Timothy Morton - Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics

Timothy Morton

Ecologywithout Nature

RETHINKINGENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS

TIMOTHYMORTON

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts,and London, England 2007

Copyright 2007 by thePresident and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved

Printed in the UnitedStates of America

ISBN-13: 978-0-674-02434-2ISBN-10: 0-674-02434-6

TheCataloging-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 DeniseLevertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp., PollingerLimited, and the proprietor.

Pink Floyd,"Grantchester Meadows," Umma gumma (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 rightsfor the U.S.A. and Canada. Used by Permission.

For Kate

Acknowledgments

Writing this book hasoften called to mind a precarious picture of walking across a minefield with abouquet of flowers, dressed in the costume of a clown. For those who encouragedme across, I have nothing but thanks: David Clark, Greg Dobbins, MargaretFerguson, Kate Flint, Denise Gigante, Geoffrey Hartman, Karen Jacobs, DouglasKahn, Robert Kaufman, Alan Liu, James C. McKusick, David Nor-broolc, JeffreyRobinson, Nicholas Roe, David Simpson, Nigel Smith, Jane Stabler, Robert Unger,Karen Weisman, and Michael Ziser. The two anonymous readers appointed byHarvard University Press were extraordinarily encouraging. To David Simpson inparticular I owe a debt of gratitude beyond measure, for years of support andfriendship. I benefited from a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship at Queen Mary,University of London while copyediting, proofreading, and indexing. Thanks inparticular to Richard Schoch and Paul Hamilton. Thanks go to my researchassistants, Seth Forrest and Christopher Schaberg, who helped me balance mylife, writing, and teaching. I would like to thank all those students, bothundergraduates and graduates, who have explored and shared these ideas since1998, in classes at the University of Colorado and the University of California.In particular, I am grateful to my entire "Ecomimesis" graduate classof Spring 2004, for helping me to work through to the heart and soul of thisproject: Seth Forrest, Timothy Kreiner, Dalai Mansour, Eric O' Brien, FranciscoReinking, Christopher Schaberg, Daniel Thomas-Glass, Sabrina Tom, Karen Walker,and Clara Van Zanten. And I am equally grateful to my "Ecology withoutNature" class of Spring 2006: Tekla Babyak, Andrew Hageman, LynnLangemade, Rachel Swinkin, Julie Tran, and Nicholas Valvo. At HarvardUniversity Press, Lindsay Waters has been everything I would wish an editor tobe. John Donohue at Westchester Book Services coordinated the copyediting. Lastbut not least, I don't think the idea of dark ecology would have been possiblewithout a life spent listening to the ethereal splendor of the Cocteau Twins.

I dedicate this book to mylove, my wife Kate. She was the first to hear and discuss the ideas set downhere. At every moment, she was ready with a comment, a suggestion, a kind word.And she bore our daughter, Claire, the sweetest stranger who ever arrived.

Contents

Introduction: Toward aTheory of Ecological Criticism 1

1 The Art ofEnvironmental Language: "I Can't Believe It Isn't Nature!"

2 Romanticism and theEnvironmental Subject

3 Imagining Ecologywithout Nature 140

Notes

Index

Ecology without Nature

INTRODUCTION

Towarda Theory of Ecological Criticism

Nobody likes it when youmention the unconscious, and nowadays, hardly anybody likes it when you mentionthe environment. You risk sounding boring or judgmental or hysterical, or amixture of all these. But there is a deeper reason. Nobody likes it when youmention the unconscious, not because you are pointing out something obscenethat should remain hiddenthat is at least partly enjoyable. Nobody likes itbecause when you mention it, it becomes conscious. In the same way, when you mention the environment, youbring it into the foreground. In other words, it stops being the environment.It stops being That Thing Over There that surrounds and sustains us. When youthink about where your waste goes, your world starts to shrink. This is thebasic message of criticism that speaks up for environmental justice, and it isthe basic message of this book.

The main theme of the bookis given away in its title. 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, theidea of nature is getting in the way of properly ecological forms of culture,philosophy, politics, and art. The book addresses this paradox by consideringart above all else, for it is in art that the fantasies we have about naturetake shapeand dissolve. In particular, the literature of the Romantic period,commonly seen as crucially about nature, is the target of my investigation,since it still influences the ways in which the ecological imaginary works.

Why Ecology Must Bewithout Nature

In a study of politicaltheories of nature, John Meyer asserts that ecological writers are preoccupiedwith the "holy grail" of generating "a new and encompassingworldview."1 Whatever its content, this view "is regardedas capable of transforming human politics and society."2 Forexample, deep ecology asserts that we need to change our view fromanthropocentrism to ecocentrism. The idea that a view can change the world isdeeply rooted in the Romantic period, as is the notion of worldview itself (Weltanschauung). Coming up with a new worldviewmeans dealing with how humans experience their place in the world. Aestheticsthus performs a crucial role, establishing ways of feeling and perceiving thisplace. In their collection of narratives on ecological value, TerreSlatterfield and Scott Slovic tell a story about President Clinton's dedicationof a wilderness area in Utah: "At the ceremony dedicating the new nationalmonument [Grand Staircacse-Escalante],... President [Clinton] held up a copyof [Terry Tempest Williams's] Testimony and said, 'This made a difference.' "3Slatterfield and Slovic want to demonstrate how narrative is an effectivepolitical tool. But their demonstration also turns politics into an aestheticrealm. For Slatterfield and Slovic, narrative is on the side of the affective,and science, which they call a "valuation frame," has blocked or isin "denial" about it.4 As well as producing arguments,ecological writers fashion compelling images literally, a view of the world. These images rely upon a sense of nature. But nature keeps giving writersthe slip. And in all its confusing, ideological intensity, nature ironicallyimpedes a proper relationship with the earth and its life-forms, which would,of course, include ethics and science. Nature writing itself has accounted forthe way nature gives us the slip. In Reading the Mountains of Home, for example, John Elder writesabout how the narrative of nature appreciation is complicated by a growingawareness of "historical realities."5 Ecology without Nature systematically attempts to theorize this complication.

Conventional ecocriticismis heavily thematic. It discusses ecological writers. It explores elements ofecology, such as animals, plants, or the weather. It investigates varieties ofecological, and ecocritical, language. Ecology without Nature does talk about animals, plants,and the weather. It also discusses specific texts and specific writers,composers and artists. It delves into all types of ideas about space and place(global, local, cosmopolitan, regionalist). Such explorations, while valid andimportant, are not the main point of this book. The goal is to think through anargument about what we mean by the word environment itself.