Timothy Morton Ecology Without Nature Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics
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Timothy Morton Ecology Without Nature Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics...
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ECOLOGY
Ecology without Nature �
EKG EVEAL AESECS
TIMOTHY MORTON
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2007
Copyright © 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard Colege ll rights reserved Printed in the United States of merica SBN13: 978-0-674-024342 SBN0 074-0243-6 The CataloginginPubication Data are available from the Library of Congress. Epigaph Epigaph to Chapter To the Reader," by Denise Levertov, from Poems 96-967 copyrght © 9 by Dense Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Direcions Publishing Corp., Pollinge Limited and the proprietor. Pink Foyd Gantchester Meadows" U11au1a EM 969). Words and Music by Roge Wates © Copyright 970 Renewed) and 980 Lupus Music Co. Ltd., London, England. TROHampshire House Pubishng Corp., New York contols a pubication rights for he U.S. and Canada Used by Permission
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Acknowledgments
itng this book has often called to mind a pecaious pictue of walkng acoss a mneeld wth a bouquet of owes, dessed in the costume of a clown. Fo those who encouaged me acoss, I have nothing but thanks: Davd Clak, Geg Dobbns, Maaet Feguson, Kate Flnt, Dense Gigante, Geofey Hatman, Kaen Jcobs, Do uglas Kahn, obet Kaufman, Alan Lu, Jame C. McKusck, Davd Nobook, Jffey obnson, Ncholas oe, Davd Smpson, Ngel Smth, Jane Stable, obet nge, Kaen esman, and Michael Zise. The two anonymous eades appointed by Havad nveity Pess wee extaodnaly encouagng To Davd Smpson n paticula owe a debt of gattude beyond measue, fo yeas of suppot and fendship I beneted fom a Dstngushed Vsitng Fellowshp at Queen May, Univest of London whle copyeditng, poofeadng, and indexing. Thanks in paticula to ichad Schoch and Pa ul Hamilton. Thanks go to my eeach assstants, Seth Foest and Chistophe Schabeg, who helped me balance my lfe, witng, and teaching. I would lke to thank all those students, both undegaduates and gaduates, who have exploed and shaed these deas snce 1998, n classes at the Univesty of Coloado and the Unvesty of Calfona. In patcula, I am gateful to my entie Ecomimess gaduate class of Spng 004, fo helping me to wok though to the heat and soul of ths poje ct Seth Foest, Tmothy Kene, Dalal Mansou, Eic ' Bien, Fancsco enking, Chstophe Schabeg, Daniel ThomasGlass, Sabna Tom, Kaen alke, and Claa Van Zanten. And I am equally gateful to my
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Acknowledgments
Ecology without Nature" class of Spring 2006: Tekla Babyak, Andrew Hageman, Lynn Langemade, Rachel Swinkin, Julie Tran, and Nicholas Valvo At Harvard University Press, Lindsay Waters has been everything I would wish an editor to be. John Donohue at Westchester Book Services coordinated the copyediting Last but nt least, I don't think the idea of dark ecology would have been possible without a life spent listening to the ethereal splendor of the Cocteau Twins I dedicate ths boo k to y love, y wife Kate. She was the rst to hear and discuss the ideas set down here. At every moment, she was ready with a coment, a suggestion, a kind word. And she bore our daughter, Claire, the sweetest stranger who ever arrved.
Contents
Introdction: oward a heory of Ecoogica Criticism 1
T he Art of Environmen al L anguage : "I Can' B elie ve It Isn
Natu re ! "
29
2
Romanticism and he Environmenta Sjec
3
magining Ecoogy withou Nare Notes
207
ndex
239
40
79
Eclgy wihu aur
�
INTRODUCTION
Toward a Theory of Ecological Criticism
Nobody likes it when you menion the unconscious, and nowadays, hadly anybody likes i when you mention the envionment. You isk sounding boing o judgmental o hysteical, o a mixtue of all hese . But thee is a deepe eas on. Nobody likes it when you mention the unconscious, not because you ae pointing out somethig obscene that should emain hiddentha is at least paly enjoyable. Nobody likes it because when you menion i, it becomes conscious. In he same way, when you mention the envionment, you bing it ino the foegound. In othe wods, it stops being the envionment It sops being That Thing Ove Thee hat suounds and susains us. hen you hink abou whee you waste goes, you wold stats to shink This is the basic mess age of citicism ha speaks up fo envionmental jusice, and it is he basic mess age of this book The main heme of he book is given away in is ile. Ecology without Nature agues that the vey idea of natue which so many hold dea will have to withe away in an ecological state of human society. Stange as it may sound, the idea of natue is geting in he way of popely ecological foms of cultue, philosophy, politics, and at. The book addesses this paadox by consideing at above all else, fo it is in at tha the fanasie s we have about naue take shapeand dissolve. In paicula, the liteatue of the omantic peiod, commonly seen as cuci ally abou natu e, is the taget of my investigaion, since it still inuences the ways in which the ecological imaginay woks.
4
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Ecology withou Naure
how does t affect our deas about art and culture? This chapter analyzes the Romantc perod as the moment at which the captalsm that now covers the earth began to take effect. Workng forward from that moment, the book elaborates ways of understandng the dlemmas and paradoxes facing envronmentalsms. In a somewhat more synthetc manner than Davd Harvey's Justce, Nature and the Geography of Dfference, Chapter 2 accounts for why postRomantc wrtng s obsessed with space and place. It employs my existng research on the hstory of consumersm, whch has established that even forms of rebellon aganst consumersm, such as envronmentalst practces, fall under the consumerst umbrella. Becase consumersm s a discourse about dentty, the chapter contans detaled readngs of passages n envronmentalst wrtng where a narrator, an I," struggles to stuate hm or herself in an envronment. Chapter 3 wonders where we go from here. What knds of poltcal and social thnkng, making, a nd dong are possble ? The book moves from an abstract dscusson to a seres of attemts to determne precsely what our relatonshp to envronmental art and culture could be, as socal, poltical anmals. The chapter explores dfferent ways of takng an artstc stand on envronmental ssues. It uses as evdence wrters such as John Clare and Wllam Blake, who mantaned postons outsde m anstream Romantcsm. Chapter 3 demonstrates that the Aeolan," ambent poetcs outlned n Chapter pckng up the vbratons of a materal unverse and recordng them wth hgh deltynevtably gnores the subect, and thus cannot fully come to terms wth an ecology that may manfest tself n bengs who are also personsncludng, perhaps, those other bengs we desgnate as anmals. Chapter 1 offers a theory of envronmental art that s both an expl caton of t and a crtcal reecton. Chapter 2 offers a theoretcal re ecton on ths, the dea" of environmental art. And Chapter 3 s a further reecton stll. This theory of the theory" s poltical. Far from achevng greaer levels of theoretcal" abstracton (abstracton s far from theoretcal), the volume rises" to hgher and hgher levels of con creteness. Ecology without Nature does not oat away nto the strato sphere. Nor does t qute descend to earth, snce the earth sarts to look rather dfferent as we proceed. Ecologcal wrtng keeps nsstng that we are embedded" n nature.6 Naure s a surrounding medum tha sustans our beng D ue to the propertes of the rhetorc that evokes the dea of a surroundng
Inroducion
.
5
medum, ecologcal writng can never properly establish that ths s nature and thus provde a compellng and consstent aesthetc ba ss for the new worldvew that s meant to change socety. It s a small operaton, lke tppng over a domno. My readngs try to e symptomatc rather than comprehensve. I hope that by openng a few wellchosen holes, the entre nasty mess mght pour out and dssolve. Puttng something called Nature on a pedestal and admrng t from afar does for the envronment what patrarchy does for the gure of Woman. It s a paradoxcal act of sadstc admraton. Smone de Beauvoir was one of the rst to theorze ths transformaton of actally exsting women nto fetsh objects.7 Eclogy wthout Nature examines the ne prnt of ow nature has become a transcendental prncple. This book sees tself, n the words of ts subttle, as rethnkng envronmental aesthetcs. Envronmental art, from low to hgh, from pastoral ktsch to urban chc, from Thorea to Sonc Youth, plays wth, renforces, or deconstrcts the dea of natre. What emerges from the book s a wder vew of the possibltes of environmental art and crtcsm, the wdescreen" verson of ecological culture. Ths verson will be unafrad of dfference, of nondentty, both n textual terms and n terms of race, class, and gender, f ndeed textualcrtcal mattrs can b separated from race, class, and gender. Ecocrtcsm has held a special, solated place n the academy, n part because of the deologcal baggage t is lumbered wth. My ntent s to open t up, to broadn t. Even f a Shakespeare sonnet does not appear explctly to be about" gender, nowadays we stll want to ask what t mght have to do wth gender. The tme should come when we ask of any text, What does ths say about the envronment? " In the current stuaton we have already de cded whch texts we wll be askng. Some readers wll already have pegged me as a postmodern theorst" on whom they do not wsh to waste ther tme. I do not beleve that there s no such thng as a coral reef. (As t happens, modern ndustral processes are ensurng they do not exst, wheter I beleve n them or not.) I also do not beleve that envronmental art and ecocrt csm are entrely bogus. I do beleve that they must be ddressed crtcally, precsely because we care about them and we are about the earth, and, ndeed, the future of lfeforms on ths planet, snce humans have developed all the tools necessary for ther destructon As muscian Davd Byrne once wrote, Nuclear weapons could wipe out lfe on earth, f sed properly."8 It s vtal for us to think and act n more gen eral, wder terms Partcularsm can mster a lot of passon, bt t can
14
Ecology without Nature
npulaton o preormed peces on a readymade board. Ths s also how Hegel dstngushed dalectcal thnkng rom sheer gc.1 9 There must be a movement at least rom A to notA. At any moment, thought necessarly bumps ts head aganst what t snt. Thnkng must go somewhere," though whether t goes anywhere partcularly sold s up or grab s. Ths encounter wth nondentty, when consdered ully, ha s proound mplcatons or ecologcal thnkng, ethcs, and art. Nondentty has a lneage n nature wrtng tsel, whch s why I can wrte ths book at all. Peter Frtzell delneated a derence between navely mmetc and s elreexve orms o nature wrtng. In the latter, what nature was really lke s oten not what nature was really lke (or, or that matter, what t s)." 20
Natural History Lessons One o the deas nhbtng genunely ecologcal poltcs, ethcs, phlos ophy, nd art s the dea o nature tsel. Nature, a transcendental term n a m ateral mask, stands at the end o a potentally nnte seres o other terms that collapse nto t, otherwse known as a metonymc lst: sh, grass, mountan ar, chmpanzees, love, soda water, reedom o chce, heterosexualty, ree markets . . . Nature. A metonymc seres becomes a metaphor. Wrtng conjures ths notorously slppery term, useul to deologes o all knds n ts very slpperness, n ts reusal to mantan any consstency.21 But consstency s what nature s all about, on another level. Sayng that somethng s unnatural s sayng that t does not conorm to a norm, so normal " that t s bult nto the very abrc o thngs as they are. So nature" occupes at least three places n sym bolc language. Frst, t s a mere empty placeholder or a host o other concepts. Second, t has the orce o law, a norm aganst whch devaton s measured. Thrd, nature " s a Pandoras box, a word tha encapsulates a potentally nnte seres o dsparate antasy obj ects. It s ths thrd sensenature as antasythat ths book most ully engages. A dscplne " o dvng nto the Rorschach blobs o others enj oyment that we commonly call poems seems a hghly approprate way o begnnng to engage wth how nature" compels eelngs and beles. Nature wavers n between the dvne and the materal. Far rom beng somethng natural" tsel, nature hovers over thngs lke a ghost. It sldes over the nnte lst o thngs that evoke t. Nature s thus not unlke the subject," beng who searches through the entre unverse
Introduction
15
or ts reecton, only to nd none. I t s just another word or supreme authorty, then why not just call t God? But ths God s nothng outsde the materal world, then why not just ca ll t matter? Ths was the poltcal dlemma n whch Spnoza, and the dests o eghteenthcentury Europe, ound themselves.22 Beng an out" athest was very dangerous n the eghteenth century, as evdenced by the cryptc remarks o Hume and the ncreasngly cautous approach o Percy Shelley, who had been expelled rom Oxord or publshng a pamphlet on athesm. God oten appeared on he sde o royal authorty, and the rsng bourgeose and as ocated revolutonary classes wanted another way o beng authortatve. Ecoogy wthout nature" means n p art that we try to conront some o the ntense notons whch nature smudges. Ecologcal wrtng s ascnated wth the dea o somethng that exsts n between polarzed terms such as God and matter, ths and that, subject and object. I nd John Lockes crtque o the dea o ether to be helpul here. Lockes crtque appeared toward the begnnng o the modern constructon o space as an empt set o pont coordnates.2 3 Numerous holes n materalst, atomst theores were lled by somethng elemental. Newton's gravty worked because o an ambent ether that transmtted the propertes o heavy bodes nstantaneously, n an analog or (or as an asp ect o) the love o an omnpresent God.2 4 I ether s a knd o ambent ud" that surrounds all partcles, exstng n between" them, then what surrounds the partcles o ambent ud themselves?25 I nature s sandwched between terms such as God and matter, what medum keeps the thngs that are natural sandwched to gether? Nature appears to be both lettuce and mayonnase. Ecologcal wrtng shules subject and object back and orth so that we may thnk they have dssolved nto each other, though what we usually end up wth s a blur ths book calls ambience. Later n the modern perod, the dea o the natonstate emerged as a way o gong beyond the authorty o the monarh. The naton all to oten depends upon the very same lst that evokes the dea o nature. Nature and naton are very closely ntertwned I show how ecocrtque could examne the ways n whch nature oes not necessarly take us outsde socety, but actually orms the bedrock o natonalst enjoyment. Nature, practcally a synonym or evl n the Mddle Ages, was consdered the bass o socal good by the Romantc perod. Accordng to numerous wrters such as Rousseau, the ramers o the socal contract start out n a state o nature. The act that ths stte s not much
6
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dieent om the concete ungle o actual histoical cicumstance has not e scaped attention. n the Enlightenment natue bec ame a wa y o establishing acial and sexual identity and science became the pivileged way o demon stating it. The nomal was set up as dieent om the pathological along the coodinates o the natural and the unnatural26 atue by then a scientic tem put a stop to agument o ational inquiy: Well it's just in my natue. He is ideological you ae pejudiced but my ideas ae natual. A metaphoical use o Thomas Malthus in the wok o Chales Dawin o example natualized and continues to natu alize the wokings o the invisible hand o the ee maket and the suvival o the ttestwhich is always taken to mean the competi tive wa o all (ownes) against all (wokes). Malthus used natue to ague ag ainst the continuation o ealy moden welae in a document poduced o the govenment o his age. Sa dly this vey thinking is now being used to push down the poo yet uthe in the battle o the s up posedly ecologically minded against population gowth (and immi gation). atue achieved obliquely though tuning metonymy into metapho becomes an o blique way o talking about politics. What is pesented as staightowad unmaked beyond contestation is waped. One o the basi c poblems with natue is that it could be consideed eithe as a substance, as a squishy thing in itsel o as essence, as an ab stact pinciple that tanscends the mateial ealm an d even the ealm o epesentation. Edmund uke consides substance as the stu o na tue in his witing on the sublime .27 This substantialism assets that thee is at least one actually existing thing that embodies a sublime quality (vastness teo magnicence). Substantialism tends to po mote a monachist o authoitaian view that thee is an extenal thing to which the subject should bow. Essentialism on the othe hand has its champion in mmanuel Kant. The sub lime thing can neve be ep e sented and indeed in cetain eligions says Kant thee is a pohibition against tying (Judaisn slam) . This ess entialism tuns out to be politi cally libeating on the side o evolutionay epublicanism.28 On the whole natue witing and its pecusos a nd amily membes mostly in phenomenological and/o Romantic witing ha s tended to avo a substantialist view o natueit is palpable and despite the ex plicit politics o the autho. Futhe wok in ecocitique should delin eate a epublican nonsubstantialist countetadition unning though wites such as Milton and Shelley o whom natue did not stand in o an authoity o which you sacice you autonomy and eas on.
ntdtn
Ecologcal oms o subje ctivity inevitably involve ideas and decisions about group identity and behavio. Subjectivity is not simply an indi vidual and cetainly not just an individualist phenomenon. t is a col lective one. Envionmental witing is a way o egisteing the eeling o being suounded by othes o moe a bstactly by an otheness some thing that is not the sel. Although it may displace the actual social col lective and choose to wite a bout suounding mountains instead such displacements always say something about the kinds o collective lie that ecological witing is envisaging. Fedic Jameson outlines the ne cessity o citicism to wok on ideas o collectivity: Anone who eoe he tme e of the ommnt o the oe t fom eft pepete mt fe hee pobem ) how o dn gh poon d fom ommntnm; ) ow o dffeen e te oee pojet fom fm o nzm; 3) how to ee he o nd he eonom eeth how o e he Mt n of ptm o demonte the nbt of o oton whn h em. A fo oee dente, n ho moment n wh nd d peon dent h been nmed deenteed o of m pe bje poon, e no too mh to tht omethng nogo be oneptzed on te oete ee.
The idea o the envionment is moe o less a way o consideing gou ps and collectiveshumans suounded by natue o in continuity with ohe beings such as animals and plants. is about beingwih. As La tou has ecently pointed out howeve the actual situation is a moe dastically collective than that. All kinds o beings om toxic waste to sea snails ae clamoing o ou scientic political and atistic atten tion and have become pat o political lieto the detiment o mono lithic conceptions o atue. To wite about ecology is to wite ab out society and not simply in the weak sense that ou ideas o ecology ae soci constuctions. Histoical conditions have abolished an exta social natue to which theoies o society can appeal while at the sa me time making the beings that ell unde this heading impinge eve moe ugently upon society. Dieent images o the envionment suit dieent kinds o society. Substantialist images o a palpable distinct natue embodied in at least one actually existing phenomenon (a paticula species a patic ula gue) geneate authoitaian oms o collective oganization. The deep ecological view o natue as a tangible entity tends this way. Es sentialist ideas o a natue that cannot be endeed as an image have suppoted moe egalitaian oms. t would be vey helpul i ecoci
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single, independent, and lasing ut deluded ideas and ideological xations do exist atue is a ocal point that compels us to assume cetain attitudes deology esides in the attitude we assume towad this ascinating object y dissolving the object, we ende the ideological xation inopeative At least, that is the plan The ecocitical view o postmodenism, o which theoy is a shibboleth, has much in common with the English dislike o the Fench Revolutionindeed, it is in many ways deived om it5 Theoy, goes the agument, is cold and abstact, o ut o touch 6 t oces oganic oms into boxes that cannot do them j ustice t is too calculating and ational Postmodenism is just the latest vesion o this soy state o aais O couse, the English position against the Fench was its own abstaction, a selimposed denial o histoy that had aleady happenedthe behea ding o Chales , o instance Academics ae neve moe intellectual than when they ae being antiintellectual o selespecting ame would compot himsel o hesel quite like Aldo Leopold o Matin Heidegge What could be moe postnden than a poesso eexively choosing a social and s ubjec tive view, such as that o a ame What could be moe postmoden than ecociicism, which, a om being naive, consciously blocks its eas to all intelletual developments o the last thity yeas, notably (though ot necessaily all at once) eminism, antiacism, antihomophobia, deconstuction ust as the Reagan and ush administations attempted a eun o the s, as i the s had neve happened, so ecociticism pomises to etun to an academy o the past t is a om o postmoden eto ecocitics dislike what say, howeve, so will poststuctualists Poststuctualismciticism that acts as i the s had occued has its own views o natue, though it may not name it so baldly t is just tat these views ae supposedly moe sophisticated than pevious ones Thee is still the basic seach o something in between categoies such as subj ect and object, act and value Thee exists a class divide between the enjoymentobjects o ecociticalconsevative and poststuctualistadical e ades ecocitics pee Aldo Leopold's almanac style, complete with cute illustations, poststuctualists tend to go o the latest compilation album by an amb ient techno D t may not be eethoven, but it is still polite a t a cocktail paty o at opening, i not moe so Leopold and The Ob ae eally two sides o the same coin, accoding to ecocitique Whethe they ae highbow o middlebow, installation o pastoal symphony, atwoks exhibit what call comimsisJ a hetoical om descibed in detail in Chapte , and ex
ploed thoughout this book Thundebid o Chadonnay, eto o utuistic, it's all the same ecomimesis Postmodenism is mied in aestheticism t eezes iony into an a esthetic pose Whe n suggest that we dop the concept o natue, am saying that we ally dop it, athe than ty to come up with hastily conceived, new and impoved solutions, a new om o advetising language This is about what you think without me ns in the title o this book Deida's poound thinking on the without, the ssJ in his witing on negative theology comes to m ind D econstuction goes beyond just saying that something exists, even in a hypeessential way beyond be ing And it goe s beyond saying that things do not e xist ' Ecology without natue is a elentless questioning o essence, athe than some special new thing Sometimes the utopian language o a wite such as Donna Haaway ushes to jeybuild ideas like natueculte8 These nonnatues ae still natue, b ased on hopeul intepetations o emeging ideas acoss disciplines such as philosophy, mathematics, and anthopology, ideas that tun out to be highly aesthetic Chapte ocuses on a set o altenatives to taditional ideas o natue that lie just to the side o it Assuming that natue itsel is too sot a taget these days, analyze possible ways o thkng the same idea bigge, wide, o bette unde the geneal heading o ambience To get popely beyond postmodenism's pitalls, genuinely citical ecociticism would engage ully with theoy we conside the nontheological sense o natue, the em collapses into impmac and his toy ways o saying th same thing Lieoms ae constantly coming and going, mutating and becomng extinct iosphees and ecosystems ae subject to aising and cessation Living beings do not om a solid pehistoical, o nonhistoical gound upon which human histoy plays ut natue is oten wheeled out to adju dicate between what is eeting and what is substantial and pemanent atue smoothes ove uneven hstoy, making its stuggles and sueings illegible Given that much ecocitcism and ecologcal liteatue is pimitivist, it is ionic that indigenous societies oten ee to natue as a shapshiting tickste athe than as a m basis The nal wod o the histoy o natue is that atu is histoy. atual bea uty, pupotedly ahistoical, is at its coe histoical 9 What Is Nature For? Ecolo without Natu stats as a detailed examinaton o how at
epesents the envionment This helps us to see that natue is an a
w e
bitay hetoical constuct empty o independent genuine existence behind o beyond the texts we ceate about it The hetoic o natue depends upon something dene as an ambien poeics a way o con juing up a sense o a suounding atmosphee o wold My agument ollows Angus Fletche's ecent wok on an emeging Ameican poetics o the envionment4 His suggestive idea that the long sinuous lines in Whitman and his descendants establish ways o eaching out towad and going beyond hoizons and o ceating an openended idea o na tue is a va luable account o a specic om o poetics associate it as he d oes with developme nts in postmode n an d de constuctive thinking am howeve less condent than Fletche o the utopian value o this poetics n Chapte 2, we see that this poetics has its own histoy and that people have invested vaious deologcal meanngs n t ove tme When we histoicize ambient p oetics we nd out that this too is de void o any intinsic existence o va lue Some contempoay atists use ambient poetics to ise above what they see as the kitsch quality o othe oms o natual epesentation ut in so dong they ignoe the ideological qualities o the hetoic they ae using They isk ceating just a new and impoved vesion o the kitsch they wee tying to es cape The hstoy o ambent poetcs depends upon cetain oms o identity and subjectivity which Chapte 2 also discoves to be histo ical Chapte goes still uthe Rathe than esting in histoicization we should begin to politicize envionmental at which means begin ning to become less blind to its opeations We ouselves must not ven tue omulating a new and impoved vesion o envionmental at This will involve us in some paadoxes Fo example since thee is no escapng kitsch the only way to b eat it is to join it The thing we call natue becomes in the Romantic peiod and a tewad a way o healing what moden society has damage d4 Natue is like that othe Romanticpeiod invention the aesthetic The damage done goes the agument has sundeed subjects om objects so that human b eings ae olonly alienated om thei wold Contact with natue and with the aesthetic will mend the bidge between subject and obje ct Romanticism saw the boken bidge as a lamentable act o philosophical and s ocial lie PostKantian philosophySchelling and Hegel in Gemany Coleidge in Englandoten wishes o reconciliaion o subject and object they met unde the ight cicumstances they would hit it o Subject and o bject equie a cetain envionment in which they can join up togethe Thus is bon the special ealms o
ndn
at and natue the new secula chuches in which subect and object can be emaied42 This all depends upon whethe subject and object eve had a ela tionship in the st place; and indeed upon whethe thee re such things as subject and object which leads us to a cental knot the poblem posed by some oms o utopian envionmental at subject and object do not eally exist then why bothe tying to econcile them O i hey do exist why would some esh amalgamation o the pai be bette than what we have now Would this amalgamation look any dieent than the subj ectobject dualism that concens us the solution to subj ectobject dualism wee as easy a s changing ou minds then why have ountless texts seeking to do exactly that not done s o al eady the solution is some sense o an envionment then wha pe cisely is it i it is not aound anything Will it not tend to collapse ei the into a subj ect o an object Thee ae at least two ways o looking at these iksome qustions The st examines the idea that we need to change u minds In stead o looking o a solution to the subjectobject poblem a moe paadoxical stategy is in ode t questions what is poblematic about the poblem itsel I at bottom here is no problem eality is in deed devoid o eed igd o conceptual notions o subj ect and ob ject a nd we coexist in an innite web o mutual intedependence whee thee is no bounday o centewhy then do we need to make all this ecocitical uss Suely theeoe the uss is like scatching an itch that doesn't existtheeby binging it into existence n which case one o the tagets o genuine citique would be the vey (eco)citical lan guagesthe constant elegy o a lost unalienated state the esot to the aesthetic dimension (expeie ntial/peceptu al) a the than ethica l political paxis the appeal to solutions oten antiintellectual and o onwhich sustain the ith albeit in a subtle way The second appoach is to wonde whethe the poblem lies not so much in ou heads as out thee in social eality What i no matte what we thought about it cetain eatues o the deaded du alism wee hadwied into ou wold Ecocitique in that case takes the cy against dualism at least hal seously It peceives it to be a symptom o a malaise that was not an idea in ou heads but an ideo logical eatue o the way in which the wold opeates Ecocitique is indeed citique; but it is also eco My aim is not to poke un at hopeless attempts to join togethe what could neve be ton asunde o to supplant ecological thnking with a hippe om o belie
24
w re
a nhlstc ceed that anythng goes The am s to stengthen envonmentalsm Appealng to natue stll has a poweful hetocal effect n the shot tem, elatvely speakng, natue stll has some foce But envonentalsm cannot be n the game just fo the shot tem And that natue emans an effectve slogan s a symptom of how fa we have not come, not of how fa we have "Ecology wthout natue could mean "ecology wthout a concept of the natual Thnkng, when t becomes deologcal, tends to xate on concepts athe than dong what s "natual to thought, namely, dssolvng whateve has taken fom Ecologcal thnkng that was not xated, that dd not stop at a patcula concetaton of ts object, would thus be "wthout natue To do ecoctque, we must consde the aesthetc dmenson, fo the aesthetc has b een posted as a nonconceptual ealm, a place whee ou deas about thngs dop away Fo Adono, "The descence that emanates fom atwoks, whch today taboo all affmaton, s the appeaance of the affmatve ineffabie, the emegence of the nonexstng as f t dd exst 4 At gves what s nonconceptual an llusve appeaance of fom Ths s the am of envonmental lteatue: to e ncapsulate a utopan mage of natue whch does not eally exstwe have destoyed t whch goes beyond ou conceptual gasp On the othe hand, a nonconceptual mage can be a compellng focus fo an ntensely conceptual systeman deologcal system The dense meannglessness of natue wtng can exet a gavtatonal pull The aesthetc s also a poduct of dstance: of human bengs fom natue, of su bjects fom objects, of mnd fom matte s t not athe suspcously antecologcal Ths s a matte fo debate n the Fankfut School Benj amns famous descpton of the aesthetc aua does ndeed use an envonmental mage44 ebet Macuse clams that "The aesthetc unvese s the Lebenswet on whch the needs and facultes of feedom depend fo the lbeaton They cannot develop n an envonment shaped by and fo aggessve mpulses, no can they be envsaged as the mee effect of a new set of socal nsttutons They can emege only n the collectve practice of creting n environment 45 At could help ecology by modelng an envonment based on love (eos) athe than death (thanatos)as s the cuent technologcalndustal wold, accodng to Macuse Macuse uses Lebenswet (lfewold), a tem developed n phenomenology out of Romantcsm's constucton of wolds and envonments that stuate the thnkng mnd As we shall see n Chapte 2, ths lne of enquy lnked togethe the env
nrdn
25
onment and the aesthetc N o wonde Macuse thnks o f the aesthetc as a " dmenson e wtes "At beaks open a dmenson naccessble to othe expeence, a dmenson n whch human bengs, natue, and thngs no longe stand unde the law of the establshed ealty pncple46 Dimension, lke the aestetc tself, sts somewhee between an objectve noton (n mathematcs, fo nstance) and a sub jectve expeence Many of the wtes ths study encountes teat the aesthetc and natue as f they compsed a sngle, uned dmenson But even f thee wee moe than one dmenson, ths would not solve the poble ms of ths ntnscally spatal way of thnkng No matte how many thee ae, a dmenson s somethng we ae o notand ths assumes a dchotomy between nsde and outsde, the vey thng that has yet to be establshed Adono s moe hestant than Macuse Fo hm, the aesthetc helpfully dstances us fom somethng we have a tendency to destoy when we get close to t e dne of e ee em from of p m pper nneee e dane of ee obje fom e o ben bje; j wo nno eene e bje nn neene n em; dne e pma ondon fo n oene o e onen of wo. mp n n onep of bene of nee w de mnd of ee ompomen o ap e bje no de or .
n ths way, the aesthetc pomotes nonvolence towad natue At s not so much a space of postve ualtes (eos ), but of negatve ones t stops us fom destoyng thngs, f only fo a moment Fo Benj amn, on the othe hand, the aesthetc, n ts dstancng, alenates us fom the wold What we need s some knd of antaesthetc stategy Benjamn nds a model fo ths n the age of techncal epoducblty, whee we can download MPs of Beethoven's Pastoal Symphony, o dstbute photocopes of a landscape pantng48 t s stll uncetan whethe the aesthetc s somethng we should shun, n the name of geneatng a lbeatng ecologcal atstc pactce, o whethe t s an nevtable fact of lfe that eappeas n evesu btle guses j ust as we thnk we have gven t the slp We could clam that thee s a dffeence beween the aesthetc and aesthetcaton49 But ths s athe Romantc t bngs to mnd the noton of a "good aesthetc and a " bad one The st s good because t essts becomng objected o tuned nto a commodty, f only be cause t oncally nte
30
w e
The moe ty to evoke whee amthe " who s wtng ths textthe moe phases and gues of speech must employ must get nvolved n a pocess of wtng, the vey wtng that am not descbng when evoke the envonment n whch wtng s takng pla ce The moe convncngly ende my suoundngs, the moe guatve language end up wth The moe ty to show you what les beyond ths page, the moe of a page have And the moe of a ctonal " havesplttng "me nto the one who s wtng and the one who s beng wtten aboutthe less convncng s ound My attempt to beak the spell of language esults n a futhe nvolvement n that vey spell Pehaps ths envonmental language offes a dgesson fom the man pont O p ehaps t s a compellng llustaton, o a n ndcaton of my sncety The wtng beak s out of phlosophcal o lteay ctonal o poetc modes nto a jounal style, somethng wth a date o a tme make, somethng wth a sgnatue and thus falls back nto the wtng t was tyng to escape Many dffeent types of lteatue ty t Consde the begnnng of Chales Dckenss Beak House wth ts ounalstyle evocaton of Mchaelmas tem and ts allpevasve ondon fog2 The " as wte tag s optonal, beng nealy always mplct n the naatve mode of ths hetoc, whch has a decdedly ecologcal usage But n attemptng to ext the genec hoon that contans t, o any suggeston of hetocal stategy altogethe ( "Ths snt wtng, ts the eal thng), the "as wte gestue entes an neluctable gavtatonal eld t cannot acheve escape velocty fom wtng tself The moe the naato evokes a suoundng wold, te moe the eade consumes a potentally ntemnable steam of opaque scbbles, gues, and topes t s lke the house n ews Caolls Aice Through the LookingGass Ty as she mght to leave the font gaden, Alce nds heself back at the font doo Dense evetovs poem "To the Reade nvets "as wte nto "as you ead But the effect s the same, o even stonge, fo, as n advetsng language, "you becomes a nche n the text, speccally desgned fo the actual eade 4 Ths hetocal stategy appeas wth astoundng fequency n a v aety of ecologcal texts n tyng to evoke a sense of the ealty of natue, many texts suggest, often explctly, that ( 1 ) ths ealty s sold, vedcal, and ndependent (notably of the wtng pocess tself) and that (2) t would be bette fo the eade to expeence t dectly athe than just ead a bout t But n makng the case these texts ae pulled nto the obt o f wtng, wth ts slppey, tckstesh qu altes of neve
e f nnmen ne
3
qute meanng what t says o sayng what t means"tunng / ts dak pages Neve mnd that fo many cultues natue s a tckste, and lteay lluson would aptly summon ts evechangng, elusve "essence The hetocal devce usually seves the pupose of comng clean about somethng "eally occung, dentvely "outsde the text, bot authentc and authentcatng Ecommess: Naue Wtng and he Natue of Wrtng
The devce call t wants to go beyond the aesthetc dmenson altogethe t wants to bea out of the nomatve aesthetc fame, go beyond at ntoducng Waden Thoeau wtes: "When wote the followng pages lved alone, n the woods, a mle fom any neghbo, n a house whch had bult myself, on the shoe of Walden Pond, n Concod, Massachusetts, and ea ned my lvng by the labo of my hands onl Thee s nothng moe "lteay than ths actvty of acknowledgng, n the negatve, the sucton of ctonal wtng6 And t s not a matte of beng moe, o les, sophstcated tha othes The ktsch of an Aldo eopold, wtng a ounal (a n " almanac) to convey natue n a sutable (non)aesthetc fom, meets the avantgade stategy of a mnmalst pante who puts an empty fame n an at galley, o a ple of " stuff wthout a suoundng fame o a John Cage, makng musc out of slence o out of ambent nose eopolds A Sand County Amanac tes to escape the pull of the lteay, n much the same way as avantgade at tes to escape the conventonal aesthetc evetovs "To the Reade is hghly lteay, gong so fa as to compae the ollng waves wth the tunng of a texts pages Thee s no gult about wtng hee evetov does pont beyond the specc event of the wods on the page, the voce ntonng the wods But somehow "To the Reade acheves a sense of the suoundng envonment, not by beng le ss atful, b ut by beng moe so Ths conscous, eexve, postmoden veson s all the more ecommetc fo that Contempoay at evoes what s often excluded n ou vew of the pctue: ts suoundng fame, the space of the galley tself, the nsttuton of at altogethe n a vey sgncan way, these expements ae envronmenta Only the taste and habts of the academy have pevented us fom seeng the connecton between ths supposedly " sophstcated at and the ktsch we know as "natue wtng Roland Bathes wtes, n a passage of avantgade ecommess, a bout the expe
32
wtt te
rience of walking through a dry riverbed. The experience, he writes, is analogous to that of what he calls x-an innite play of interweaving
sgns e ede o te et m be omped to omeone t ooe end . . . t pb empt bj et tot wt ppened to te to of tee ne, ten t w tt e d d de of te eton te de o e, oued [Ab temb ed tt d eept dng te n eon owng down beow oued tee to be wtne to e tn feeng of nfmt); wt e peee mtpe, edbe omng fom donneted, eteogene et of btne nd pe pete gt, oo, egetton, et, , ende epoon of noe nt e of bd, den oe fom oe on te ote de, pge gete, ote of n btnt ne o f w.
We nomally thnk of natue wtng a s havng a cetan knd of contentsay the ake Dstct But hee we have the oentalst deset Ths s oentalst ecommess, n contast to the famla Euocentc o Amecan vaety t succnctly demonstates how avantgade ecommess s cut fom the same cloth as the ktsch vaety, despte appaent dffeences (the one ogancst, the othe atcal, the one abo ut beng "home, the othe about beng "away, and so on) Oue conj ues up an opaque, exotc land teemng wth what Bathes calls "h alfdentable sgncance Bathes opens up ths vson wth a stng of wods that conm the supposed mysteousness o the Aabc wod athe than explanng t The wod tself s teated as foegn, and so s the clmate and envonment that t sgnes a wet season and a dy season, a ve whee people walk, evokng the medeval mone renvers o wold tuned upsde down Ths s not a wold you could lve n, but a wold you could vst, as a toust All the tats of ecommess ae thee the authentcatng " t s what happened to the autho of these lnes, bngng us nto a shaed, vtual pesent tme of eadng and naatng the paatactc lst the magey of dsjonted phenomena suoundng the naato the quetness (not slence, not full sound) of the " slende explosons and "scant ces that evoke the dstance between the heae and the sound souce ee n the vey gospel of poststuctuasm, of the supposedly antnatua b lss of shee textualty, we nd ecommess Bathes offes us a vvd evocaton of atmosphee An Ambent Poetcs Strong ecommess pupots to evoke the hee and now of wtng t s
an nsdeout fom of "stuatedness hetoc Rathe than descbe
e At nnent ne
33
"whee am comng fom (" as a bl ueblooded young Potuguese hot dog salesman), nvoke "whee am ("as wte ths, the smel of hot dogs wafts though the sbon nght a ) The eade glmpses the envonment athe than the peson But the effect s much the same Ecommess s an authentcatng devce Weak ecommess opeates wheneve wtng evokes an envonment Rhetoc used to have a whole poply of tems fo ths weak fom of ecomme ss geographia (the descpton of eath o land), topographia (place), chorographia (naton), chronographia (tme), hyrographia (wate), anemographia (wnd), enrographia (tees)0 (Angus Fletche has esusctated choro graphia to descbe exactly what am afte n ths chapte, the "envonmentpoem) But the emphass on stuatedness s dstnct and moden Stuatedness s a hetoc that Davd Smpson has lnked to the ugency of mpendng and "theatenngly nondscmatoy ecologcal pel Stuatedness s pevasve, he agues, because "no one now thnks hmself mmune fom adcal theat 12 The patcula ases ts lone voce n the jaws of geneal doom Ecommess s a pessue pont, cystallng a vast and complex deologcal netwok of belefs, pactces, and pocesses n and aound the dea of the natual wold t s extaodnaly common, both n natue wtng and n ecologcal ctcsm Consde awence B uells The Environmental Imagination: "The gove of secondgowth pne tees that sway at ths moment of wtng, wth the blueyellowgeen veneedle clustes above spky ccles of atophed lowe lmbs O James McKusck "As wte these wods, pee out of the wndow of my study acoss open elds and gnaled tees custed wth ce Beyond those tees see cas and tucks dashng aong a busy ntestate hghway past dty ples of meltng sow that stll eman fom last weeks snowstom Ths s the cty of Baltmoe, whee lve 1 Fo ecologcal ctcsm to be popely ctcal, t must get a puchase on ecommess Ecommess s a mxtue of excursus and exemplum Excursus s a "tale, o ntepolated anecdote, whch folows the exposton and llustates o amples some pont n t ExempJ also known as paraigmaJ o paraiegesisJ s "an exampe cted, ethe tue o fegned an] llustatve stoy What then, of the specc featues of ecommess Paraiegesis speccally mples naatve Bu s some emaks a bout the descptve popetes of ecommess e n ode Ecommess nvolves a poetcs of ambience. Ambence denotes a sense of a ccumambent, o suoundng, worl t suggests somethng mateal and physcal, though somewhat ntangble, as f space tself had a mateal aspectan dea that should not, afte Ensten, appea
36
Ecology without Naure
At snce the age of sensb lty has sought ths mmedacy. f only the poet could do a ubbng of hs o he ban, and tansmt the feelngs to us dectly. Ths s the logc of a cetan type of Romantcsm, and doubtless of ealsm, natualsm, and mpessonsm (and expessonsm, and so foth). We have only to thnk of suealsm and automatc wtng, a "dect endeng of unconscous pocesses; of abstact expessonsm wth ts monumental canvases; of concete musc 's samplng and splcng of envonmental sound (by uc Fea, fo nstance); o of envonmental at that ceates a "space we must nhabt, f only fo a whle. Nam June P ak's TV Garden ( ).24 tuns televsons boadcastng mages of leapng dances nto buddng owes. t s mmesve yet humoous and oncal n a way that s, n Schlle's language, sentmental athe than nave. Rendeng pactces sk fogettng the othe sde of Romantcsm, the value of hestaton and ony. They ovelook why Wodswoth nssted that poety not onl s "the spontaneous oveow of poweful feelngs, but also s "ecollected n tanqulty Although eecton then dssolves ths tanqulty untl "an emoton, smla to that whch was befoe the subject of contemplaton, s gadually poduced, and does tself actually exst n the mnd, the pocess thus becomes delayed and medated.25 Aleady we can s ee cacks n the ecommetc lluson of mmedacy. T Md n nn
The medial deves fom the agument n Roman Jakobson's "Closng Statement, wth ts analyses of phatc statements.26 Jakobson exploes sx aspects of communcaton and the attendant lteay effects These effects ae acheved by foegoundng one of the pats of communcaton. The sx pats ae addesse, addessee, messa ge, code, contact, and context. Emphaszng the addesse gves us a "conatve statement that dectly focuses on the ntentons of the eceve of the message "You must feel that Jakbson's model s vald. Stessng the addesse esults n an "emotve statement "et me tell you how feel about Jaobson. Foegoundng the message tself esults n a poetc statement, snce Jakobson, a stuctualst, thnks that poetc language s peculaly selfefeental. f the code s foegounded, we obtan a "metalngustc statement "You can't say that t sn't allowed n stuctualst theoes of language. f we focus on the context, we get a "efeental statement "Ths s a message about Jakobson's sxpat model of comm uncaton.
The Art of Environmental L anguage
3
f we foegound the contactJ we obtan a phatc statement (Geek phasisJ speech) . "Can you ead ths awfully small typeface " Ths telephone lne s vey cackly. Call me back n ve mnutes can't hea you. "Check, check, check one, mcophone check. "Testng, testng. "You'e on the a. The contact s the dmensonas lteally as you would lke to undestand that wodn whch communcaton takes place Phatc statements make us awae of the actual a between us, o the electomagnetc eld that makes t possble to lsten to ecoded musc, o see a move. They pont out the atmosphee n whch the message s tansmtted Jakobson clamed that talkng bds shae ths functon alone, of all the dffeent types of communcaton.27 Futue ecoctcsm must take the phatc dmenson of language nto account. When explong the a dcally new envonment of the moon, the st wods between the Amecan astonauts and ouston wee phatc "You can go ahead wth the TV now, we'e standng by. The enonmental aspect of phatc communcaton explans the populaty n contempoay ambent electonc musc of samples fom ado talk shows (" ello, you'e on the a ), scanned telephone convesatons and othe phatc phenomena.28 pefe the tem medial athe than phaticJ because see no eason that a statement that foegounds the medum should necessaly have to do wth speech pe se. Medial wtng, fo nstance, hghlghts the page on whch the wods wee wtten, o the gaphcs out of whch tey wee composed. Meda l statements petan to pecepton. Usually we spend ou lves gnong the contact When the medum of communcaton becomes mpeded o thckened, we become awae of t, j ust as snow makes us panfuly awae of walkng. The Russan F omalsts, the pecusos of the stuctualsts, descbed lteaness a s an mpedng of the nomatve pocesses of language. Vkto Shklovsky declaed, "The technque of at s to make objects unfamla' . . . to ncease the dffculty and length of pecepton because the p ocess of pecepton s an aesthetc end n tself and must be polonged.29 When the phone s not wokng popely, we notce t as a medum of tansmsson. The convese s also tue to pont out the medum n whch communcaton s takng place s to nteupt that communcaton. Notce how the black maks on ths page ae sepaated fom the edge by an empty magn of blank pape When ecommess ponts out the envonment, t pefoms a medal functon, ethe at the le vel of content o at the level of fom. Contact ecomes content Ecommess nteupts the ow of an agument o a sequence of naatve events, thus makng us awae of the atmosphee
38
e r o nrnen n e
oo wo tre
"aound the acton o the envonment n whch o a bout whch the phlosophe s wtng Avantgade and expemental atwos that ae not dectly ecologcal n content ae envonmental n fom, snce they contan medal elements Keth Rowe, gutast n the mpovsatonal musc goup AMM, tals of the ncluson of "unntenton (hs techncal tem fo slence) n the pantngs of Ma Rotho Unntenton geneates a cetan atmosphee suoundng Rotho's gant squaes of vbatng colo0 Mauce Blanchot taced the ealest moment of ths featue of at to what he calls the dsoeuvement (" unwong) n Romantc poety1 Ths unwokng accounts fo the automated feel of ambent poetcs, the "found qualty, the sense that t s wong "all by tself o " comng fom nowhee (see the su bsecton afte next) "As wte ( bds ae sngng, the gass s gowng) s a medal statement tealy, and the medal s always lteal to some extent, the dmenson s the page we ae eadng The dea s to enfoce the luson that the dmenson of eadng s the same as nscpton: that eade and wte nhabt the same dmenson, the same place Ou awaeness of ths dmenson s avaable pecsely beca use ts tanspaency has been mpeded by the addton of the exubeant, exobtant ecommess to the agument The "as, posed between "snce and "when, between a tempoal mae and an ndcato of logcal analogy, seduces us fom one level of hetoc to the next We ente the wam bath of ambent ecomme ee comes the twst One of the meda that medal statements can pont out s the vey nedum of the voce o of wtng tself Snce the sound of musc s avalabe va the medum of, say, a voln, then a medal muscal passage would mae us awae of the "volnness of the soundts tmbe The tmbe s the qualty wth whch the soundemttng matte s vb atng So one of the contents of a medal mess age could be the medum n ths sense Ths undemnes the nomal dstncton we make between medum as atmosphee o envonmentas a bacgound o " eldand medum as mateal thngsomethng n the foegound n geneal, ambent poetcs seeks to undemne the nomal dstncton between bacgound and foegound Medal statements can nclude meda n the sense of tmbe Suely th s why much expemental "nose mu scwhch sees pecsely to undo the bounday between what we consde nose and what we consde sounds nteested n tmbe Cage's pepaed pano maes us awae of the matealty of the pano, the fact that t s made of taut vbatng stngs nsde a had wooden box The sustan pedal, nvented n the Romantc peod as an addton to the panofote, pefoms ths
39
functon tself Convesely, the sustaned vbaton of a note o done maes u s awae of the spae n whch the vbaton s occung Ambent musc can ende a pctue of an envonment usng sound effects (bdsong, waves) o make us awae of the space n whch we ae sttng though dones, evebeaton, and feedback The obj ect, the mateal, of concete musc s tmbe ngustc at can do the same At the end of evetov's "To the Reade, we don't now what s wtten on the "dak pgesthey ae obscue as well as vsually dak We become awae of the text as mateal, as pape and pages, and the physcal hythm of tunng The tun (talan: volta s a moment n a sonnet at whch the thought pocesses n the sonnet begn to shft t s also a tope, a hetocal tunng And t s the clnamen of ucetus, the tun o sweve of patcles that bngs about te geneaton of wolds evetov's "tunng s a tope that physcalzes the noton of topng o of volt of swtchng fom one dea to anothe, of negaton n Thoeau's Walden the dstant sound of bells bngs to mnd the atmosphee n whch they esonate: A ond erd e ree pobe dne prode one n e me effe bron of e ner re e nerenn o pere me dn rde f er neren o or ee b e zre n mpr o . ee me o me n e eod w e r d rned, nd w d onered w eer ef nd neede of e wood, poron of ond w e eemen d en p nd mod ed nd eoed from e o e. e eo , o oe een, n or n ond, nd eren e m nd rm of . no ere ep eon of w w wor repen n e be, b pr e oe of e wood; e me r word nd noe n b woodnp.
n ths ema able pas sage, Thoeau theozes the medal qualty of ambent poetcs Notce how "staned, "a, and "melody ae all synonyms fo musc Thoeau s descbng how sound s "lteeda common dea snce the advent of the synthesze, whc electoncally ltes sound waves An echo s evdence of a medum of the a that ntevenes between thngs le a bell and the human ea, b ut also of wood that vbates We shall see , howeve, hat we cannot be as c ondent as Thoeau about the "ognal qualty of echoed sound The echo undemnes notons of ognalty and pesence Te Tmal
The tmal s about sound n ts physcalty, athe than about ts symbolc meanng ( "tmbal comes fom time "The chaacte o qualty
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of a m uscal o vocal sound (dstnct fom ts ptch and ntensty) de pendg upon the patcula voce o nstument poducng t). Tmbe, whch ntally meant a p atcula pecusson nstument, ethe a dum o a bell wthout a clappe ("tamboune s a elated wod), cam e to descbe the way sound stkes o stamps (Fench timbre ou eas, sometme aound the late Romantc and Vctoan peods. Tmbe deves fm the Geek tympanon The taut skn of the dum, even of the eadum, sepaates the nsde fom the outsde lke a magn, and gves se to esonant sound when stuck. The tympn n a pntng pess makes sue the pape s at enough to egste the type coectly. s ths dum, ths magn, pat of the nsde o the outsde Deda has shown how ths suggestve tem evokes the dffculty of ds tngushng popely between nsde a nd outsde.4 The tmbal voce s vvd wth the esonance of the lungs, thoat, salva, teeth, and skull: the gan of the voce, as B athes called t.35 Fa fom the tanscendental "Voce of Dedean theoy, ths voce does not edt out ts mateal embodment. acan's "llanguage, "lalangue, s the m eanngless uctuton of tongueenjoyment. Ths me anngless uctuaton makes us thnk a bout a space (the mouth) that s thooughly mateal Nusey hymes enable the baby to hea the sound of the paent's voce, athe than any specc wods. One of the stongest am bent effects s the endeng of ths tmbal voce. Ou own body s one of the uncannest phenomena we could eve encounte. What s closest to home s also the stangestthe look and sound of ou own thoat. Thus, tmbal statements can be stongly medal, evokng the medum that uttes them. And medal statements can be tmbal, pontng out the physcalt and matealty of the language. Ths s stongly envonmental A guta note bngs to mnd the wood out of whch t s made . The tmbal and the medal a e two ways of descbng the same thng. Ths axom assets that at bottom, foegound and backgound ae moe than ntetwned. Matn edegge affms that we neve hea sound n the abstact. nstead, we hea the way thns (a vey ch wod fo edegge) soundJ n an alm ost actve sense of the veb. We hea " the stom whstlng n the chmney, the sound of the wnd in the doo, the wal of the hound across the moo.38 Fo edegge thee s no such thng as a "pue tone all by tself. ee s a paadox. The peceptual phenomena we have been explong possess mateal thnglness. They ae nsepaa ble fom matte, ncludng elds of foce. Even a supposedly "pue tone such as a sne wave stll emeges fom mateal (say, an electcal c
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cut), and s ampled and tansmtted by vous mateals and enegy elds. Fo edegge, the dea of "pue sound deves fom a noton of the thn as a sensoy manfold (a mxtue of how thngs feel, touch, taste, and so on): "the isthetonJ that whch s peceptble by sensatons.9 B ut such deas sk suggestng that thee s nothng othe than subjectve expeence. Moden at and theoy, howeve, expement wth pue tone. We could pont to the use of shee sound o colo n atYves Klen's and Deek Jaman's use of blue ae exteme examples. Klens pue blue c anvases hang n numeous gallees. e wote of ntenatonal Klen Blue, a specal suspenson of ultamane ( cystals of gound laps laul) n a clea commecal bnde, Rhdopas: "IKB / spt n matte.4 We could also nvoke the ntepetaton of shee sound o colo n psychoanalytc and lteay theoy.4 Whethe we thnk of natue as an envonment, o as othe bengs (anmals, plants, and so on), t keeps collapsng ethe nto subjectvty o nto objectvty. t s vey had, pehaps mposs ble, to keep natue just whee t appeassomewhee n between. The dffculty used to be esolved by deas s uch as that of the elements. Befoe they became specc atoms n the peodc t able, the elements wee manfolds of what we conventonally sepaate as "subjectvty and "objectvty. The phlosophy of elements beas stong esemb lances to phenomenology. We stll descbe vese as lqud, hetoc as ey o eathy. Thnkng n elemental tems s thnkng that matte has cetan ntsc qualtes wateriness s not just "panted on to the suface of the thng called wate; wate s watey though and though. These tems have gadually come to have a puely subj ectve sense (ths oom fees dy; am hot tempered ke tmbe and tone (see the late sub secton), the elemental s a way of descbng a " thng that s aso an " envonent. t s sub stantal, yet suoundng. The Classcal elements (e, wate, eath, a ) wee about the body as muc h as they wee about the atmosphee. Te Aeoian The Aeolan ensues that ambent poetcs establshes
sense of pocesses contnung wthout a subj ect o an autho. The Aeolan has no obvous souce. "Acousmatc sound, fo nstance, s dsemboded sound emanatng fom an unseen souce. t comes " fom nowhee, o t s nextcably bound up wh the space n whch t s head. Consde the voceove n a move. t does not ognate anyhee n the pctue on the sceen. Cnematc " endeng employs acousmac sound to ll the audtoum ( suound sound) . The specc sound fom of a patc
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ula place s epoduced, athe than shee slence Jet planes unseen on the lm's suface appea to y ovehead The suoundng quet of a deset of shftng sands s head as we watch the potagonst ecallng hs o he expeences thee Expemental musc contans examples of acousmatc sound, emegng fom loudspeakes So does the eveyday technology of lstenng to ecoded sound: "The tue theat of phonogaphy came not fom ts ablty to dsplace a voce but ts ablty to dsplace a peson's own voce42 n poety, mages can appea to ase wthout o despte the naato's contol A poem called "A Geology, n CascadiaJ Benda llman's expement wth =A=N=G=U=A=G=E poety, s both a montage of descptons of Calfona though geologc tme and an account of gettng ove an addcton t s mpossble to detemne whch laye has poty Each laye mnmes the nput of a conscous subject: by compason wth geology, addcton and wthdawal ae ntensely physcal pocesses that must be endued The fom of the poem heghtens the physcalty by playng wth typogaphcal aangement Thee s often somethng gong on n the magn, out of each of ou eadng gae One metapho blends nto anothe n a dstubng, punnng way that makes t mposs ble to decde whch level of ealty s, to use a geologcal gue, the bedock A cetan degee of audovsual hallucnaton happens when we ead poety, as Celeste angan ha s demonstated concenng Walte Scott's long naatve poem The La of the Last Minstel43 Aeolan phenomena ae necessaly synesthetc, and synesthesa may not gve se to a holstc patten Because we cannot dectly peceve the souce, those ogans of ou pecepton not engaged by the dsemboded event become occuped wth dffeent phenomena Ths s the mpot of contempoay sound at, compsng poductons that ae supposed to be dffeent fom conventonal musc Sound at s sometmes exhbted n places tadtonally eseved fo vsual a t n these envonments, thee s less focus on the muscans (f any) and the musc (f any) Acousma tc sound can compel us to a state of dstacton athe than aesthetc ab sopton Ths s not nevtable: synaesthesa could become an even moe compellng fom of Gesamtkunstwek than mmesve, Wagean foms The dea of sounds wthout a souce has come unde attack fom poponents of acoustc ecology R Muay Schafe, who coned the tem oundscape n labeled t schophona Acoustc ecology ctces dsembodment as a featue of moden alenaton ke othe
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foms of Romantcsm, acoustc ecology yeans fo an oganc wold of facetoface contact n whch the sound of thngs coesponds to the way they appea to the senses and to a cetan concept of the natual The Aeolan povokes anxety, because bult nto t s a hestaton between an obscue souce and no souce at all f the soce s obscue, the phenomenon dwells n ou wold We need to expand ou pecepton to take stock of t t s lke what Tvetan Todoov calls the supenatual uncanny: an unusua l occuence that s ultmately explcable 44 f, howeve, thee s no souce at all, the phenomenon does not esde n ou wold t adcally bsects t Ths s akn to Todoov's supenatual mavelous: an event that must be beleved on ts own tems We thus face a choce between a tanscendental expeence and a psychotc one Most ecommess wants to eassue us that the souc s meely obewe should just ope n ou eas and eyes moe But ths obscuty s always undewtten by a moe theatenng vod, snce ths vey vod s what gves ecommess ts dvne ntensty, ts admonshng tone of "Shh sten Even at the vey depth of the lluson of endeng, thee s a blankness that s stuctual to ou acceptance of the lluson tself ne IntenitJ taiJ enin
Ambence s an expanson of the spacetme contnuum n an atwok, to the pont at whch tme comes to a standstll To nvestgate ths, let us escue the dea of tone fom ts awful fate n Amecan hgh schools Tone s a notoously casual tem t has somethng ktsch about t: t s too emotonal, too physcal When we consde t closely, tone has a moe pecse sgncance t efes to the qualty of vbaton Tone can denote the tenson n a stng o muscle (muscle tone), o a cetan ptch: the way n whch matte s v batng t also, sgncantly, efes to a noton of place hence "ecotone, a one of ecologcal tanston A ough aesthetc equvalent s the Geman timmung (" mood, "attunement), used by Alexande von umboldt n hs descpton of how dffeent at emeges fom dffeent clmates, and mmanuel Kant n hs analyss of the sublme45 Tone accounts mateally fo that slppey wod atmosphee Multmeda, musc, and vsual at play wth atmosphee as nstument and as aw mateal Thee s a lteay anaogy n envonmental wtng and foms of poetcs gong bac k to the cultue of sensblty n the eghteenth centuy46 Tone s useful because t ambguously efes both to te body and to the envonment Fo "the body (as t s so often called n contempoay at and theoy) is the envonment, n the conventonal, vulga
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Catesan sense "We nhat the ody lke a peson lvng n a house Envonmental at makes us awae of ou eas, j ust as much as t makes us awae of the atmosphee But n so dong, t nudges us out of the vulga Cate sansm, lke phenomenologcal phlosophy The lnkage of peceve and peceved s a pedomnant theme n Mauce MeleauPontys phenomenology4 Thee also exsts a Btsh lneage ockean empcsm assets that ealty wll e dffeent fo dffeent peceves4 8 ate n the eghteenth centuy, the dscouse of sentmentalty, whch egsteed tuth on the ody, was developed nto an ethcs n Adam Smths Theor of Moral Sentiment wth mplcatons fo the evoluton of the nove49 Synesthetc woks of at ty to dsupt ou sense of eng centeed, located n a specc place, nha tng "the ody fom a cental pont Ou senses ae dsoented we notce that ou gae s "ove thee, ou heang s " outsde the oom we ae sttng n Bodly pocesses ae cyclc Plateaus of tenson and elaxaton take place ove tme The naatve aspect of ecommess geneates tone Speccally, ths s a stong fom of ekphass decriptio vvd descpton) Ekphass exsts when a naato says "pctue ths It often takes a vsua l fom, ut tadtonally ekphass can emody any sensoy nput, and thus t s appopate to ou multmeda a ge50 Vvd descpton slows down o su spends naatve tme et us dstngush etween plotthe events of a naatve n chonologcal sequenceand tor the events n the ode n whch the naato tells them Suppose that n the plot, event B follows event A afte an nteval of ve seconds, ut that n the stoy an ntevenng ekphass s nseted that takes seveal pages fo the eade to get though, such as Homes descpton of Achlles sheld dung the ntense descpton of attle at the end of the Ilad The effect on the eade s that the tme of naaton s held n stass In naatve, suspenson occus when the tme of the plot (the events as they would have occued n "eal tme) dveges wdely fom the tme of the stoy (the events as they ae naated) In the second decade of the nneteenth centuy, S Thomas Raffles en oyed the epettve musc of the Indonesan gamelan, and eonhad Hunga late declaed, "It s a state, such as moonlght poued ove the elds1 Statc sound ecame a ass of contempoay musc, as composes such as Claude Deussy ncopoated nto the compostons what they had leaned fom the gamelan snce ts appeaance at the Expoiton Univerelle n Pas (). Stass ecomes audle n muscal upenion whee one laye of sound changes moe slowly than anothe laye Dsco musc compels dances to stay on the dance
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oo not only ecause t nvolves epettve eats, ut also ecause t sustans s uspende d chods that do not pogess fom A to B, ut eman "n etween wthout esoluton Ths can only e a matte of semlance, even n vsual at Snce epetton s tself a functon of dffeence, funk, then dsco, then hphop, then house, we pogessvely ale to mne eve moe deeply the asc lues stuctue fo a sweet spot, a suspended chod pulsatng n hythmc space Ton s anothe wod fo ths sweet spot, somewhee wthn the thd pat of a foupat lues, always nea the e soluton ut neve qute makng t Ths s how amence entes the tme dmenson Tone s a matte of quantty, whethe of hythm o magey stctly speakng, the ampltude of vatons An AA hyme scheme nceases the enegy level of a poem, as would a pepondeance of epeated eats A moe complex hyme scheme, a less epettve hythmc stuctue, endes the text "coole Texts also explot negatve hythm to geneate tone The asence of sound o gaphc maks can e as potent as the pesence Gaps etween stanas, and othe knds of oken lneaton, ceate tone out of shee lankness In tems of magey, tone s also quanttatve It s not necessaly a matte of what ort of magey, just how much. Just as wods come n phases, magey comes n clustes Metonymc lstng can geneate an ovewhelmng tone As wth hythm, thee s such a thng as negatve magey, o apophai sometng n the negate Negatve theology assets that od s not g, sm all, whte, la ck, h ee , th e e Exteme negatvty conssts n ellpss ( ) o slence Even moe exteme s placng a wod unde easue, a s Mallam does (o consde Hedegge s wod ) How do you ponounce a cossedout wod The easue compels us to pay attenton to the wod as gaphc mak, and to the pape on whch t s wtten (and the slence of the unspoken) Thnk of the use of shadow n dawng, o slence n musc Cage scoed optonal quanttes of slenc of exactly the same length as postve muscal phases, fo the pefome to susttute spontaneously A text can desce somethng y delneatng t negatvely Occupato gves apophass a selfeexve twst, consstng n complanng aout how wods fal ou alty to desce somethng Ths negatve delneaton s especally mpotant n ament poetcs Snce a mence tes to evoke the ackgound a ackgoundto dag t nto the foegound would dssolve tt must esot to olque hetocal stateges Thee s a school of thought that negatve ecology, lke negatve theology, s a moe apt descpton of natue I eman convnced y
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Deda's emaks that negatve theology s stll plague d y the meta physcal 2 t s poale th at a negatve poetcs of the envonment also suffes fom these symptoms Kants vew of the su lme povdes a lmt case f o ths secton of the agument much moe so than that of Buke who evokes the sulme n actually exstng thngs athe than n mental expeence f Kant hm self tanscendental dealst that he s povdes tools fo eadng am ent poetcs how much moe would someone nclned towad mate alsm o empcsm do the s ame The shee quantty of natue wtng s a cause of ts powe And what could e moe evocatve of ths than a swathe of lankness language that evokes an endless mumung o sclng o gltteng colo o the dffuson of a huge cloud of scent Ths language estalshes a plateau on whch all sgnals ae equal n n tenstywhch mght as well e slence A negatve quantty the a sence of somethng "thee evokes a sense of shee space n Kants tems ou mnd ecognes ts powe to magne what s not thee Sublime is wat even to be able to tink proves tat te mind as a powe surpassing any standard of sense. Kant demonstates ths y
takng us on a jouney of quantty, fom the se of a tee though that of a mountan to the magntude of the eath and nally to "the m mense multtude of such Mlky Way systems The sulme tanspots the mnd fom the extenal wold to the ntenal one Negatve quantty has ecome a poweful tool of moden at, ut also of moden deology Fo example consde the use of slence n na tonalst tuals Ths suely explans the cenotaph the empty tom of the unknown solde Befoe Cage the two mnutes slence on Amstce Day was ntended fom ts ncepton as a ado oadcast that would make Btons awae of the countys dea d The compose Jonty Sempe ecently comned evey avalale BBC ecodng of the two mnutes' slence complete wth newseel hss ds callng can nons ng and an6 The desgn that won the commsson o Gound Zeo n New Yok Cty s enttled " Reectons of Asence Negatve quantty sgned though ellpss o some othe effect s a suggestve tanspotaton pont n the text whch allows sujectvty to eam down nto t The Romantc oheman consumest Thomas De Quncey, expemented wth hs own knds of psychc and physcal n tensty n takng opum De Quncey theoes how fom the eade's (o lstenes, o dances) pont of vew tone gves us pause Ths pausng s not a mee hatus o stoppng t s athe a stayngnplace endowed wth ts own ntensty Thee s "not much gong on, whc h s
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not the same as no nfomaton at all We ae thown ack on the hee andnow of odly sensaton n the anechoc chame at avad Cage hed the sound of hs own ody as f t wee ampled 7 Ths heghtenng of awaeness takes place n what De Quncey calls parentesis o syncope. Syncope commonly efes to aevaton and moe aely to a loss of conscousness ut De Quncey makes the tem expeental Pa enthess usually places a phase o senence nsde an othe one ut De Quncey extends the tem towad the noton of tone a plateau o suspenson what Wodswoth called a "spot of tme RMa Can't Bive t n't At
We geneally take one knd of medum to e the background the am ent a o electomagnetc eld the pape on whch text appeas The othe knd o medum, the one we exploed as the tmal appeas as foreground. A dsemoded Aeolan sound emanates "fom the ack gound ut appeas "n the foegound Wth Aeolan events we have a paadoxcal stuaton n whch ackgound and foegound have col lapsed n one sense, ut pesst n anothe sense We a e appoachng the fundamental popetes of am ent poetcs the ass of ecommess Backgound and foegound ely upon dstn gushng etween hee and thee ths and that We talk aout "ack gound nose whle musc appeas as n the foegound tems nd catng dstnct poltcal and hstocal eangs60 Backgound musc Muak o speccally ament musc attempt to undo the nomal df feence etween foegound and ackgound The Aeolan attempts to undo the dfeence etween a peceptual event uon whch we can focus and one that appeas to suound us and whch cannot e d ectly ought "n font of the sense ogans wthout losng ts env onng popetes Cuent neuophysology has suggested that a e cepto n the hypothalamus Alpha enales the dstcton etween foegound and ackgound sound A eakdown n the neuotans msson acoss ths ecepto may n pat e esponsle fo scho phenc symptoms such as heang voces ( foegound phenomena) em anatng fom sonc souces (adatos a vents) that ae nomaly consdeed as lyng n the a ckgound61 Alvn uce's Am Sitting in a Room () s a poweful demon staton o the shftng and ntetwned qualtes of foegound and ackgound62 A voce speakng n a oom s ecoded ove and ove agan, such that each pevous ecodng ecomes what s then e ecoded n the same oom The text that uce eads s a out ths po
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cess t s medal Afte a shot whle, the ecodng pcks up the esonance of the oom and feeds t back, amplfyng and atculatng t though the sound of the speakng voce (kewse, ample feedback n geneal lets us hea the sound of the techncal medum of tansmsson ) We lose the wods and gan the sound of the oom "tself put "tself n quotaton maks because what we come to eale s that the voce and the oom ae mutually detemnng One does not pecede the othe The wok s stuated on a waveng magn between wods and musc, and between musc and shee sound, and ultmately between sound (foegound) and nose (backgound) Retoactvely, we eale that the oom was pesent n the voce at the vey begnnng of the pocess The voce was always ale ady n ts envonment " am sttng n a oom sts n a oom Thee was neve a pont of "handove at whch the sound of the voce "n tself modulated nto the sound of the oom "n tself Voce s to oom, not even as sound souce to medum, but as tongue to bell They wee always mplcated n each othe Ths at s as envonmental as wtng about bds and tees, f not moe so, because t tes dectly to reder the actual (sensaton of) envonment altogethe We could easly thnk of vsual equvalents, such as envonmental sculptue Andy Goldswothy's wok gadually dssolves nto ts ste6 Aesthetc, and futhemoe, me taphysca l dstnctons, nvolve d scmnatons between nsde and outsde 64 We can be sue that ths dscmnaton s metaphyscal, snce eally what we ae dealng wth s the dea of medum splt nto two aspects ( foegound and backgound) We must be caeful not to asset that a medum exsts " befoe the splt occus, snce the noton of medum depends upon ths vey splt (between "hee and "thee) Thee s a Buddhst sayng that ealty s "not one, and not two Dualstc ntepetatons ae hghly dubous But so ae monst onesthee s no (sngle, ndependent, lastng) "thng undeneath the dualst concept Othewse Alvn uce would not have been able to geneate I Am Sttg a Room ow does the splt that sepaates backgound and foegound occu Thee s a devce that poduces t n at Jacques Deda ha s bllantly analyed t n such woks as Dssemato and Te Trut Patg. e calls t the remark65 The emak s the fundamental popety of ambence, ts ba s gestue The emak s a knd of echo t s a specal ma k ( o a sees f them) that makes us awae that we ae n the pesence of ( sgncant) maks ow do you dscmnate between the lettes on ths page an d andom patches of dt, o patches of pant and
e Ar nvrnmen ne
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"extaneous matte on the canvas O between ose and soud (how about armoy and dssoace O between grapcs and letters? O a nonspecc smell and a specc o sgncant scet? O, even moe subtly, between a ngng bell and a soundng tongue6 6 Between a substance and ts attbutes A emak dffeentates between space and place n moden lfe ths dstncton s between objectve (space) and subectve (place) phenomena67 Evey tm teach a class on ecologcal language, at least one student assets that "place s what a peson makes of " space, wthout efeence to an utsde Even when s extenal, place has become somethng tat people d o constuct; a space that, as t wee, appes to someone Despte the gdty of the student esponse, am suggestng hee that subjectvty and objectvty ae just a has beadth (f that) away fom each othe The llusve play of the emak establshes the dffeence out of an undffeentated gound n T S Elot's poety, how do we ecogne that some mag e of an extenal thng s actually an "o bjectve coelatve fo a sbj ectve state Some vey small cke occus A emak ps an "objectve mage nto a "subjectve one The emak s mnmalstc t doesn't take much fo ecommess to suggest a qualty of place The subj ectve value that shnes out of places such as Thoeau's Walden Pond ema nate fom mnute, as well as fom lage, sgnals n the text To dentfy the emak s to answe the queston: how lttle does the text need to dffeentate between foegound and backgound, o between space and place t s a tusm that contempoay at tes to challenge such dstnctons But the emak occus m oe wdely The emak s behnd the humo of the Chale Bown catoons When the bd Woodstock speaks, we don't know what he s sayng, but we know tat e s speakg because the lttle squggles above hs head ae placed n a speech bubble, whch pefoms the acton of the emak and makes us pay attenton to tese squggles as meanngful n some uspeced way (Woodstock hmself, who appeaed afte the Woodstock festval, s close to the subject of ths book, nsofa as he embodes the natual wold " beyond Snoopy's gaden lawn) Gestalt psychology establshes a gd dstncton etween gue and gound such that gue and gound ental each othe (the faces and candlestck lluson s the classc example ), whle t emans stctly mpossble to see both as gue, o both as gound, at the ame tme The emak s a quantal event What happens at the level of the emak e
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Ecoogy without Nature
sembes what happens in quantum physcs, at the eve of the very small . This sounds abstruse, even mystical, but really I mean it in a very straightforward sense. The occurrence of the remark is always a "oneshot deal. In quantum mechanics, a choice presents itself between waves and particles. We could measure things one way or another; never as an amalgam of the two simultaneousy.6 8 Until the measurement takes place, both possibilities are superposed, one on the other. Reality, at that "moment (though that word only makes sense after the quantum wave reduction), is only a ser ies of probabilities. We cannot claim that there is a spe cial entity that exists as a comb ination of both wave and particle. There is nothing underneath the wave/particle distinction. The same is true of the remark. Either the inside/outside distinction is constituted, or notin which case the dis tinction will appear at another date, in another place. T he level of the remark is a fundamentally indeterminate one, at which a squiggle could be either ust a s quiggle or a letter. However close we get to the (admittedly articial) boundary between inside and outside (sound/ noise, smell/scent, squiggle/letter), we won't nd anything in between. This is related to a mathematical paradox. It is impossible to establish in advance (using an algorithm) whether a point will lie on the boundary of a set, even a very simple one "Imagine two algorithms generating the digits 0. . . . a nd . 00 00 . . . respectively, but we mght never know if the s, or the Os, are going to continue indenitely, so that the two numbers are equal, or whether some other digit will eventually appear, and the numbers are unequal.69 The brilliance of ambient rhetoric is to make it appear as if, for a eeting second, there is something in between. Calling William Wordsworth a minimalist, Geoffrey Hartman praises the idea of Wordsworthian nature as a contemplative space in his book on culture: "The spacious ambience of nature when treated with respect, allows physical and emotional freedom; it is an outdoor room essential to thought and untraumatic (that is, relatively unforced) development.7 This "outdoor room is the result of ambient rhetoric (and a certain attachment to an idea of a tempe ate climate; untraumatic development would be less possible if one were freezing to death). This is not to say that ambience i s not incarnated in physical things. Am bient rhetoric is present, for instance, in the common su burban lawn, which acts as an etension of the inside of the house and is referred to as a carpet.71 Actually existing spaces can have ambient qualities; otherwise, certain forms of contemporary architecture would not be poss ible.
The Art of Envronmental Language
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Margin (French marge) denotes a border or an edge, hence "seashore. Indeed, if current industrial poicies remain unchecked, these very spaces, such as coral reefs, and liminal species ( Latin, limen� boundary) such as amphibians, wil be increasingly at risk of being wiped out. But because of the logic of the remark, such spaces, whether they are outside or inside our heads, emboy what is, at bottom, illusory. I mea n here to suppot these margins. A s a matter of urgency, we just cannot go on thinking of them as "in between. We must choose to include them on this side of human social practices, to factor them in to our political and ethical decisions. A Bruno Latour states, "Political phiosophy . . . ds itself confronted with the o bligation to internalize the environment that it had viewed up to now as another word.7 Since it appears to lie in between oppositional entities, the effect of ambience is always anamorphic can only be glimpsed as a eeting, dissolving presence that ickers across our perception and cannot be brought front and center. Georges Bataille was s ubstantializig it too much when he labeled what he called the informe "unassimilable waste, but it is a suggestive image for the ecological critic, preoccupied with waste products that will not be ushed away 3 Miimalist experiments with empty frames and also with frameless and formless "found objects or installations make this apparent.74 In these works, at tries to sneak a glimpse of itself from the side, or from ground level, like an animal5 We have returned to the idea of rendering, but with greater understanding. Rendering appears to dissolve the a esthetic dimension because it depends upon a certain necessarily nite play with the remark. The more extreme the play, the more art collapses into nonart. Hence the infamous stories of anitors clearing away installations, thinking they were ust random ples of paintbrushes and pots of paint. There is a politics to this aesthetics. It says that if we point out where the waste goes, we won't be a ble to keep ourselves from taking greater care of our world. In the rhetoric of juxtaposing contents and frame, product and waste, the antiaesthetics of the high avantgarde meets moe common varieties of ecologica anguage. A question to which we shall return does not this collapse of art into nonart actually paradoxically serve to hold open the sace of the aesthetic " until something better comes along in an age where all art has been commercialized ?7 And therefore is not the collap se a strongy Romantic gesture of defying the commodity world? I reiterate that this is not to say that there do not eist actual anamorphic lifeforms. These
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very lifeforms (coral, sea slugs, invertebrates) are vital for sustaining life on earth. Beause they have no distinct shape, it is very hard to make them cute, to turn them into objects of consumerist enironmental sympathy. A doeeyed coral ree f is more likely to elicit a gasp of horror than a coo of identication. Although it tries with all its might to give the illusion of doing so, ambient poetics will never actually dissolve the difference between inside and outside. The remark either undoes the distinction altogether, in which case there is nothing to perceive, or it establishes it in the rst place, in which case there i s something to perceive, with a boundary. On this point, there is an a bsolute difference between my argument and that of JeanFran
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