Jefferson, Rivers & Commerce

While reading Sayre's essay on Jefferson, I kept thinking about Jefferson's role in the Corps of Discovery expedition (1803-1806), better known as the "Lewis and Clark Expedition". Here is a section of a letter dated June 20, 1803 that Jefferson wrote to Lewis that I thought you might find interesting:

"The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, and such principal stream of it as by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce."

Selling sublime down the river ...

Further Thoughts on Bachelard

Further Notes on Bachelard (introduction, chs. 1 and 9).

So much depends on Bachelard’s definition of what a poetic image is—and on the relationship of the poetic image with the past. It’s important to him that the image is not an echo; rather, the past is an echo of the image. How does this agree with what we said about the role of nostalgia in Bachelard’s work? Bachelard is a historian of science—but here he writes about poetry, and defiantly so. The image exists in the present, is dynamic, inverses the duality of subject and object, and so forth. It is both subjective and trans-subjective—how so? And what is the work of phenomenology, then? Bachelard declares here that he is departing from his former view (p. xviii)--a reference to his books on fire, water, earth, and air.

Note also the comparison between the phenomenologist’s work and that of the psychoanalyst, who translates the image “into a language that is different from the poetic logos” (p. xxiv). But is the phenomenologist a literary critic (p. xxv)? I like the phrase “felicitous reading” (p. xxv)—somehow I wish that’s what we could all engage in… “Felicitous reading” corresponds to what Bachelard defines as the object of his inquiry, “felicitous space” (p. xxxv). See also his thoughts on “harmony in reading.” Some of these concerns will reappear when we turn to Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Rural Hours and her plea for an ecology of reading. Consider the brilliant distinction (derived from Bergson) between “language-as-instrument” and “language-as-reading”—what, in other words, does a phenomenologist not engage in when she is reading texts? (See p. xxvii: “ to determine its place and role in the poem’s composition”). Section VIII of the introduction is entirely directed against the equation of image with memory, or “reproductive imagination” (p. xxxv). Instead, Bachelard privileges chance, the unpredictability of the image (perhaps an indication that Bachelard was influenced by surrealism).

As always, Bachelard invokes experience as authenticating what the phenomenologist does: “Very clearly, the poetic image furnishes one of the simplest experiences of language that has been lived.” The poet herself is always already a phenomenologist. See the distinction (once again) between the psychoanalytic critic (“He explains the flower by the fertilizer,” p. xxx) and the phenomenologist-reader. The Latin on p. xxxii comes from Pliny and can be translated as follows: “Don’t be a cobbler beyond the sole [of the shoe.” Bachelard’s imaginative modification might be taken to read: “Don’t be a psychoanalyst beyond the lower part of the body” [the Latin “uterus” is a bit more comprehensive than the English equivalent]. Bachelard doesn’t want to examine “hostile space”—why? (p. xxxvi). And why end with a note of skepticism regarding the writing of books (p. xxxix)?

It is no coincidence that Bachelard begins his book with houses (later, there are chapters on the “houses of things,” wardrobes, chests, drawers). Houses stand for “protected intimacy” (p. 3); the house “protects the dreamer” (p. 6). All space, for Bachelard, is “inhabited space” (p. 5), the non-I that surrounds the I. Looking at houses will tell us how to “abide within ourselves” (p. xxxvii)—to live in the houses of our dreams (an “oneiric house” is, literally, a dream house). But how do these observations on memories, his definition of the image as a “blend of memory and legend” (p. 33), square with Bachelard’s insistence, in the introduction, that the phenomenologist’s work takes place in the present of experience? Psychoanalysis gives “an exterior destiny to the interior being” (p. 11); Bachelard, however, engages in “topoanalysis”—what is that? (For one thing, it bears the mark of “topophilia,” p. 12).

Poetry lets us live in the house that is gone, our childhood home. Think here of the etymology of ecology—nature as the house in which we live. Bachelard stresses the verticality of the dream-house, which is a combination of cellar (the earthly, watery depths) and tower, which “sounds a note of immense dreams” (p. 25). Poe’s indoor tales, as he sees them, “are the realization of childhood fears” (p. 20). But how would his reading differ from a psychoanalytic one, e.g. the interpretations provided by Marie Bonaparte? Bachelard’s discussion of city houses is especially interesting in the context of our seminar, given Buell’s efforts to integrate urbanism into environmental criticism. His attempt to transform his city dwelling into a boat rocked by the ocean reminds us, of course, of the transformation of his annoying neighbor into a woodpecker later in the book. Is this simply an attempt to ward off the noxious effects of modernity, a Heideggerian retreat to the farm, an escapist fantasy?

The chapter on the dialectics of inside and outside offers another variation on the idea of houses as both containing and expressing our being—see p. 222: “man is half-open being.” Bachelard extends here the walls of the house, making the outside the emanation of a former inside –see his brilliant reading of the Rilke passage, which illustrates “an osmosis between intimate and undetermined space” (p. 229-230). This section seems to be conceived as a counterpoint to the frightening reversal of interior and exterior space in the Michaux poem cited on pp. 216-17. See also p. 217-18: “Outside and inside are both intimate—they are always ready to be reversed.”

My hope for the Bachelard reading would be that it offers the starkest possible contrast to Buell’s vision for environmental criticism. Well, perhaps not as stark as it seems at first. Because Bachelard illustrates, in radical fashion, the kind of world-making Buell outlines when he tries to defend ecocriticism against the charge of naïve realism. The imagination inhabits the world as hermit crabs inhabit their shells and birds form their nests; human imagination and the imagination that manifests itself in nature—a gigantic tapestry of quotations, allusions, echoes—are coeval (so the question of mimesis doesn’t arise). BUT: Bachelard is completely uninterested in ethics—his images have ontological value only, as he emphasizes (compare this with Buell’s thrust in the direction of environmental justice). Finally, Bachelard obviously defines the role of reading very differently—as a sympathetic act (the reader is the writer’s “ghost”), very unlike Buell’s prescriptive model (we at least touched on the role of “power” in Buell’s book).

A sample of Robinson Jeffers

Below I've pasted not one, but three poems of Robinson Jeffers. I thought that one would be too restrictive and unrepresentative of his body of work, which is rather large and varied. I've intentionally selected poems that seem to speak to or illustrate many of the issues/ideas that we've been talking about in class. In some cases, the format is a bit off e.g., the last two poems don't capture the proper indentations.

Here is a stanza from "Continent's End", which brings to mind Emerson's "eye" we talked about in class last week:

The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your
child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that
watched before there was an ocean.


People and a Heron

A desert of weed and water-darkened stone under my western
  windows
The ebb lasted all afternoon,
And many pieces of humanity, men, women, and children, gath-
  ering shellfish,
Swarmed with voices of gulls the sea-breach.
At twilight they went off together, the verge was left vacant, an
  evening heron
Bent broad wings over the black ebb,
And left me wondering why a lone bird was dearer to me than many
  people.
Well: rare is dear: but also I suppose
Well reconciled with the world but not with our own natures we
grudge to see them
Reflected on the world for a mirror.

Sign Post

Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how. Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from hu- manity, Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow, Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let your eyes Climb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man. Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes; Things are the God; you will love God and not in vain, For what we love, we grow to it, we share its nature. At length You will look back along the star's rays and see that even The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven. Its qualities repair their mosaic around you, the chips of strength And sickness; but now you are free, even to be human, But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman. Gray Weather It is true that, older than mand and ages to outlast him, the Pacific surf Still cheerfully pounds the worn granite drum; But there's no storm; and the birds are still, no song; no kind of excess; Nothing that shines, nothing is dark; There is neither joy nor grief nor a person, the sun's tooth sheathed in cloud, And life has no more desires than a stone. The stormy conditions of time and change are all abrogated, the essential Violences of survival, pleasure, Love, wrath and pain, and the curious desire of knowing, all per- fectly suspended. In the cloudy light, in the timeless quietness, One explores deeper than the nerves or heart of nature, the womb or soul, To the bone, the careless white bone, the excellence.

Rosamond Purcell's Eggs and Nests

For a unique visual commentary on Bachelard, take a look at the work of Rosamond Purcell, one of the most exciting photographers working today. Click on any of the boxes on the site and you'll get a little slideshow. Rosamond will be my guest on this campus next year.

Some Thoughts on Bachelard

Hi everyone,
This is the first time I've ever blogged, so I may not do it very well.
In any case, I've been trying to puzzle out some ideas I had about our Bachelard reading which I couldn't quite put my finger on in class. I think I mentioned that what struck me about the book was the "love" which Bachelard has towards poetry, matched by the "love" of the people he quotes towards their subjects. After that, we got onto the subject of being alone with the world, which I think ties into this "love" directly. Love, at least in my understanding of it, is something which can only exist as a relationship between two people or in this case a person and a thing, not as a group or societal phenomena... one might be able to experience multiple loves occuring simultaneously, but in the end real love is only possible in reference to a single other. And of course, I don't mean love in a Disney/Hollywood kind of way, perhaps not even in a romantic way... and I would shy away from a Platonic view as well, as I think Bachelard is critiquing alot of Plato in his book. Maybe what Bachelard is giving us here, as opposed to Buell who is attempting to totalize his view into a sort of Pauline message, is the opportunity to enter into a relationship with the natural world as the other... to see nature not as oneself, but as a fascinating other which deserves our devotion. So, for the conchologist or ornithologist, we see the moment of infatuation which changes their life, when they enter into a relationship with shells or birds. According to Bachelard, the honeymoon is over when it becomes an academic discipline, but who cares more than these people about the life and safety of birds or mollusks? I still haven't thought this out completely, and I think there are some obvious flaws: how can nature be a single other, for example? But I thought I would share and see what everyone else thinks.

Reading Notes on Buell, chs. 3 and 4

Buell, chapters 3 and 4

Here are some notes on chapters 3 and 4 of Buell’s book (which again introduce us to some new words in the language, “multi-scalar” and “immiserated” being my favorites). A figure that hovers uneasily in the background here is philosopher Martin Heidegger, whose membership in the Nazi party has permanently compromised his reverence for “living-in-rustic –place-and-letting-nature-be” (p. 103; see also p. 66) and who fuels some of the agonizing reflections on ethics and politics in chapter 4. As Buell has it, Heidegger’s parochialism demands the corrective of globalism, which is the direction in which The Future of Environmental Criticism inexorably moves.
Please note: I’ve moved things around in the syllabus. An updated version has been posted both to the blog and to the oncourse site.

1. The distinction between “space” and “place” on which most the argument of chapter 3 hinges is probably uncontroversial. But what are the “intractable ambiguities” (p. 66) that attach themselves to the ecocritical reverence for place (p. 66-68)? What Buell seems to be centrally concerned with is—in the words of Val Plumwood—“a monogamous relationship to just one place” (see p. 69).
2. What does it mean that “non-places are the real measure of our time” (p. 69)—and what consequences does this insight have for environmental criticism? Buell wants to encourage, he claims on p. 71, a “more rigorous” reflection on place as a “physical environment.”
3. Consider the distinction between “phenomenological” and “sociological” place-attachment (pp. 72 ff.). What are the five dimensions of place-attachment Buell thinks he has identified? And where or when does the transition from phenomenology to sociology take place?
4. The largest section of chapter 3 is devoted to a critique of eco-localism, of the kind represented by Wendell Berry. Much in this and the next chapter rests on Buell’s selection of counterexamples (especially Derek Walcott). Comment on Buell’s canon or “archive” here and elsewhere. Can any one critic be conversant with so many different national traditions, writers, and themes? See also Buell’s weary comment about the lack of “true comparatists” (p. 91).
5. What does Buell pit against the importance of the local in traditional environmental writing? What exactly is a “bioregion” (which also includes urban environments)?
6. What happens to place as the scope of environmental writing expands? Note the convergence of ecocritical and postcolonial writing in Walcott’s Omeros. Is this a convincing example (judging from the excerpts)?
7. Chapter 4: can you figure out the little graph Buell suggests on p. 98 (see also p. 112)? The whole chapter, as Buell admits at the end, is essentially a simplification of a “pluriform critical scene,” proposing as it does a three-step development to glory, ranging from “deep ecology” (which he calls “chuckle-headed” [???]) to “ecofeminism” (much better) to “environmental justice,” the teleological goal of all earlier efforts, as long as it performs a balancing act, “if not also the reconciliation,” between the “social” and the “natural.” Do you find this Hegelian synthesis convincing?
8. What precisely is the reason for the “chuckle-headedness” of deep ecology, according to Buell? Deep ecology he apparently can take seriously only as “ontology or aesthetics” rather than as a recipe for ethics (p. 103)—why? See how he discusses the example of Aldo Leopold’s advice to “think like the mountain” (p. 104).
9. Note how short the ecofeminism section is (pp. 108-112)—a bit odd given how “strong” he thinks the positions of ecofeminists are.
10. It’s important, says Buell, that ecocriticism doesn’t disconnect “the history of conservation” from the “evolution of urban and workplace environmentalism” (p. 115). Why? Note the importance of Carson for the movement.
11. It’s interesting how Buell deals with “environmental racism”—by first agreeing with and then criticizing and then again agreeing (“But it is also true that….”) Joan Martínez-Alier. Buell alludes here to the case of Love Canal and activist Lois Gibbs, who in 1978 discovered that her son's elementary school--and indeed her entire neighborhood in Niagara Falls, NY, known as “Love Canal”--was built on a toxic waste dump. Gibbs went on to lead her community in a battle against the local, state, and federal governments that ended with the evacuation of the residents and the creation of the EPA’s Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act.
12. The chapter ends with a kind of moral imperative for “ecocritics.” What must we do?

Christoph Irmscher

ENG-L780/AmSt G-751

Ecocriticism (Spring 2009)

Office: Ballantine 417

Tu Th 2:30-3:45, LI 851

office hours: Tu Th 11:30-12:30, and by appointment

cirmsche@indiana.edu

cell: 443-622-3277


Ecocriticism emphasizes issues of environmental interconnectedness, sustainability, and justice in cultural interpretation. It borrows liberally from those and other interpretive modes to produce a polymorphous set of possible strategies, which are not united by a single method but orbit around issues of cultural-environmental concern. This course is conceived as a broad introduction to the theory and practice of ecocritical work; we will not focus on any specific period or national tradition. The basic narrative of the course will follow Lawrence Buell’s The Future of Environmental Criticism (Blackwell), supplemented by essays from The ISLE Reader, ed. Michael Branch and Scott Slovic (Georgia). We will trace the stages of ecocriticism’s development, map the shifting theoretical terrain inhabited by ecocritics and their alliances with other disciplines, and attempt to define the relationship of the movement with ecofeminism, environmental justice, and science studies. Primary readings will be drawn from texts by John James Audubon, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Barbara Gowdy, H.D. Thoreau, and others.


Course requirements:

Active participation in class discussions, weekly responses to a text (or a secondary reading) to be discussed, and one in-depth preparation of a reading from our list will constitute your class participation grade (30% of your entire grade). Responses are to be posted as blogs to a site I have created for our class—go to http://bloomingtonecocriticism.blogspot.com/. I will send you instructions on how to sign up.

Writing assignments include a 20-25 page seminar paper, which may include archival research and should eventually be in a format ready for submission to a journal (50%). I will also ask each participant to prepare a brief teaching presentation on a text or a theme derived from our readings and to design either a unit or his/her own course that he/she could teach at the college level (20%). This teaching presentation will require research that goes beyond our readings in class; in its written form, it should consist of a short narrative (approximately 5 pages) and a syllabus (or part of a syllabus).

I will also ask you to make time for additional meetings at the Lilly Library.

Texts:

Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon)

Branch, Michael, ed. The Isle Reader (University of Georgia Press)

Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism (Blackwell)

Cooper, Rural Hours (University of Georgia Press)

Heaney, Beowulf (Norton)

Gowdy, The White Bone (Metropolitan)

Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (Oxford)

Sanders, Scott, Staying Put

Thoreau, Walden, 3rd ed. (Norton)

Mapping out the Territory

Week 1

Jan. 13 Introduction

Jan. 15 Buell, The Future, chapter 1-2

Week 2

Jan. 20 Buell, chapter 3-4

Jan. 22 Gaston Bachelard, Poetics, chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 9

Week 3

Jan. 27 readings from ISLE Reader: Sayre, “If Thomas Jefferson…” (102); Lindholdt, “Literary Activism” (243-257); Kern, “Ecocriticsm” (258-281)

Jan. 29 Tallmadge, “Toward a Natural History of Reading” (282-295); Bennett, “From Wide Open Spaces” (296-317)

The Roots (the American Tradition)

Week 4

Feb. 3 John James Audubon (“The Ruby-throatd Hummingbird”; “The Black Vulture”; “The Passenger Pigeon”; excerpts from Ornithological Biography; Oncourse)

Feb. 5 Visit to the Lilly Library (Audubon material)

Week 5

Feb. 10 hunting narratives (to be selected); Robert Penn Warren (oncourse) “Audubon: A Vision”; Marshall, “Tales of the Wonderful Hunt” (ISLE Reader, 188-202)

Feb. 12 Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

Week 6

Feb. 17 Susan Fenimore Cooper, Rural Hours

Feb. 19 Susan Fenimore Cooper, Rural Hours

pp. 4-13 (introduction; Spring);pp. 45-55 (May; in praise of wildflowers); pp. 59-67 (Summer; the problem of “weeds”); pp. 71-81 (hummingbirds; the art of gardening); pp. 82-93 (naming American flowers; the cultivation of American landscapes); pp. 107-115 (Native Americans appear in Cooperstown; “changes in the land”); pp. 125-135 and 138-139 (American forests and the problem of deforestation); pp. 148-151 (the death of the fawn); pp. 155-157 (insects; the battle between the wasp and the spider); pp. 168-170 (forest fires); p. 173 (Cooperstown in the moonlight); pp. 174-177 (American flowers); pp. 197-199 (beginning of Autumn); pp. 202-213 and 215 (in praise of “noble” Autumn); pp. 250 (fences); pp. 264-266 (the “bald eagle”; patriotism); pp. 282-290 (the lake in winter); pp. 291-294 (beginning Saturday, 27th: “Yankeeisms”); pp. 299-309 (American place names); pp. 310-314 (Tuesday, 13th: changes in the land; depletion of wildlife); pp. 315-316 (absence of flowers in the winter); pp. 326-327: last entry

Oncourse: excerpts from Buell, The Environmental Imagination; Johnson, Patterson (oncourse)


Week 7

Feb. 24 Visit to the Lilly; Thoreau, Walden (“Economy”; “Where I Lived…”; “Reading”; “Sounds”; “Solitude”; “Visitors”; “The Bean-Field”)

Feb. 26 Thoreau, Walden (“The Village”; “The Ponds”; “Baker Farm”; “Higher Laws”; “Brute Neighbors”; “House-Warming”; “Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors”; “Winter Animals”; “The Pond in Winter”)

Week 8

March 3 Walden, cont. (“Spring”; “Conclusion”)

March 5 Thoreau criticism: Marx, Cavell, Johnson, Walls, Buell (from Norton edition, but also posted as pdfs to oncourse)

The Branches

Week 9

March 10 Heaney, trans. Beowulf

March 12 Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Oncourse); additional reading: Mc Kusick, from Green Writing; Nandina Batra, “Dominion, Empathy, and Symbiosis” (in ISLE Reader, 155-72)


March 17 Spring Break

March 19 Spring Break


Week 10

March 24 contemporary eco-poetry (excerpts from Scigaj, Sustainable Poetry)

March 26 Syllabi due; discussion

Week 11

March 31 Gowdy, The White Bone

April 2 Gowdy, The White Bone

(Neta Gordon, “Sign and Symbol,” oncourse)


Week 12

April 7 Sanders, Staying Put

April 9 Scott Sanders, visit

Reaching Out

Week 13-15

April 14 Buell, The Future, chapter 5

April 16-28work on individual projects; daily meetings

No need to start blogging this week...

...the due date for your first post is Monday, January 26.

Journal of Ecocriticism

Wanted to make sure to include this link to the the Canaidan online publication Journal of Ecocriticism for future reference--as a place to submit future work?

Welcome to the Blog for English 780

You will soon receive invitations to be the co-authors for this blog. Use this forum to post your responses (due Monday night, 6 p.m. before class) as well as anything else that seems relevant to you. The usual rules apply: use courteous language, especially when referring to the opinions or posts of other members of the class, keep your entries to a reasonable length (I require 500 words minimum but leave it to you to determine when you need to stop), and document your sources. I will read all entries and comment on them when this seems necessary or useful.
Thanks,
Christoph