The ecological thought—introductory
Hi everyone—Tim Morton here. I was asked to start blogging here on ecological issues, and I’m delighted to accept the invitation. I’m actually working on a book right now called The Ecological Thought. It’s kind of the prequel to Ecology without Nature. I mean this in a rigorous way—not just the fact that the first book implies a view that I outline more deeply in the second one. I mean that in a rigorous sense, this “ecological thought” weirdly creeps up on you from the future. The best I can compare it to is Shelley’s idea of poetry, that it’s like a shadow from the future that somehow looms into the world of the present (A Defence of Poetry). Anyway, stay tuned.
Here’s a good question for starters: am I an ecocritic? I fancy that what I’m doing is ecological literary criticism, but I’m not sure it’s ecocriticism. Already I don’t belong on this blog! Ecology without Nature argues that in order to have ecology, you have to give up Nature.
Lots of people don’t like this idea. It’s like I’m stealing their toy. I recently had an interesting conversation with Donna Haraway about it—of all people she was the very last I would have suspected of worrying about me stealing the Nature toy. But she was.
Her argument was basically about “worlding”—ideas and practices constitute “worlds” not just ideas; people do things in these worlds and create values in them, etc. (You will see if you’ve read my book that the “worlding” idea itself recursively falls prey to my “hand Nature over” gambit!) I thought of a good answer, but I was too scared to say: “The Nazis had lots of ideas, and those ideas constituted a world. If your argument is valid, we should have allowed the Nazis to have their world and should not have intervened in the Holocaust, etc.” Preserving an idea because it makes a world for you isn’t that great, I think. (Not even because it’s good or even useful, mind you.) I’m sure there was a whole wild world of witch ducking stools too.
Anyway…
I thought this blog would be a good place to do mini close readings that point the way towards the ecological thought—so expect some riffs in search of an album, some organs without bodies. First up: to whom are we speaking when we say “Hello”? (With a little help from Coleridge.)
