Nature Writing as Postmodernism
Here is an aspect of one part of Ecology without Nature:
Thoreau is about ponds and woods and fruits ... and Thoreau.
Leopold is about wolves and mountains and farms ... and Leopold.
Wordsworth is about fells and sheep and trees ... and Wordsworth.
Narrative is about events and people and plotting ... and narrators.
—The part after the ... is what nature writing is blind to. This blindness repeats the structure. Here I am writing about wolves and mountains. Here I am writing about a desert. Look, it's me, in a desert, writing. Did I tell you I was in a desert? I am in a desert.
It doesn't much matter if you upgrade Nature to Nature 2.0, all flowy and pantheist and squishy and embedded. The same structure happens. Because you have not yet seen the whole thing, the whole of your Nature writing thing.
When I was threatened (the only time I have been) with physical violence, for a stance I took (this stance), it was by a writer for an ecocriticism journal, who gave out his email address and said “Let's do it.” (I would have been cool if the paragraph had only been “Let's pour rancid animal fat over Morton's head at a conference.” And so would Oxford UP, just about, in whose contracts you have to sign that you will not incite violence. That was the press in charge of the journal.)
In defense of the paragraph, the editor said “But it's just metaphorical.”
Isn't that the quintessence of postmodern violence. “I'm not a racist, I'm just joking. Can't you take a joke?”
Nature writing is the ultimate postmodern performance art.
Thoreau is about ponds and woods and fruits ... and Thoreau.
Leopold is about wolves and mountains and farms ... and Leopold.
Wordsworth is about fells and sheep and trees ... and Wordsworth.
Narrative is about events and people and plotting ... and narrators.
—The part after the ... is what nature writing is blind to. This blindness repeats the structure. Here I am writing about wolves and mountains. Here I am writing about a desert. Look, it's me, in a desert, writing. Did I tell you I was in a desert? I am in a desert.
It doesn't much matter if you upgrade Nature to Nature 2.0, all flowy and pantheist and squishy and embedded. The same structure happens. Because you have not yet seen the whole thing, the whole of your Nature writing thing.
When I was threatened (the only time I have been) with physical violence, for a stance I took (this stance), it was by a writer for an ecocriticism journal, who gave out his email address and said “Let's do it.” (I would have been cool if the paragraph had only been “Let's pour rancid animal fat over Morton's head at a conference.” And so would Oxford UP, just about, in whose contracts you have to sign that you will not incite violence. That was the press in charge of the journal.)
In defense of the paragraph, the editor said “But it's just metaphorical.”
Isn't that the quintessence of postmodern violence. “I'm not a racist, I'm just joking. Can't you take a joke?”
Nature writing is the ultimate postmodern performance art.
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