assembly. The resonance of res is both " object" and "circumstance," as ed. D . V. Erdman (New York: Doubleday, 1 9 8 8 ). well as "dealings " (Ethan Allen Andrews, A Latin Dictionary: Founded on 1 9. \"'\falter Benjamin, "Notes to the Theses on History," in Gesammelte Andrews' Edition of Freund's Latin Dictionary, rev. and en1. Charlton T. Schriften, ed. Theodor Adorno and Gersshom Scholem, 7 vols. (Frankfurt Lewis [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1 9 84]). See Bruno Latour, Politics of Na­ am Main: Surkhamp, 1 9 72-1 989), 1 . 1232. ture: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Har­ 20. Mary Favret, "War, the Everyday, and the Romantic Novel," paper given at vard University Press, 2004 ) , 54. "New Approaches to the Romantic Novel, 1 790-1 848: A Symposium," the 5. See for example Emmanuel Levinas, " Ethics and Politics," in The Levinas University of Colorado, Boulder, October 5-6, 200 1 . Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1 9 8 9 ) , 289-297 (294); Totality and Infinity: 21. William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence," i n The Complete Poetry and Prose An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, Penn.: of William B lake. D uquesne University Press, 1 9 69 ). 22. James E. Wilson, Ten'oir (Berkeley: University of California Press; San 6. Jacques Derrida, "Hostipitality," in Acts o f Religion, ed., trans., and intra. Francisco: Wine Appreciation Guild, 1 9 9 8 ); Patrick Bartholomew Reuter, Gil Anidjar (London: Routledge, 2002 ), 356-420. "Terroir: The Articulation of Viticultural Place " (Master's Thesis, Univer­ 7. Robert Bernasconi, "Hegel and Levinas: The Possibility of Forgiveness and sity of California, Davis, 1 9 99). Reconciliation," Archivio di Filosofia 54 ( 1 9 8 6 ) : 325-346; " Levinas Face 23. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: to Face with Hegel," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 1 3 Continuum, 1 973 ), 200. ( 1 9 82 ) : 267-276. 24. For a decisive account, see Marjorie Levinson, "Pre- and Post-Dialectical 8. Christof Koch, The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach Materialisms: Modeling Praxis without S ubjects and Objects," Cultural (Englewood, Colo.: Roberts & Co., 2004), 33, 35, 83-84, 140-144, 250- Critique (Fall 1 99 5 ) : 1 1 1-1 20. 255, 264-26 8 . 25. Clement Greenberg, "The Avant-Garde and Kitsch," in Gillo Dorfles, ed., 9. See for example John M . Meyer, Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste (New York: Bell, 1969), 1 1 6-126. Interpretation of Western Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001 ), 47. 26. Oxford English Dictionary, "kitsch." German philology speculates that trans. 6 7. Paul Magnuson. Nicholas Collins. In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Roman­ New York: Doubleday. 248 . N." in Den'ida and Nega­ versity Press. Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire. Susan Sontag.. Arj u n Appadurai. trans. edition bundles A Sand County Almanac with Sketches Here and There. 35 . Gerda Norvig has read Thel as a figure for theory: "Female Subjectivity and tique (New York: Routledge." For a Ontology. repr. Walter Benj amin. Zone Books. 1 9 73 ) . Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (Albany: State Uni­ 39. 4 8 . Martin Jay. 222-223 . 5 7. trans.ac. Santa Barbara.. Adorno. 601-6 1 5 . Missouri Press. see Denise Gigante. 23 1 kitsch derives from the English "sketch. Jennifer 59. analysis and foreword by J.' '' in Against Interpretation ( 1 966. 1 9 71 ). Sartre. Stanley Cavell. Brace and 4 1 . 1 6 6-1 6 9 . 34. 2004 ) . The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York: Harper. 275-292. 2. 1-3 1 .: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Jones. 6 2 . Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Aesthetic Theory. tive Philosophy. 1 9 8 8 ). 1 978). the Desire of Reading in(to) Blake's Book of Thel. Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Cri­ 40. 1 989). 53. Jacques Derrida.. 609. 60. 1 977). Andrew Ross. The Collected 'Works of Samuel Taylor Cole­ 3. 1 3. 1 969). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological ethic. Aesthetic Theory.: Duke is relevant to the earlier discussion of space as invaginated sinthome. 28. 1 99 1 ). 4 9 . 1 33. Walter Benjamin. Timothy Morton. On Longing: Narratives of the Minia­ brary.net/html/nuc!ear. 74. 27. "Earth. 250-25 1 .2 ( 1 995): 255-2 7 1 . the Gigantic. C. 1999). 1-3. Notes to Pages 1 5 1. Erdman. Hannah Arendt. "Blood Sugar. See for example Kate Rigby. versity Press. World. ed. ed. Dover. 1 5-1 7." in Illuminations. B lake: Prophet Against Empire. 8 7-1 06. Karl Kroeber. lumbia University Press. 42.ox. Slavoj Zizek. 52. 6 1 . 1 996). Princeton. 5 3-55. Julia Kristeva. Miller. ed. and ed." in ticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 34. and ed. 1 9 9 3 ). 55. V. 3 3 . 1 1 8. 1 995). 1 3 5-1 70.0." New Literary History 35. http://users. For University Press. 24 (November 200 1 ). Coleridge's Poetry and Prose. 6 6 . 47. The Social Life of Things: Commodities i n Cultural "The Endgame of Taste: Keats. Patton and P. the Collection (Chapel Hill. Basil Blackwell. David V. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Co­ (Lovely Music. 6 7. the Souvenir. Metaromanticism: Aesthetics. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. 1 992). Adorno. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.J. 1 99 3 ) . Formless. cago: University of Chicago Press). 5 4 . which turn out to be anything but sketchy in their outlining of the land 45. Harry Zohn ( London: Harcourt. Robert Hullot-Kentor eds. 4 6 .1 62 . Oxford: lated Matters ( London: Verso. The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Re­ 37. 235-23 7. The modern Halmi. 1 780-1 83 0 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 32. and Raimonda Modiano (New York: Norton. sleeve note i n Alvin Lucier. 246-248. ed.joannamacy. 43. Mann (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.D. 6 7. 1 9 94). Being and Nothingness. 1 1 7-124 ." European Romantic 6 1 . ed.html. Text: On the (Im)possibility of 3 8 . Theory (Chi.: Princeton Uni­ 3 1 . Beckett. A. private communication). N. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduc­ Review 1 5 . 1 03 . more. 1 3. 609." Romanticism on the Net Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 8-9.. " Studies in Romanticism 5 8 . L. I Am Sitting i n a Room 51. 21 8-220. "Theses on the Philosophy of History. Aesthetic Theory. xxxviii. Litertature.. Aesthetic Theory. 82. . 1 990). Ambient 1 : Music for Airports (EG Records. vol. No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (London: Routledge. (New York: versity of New York Press. 25 3-264 (26 1 ) . Hazel Barnes (New York: The Philosophical Li­ decisive analysis see Susan Stewart. First Century" (Ph. dissertation. 223. 1 982). The Return o f the Visible i n British Romanticism (Balti­ World. see also 123-124. Sartre. Adorno. Joseph Carroll. 240. 1 99 7). 42.html. 3 9 9 . Md. Brian Eno. 71. Nicholas dence to prove it (Winfried Schleiner. sleeve note. (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Sartre. See Timothy Morton. "Uses of Camp.230 . Milan Kundera. William Galperin. 36. 5 0 . 1 02-1 04. "Virtual Sublime: Sensing Romantic Transcendence in the Twenty­ Biology of Mind (New York: Columbia University Press. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel." in Illuminations. 1 9 9 3 ) ." in Timothy Fulford and Peter Kitson. Terry Eagleton. 1 9 8 6).uk/-scat03 85/24gigante. Formless: A User's Guide (New York: ridge. "Wordsworth Digs the Lawn.1 5 7 Notes to Pages 1 5 7. Theodor Adorno.2 (March 2004 ): 3 1 7-327. 29. trans. 1 (Lectures 1 795 on Politics and Religion). Ecopoiesis. parallels between Romantic and existential disgust. Yve-Alain Bois a n d Rosalind Kraus. 1 990). Paul Hamilton. repr. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ 56. tion. Sartre's view of woman/sex as a " hole " ( 6 1 3-6 14) ture.. "Notes on 'Camp. Ibid. Bois and Kraus. 1 99 7).3 (2004) : 439. 1 9 9 3 ) . Jean-Paul Sartre. Evolution and Literary Theory (Columbia: Uni7ersity of 2002). Kitsch stems from the verb meaning " to put together sloppily. 1 99 8 )." though there i s little o r n o evi­ 44. 2nd ed. See http://www. University of California. Ibid. Literary Theory: An Introduction ( 1 983. B eing and Nothingness. "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials. " 60-63. " The Origin of the Work of Art. The Open: Man and Animal. 2000). 56. 5. 8 5-87. Benj amin. Clarke (Harmondsworth: Penguin. Space o f Literature. Avital Ronell. Heidegger. : Stanford University Press. 1 46-1 78 ( 1 66 ) . "The One Measure of True Love Is: You Can Insult the Wordsworth. Thought. 1 9 75). repr . Maurice Blanchot. 66-84. " Aura. Gernot Bohme. Still. Magazine. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 26-83 (28 ) . Sigmund Freud. Little Star' as an Ambient Poem. 2002). Kaufman quotes Adorno. 97. " Origin.. Freud. Raymond Williams." interview with Sabine Reul and Thomas Deichmann. 1 9 8 9)." Seventeen Seconds (Elektra/Asylum. Simpson 91. 24 74. 89. 7 1 . 259. " Origin. ed. Blake. 27. 1 982). 1 9 77). Johnston. 1 00. Atmosphare: Essays zur neuen Asthetik (Frankfurt am 95. November 1 5 . 64. umd. The Reach of Mind: Essays in David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000).. 81. 1 8 6 . 1 9 9 3 ) . 72. and trans. Mass." in Poetry. 245 . Logic) trans.rc. Mind and World (Cambridge. See Harvey.World (Bloomington: Indiana Uni­ 1 06. The Cure. The New Ecological Order. "Building Dwelling Thinking. Aesthetic Theory) 269. Language. repr." in Ecrits: A Selection. Ann Smock ( 1 955. Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago: University sity of Chicago Press. http://www. Adorno. The Cambridge Companion to William Wordsworth (Cambridge: 77." in Selected Writings. Rene Descartes. tock Publications. 200 1 . See David Simpson.htm. Karl Marx. : Cornell University Press. For a comprehensive study s e e Robert 79. Henry David Thoreau. " 8 1 . a Press. I follow the argument in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Luc Ferry." 4 1-42. "The Still Life as a Personal Object: A Note on Heidegger 109. Meyer Shapiro. 88. 245. 108.232 . N. Michael Meyer ( 1 854. " i n Stephen Gill. ed. 1 43-1 6 1 ( 1 5 2-1 5 3 ) . 1 995). Calif. Thoreau's word. Press. Giorgio Agamben. "Reception in Distraction. The Space of Literature." in Marianne L. Adorno. "The Uncanny. Eiland. ed. 98. 1 995). Benj amin." boundary 2 30. Memory of Kurt G oldstein (New York: Springer. of Enlightenment) trans. Robert E.. Twinkle. John Cumming (London: Verso. 1 04. See Kenneth R . " Comments on Adolph Wagner. The Open) 8 3-84." in Poetry. 1 67-168. Thought. 2003 ). Language. 99. "The Uncanny. 667.spiked-online. Norton. David Harvey. or. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 94. of Chicago Press.237.. 76. "Wordsworth and The Recluse. 1 07. Century (Ithaca. 68. 1 9 80 ) . Ibid. Justice. Kevin Attell (Stan­ 103. and Main: S uhrkamp. Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings. ed. "Work of Art. versity of California Press. 1 1 5-1 1 9 . 84. Martin Heidegger. The Country a n d the City (Oxford: Oxford University 101. Study of a Dialectical Image. 1 50. 9 1-1 07." 85. Complete Poetry and Prose. 1 995). 1997). 2000). 1 994). Simmel. G etting Back into Place: Toward 105. and Van Gogh. Jacques Derrida. trans." in James McKusick. I borrow the phrase from Edward Casey. Politics of Nature. ford. 1 953).edu/praxis/ecology/. ed. Ibid. with Some Remarks on Coleridge and 111." 54-55 . Carol Volk (Chicago: Univer­ Pogue Harrison." 1 7. Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1 99 3 ) . especially 2." October 9 9 (Winter 2002): 45-80 (49). Heidegger. John McDowell. 70-89 ( 8 6 ) . 80.Y." in The Standard Edition o f the Complete 73. trans. I a m grateful t o Andrew Hageman for pointing this out t o me. 233 63. Heidegger. Desmond M.21 8-252 (246. Situatedness. Martin Heidegger. 78. 4 9 . Jacques Lacan. 1 75. islanders. Mass. 1 996). trans. 1 984). "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason 69. Dialectic versity Press.com/Articles 8 7. Psychological 'Vorks of Sigmund Freud. Aesthetic Theory.: Harvard University Press. 90. The B eautiful Soul: Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth 96. "Work of Art. Notes to Pages 1 62-1 72 Notes to Pages 1 72-1 8 1 . 403-4 3 8 .1 (Spring 93. M. 8 2 . "Wordsworth and The Recluse. intro. (London: Hogarth. Timothy Morton. 3 91-397.C. intro. Justice. Alan Sheridan (London: Tavis­ 70. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the 8 3 . Martin Heidegger. 269.: Harvard University 86. Since Freud.. 221 . Agamben. Edward Casey." Ro­ Other. Spiked mantic Praxis (November 2001 ). Keith Basso. 1-8. Coming From (Durham. Latour. Negative Dialectics) 3 6 5 . trans." in The Metaphysical Foundations of 66. Nature and the G eography of Difference (Oxford: Cambridge Univeristy Press. trans." 239 . 46-47. http://www. The Telephone Book: Technology) Schizophrenia) Electric 65. "Reception in Distraction. 3 72 . 34. 1 1 0. 8 4 . 5 8 1 . S e e Howard Eiland. I00000002D2C4. 234. Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.. 1 9 8 6). 233 and 23 3-247 passim. 252). "Building Dwelling Thinking. . 6 7 . Slavoj Zizek. Blanchot. 1 9 . 1 9 77).. vols. 92. 1 9 79 ) ." 1 54. "Hostipitality. 1 96 8 ). Why We Keep Saying Where We're Speech (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1 02. Walden and Civil D isobedience) 75. Johnston. 2004 ). "A Forest. The Song of the Earth (Cam­ compares Heidegger's peasant with Malinowki's primitivist image of Pacific bridge. 1 7. Blackwell. 224 . a Renewed Understanding of the Place. "Romanticism and Ecology." 240. 256-26 0. N. Robert Kaufman.: Duke University Press. "Supplement. 277-282. James Strachey. 203-209. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: Uni­ 2003 ) : 5 1-66. I take the term textmark from Jonathan Bate. " 'Twinkle. 1 9 6 3 ) . 1995). Amory Lovins. and the . See for example Cary Wolfe. 200 1 ) . (Stanford. Walden.. et a1. Ibid. Ibid. panion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1 776-1 83 2 (Oxford: Oxford 1 24. "Literary Theory. Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge. University Press. : Stanford University 149. Jacques Derrida. 53-54. Calif. 150. 34-6 5 .. 9 1 -92. Latour. 1 1-23 . 453. 235 1 1 2. 35-39. Alas. ed. Earth. 3 8 1-474. ( 1 7) . 1 997). 1 9 8 9). 1 52. For further discussion of music that works with 126. 1 4 7. Ibid. 220. 1 73 . and 151. Peggy Kamuf 1 40. Bohls. Cyborgs. 1 35 . See for instance Steven Johnson. and Kanner. Ibid. Ibid. 1 0 . trans. 122. Gomes. This view i s supported by Ursula K . ed. 2003). Ibid. and by Louis H. 64. "Literary Theory. trans. The New Ecological Order. Kierkegaard. in Points: Interviews. John Carpenter (director). a n d Sketches Here a n d There. . Kierkegaard. the Peril and Promise of Our Time (Philadelphia: Library Company of 145." emergent form. 3 73. 1 1 6-1 1 7. Pa ul Hawken. trans. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science. Leopold. and Animal Rites: American Culture. Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (New York: Simon tair Hannay (London: Penguin. 1 5 5 . 123-124. 1 82-1 83. Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic. 1 20. 1 32 . 1 9 9 9 ) . Mass. Leslie Marmon Silko. nesota Press. of the Debt. Heise in "From Extinction to Electronics: 153. S e e Williams. and Allen D. Discourse of the Species. Kierkegaard. 1 9 92). and ed.. L a Monte Young." i n Roszak. trans. and Women: The Reinvention of Nature ( London: Routledge. . Beyond Representation: Philosophy and Poetic Memory (London: Serpent's Tail. 1 6 1 . 1 9 82 ) . see David Toop. Aldo Leopold. Emergence. 3 vols. 1 3 2-1 5 0 ( 1 3 8-140). 6 7-68. Silence and in Richard Eldridge. Joanna Macy. intro. Either/Or: A Fragment o f Life. Zoon­ 154. Technology. Ibid. Adorno. Either/Or. Cyborg: An Impure Model for Environmental Revolution. E.. eds. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 1 99 0 ). ed. repr. 1 994). Karl Marx. Discourses of 'Race' . Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants. 1 1 8 . Brown." 3 8 5 . 1 1 5. 121. ed. 141. Heiner Friedrich." in Sand County Almanac. " Confession and Forgiveness: Hegel's Poetics of Action. 1 3 1 .. 1 99 1 ) . the Work of Mourning. Looking Awry: An Introduction t o Jacques Lacan through University Press. Slavoj Zizek. and L. An Oxford Com­ Philadelphia. Notes to Pages 1 82-1 8 8 Notes to Pages 1 8 8-195 . and the Pragmatics of the "Outside" (Minneapolis: University of Min­ 1 2 8 . Mass. 1 9 9 9 ) . Ecopsychology. 1 3 7. 165-1 77.: Harvard 1 2 3 . 2000). 224-225 . 1 9 8 7). Culture a n d Society. See Jay Bernstein. 243-376. Dead Frogs. Elisabeth Weber. Otto." in Steven 156. 2003). 1 9 92). Capital. and intro." in Theodore Roszak. 1 1 9 . 1995). 1 3 5 . B rains." in The Psychic 148. : Stanford University Press. Popular Culture (Cambridge. and Schuster. Palmer III in "Articulating the Desire (New York: Columbia University Press. 1 9 9 8 ). Healing the Mind (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. ed. I borrow "hauntology" from Jacques Derrida. Peter Otto. Slavoj Zizek. Chicago Press. 1 9 9 1 ) . S0ren Kierkegaard. 540. 1-1 7 142. 2 1 7. the 1 29 . The Thing (Universal Studios. Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking. 256-25 7. Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunter Lovins. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Boston: Little. Specters of Marx: The State 1 1 6. Thoreau. Gomes. 1 36. and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of 1 30. 1 2 7 . 1 34. 73-82. 2004 ). Kanner. and Software (New York: Scribner. Press. "Standards of Taste. Johnson." in Cary Wolfe. 1 52. 378-3 85 ( 3 8 4 ) . Donna Haraway. of Iowa Press. 40-46. Natural Capitalism: Mary E. and the New International.. 1 9 8 9 ). Robert Finch ( 1 949. Theodor W. Kierkegaard. " Conservation Esthetic. See Shershow. Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford. 56. Empire (Cambridge. . 452-453. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. 1 9 8 5). The Greening of Literary Scholarship (Iowa City: University 1 1 3 . in Adorno. Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. 1 4 7. Judith Butler. Composition 1 9 60 #5. Calif. 1 974-1 994. 1 3 3 . Adorno. 1 9 9. 59-8 1 (74-78). 181. Cities. Despairwork: Relating to 144. Politics of Nature. Wilson. 1 996)." in lain McCalman. in An Anthology (New York: 1 25 . 138. 1 1 7. Consilience: The Unity o f Knowledge (New York: Knopf. 1 9 82 ) .. 143. trans. Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory Press. A Sand County Almanac. Elizabeth A. 2002).. 1999). Haunted Weather: Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Between Men: English Literature a n d Homosocial Press. 1 90-1 92. Live Dinosaurs.: MIT Press. Rosendale. and Electric Sheep.. "There Is No O n e Narcissism (Autobiophotographies). Work and the Gift. 243-3 76. O. 89. 1 99 8 ). Theodore Roszak. "Working through Environmental Despair." in Simians.." 139. James Gleick. 146. 4 1 3 . 5 8. 240-259. "Melancholy Gender/Refused Identification. Haunted "\-'(Ieather. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth: Penguin. tologies: The Question of the Animal (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 155. 1 65-1 77. 1 1 4. 129-1 3 7. "Where Psyche Meets Gaia. The Sublime O bject of Ideology (London: Verso. Ferry. . Toop.234 . Lacan. Robert F. 1 82. Theodor Adorno. 9 1 ) . "Agency. 1 65. 1 9 8 8 ). The Origin of German Tragic Drama (London: NLB. Manuscript ( London: Richard Cobden-Sanderson. Ibid. W. Hamilton. 200-23 3 .4 ( 1 98 3 ) : 4 3 7-466. 1 75. especially 241 : "a union between the disalienated mind and a rehu­ Matthews.. 158. Ibid.. "Progress. 1 78 . 77-94 (especially 89. My thanks to John Felstiner for sug­ gesting this quotation (and for pointing out the lack of commas in the manuscript) . Percy Bysshe Shelley. ed. K.. Harris (Berkeley: University of Cali­ 1 63 . Derrida . "The Direction o f the Treatment and the Principles of Its 1 60. eds. 206. Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology (New York: St. trans . Martin's Press. 33. Complete Poetry and Prose. 1999). Bradley (London: Dent.. trans." The Philosophical Forum 1 5 . Some scholars.. J. 3 vols. including Goodridge and Robert Heyes. Jaques Lacan. 1 9 84). Bate. and ed. Ibid. Norton. 3 . are inherently suspect-we view them from the outside . 3 5-3 9.. John Clare: Poems Chiefly from The Lectures of 1 825-1 82 6. 226-280 (236 ) . 1 77. prefer "sexpools" (small pools formed in the hole left by turf cutting) . 1 69 . John Clare. 506. conscious conceptual essence 1 5 7. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. John Clare. John Clare: A Biography (London: Picador. Blake.23 6 . 1 8 0. trans. Robert Frost. 1 99 1 )." 1 83 . 168. Ind. Donald Cress (Indianapolis. 1 59 . 225." Power. Tradition (London: Routledge. John Goodridge has indicated to me that "cesspools " is a textual crux. . with H. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter. Kelvin Everest. Eric Robinson and David Powell (Oxford: Ox­ ford University Press." in EC1'its. Brown. Discourse o n Method and Meditations 011 First Philos­ 1 64. " 1 79. "Hostipitality. New York: Farrar. 1 3 1 . 1 8 5. A. Roman tic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental ophy. James C. Brown and J. Benjamin C. 1 9 77). 237 Aesthetic Education of a Monster: Critique of Empire in Frankenstein. F. I a m grateful t o Tim Fulford for pointing this out. 9 1 ." 1 65.: Hackett. 1 4-1 6 .. "Active Individuality and the Language of Confession: The Figure of the Beautiful Soul in the Lehrjahre and the Phanome­ nologie. Abrams. 2003 ). 256. 1 86 . Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: W. 6 1 . 1 9 82). M." since that word Eighteenth-Century Life 1 8 . Stewart." 62. Ibid. For example. ed. Sax. Adorno. Jonathan Bate. 1-2 (Fall­ Hegel is after here. 2000). 1 973). Anglo-Saxon Poetry. "The Little Girl Lost.3 ( 1 994 ) : 23-36 . 188. fornia Press. and Geoffrey lv1atthews (London: Longman. Lectures on the History of Philosophy: 1 62. Begriff was used by Kant to imply "concept. manized nature. 1 84. New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes a n d Grace Notes (New York: Henry Holt. 1 6 7. see M . 1 72. 62). 3 72. 1 69-1 71 ( 1 70). 1 920). 1 73 ." in Shelley's Prose: The Trumpet of a Prophecy. Rene Descartes. I diverge here from the translation of Begriff as "notion. 1 98 9 ) . R. David Lee Clark (London: Fourth Estate. 4th ed. Walter Benj amin. S. does no j ustice to the element of inward. 1 8 7. I do not believe this af­ fects my reading. 563-5 75. Clare." in The Complete Poetry a n d Prose." Notions Winter 1 9 8 3-1 984): 55:-70 ( 6 1-63. 1 76 . 252. Jonathan Bate. Notes to Pages 195-202 Notes to Pages 202-204 . ed. 35. Ibid. Blake. 1 74. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and 1 8 1 . 1 71 . McKusick. Metaromanticism. 1 6 6. 161. 1 990). " On Love. The Poems of Shelley. Zizek. 146-1 47. 1 70. "Progress. H . Looking Awry. S. 1 92 3 ) . Straus and Giroux. " Journal of the History of Philosophy 1 1 . ed.. 34. 195 Acousmatic music. 96. 1 46. 1 52-1 54. Meyer H. 99. 60. 196 44. 58. 46 Aesthetic dimension. Abstract expressionism. 176. 171. ableism. See also Ambient music. 142-143. 149. 191. Appadurai. 71. 129-130. 5 4. 4 1 . 68. 168. 164. 157. 25-26. 128. 36. 201 Arabia. 138. David. acousmatic voice. 1 8 1 Attali.. 115. 61. Aporia. 162. Africa. Aura. 32. 34. 96. 164. 193 187 Asia. 1 58. 193. 66. 84 Aesthetic distance. 171. 80. 1 16 Apes. 90. 17 1 . Arnold. 26. 203. 32 Aeolian. 1 54. 1 89. 35. Artificial intelligence (AI). 139. 160-16 1 . animal rights. 5 1. 180-181. Index Abject. 1 90-193 Auge. 132. 193-194 Auditory history. Walter 164. 43. 157. 149. 165. 77. See also Ideology. 1 59. 196. Aeolian harp. the. 129. 56. 137. 170. Marc. auditory culture. 26. Atmosphere. 91 191 Armistice Day. 162-163. 152-153. 184. 132. 112 82. Jane. 82. 42-43 Apache. 187 Agamben. 1 17. 1 5 5 . 47 A I ( movie). 1 94 Anamorphosis. 133 152. 182. 167 Austen. Albatross. 47. 4. 166-168. 5 1 . 1 08. 180 Adbusters (magazine). 1 45-146 154. 53. 93. 24. 198. 159 95 Algorithm process. 86. 202. 83. 24. 151 195. 47. Louis. 58. Theodor. 182. 68. 186. 80. 135. 19 195. 41-43. Arjun. 168 1 17. See also Sexuality . Abrams. 98-100. 135. 133 Able-bodied. 85 Althusser. 89. 192. 8. Aristotle. 38 Autoeroticism. See also 70-72. 73 160-162. 53. 134. 1 1 9 Adorno. 9. 168. 58. 125 Acoustic ecology. 1 42. 50. 58. Interpellation 160. 136. 2. 184. Giorgio. 2 8 . 9. 6. 37-41 . 4. Abram. 1 5 7. Animism. 1 1 8-1 1 9. Deconstruction 142. Matthew. Benjamin. 1 53. 127. 4 1 . 161 AMM (musical group). 159. 1� 18. Jacques. 126. Arabian Nights. 144. 162 Antarctica. 9. 1 06. 178. 7-8. 1 44. 181. 123-124. 182. 81. 13-14. 186-188. 134 Anima�. 80. 68. 180 42. 22. 162-166. 184. George. 11� Dionysus. 14. 4 6. 185 Echo. 130 Chiasmus. 62. 156. John. The ( musical group). 8. Maurice. 1. 90. 94. 192 Bedazzled (movie). 143. Judith. 60. The (movie). 184 Brecht. 194. 92. 1 8 1. 82. 172. 149 Diggers. 122-123. 223-214nl0l 192. 40. 44. 179. 32. 199. 157. Michel. 95. 24. 107. 175. 42. 192 Distraction (Zerstreultng). 58. 183. 164. 83. 91 216n125 Byron. 75- Black Forest. 109-123. 92. 178. Chion. 92. John. 187-18 8 Children. Beck. 143. 102. 195. 101. Index Index . 199 199. 33. Terry. 101. 71. 73. 127. 74. 8. DNA. Thomas. 13. 52. 15. 84. 109. 136. 124. 4 � 48. Barthes. 98. 8 6. 201-202 Choice. 50. 160. 17. 150. 5. 52. 171. 157. 155 159. 198 commodity phase. Charles. Keith. 8 2. 183. 37. 19 7-205 Badiou. 143. 197. 18. 184 170. 66. 1. 161. 18 1-197. 170. Casey. 98. 143-144 . 114. Carl von. commodity form. 241 Automation. Andre. 8. 93. Barbauld. 86. 195. Jonathan. 118. 149. Basso. 62. 10. 4 6. 106. 31-32. 20. 102. 175. 73-74. 83 Diastic poetry. Distraction Celan. 157-159. 162-164. 127. 72. 102 Deconstruction. Lord. Lewis. Peter. 126. 141 Bourdieu. 19 190 Debussy. 127. Clapham. 84 180. See also Bakhtin. 13� 152. 141-143. 223n95. 102. 111. 40. 32. 190. John. Walter Beckett. 188-189. Christianity. 25-26. 215n92 Climate. 12� 140. 150. 172. 114. 101. 68. 84. 104. 131. 9 6. 29. 93. 142. Byron. 65. 129. 112. 10� 141. 194. 80. Dionysian. 106. 153. collectivity. 154. 32. Charles. 72. 140. 151. 176 Cocteau. 75. 135 4� 48. 185 101-102. 19 1 184. See also Descartes. 38. 11. 4. 151. Paul. 4. 35 5. 180 Descartes. 94. 101. 52. 176-177. 153 184. 165. 224nl17 Drive (psychoanalytic concept). 19. See Butler. 130. 8 8. 196. 197. 7. Edmund. 24-26. 88. W illiam Jefferson. 56. 53. 126. 83-94. 194. 130 93. 189. 134 Chiapas. 52. Ernst. 142. 143. 35. 104. 8 1. 83. 49 124. Charlie Brown cartoons. 55. 28. 188 Ecocriticism. Blanchot. 142. 169. 71. Bamboo. Catascopy. 180 Bull. 43-4 4. 153. 203. 162 Culture. 30. 94. 4 1. 77. 35. Gilles. 17� Eagleton. 7 . 20 43. 33. 159. 46. 103. 5 9. 61. Cavell. 8. 188. 111. 127-128. 16� DJ Spooky (Paul Miller). 30. 7. 70. 173 117. 118. 80. 4 6. 46-47. 18. 156. 17. Pierre. 72. 158 Coral. 10. 135. Ada. 189. 185. 197-201. Charles. 191 Colorado. 197. 79. 164. Ulrich. 2. 133. bohemianism. 124. 151. 4 � 48. 47. Edward. 164. Rene Biotechnology. 18 6 Collectives. 205 Avant-garde. S. 98. 178 Baraka. 191 Benjamin. Wilhelm. 64. 203. 129. Ludwig van. 127. 84-85 139. 202. 60. 117. 9. Joel and Ethan. 190. 160-164. 86 Cronon. 116. 1 8 8. 8. 1 8 1. 16� Dark ecology. 20. 35 Coen. 175. S. 109-123. 58. 141. 202 114. 188. ecological criticism. 5 101. 160. 101 De Quincey. 9 1 Death. 70. 175. 152. 135. 63. 101. 152-153 Bohemians. 47. 10. 160. 38. 32. 16. 161. 203. 114. 180. 94. 168. 35. 166. 121. 161-162. Malcolm. Dilthey. 164. 9 6. Disability. 183 Chernobyl. Walter. 9. 6. S Collingwood. 196. 56 160. Stanley. 68 Coca-Cola. Jean. 15 � 165. 15 � 161-162. 185. Deleuze. 90-91 13� 151. 190. 119. 134. 3. 8 7. 33. King. 129. 157 Chaos theory. 45. 112. 112 93. 164. Charles. 106-107. 5 6. 6. 127. 191 Bohme.240 . 7. 202 196 Baudrillard. 181. 8. 58. 51. 20. Roy. 157. 8 7. 71. 154. 180. 231n45 Beauvoir. See also Zapatistas Cure. 8. 18� Bewell. 106 205. 65 Bourgeoisie. 155. also Planeur Butterfly. Commodity. Jacob. 106. 103. 183. Aaron. Camp ( aesthetic category). 40 Buddhism. 127. 57. 38. 155. 31-32. 85 183-184. 19 Beautiful soul. 48. Georges. 6 Chandler. 104. 151 Disco music. 145. 13. Cleanth. George Gordon. 45 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Callkot� J. 43. California. Body. 50. 205. 52 Beethoven. 51. 8 8 Brillat-Savarin. 113. See also Aura. 14 6. Autopoesis. 84. 181 Byrne. 192. 84. 115. 4. 5 6. 2. 83 131-132. 13. 31. 182 15� 155. 8� 83. 192 Crows. 85. 111. 153. 3� 38. 31. 110. 195 168. 143. 186. 118. Jean-Anthelme. 119 Coleridge. 80. 78. 8. 135. 2 1. 9. Baudelaire. 5 6. 141. 82. 69-71. 151. 61. 122. 153. Claude. 93 Derrida. Matsuo. 200. 15� 16� 175. 201. 140-143. 60. Dunckel. 153 Breton. Rene. 77. 89. 186. 179. Alain. 195 Capitalism. 38. Darwin. 92. 9 7. 205 Day after Tomorrow. 55. 191. 126. Charles I . 170. 6. 105. 21. Disease. 113 Clinton. 81. 111. David. 48. 51. 6 7. 152. 213-214n66 Basho. 24. 176 See also Consumerism. 5� 5 � 64. Simone de. 140. Cage. 135-139. John. 44. See also Hegel. 160. 69. 11. 158. 119. 190. 114. 178 76. 138 Cook. Alan. 194 197 Rhizome Bambi. 183-187. 142. 164. See also Benjamin. 11� 131. 20. 159. 2 6. 125 194. 191. 162 Cybernetics. 29. 10� 108. 14. 169. 25. 203. 12. 191. 112. 141-143. 196. Computers. 106. Boehme. 140. 142. 117. Bataille. 111. 64. 41. Mikhail. 134. 182. 200 101. 95. 130. 119. 175. 165. 93 Chaplin. 91. 148. 166 Class. Romanticism Clare. Charlie. 5 6. 3. 6. 162. 39. 9-10. 16 160. 191 Color. 28. 5 5. 15. 20. 149. 110-111. 4. 159. 4 6. Jacques. Samuel. 172. 55-56. 155 189 Disgust. William. 2. 54. 137. 190 Beatles. 129. 15 8. Gernot. 170. 155 104. 236nl71 Deep ecology. 159. 8 6-8 7. Babbage. 42. Samuel Taylor. 193. 20-21. 102. Amiri. 125 Carpenter. 50. 6. 154. 169. The (musical group). 159 Burke. 147. 38. 129. 82. 94. Consumerism. 4. Church o f Deep Ecology. 7. 52. 87. Bloch. 192. 21. Raymond. 184. 169 116-11� 118. 138 202 Dialectics. 49. 108 18 6 Blade Runner (movie). 148-150. 154. 141. 136 B�d� 6. Daniel. 115. 6 Clausewitz. 177. Black hole. 84. Roland. 191. 180. 10 64. 172. 138. 195. 52 Dualism. 84 Beauty. Anna Laetitia. 68-69. 79 Buell. 204. 46. 124 Cows. 152. 164. 130-131. 13. 169. 105. 21. 22. 195. 158. 158. DJ (disc jockey). Lawrence. 88. 105-109. 197. 192 115. 170. 177. 193. 8 � 8 9. Benn Michaels. 137. 43. 34 Carroll. 199-200 Bush. 201 122-123. 67. 92 Dickens. 200. 17� 182. Robin George. 165. 3 145. 136-137. Bertolt. 91. 194 City. See also Dualism Bate. 169 197. 39. 167. 18 8-189. 187 Cyborg. 117. Jean. 109-116. 151. William. 5 1. Ba�� 176 Communism. 29. Walter. 189. 23. Blake. 110-111. 192. 118 205 . 18. 126. 1 5 6 Brooks. 117 157. 20. 7 . 173. 9. 134-135. 23. 6. 49. 69 Frost. 182. 195 197 Hawken. 1 5 7. 229n20 117. 134. 81. 154 9 7. Alexander von. 172. 202 Homophobia. 195 1 69. 1 73. 131. 18. 1 75. 92. 145 60. 102 132. 1 75. 130. 83. 161. 99. 83. 102. 103. 7. 4 7. 103. 1 62. Electromagnetism. 9 7. 84. 8 6 Gender. 79 Installations. Donna. Feminism. See Greenham Common women. 1 77-178. Sigmund. 243 Ecocritique. 1 5 9 . 54-63. 159. 9. Gap (clothing store). 28. 23-24. 79. 198. 1 85. 1 64. 1 62. 94. 155. S. 137. 152. 5 5. 9. 149. 137. 85 237n179 Impressionism. 81. 104-109. 8 6. Clement. 204 Holbach. Johann Gotlieb. 40-41. 56. 39. 156. 201 Freud. 205 Geography. 169. 14 1 62. 40. 5 � 5� 195 Fritzell. 53. 51. 124. 166. Hans. 8. 101. 1 8 6. 12 8. 11 7. 104 Globalization. 125. Ferry. 135 . 160. 111. 94. 15. 39. 94. 195 Engels. 1 83. 11. 193. 22. Giblett. 76. 124. Peter. 3 5 . 1 8 5. 20. Grossman. 92. 133 Ideology. 9 1. 195 Goddess. 145-14 6. 174. 129-130. 16. 1 13. 84. 120. 100. 83. fi l m theory. 9 7. 50. 92. 80. 103 16. See also Gender 166. 1 8 6. 196 195 Europe. 12. 9 6. 1 9 1 . 1 69. 60. 143. 33. 89. 126. Julia Bu tterfly. 12� 1 4 1 . 188. 98. Oliver. 200. 1 1 7-118. 20. 182. 8 7 Ekphrasis. 181. 7. 14. 16 1 Idealism. 73. Ralph Waldo. 9 1 . Inside-outside dichotomy. 76. 19. 130. 9 6 Interdependence. 183. Economy. 135. 231n45 Heterosexism. 1 71 . 118 Enclosure. 136 Geology. 137. 1 15. 1 3 � 1 5 6. 190. Enlightenment. 133. 54-63. T. Gothic. 10. 194 Ecopsychology. 15 1 Humboldt. 104. ecological critique. Sexuality 1 5 6. 1 94. 5 6. Fantasy. 2. 194. 1 43. 84. 24. 83. England. 104. 64. 8. 52. 1 96. 1 8 7. 143-1 50. 12 1 . 1 9 1 152 Ga tta. 6. 1 67. 150 Mary 125. See also Vegetarianism Guattari. 1 15. 136. 128. 9. 15 . 19 8 5 7. 155. 184. 73. Michael. 15. Grapes. 1 1� 1 2 1 . 84. 2 6. European. 129. Femininity. 11-14. Daseil1. 85. 18 7. 110 1 47. 13-14. economics. 135. 126. Felix. 144. 163. 40. 169. 111. 142. 56. 22. 1 1.242 . 18 Found art. 1 8 8 Elder. 108. 84. 94. 107. FIJneur. 165. Haeckel. 129. 139 Einstein. Edmund. 131. 94. 107 9� 1 1 5 . 8 8 . 1 77. 63. 6 1 . 4 2 . Jurgen. 29. 52. 22. 98. 93. 34. 18. 93. 74. 1 97. 45. 157. 150. 61 Husser!. 20. 108. 108. Habermas. 134. 67. 138 Emerson. 102 Identity. 1 22. Feedback. 173. 68. 1 9 6. 203 Ecofeminism. 83. Rod. 104 7 1 . 1 1 4. 99. 3. 22. Johann Wolfgang. 160. French Revolution. 5 1 . 32. 1 5 8. 63. Brian. 164. 92. 8 8. 63-78. 9 7. Luc. 44. 115. 94. 202 104 Finlay. David. 105 . Index Index . 8 7 130. Adolf. 7. 1 75. 202. 126. S. 198 Formlessness. 69. 8 1. 7 1 Horkheimer. 17. 195. John. 14. 82 Fletcher. 171 also New Historicism Ecomimesis. 65. 73. 118. baron d' (Paul Henry Thiry). 134. Andy. 112 Holbein. 142. 37. 89. 53. 101. 144. 4. 67. 94. 166 85. 113. 8 6 . 122. Framing. 50. 126. 1 60. 20. 1 8 7. 197 Hunting. John. 194. 77. 1 1 2. 14 8. 59. English Revolution. 126. 120. 133. See also Gnosticism. 65. 1 74. 1 75 Foreman. 59 Greenberg. 14. 137 Goldsworthy. 155. 5 1. 152-153 188. Film. 83. 1 1 6. 1 1 1-112. Frankfurt School. 1 14. 104. 100. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 127-128. 95. David. 92. 3. 200 Goethe. 1 8 8 176. 75. 175. 79. 42. 136. 37. 200-201 Extinction. 14 1 . Imperialism. 1 8 6. 44. 8 1 . 33. 4 7. 14 1 . 18 1. 115. 105. Geoffrey. 136. 138. 69. 82. Ernst. 186. 67. 156. 177. 16. Industry. 20. 1 61 Faraday. 1 5 1. 170. 233nl02 Happenings. 1 15. 1 61. 1 22. 15 7. 29. Heinrich. 2 133. 46. 1 24. 112. 9 8 . 65. Harvey. 13. 232n65. 4. 1 70-173. 72. 171 Environmentalism. 195. 8. 1 85. 220n55. 94. 78. 119. 69. 94. Allen. 1 73. 122. 1 42. 108. 1 70. 196. 102-103. 5 5 . 1 80. 80-83. 65. 175 . 101. 130. 94. 186. 1 8 6. 54 Eco-phenomenology. 20-2 1. 109. 161 also Consumerism Green Party. 161. 49. 175. 102. 102. 177. Angus. 108. 47. 189. 101. 8 2 . 1 69. 93. 53. 3-4. 6 4 . 184. Mary. See Ecologocentrism. History. 172. 93. 109-123. 167-168. 1 14 Food. 70. 92. 13. 9� 97. 154. 64. 78. 174 Fichte. 1 11. 93. 9. Max. 20. 9 1 . Paul. 15 6. 172. 54. 79. Dave. 34. 1 6 8. 1 36. 6. 1 78 . 217n139 Homosexuality. 43 Elements. 60. 126. 1 9 � 204. 158. 67. 1 70. 130 1 7 8 . 35 . 16. 200 195. 92-93. 42 Hillman. Escher. 33. 138-139. 148. 151. 195. 34. Hartman. 135. 1 6 1 5 6. 1 8 1. 17. 4. 30. 95. 186 1 84. 22. 143-150. 1. 187. 97. 83-92. 195 14 1. 13. 203. 81. 20. 186. 135 Feudalism. S. 6. 99. 163. 1 62 1 99. 199. 18. 56. 56-5 8. Hegel. 107. Gesta lt psychology. 20. Friedrich. 1 66. James Henry Leigh. 3 1 . 57. Michael. 227nl78 1 83. 15� 15� Holism. 203 Eno. 31-35. 187. 163. 1 17 Heideggel'. 1 9 Hess. English. 123. 17-18. 9 7. 69 203-204 Ginsberg. 21. 1 5 6. 136. 103. 109-1 10 105. 62. 66. 2 7. 1 1. 73. 179. 201 . 151. 4 8 . 168. 189 202 Enjoyment. David. 140. 1 76. 1 1 6 Internet. 14 8 . 172. 1 27. 96. 1 8 5 . 8 8 . 94. Ludwig. 1 1 7 Icke. Maurits Cornelis. 14 9. 53. 25. 171. 1 9 8 . 1 99 Forests. Robert. 123. 1 1 6. 7. 36.. 115. 113 Goldsmith. 150 Humanitarianism. 45. Allen. See also Shelley. 34. Gods. 187. Englishness. Felix. the. 1 1 7 . 6 8 . 15. Environmental justice. 44. 1 67. 201. 1 8 6. 1 . 51. 15. 1 5 6 Favret. 109 1 22. 101.1 78. 185. 183. 145 Eliot. 120. 1 9. 198 146. 173. 1 24. 132. 8. 203 127. 6 7. 9 2 . 48. 110. 30. 33 Grief. 48. 133. Ian Hamilton. 189. 159. 101 . 94. 72. 1 3 6. 122. 34. 63. 1 93 Extraversion. 123. 40. 1 60. 93. See also Ecorhapsody. 57 125. 135-136. 56. 1 65. 1 1 0 Hume. 126. 136. 103. 13. William Rowan. 20. 1 5 144. 14. 21. 165. 10. 32. 63. Hitler. 10. 16. 120. 140. 150-151. Ecodidacticism. See also Rhetoric Gender. 184. 1 66 Hinduism. 65. Gender God. Environmental criticism. 185 198. 1 90. Exemplu111. 14 8. 142. 9 6 Hardt. 145. 127. 141-1 69. 184 House music. Feuerbach. Albert. 109. Ecofeminism. 63. 8 7. 188 Homer. 208n 14 1 69. 126. 6 7. 4 1. 125 . 11. 38. 1 5 8 . 1 5 6. 46. 82. 95- 164. 9. 202. 1 94 Frankenstein's creature. 18. 103. 1 70. Martin. 124. 197 Haraway. 1 79. 10. 95. 150 Hill. 8 8 Heine. 1 1 2. 60. 69. 3 5 . Hamilton. 178. 1 9 9 Gravity. Humans. 183. 8 . 1 61-1 62. 5 1. 103-104. 169 89. 67-68. 41. 164. Brenda. 129. 132. Ghosts. 122. 14. 1 9 1 Global warming. 170. 9 7. 165. 104 Field. 64. 106 Empiricism. 153. 1 6 6-1 67. 52. 1 80 Fetishism. 194-195. 115. 121. 42 Interpellation. 1 1 8 Hunt. 131 . 8 9 120. 170. 156 . 21. 8 8 . 46. 55-5 6. 6 1. 164 . Essentialism. 45. 1 7. 1 54. 16� 148. 112. 147. 5. 67. 134. 7� 74. 159. 176. 132. Humberto. 52. Negation. 165. 126. 8 9. 175. 182. 95 Noir narratives. 8 6 Mallarme. 122. 143 102. 179-180. 24. 192 38-39. 7. Moore. 13- Introversion. 200. 51. 120 Johnston. 32. 136. 122. 23. 152-154. Machines. 96-97. 72. Rem. 111 Logic. 9 8 . 163 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). 39. 68. 169. 5. Meriwether. 106. Mary Russell. Labor. 161. 129. Melanie. 120 97-9 8. 104-105. 78. 38. 36. 89. Napoleonic Wars. 84. 188. 14. 4 1. 129. Gyorgy. 85. 15. 133. 170. Minimalism. 64. 107-108. 49. 7� 8 � 10� Newsweek (magazine). 59. 85-88. 59. 8 9. Henri. 178. 118. 108. 108. 111. 4 9 . 159. 136-137 Leopold. 152. 91. See Latour. 122 Lebel1swelt. 15� 176. 149. 39. 16. 161 Marcuse. Kenneth. 192. 175. Joanna. 16. 68. 217n135 Junkspace. 185 Morton. 114. 15. Stanley. 2. the. 132. 75. 188. 6 1. 160. 112. 81. 16 79. 199 178. See also 14. 114. 203 Luke. 7. 8 6. 92. 70. Milan. New Mexico. 6. 84. 43. 149. 94 143. 70. John M. 32. 183. 89 157. 173 Olmsted. Antonio. 11. 197. 16. 187. 187. Sound. 2� 31. 196. 12. 114. Lucier. 103. 104. 5. Roman. 185-18 6. 169. 19� 198 . S01"en. 20. 80. 70. 85. 201 Narcissism. 113 Maxwell. 50. Derek. 8 1. 68. 93. 159. 119. object. 18� 188. 135-139. 134. 74. 191 Neoplatonism. 5. Celeste. 137. Friedrich. 38. 102. 182 Journal. 89-90 Locke. 49. Kant. 109-135. Lamarck. 150-160. Sound Kaufman. 97. 17. 28. 100. 1 13. 102. 119. 60. 194. 8 � 116. 14 8. Kyoto Protocol. John. 15. 108.. 163 Metonymy. 4 7. 18 8. 174. 72. 8 � 88. 71. 7 Jews. 129. 6. 5. 123 Los Angeles. New York City. See also Sinthome Maturana. 163. 203. Emmanuel. 71. 52. 72. 159 Jenkins. 164 22-25. 119. 54. 94. 106. 55. 182. 43. 116. 86. 154 Jefferson. 154 173. 96. 133. 15 9 122. 30. 147. 31. 107-108. 194 165 Klein. See also Ecomimesis New Historicism. 183. Mathematics. Maurice. 194 132. 144. 5 6. Samuel. 151. 185. 25. 6� 6� 69. 245 Intersubjectivity. 35. Masochism. 8. 15. 194 Kubrick. 51. 29. Jean-Luc. 185 Kristeva. Denise. 190 Morris. 112. Newto� haa� 15. 23. 141. 62. 120. 108. 104. 8 8 . 28. 8 1. 184. Julia. 1'77-178. 170 Semitism. 89-90. The ( musical group). Langan. 60. 5 8. 123. 162-163. 27. 40. Kundera. 205 New York Times. 28. Yves. 42. 83. 199 Nevada. 125. 152 149. 125 Nonviolence. 71. 190 Medial. 61. 47-50. 15. reification. 131. 24. 138. 46. Alvin. 123. Lucretius. 8. 203. 190 8 1. Music. 69. 21. 43. 20 . 14. 157. 142. 180-181. Fredric. 84. 26. 189. 17. 90. 7� 80. Timothy. 170. 143. 33 Naess. 170. 193 Levinas. 2. 32. 172. 60. Intersubjectivity. John. 11. 140. 44. 189 60-61. 127. 198. 16� 173. 198. 62. 96. 158. 60-61. 12. 31. Index Index . 166. 159 Jakobson. 7. 59-60. 86. 185-18 6. 116. 189 Ambient music. 199 Nirvana. 120) 186. 123. 104 Muzak. 127. 96. Dudley. 117 Klein. 83. 68 Jarman. 173. 164. 156. 83. 8 6. 111. John Stuart. 178. 184 also Dualism. 89. 122. 15. 127. 189 129. Subject 186 Merleau-Ponty. 132. 58. Moon landings. nonidentity. 176. 108 Mac Low. James Clark. 163. and Clark. 121. 137. 82. 89-90 Nonidentity. 55. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. 197 concrete music. 112-113. 31. 94-95. 152. 61. 188. 120. 34. 188. 82. 8 8 171. 159. 139. 36. 201 Mitford. 70. 169 Libertarianism. 163. 8 7. 200-201. 110. 179. 186. 4 8. 159. 202. 37 149. 50. 31. 42. 200 Kierkegaard. 173. 150. 130. 39. 115. 34. negativity. 196. 8 . 129. 73. 175. 117. 161. 150 National Trust. 189 Monstrosity. 51. 44. Lefebvre. Herbert. 36-39. 200 14. 133. Franco. 192 Mill. 139. 164 Olympic Games. 8 1. 9.:ois. anti. 185 Kroeber. 67. localism. 132. 8. Stephane. 157. fantasy object. 11. Noise. 192. 129 McKusick. 31. 46. 150-160. 180. 3. 184. 193-195. 21. Materialism. 198. 8 6 Macy. 25. 109. 95. 45. 143. 150-151. 21. 98. Keats. Robert. 95. Lake District. 138. 103. 66-68. objectivity. 167 Naz�m. James. Timothy. 176. 9 6 Nancy. John. 172. Karl. 40. 46. Disco music. 167 Masculinity. 164 Levertov. 135 112. Judaism. 151. 29. 85 Metalanguage. Objects. 36. New Criticism. 1� 9� 12� 13� 171 135 Le�ure. 159. 13 Monism. 19-20. 42. 40. See aho 132. 159. 167. 22. 135. Nietzsche. 35. Old English. Thomas. 160 Jameson. 164. 153. 13. 2 186. 58. 92 173. 155 158. W illiam. 229-230n26 191-194 Moretti. 6. 27. 70 McDonald's (restaurant). 15� 158. Jean-Baptiste. 126 Lewis. 56. 168. 137 162. 3. Jackson. 91. 76-77. 179 Love. 83 Metabolism. 7. 148 108. 44. 159 Malthus. 71. 103-104 195-197. 113. 18 1 Lyric. 199. 179-180. 5. 156. Frederick Law. 47-48. 22. 196 105. 30. 136. 61. 100-101. 144 National parks. Latinos/as. 124. 131. 102. 74-75. 118. 24. 17 Local. 141. 130. Jacque� 7. 65. 54. Arne. James. 84. 69. 18 5-186. 85. 39. Aldo. 182. 97. 180. 77. Bruno. 85. 130. 11. 163. W illiam. 166. 152. 133. 80-81. 8 � 89. Lord of the Rings. 146. 89. 167. 17. 102. The (book and movie). 128. 9. 112.244 . 191. 16. 170 Mind. 133. 190 Johnson. 124. Mimesis. 180. 35. 158. 90. 162. 4 6. 219n35 Nlesocosm. 8 6. 187 Lovelock. 47-48. 8 7. 126 Meyer. 107. subject-object dualism. 173. 133. 16. 79. 8 7. 2 9. 24-25. Jean-Fran<. 90. 113 Orb. 186. 119. 191 Techno 93. 145. 139. 125. 93 Nuclear bomb. Nationalism. 193. 193 135. 110. 134. 83. 73. 144-145. 83. 39 Monoculture. 127. 76. 200 Negri. 9 8 . 193 Marx. 194. 64. 105. 102. 106. 169. 171. 188. 110. 95. 83. 8 1. 114. 122 184. 3. 106. 45. 153. Immanuel. 101. Koolhaas. 171. 185- Irony. 14. 70. 31. 14. Thomas. 45. 75. 84. 164. 62. 145. 185. 62. 41 122. Emily. 84. 170. 167. 41. 189 Islam. 1 8 5 Monticello. 163. 122 Meditation. 117. 117. 164. See also Gender 53. 146. 196. Iraq War. 76. 37. Noncom. 64. 100. 183-184. 37. 9 1 195-196. 161. 52. 9. 84 Modernity. 95. 83-92. 29 Mllton. 132. 68-69. 2. 23-24. 141. 93 Middle Ages. 31. 9. Ki�ch. 172 See also Frankenstein's creature 170. 85. 1 8 1. 35. 129. 139. 176 Silence. 198 Mountains.eptuality. 193. Mexico. 114. 152 139. 99 Mice. 152. 149. 36. 56. 25. 115. 164-165. 50. 19. 15� Nuclear Guardianship. 119. 168 Lyotard. 67. 61. 135. 177. 64. quasi­ Lacan. 179-180. Karl. 69. 36-37 Ligeti. 18 New Age. 198 Lawn. 99. 155. 85 Race. 170. 213n56. 28. 3rd Earl o f (Anthony Ashley- Organicism. 5-6. 35 Rhapsody. 153. 203 Sonic Youth (musical group). 95. 4. 155. 63. 1 13. 107. 22. 8. 2 7. Jeffrey. 42. 1 95 literature. 10� 1 24. 104. 41. 109. 143 Sexuality. 202 Owen. 10. 94-101. 90. Gary. 89. 24. social space. 31. 42-43. 54. 117 83. 37 Painting. 38. 164 Sadism. 10-11. 64. 140. 116. 14 8 90. Otto. 66. 1 94 Reading. See also Avant-garde 133. Index Index . Presley. 141. 134. 1 54. 127. 44. 72. 123. 14 8. 134. Rudolph. 90. 4. Production. 164. 124. racism. 200 31. See also Gender. 106-108. 73 40. 3. 192 129. 45. 15. 177 76. 136. 80. 158. Karl W ilhelm Friedrich von. 144-145. 9 6. 13 6 6 6. Michel. 147. 64. 155. 127. 80. 158 Pets. Arthur. 49. 22. 173 Slime. Raymond Murray. Marc. 152. 8 6. 18. 79. 81. 4. 135. 141. Jean-Paul. 37. Place. 97. 34. the. 51. 109. 54. Silence. Quantum mechanics. 186. 20. 123. 6 1. 123. 154. 10-11. 190. 1 5 2. 63. 8 7. 8 1. Serres. 176 Rhizome. 151. 135. 125. 66. 128. 84-85. 1 73. 42. 162. 45. 35 169 136. 36. 155. 93. 100-101 . 147. 52-53. 1 27 Reagan. 4 1. 105. 189. 19. 13. 120. 85. 31. 85. 17. 1 8 1. 166. 61. 216n122. 5 6. 4 7. Avital. Erwin. Walter. 44. 124. 171. Satie. See also Beck. 95 180. 190 Shit. 10. 146. 53 Shelley. 136. 142. 155. 104. 39-4 1 . Pink Floyd (musical group). 163. Keith. 27 Robinson. 80. 35-36. 25. 136. 50. David. 122. 93. 38. 90. 1 2 � Polis. 170. 69-70. 1 85 Sextus Empiricus. 60. 43. 113. 2. 197. 76. 84. 175. 133. 45. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph. 162-165. 10. 106. 20. 74. 190. 120 Snead. 104. Simpson. Jonty. 51. 70. 172. 43. 4 6. 54-57. Rona ld. 129. 102. 64. 115. 104-105. 51. 116. 8 9. 42. 164 157. 2-3. 117 Software. 93.. Paul. 20. Schopenhauer. Theodore. 134. Scott. 190. Raffles. 117 96-97. 54. 96. 14 8 Drive. 114. 196 Reich. sound art. 1 2 6-127. 44. 98. 162. 8. 73-74. 1. 59. Fantasy. 183 144. 1 43. 1 9 7 134. 70 Cooper). 40. 145. See also Noise. 95-96. 48. 56. 93 Republicanism. Alain. 162. 47-54. 21. 60. 32. 101. 84. 105 8 1. Renaissance. 42. 94. 16. 144. 181. 68. 156. 84. 128. 67. 45. 28. 23. 24. 41-43. 140 Shapiro. 131. 191 Reality TV. 8 6. 64. W illiam. 72. 116. 114. 202 Homosexuality 102. Roszak. 10. 9. 179. 45-46. 190 Psychoanalysis. 107. 27. 95. space in Post-structuralism. 41. 191-192 Ulrich also Frankenstein's crea ture Otters. 84. 53. 18. Sinthome Robin. 99. 1 8 5. 52-53. 8. 16. 66 Replicant. 158. 99. 1 67 Queerness. 158. 60. 145. 114. Romantic Situationism. 10. 15� 158. 186. John. Slatterfield. 59. 144 228n4 Schrodinger. 25. 86.. 191. Rilke. 93. Rumsfeld) Donald. 68. 33-34. 140. 100. 102. 60. 36. 178. 150. 161. 156 142. 5 7. George. Peter. 98. the. 95. 112. 12. 152 Shershow. Charlotte. See also Robertson. 6. 54-63. 125. 127. 195. Val. 7. See also AMM Smith. 193. 183. 121. 4 6. 178. 127. 105. radioactivity. 43. Ricardo. 9. 176. 8 2-83. 163. 182. Romantic Sinthome. 70 107-108. Sartre. 94-95. 76. 50-51. 47- Phillips. 1 08. 50. 42. 130. 188 ecology. 16. 5. 106. 70 84. 84. Phob�. 19. 159. 110. 15. 164. 130. 159. 178 Rothko. 121. 52-54. 56. W . 95 Primitivism. 33. 190-191. 196. Ronell. 8 1. 8 Sampson. 135 Radiation. 161. 118. 5. 12 7 Schlegel. 42. 40-41. 15 Public Image Limited (musical group). 8 1 Schelling. Francis. 90. 13. 92. 183. 50. Leslie Marmon. 123. 91. 79. 129. reality principle. 68-69. 84. 19. 64-65. 171. 198 Puritanism. 175. 153 St. Schiller. 144. 14. 65. 133. 54. 1 93. 163. 4 4 . 113. Situatedness. 184. 40. Sebald. 36. 201. Friedrich. 15 7-160. Reality. 129. 26. 44 199. Rainer Maria. Gary. 5 8. 80 philosophy. 165. 79- 123. Jacques Schafer. 7. 94. 125. 52. 67. 124. sound 50. 1 44. 140. 14 6 13. 172-1 74. 73. Rainforest. 42. Steve. 134 Scott. 67. 161 Reason (software). soundscape. 19. 106. 19-2 1 . Risk society. 65. 15. 85-87. 2 6. 131. 65. 38 Smith. 32. 77. 15 7. 165. 37. 116 Space. 151. 49. 153. 47-48. 44. 44. 145. 173. 8. 165-167. 51. 189 48. 134. 108. 20. 36 110. 185. 1 8 7. 42. 42 recording. 71-72. 3. 159 127. 131 . queer theory. 8 8 . Poetics of spice. 99 59. 72-73. 155. Silence. 62. Postmodernism. Noise. 166. See Orpheus. 135. 94. 1 1 8-11 9 6� 6� 8 � 9� 98. 70. 61 180-181. 1 14 71. Elvis. 24. James A. 5 170. 71. 185 Siovic. 35 158. 147. 4 8. 4 6. 16. 28. 138. 115. Vandana. 79. 153 '132. 75 . 26. Adam. 5 6. Panoramas. 75. 2. 10� 1 1 6. Nam June. 44. 8. 156. 80. 31. 32-33. Percy Bysshe. 163. 184. 20 Rowe. 184. 22. 94-95. David. 127. 188 Parataxis. 172. 2 . 1 8 7-18 8. Eric. 1 42. 42. Dana. 71. 135. Semper. 103. 164 Oxford University. 104. 30-31. 166. Ruskin. 159) 1 92. 150. 5. See also Derrida. 227nl78 Phenomenology. 150-160. 14 8. 192 Snyder. 29. Ponge. 61. 25. Plato. Scott. Romanticism. Pascal. space-time. 25. 153 34. 83. 156. Shelley. 95. 4 1 . 39. G. Francis. Viktor. 69. 201 . 132. See also Gender 1 6 9-170. 88. 85. 200. 102. 99 Shakespeare. 32. 133. 106-107. 4. 36-37. 38. 77. 7. 89. Jacques. 168. 4 7. 140. 93. 73-74. 38. 133. 132 Pro Tools (software). 33. 92. 35. 4 1. 162. 115. 149. 157. 102. 48-49. 105. 105-107. 247 Ordnance Survey. 12. 1 16. 91-92. 43. 164. 51. 62. 153 Robbe-Grillet. 1 75. 33. 32. 30. 140. 28. 192. 178. 190. 49. 196 100. 200 Ricoeur. 38. 1 76 Rhetoric. See also Aeolian. 177-178. 132-133. 133. 160. 197. 145. 164. Rimbaud. 192 Renderin& 34. 1 91. 6 � 13� 15� 158. 93 Paik. 194 Slavery. 83. 8 1. Perception. 50. 127. David. 130. Eric. 25-26. 14 9 193. 114. 105. 99. 138. 72. 161. 132. 97 192. 122. 102. 1 9 6 Phantasmagoria. 103. 93-94. 138. 63. Blaise. 160. 22. 199 92. 174. Slavoj Perception. 32. Romantic irony. 70. 229n13 136. 87 Rhyme. Shiva. 1 5 9. Silko. 159 Shklovsky. 38-39. 79. 77. Mary. 37. Romantic ecocriticism and Zizek. 58. 34. 25. 35. 66. 131 . 40. Alexander. Arthur. 123. 150 171. 34. 12� Sentimentality. 202. 66. 163. 2 7. Sir Thomas. 2. 4 6 space in aesthetics and art. 40. 57. 89. 8 8 Shaftesbury. W ilfred. 32. 142-143. 38. 42. Pope. 14 8. 123. 153. 110. 9 7. Sound Pantheism. 79. 140. 169. 1 71. 8 7. 23. 80. 196. 47. 189.246 . 70. 142. 181 Rocky Flats (nuclear bomb trigger factory). 8 1. Par�. 58. 39. 13. 3. 150. See also Lacan. 76. 94. 62. 32-33. 64. Meyer. 109-123. Romantic period. 102. 108. Terre. 122 Phatic. 95. 189. 112. 32. 137. 134. 12 1 . 169-181. 61. 59. 61. 194. 79. 55. 59. 232n65 Parenthesis. 202 Sound. 64. 121. 168. 172. 182. 182. 132. 1 2 7 Re-mark. 144. 101. 67. 171. 46. 107. 177 consumerism. Fetishism. 9 6. 172 Orientalism. Timbre Plumwood. 161. 5 1. 57. 132. 9 7. 193 Tibet. 164. 85. 141. 116 Williams.. 72-76. La Monte. 178. 8 8 . subjectivity. 93. 76. 14-15. 49. 43. 94. 61. 17. 102-104. strangeness. 200. 172. 1 1 1 . 43. 120. Veblen. the. 141. 182-183. 1. 170. 145 SUVs (sport utility vehicles). 63. 97. 143. 46. 63. 123. 7. 150. 15 � 163. Vegetarianism. 170 180. 49. 67. Intersubjectivity. 15 � 156. 129. 67. 201. 62-63. 135. 2. 8-9. 29-31. 39 Uncanny. 94 Sublime. 71. 165 14� 14 8 . 102 164. 41. 209n36 Wagner. See also 91. 20-21. 94. 43. 177. 61. 115. 19 Supernatural. The (magazine). 110. 108 Z izek. 25. 22. 191. Thorstein. 152 Spinoza. 189 Zerstreuung. 82. 31-32. 62. Tansley. 19 8 . 83. 5 6. Tolkien. 42. 137. 75. 99. 72. 19 1. 121-122. 16� 17� 1 8 1. 86. 9 6 World Trade Center. 10. 119. 176. 91. 179. 55. 31. 144. 40-41. 43. 90 93. 11. 33. 112. 79. 151. 93. 227n178 Stewart. Susan. 146-150. 71. 102. 120. 34. 74. Woodstock festival. 40. 191 Technology. 159. 95. 171 Taste. 81. 15. 34. 13 39. 5 8 . the. 148-150. 164 Turing. 9. 109-110 Voice. 101. 178 Synesthesia. 197. 148 . 148 Wilson. 90. 8 . 39. 38-39. 41 Wilde. 98. 145 . Jack. 1 8 1 95. 18. 146. 166. 47. 34 Young. 191 Symbiosis. Rinpoche. 143. 114. 17-18 . 43. 108 Tuning (StimI11Ul1g).248 . 190. Thoreau. 197. 59. Adolph. 178 Williams. 39-40. 136. 7. 8 1. 64. See Distraction 112-113. 159. 4 8 . 75. 149. 100. 16� 171. 155 Syncope. 165. 169 Dualism. 168-169 . Donald Woods. 188. 69. 144. 82. 79-139. 92. 212n37 Wordsworth. 19. 4. 172. 128. Terror. Thomas. Strangers. Thomson. 199.. 151. 60. 45. 202 Turner. 40. 202. 126. 83. 202-203. 163. 135 160 Trees. 107. 75. 173. The (movie). 60. 112 Varela. 52. 164. 41. 100. 201 State. 50. Steven. 85. 51. 56 Techno (music). 177-179. 21. 101 Woodland Trust. 132. 141. 60. 9 7-100. Richard. 136. 203 233n98 Wetlands. 44. 97. 134. 28. 114. 156. 123-135. 128-129. Edward. 192. 62. 79-80 Thatcher. 150. 4 6. 5. the. 83. 130. O[)car. 16. 126. 19. 36. 105. 43-47. Roger. Virilio. 77. 116. 32-35 . 38. 30. 55-5 6. 101. Francisco. 136. Henry David. Ralph Vaughan. the. 5 6. 170. 40 Wire. 182. 81-82. 12 . 73. Totality. 99-101. 22-23. 64. 62. 191. 143. 135. 68. 162-163. 122. 106. 66. Objects Toop. 114. 111. 5 8 . 65. 111. Baruch. 150 Victorian period. 105. 27. 19. 199-200. 183. 2 6. 216n122 . 125. 41. 189. 108 Turner. 98. 97. 120 Subject. 113. 89. 65 . 70. 71-72. 15 7. 102. 5 7. Chogyam. 77. 110 Writing. 155. 8 7. 140. 82. 163. Walt. 9 208n22 14 9 Virtual reality. 62-63. R. 43 Wilderness. 46. 7 4 . 149. Timbre. 133 Winnicott. 12� 138-139. 75. 103. 99. 168. 35 . 183. 220n55 124. 125-126. 130-131. 180-181 113. Williams. 11. 38- 20. 16 8-169. 15. 70. 63-64 . 120 97. 129. 63. 11. 51. 101. 1 8 1. 146. 103. . 154 Van Gogh. 145-146. 30-31. 7. 186. 154. 38 . 119-120. 6. 176 Waters. 9. 181. 192 119 "Umvorking" (desoeuvremellt). 104. 124. 166. 145. 107. 93. Vi bration. 62-63. 203. 2. Leo. 120. 226n175 154. 185-186. 2 Zapatistas. Wagner. 175. Tzvetan. terrorism. 52. 92. 20. Trickster. 8 8 . 64. 24. Index Index . 141. 33. Margaret. 16. 178. 14 8. 173. 89. 149. 37. 181. 71. 36. 116. 179-180. 15 � 162. 138 . 4. 16. 14 8 . 133 113-114. 106. 175. Arthur G. 167 Thing. 138. 120. 120-121. 59. 177-178 81. 34. 204 119. 113 Sympathy. William. David. 110. 44. 73. Tone. 106. 149. 13. 19. 138 Whales. 110. 24. 102. 9 8 . 15 6 153 Trungpa. 190 200. 113. 133. 77. 146- stasis. 47. 76-77. 107 159. 4 . 138. Alan. 117. Todorov. 36. 249 Spielberg. 5 6. 28. 16. 117. Raymond. 34. 52. 43-47. 118. Timbral. 123. 118. 124. 9 . 193 Terroir. 131. 61. United States. 60-61. 161. 94. 186. 7. 19. 4 7. 14 8. 176. Paul. J . 19 8-199. 3. 10. 76. 53. 205 Stravinksy. 8 1-82. Uexkiill. 116. William. 49. 103. 76. 76. 135-136. 18. 64. 59 Whitman. 35 . 99. 165. 70. 150 Synthesizer. 31. 32. Vincent. 38. 92. 163 Sugar. 12. 15 8 Tryon. 194 Television. 108-109. 11� 118. 47. 167. 129. Theory. 99 174 Umwelt. 18. 160. 153. 127 5 7. 135. 94-101. 132. 182-183. 129. R. 95. 152. 137. 168. 2 2 . Substantialism. 26-28 Woods. Igor. 31. 39. 13. West. 137. 152. 19. 153. 52. 47-48. 39-41. 102. 9. Totalitarianism. 99. 62. 67. 50. 42. 95. 96. 24. 34. 83-92. 109. 124. 1 8 1 179. 182 War. 173 188 World. 11� 122. Terry Tempest. 188. 27. 40. 15 8 . 115. 66. 75 . 101-102. 41-42. 188 Suburbia. 43. 125. 137. 42. 66. 152. 3 Thomas. 189. Jacob von. System. 8 . 59. 147-14 8. 45. 26-27. 5 . 27. 101. 96. Slavoj. 17. 3. 111. 71. 18. Spitzer. James. 46. 163. Edward 0 . 19. 169. 142. 97-9 8 . 3 1 . 70. 102.