On Susan Fenimore Cooper
Prone to the 1st-wave of ecocriticism as I am, I must say I was a bit wary of Bennett’s article – the “Metropolitan” in the title initiating my reservation, but I’ve since gotten over it. Of course, Deep Ecology has its limitations (and unrealistic Romantic musings as Bennett suggests) in being applied critically and I see Bennett’s points here, particularly as is supported by some of the keen insight coming from Ross’s Chicago Gangster Theory; but while I’m not apt to pitch Deep Ecology out the window, I am excited at how Deep Ecology fused together with social ecocriticism provide us a broader lens through which to view literary works environmentally.
Think what you will of the poststructuralists (and I’m as suspicious of them as the Deep Ecologists are), but it goes without saying that “unmediated nature” doesn’t exist, or to clarify, it doesn’t exist for us because we as humans must mediate everything in order to make sense of it. So it becomes, I think, much more interesting to read Cooper’s Rural Hours not from the perspective of it as quintessential ‘nature writing’ or pastoral, but from the perspective of social ecocriticism. Barry Lopez is right, I think, in saying that “natural history writing takes as its proper subjects […] the complex biological, social, economic, and ethical relationships among [the natural world].” Viewed in this way, and here I really agree with Bennett, the scope of ecocriticism is suddenly much more expansive.
While on the surface, Cooper’s book might seem like a journal of fine musings about wildflowers and birds, it’s curious to me what significant things are being said when considered within their socio-cultural context: the passage about exterminated/eliminated Native peoples (pg 48) seems particularly in tune with Lopez’s assertion that nature writing tends towards “justice.” In this passage, Cooper seems to draw our attention not only to the natural world and how she perceives it (mediates it), but how people have interacted with that world, including the socio-cultural forces at work that grant the right of land to some and not others—the precise kind of environmental racism/injustice that Bennett says is equal to the contemporary experience of so many blacks in inner cities and how they, indeed, can be seen as the ultimate ‘endangered species.’ (This, I think, takes the argument too far, however, returning again to an overt anthropocentrization of ecocriticism to the opposite extreme).
Lots of other examples from the reading make Cooper exciting when considered from this evolved ecocritical perspective … for instance, her discussion of naming and the way in which a relationship with a place/region etc., is affected by the use of language—abhorring as she does the Latinate names, stating “What has a dead language to do on every-day occasions with the living blossoms of the hour?” (pg 68). Cooper’s discussion of cultivation, of gardens, etc. while tinged with awe of the natural world is simultaneously appreciative of human construction—not only does she appreciate the cultivated fields and considers them lovely to look at, but she appreciates how the town/village creates an interesting (and enticing) juxtaposition to the natural scenery around it. Here Cooper seems to mediate her world (and the human presence in the natural world) in a way that clearly illustrates Bennett’s central points—that the human quotient, the human impression of nature (which subsequently guides the human relationship with nature) has to be considered in order for ecocriticism to extend to its farthest reaches. How do we qualify nature and our understanding of it and how, in turn, does that understanding influence behavior?
In the same passage referenced above about the stump-fields, Cooper brings to light the differences within the studded fields – how some are cultivated and some are left in ruin – motioning towards a difference that could be more closely examined from a necessary socio-cultural perspective. How is it that one unpeopled, wild field appears beautiful (prompting the human desire to preserve it as such), while the next field is ‘lovely’ with a homestead at it’s center and winter wheat growing at its edge? How, Cooper’s text forces us to consider, do we mediate the natural environment to initiate such differences in the way we interact with the environment? Cooper seems to recognize that while one field is acceptable and the other not (the same type of sentiment she expresses around deforestation), the ultimate questions underscored by the text become: how are these choices being made, and what are the ramifications of these choices? The residents of Cooperstown lovingly tend their gardens, Cooper notes in her journal, but simultaneously destroy their forests—how then do humans determine what is beautiful, what is grotesque, what to clear-cut and what to save – all questions related to the socio-environment exchange that needs to be considered in order to (as Bennett says) effect the kind of change that the Deep Ecologists desire, but in a way that might produce that (positive) change on a grand scale.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Susan Fenimore Cooper's American Ruins
It was a commonplace, among many early American writers, extending as far into the 19th Century as Henry James, to lament the lack of ancient history in America, something that was considered a necessary subject or atmosphere for the creation of literary art. Hawthorne's preface to The Marble Faun (1859) is representative: "No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wallflowers, need ruin to make them grow."
Susan Fenimore Cooper, though, is filled with none of this anxiety. "The forest lands of America," she writes, "[...] abound in ruins of their own" (128). True, Cooper does not find in these "forest lands" any "annals" of human civilization, and she doesn't appear to be as interested as Hawthorne in the specific formal requirements of "romance and poetry." Nevertheless, she has no problem finding material to write about. There may not be evidence of human history in the "ruins" she sees in the forest, but the trees have a history of their own. Cooper writes of "broken limbs and dead bodies of great trees" that are found throughout the forest, some "still clad in [their] armor." The forest is the site for a kind of natural drama, where young trees are ever growing amongst the old, and where chance storms and unpredictable winds always threaten to upset the current order. Cooper explores the natural landscape around her and finds just the right kind of environment to spark the imagination.
At the end of her reflection on the forest ruins, she notes that, "amid this wild confusion," there are traces of human life: "the track of wheels, a rude road [...], or the mark of the axe" (129). Within the ancient history of the forest, Cooper also finds the more recent history of human life, which has a story of its own. She unites the two histories (i.e., natural and human) by observing that the trees "freely and richly [...] contribut[e] to the wants of our race." In this case, it seems Nature is subordinate and subservient to human endeavor. But it is worth pointing out that the human story is dependant on the natural. The two are not in opposition, as they so often are in American writing and imagination. Moreover, while Cooper anthropomorphizes nature to some extent (trees as bodies, bark as armor, etc.), the long history of the forest is, for her, an interesting story worth telling -- more interesting in her reflections, at least, than the story of the "rude road" or the "mark of the axe." If the American imagination is stifled by an environment that has a relative lack of history, Cooper has no trouble finding a rich past in the forest to meditate on. If good writing requires ruins, she seems to be saying, these natural ruins can be easily found.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Stillness, and the life and death of birds
"My Style of Drawing Birds” does not, in its first four pages, tell us much about Audubon’s style of drawing birds; it tells instead of his determination of a means to make birds drawable. It is not enough to simply kill a bird and draw it dead; such ornithological portraits are “neither more or less than . . . Stiff unmeaning profiles”, and even hung upside down “to shew their every portion” only produces “some pretty fair sign Boards for Poulterers!”, emphasizing their deadness (759). Audubon determines eventually that he must “attempt to Copy [nature] in her own Way, alive and Moving!” and apparently makes a brief attempt to draw living birds, but he finds that he cannot finish his sketches (760), and goes back to collecting dead specimens, which he eventually learns to string up with wire into natural-looking – that is to say, alive-looking – positions (761).
There seems a certain circular waste of labor in going to the trouble to kill a bird so that one can “represent them in . . . a Natural position” (763), making them look as if they were living again. What the bird-hunter/stuffer/painter gains in this is perhaps not so much control over the bird, since it is the bird’s “Nature (as far as habits Went) that he wants to represent – he is not attempting to make the bird do anything it would not do by itself – as it is the birds’ stillness, which is impossible to achieve while it is living. When the bird is still it is drawable; it is also approachable, and studyable. Audubon can “Stud[y] it whilt thus placed as a ‘lay figure’ before me, according to its Specificity”, learn the forms of its “bill, nostrils, head, eye, leg or claws, as well as the Structure of its Wings and Tail” (763), the better to represent it. Yet Audubon concedes also the importance of observing his birds alive, in their “form and Habits,” to discover that Pewees sit pensive and upright, while “Gallinaceous Birds . . . were possessed of equally peculiar positions and movements” and “herons walked with elegance and stateliness” (762). Audubon can’t represent a still, drawable nature without experiencing it in its unstillness, to find out what it does, so that he can artificially do it (to his birds) himself.
Consider the case of the “Ruby-throated Humming Bird”: Audubon gushes effusively on the beauties and familial habits of “this lovely little creature,” this “glittering fragment of the rainbow”; he describes it in terms of magic and fairy wings (248) and revels in its delicate feeding habits .He is enamoured of the bird’s movement, “from one flower to another like a gleam of light, upwards, downwards” (249) and even more so by its mating habits and family life, anthropomorphizing like crazy here in particular. After all of this enthusiastic description of the living hummingbird, it’s jolting when he turns briefly to the subject of killing them, and then to his strategy for representing them – “in various positions, flitting, feeding, caressing each other, or sitting . . . and pluming themselves. The diversity of action and attitude thus exhibited may, I trust, prove sufficient to present a faithful idea of their appearance and manners” (245). He is untroubled by the violence he’s done on these bird whose parental feelings he has just finished admiring, and once he’s arranged them into their lifelike poses, describes them using the verbs of their previous action, despite that they are now still. It’s as if he doesn’t quite see them as dead.
There seems a certain circular waste of labor in going to the trouble to kill a bird so that one can “represent them in . . . a Natural position” (763), making them look as if they were living again. What the bird-hunter/stuffer/painter gains in this is perhaps not so much control over the bird, since it is the bird’s “Nature (as far as habits Went) that he wants to represent – he is not attempting to make the bird do anything it would not do by itself – as it is the birds’ stillness, which is impossible to achieve while it is living. When the bird is still it is drawable; it is also approachable, and studyable. Audubon can “Stud[y] it whilt thus placed as a ‘lay figure’ before me, according to its Specificity”, learn the forms of its “bill, nostrils, head, eye, leg or claws, as well as the Structure of its Wings and Tail” (763), the better to represent it. Yet Audubon concedes also the importance of observing his birds alive, in their “form and Habits,” to discover that Pewees sit pensive and upright, while “Gallinaceous Birds . . . were possessed of equally peculiar positions and movements” and “herons walked with elegance and stateliness” (762). Audubon can’t represent a still, drawable nature without experiencing it in its unstillness, to find out what it does, so that he can artificially do it (to his birds) himself.
Consider the case of the “Ruby-throated Humming Bird”: Audubon gushes effusively on the beauties and familial habits of “this lovely little creature,” this “glittering fragment of the rainbow”; he describes it in terms of magic and fairy wings (248) and revels in its delicate feeding habits .He is enamoured of the bird’s movement, “from one flower to another like a gleam of light, upwards, downwards” (249) and even more so by its mating habits and family life, anthropomorphizing like crazy here in particular. After all of this enthusiastic description of the living hummingbird, it’s jolting when he turns briefly to the subject of killing them, and then to his strategy for representing them – “in various positions, flitting, feeding, caressing each other, or sitting . . . and pluming themselves. The diversity of action and attitude thus exhibited may, I trust, prove sufficient to present a faithful idea of their appearance and manners” (245). He is untroubled by the violence he’s done on these bird whose parental feelings he has just finished admiring, and once he’s arranged them into their lifelike poses, describes them using the verbs of their previous action, despite that they are now still. It’s as if he doesn’t quite see them as dead.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Vultures and Pigeon-hunters
One of the striking aspects of Audubon's description of the black vulture is the statement, which is really more of a question, on page 300 about the rational capability of vultures. Audubon admits that the anecdote he is about to tell is "attributed to mere instinct," but states that he himself cannot help but consider to "borde[r] on reason" in the vulture. "Border" here seems to be the key word, for the "fact" he goes on to tell is so "dastardly" (301) that it would be dismaying to consider these birds as operating under any form of reason familiar to humans: vultures, it seems, actively seek out and "devou[r] young living animals," and with great frequency.
The border with reason that vultures approach in this case is offset by much of the rest of Audubon's description, where vultures are considered to be so driven by "habit" (298, 302) and appetite that they sometimes act contrary to their own good. Sometimes vultures try to eat too much, or in the wrong places, or become so "lazy" (301) that they are incapable of moving without difficulty. The dangerous appellation of reason on an animal (and a "dastardly" animal, at that) is thus briefly suggested, but immediately and emphatically retracted. The vulture is not an animal that possesses reason or the free will that comes along with it in 19th century theory, and thus its malicious lifestyle is not a problem of reason or morality, but rather an example of a creature controlled entirely by physical appetite and unreflective habit.
Does Audubon launch an implicit critique, then, on the "tyrant[s] of creation" (268) who disturb the passenger pigeon and destroy them by the hundreds and thousands at a time? Like the vulture, these hunters, too, seem to act in the interest of desire rather than reason - they kill so many pigeons that hogs are "let loose to feed on the remainder" after one scene of "devastation" that Audubon witnesses (267), the chief motivation for which seems to be the pigeons' marketability in trade centers like New York (sold for four cents a piece [269]). Luckily, Audubon assures us that "such dreadful havock" will not result in the extinction of this species (267).
It is difficult not to recall the scenes Audubon describes of the gathering of vultures to devour some helpless prey when he tells how the hunters gather, as if by habit or strange custom, in the forest to kill a mass of pigeons. They kill more than they can carry away, just as the vultures try to eat more than their stomachs can contain. And so it is difficult not to wonder, are the humans, in this instance, also merely "bordering" on rational existence? If the vultures fall just short of reason, on what side of the border do these pigeon-hunters lie?
On page 288, Tallmadge compares the “discipline of erudition” to “ordinary science” as Thomas Kuhn conceived of it. Ostensibly, Tallmadge cites Kuhn to bolster his argument that though necessary, book learning is pushed into the “background” when the literary critic-cum-natural historian is radiated by the real, “referential world,” with its powers to induce discovery (If I remember Kuhn’s argument correctly, ordinary scientists make up the brunt of the field, they are the middling technicians whose data is necessary to the revolutionary paradigm shifts in a science). The analogy to Kuhn is curious, though, because his efforts to historicize science seem contrary to Tallmadge’s faith in a mostly unmediated access to the “more-than-human-world…[with] intense, incontrovertible certainty” (287). So while Tallmadge presents scientific discourse as the “discipline” necessary to receive nature’s message, his argument (besides falling prey at times to what Bennett refers to as “nature fetishism”) seems ahistorical w/r/t science. I think his argument would be troubled if he recognized the historically bound nature of the “background erudition” that supposedly sufficiently cleans the doors of perception onto the “referent.” To be fair to Tallmadge, he presents King’s Mountaineering as exhibiting a complex interaction between competing literary and scientific discourses. Moreover, while it is naïve to conceive of science as a privileged discourse capable of furnishing us with a complete “coherent picture of the living world” (285), there is no doubt that in the natural sciences, such observation is hugely important (whether or not it is accompanied by sublime feelings). Tallmadge’s field work, however, seems more like a fact-checking mission, of limited interest and practicality.
All of this isn’t to suggest we go completely in the opposite direction and say that the experience of “wide open spaces” is typically a fetishistic scam made for and consumed by credulous new-agers. But even if replicating the “experience” is a useful component in promoting environmental justice, theoretical challenges to the “referent” cannot, and should not, be dismissed offhandedly. Bennett’s argument, I think, lays out a number of reasons why, for instance, taking science uncritically (as a key to unlocking the experience of nature or narrativizing it as a whole) has historically led to social injustice. Likewise, the privileging of “non-human” environments as somehow more natural seems specious. But unlike Buell’s flip-flop towards a cosmopolitan, cultural ecocriticism, Bennett’s “hope” that deep ecology and social ecocriticism can find some common ground seems an attractive direction for the field.
All of this isn’t to suggest we go completely in the opposite direction and say that the experience of “wide open spaces” is typically a fetishistic scam made for and consumed by credulous new-agers. But even if replicating the “experience” is a useful component in promoting environmental justice, theoretical challenges to the “referent” cannot, and should not, be dismissed offhandedly. Bennett’s argument, I think, lays out a number of reasons why, for instance, taking science uncritically (as a key to unlocking the experience of nature or narrativizing it as a whole) has historically led to social injustice. Likewise, the privileging of “non-human” environments as somehow more natural seems specious. But unlike Buell’s flip-flop towards a cosmopolitan, cultural ecocriticism, Bennett’s “hope” that deep ecology and social ecocriticism can find some common ground seems an attractive direction for the field.
Reconsidering the Reconceptualization of the Pastoral
In class we’ve considered pushing the boundary of ecocriticism to a pre-Walden space, and the Sayre essay in particular succeeded in tracing Thoreauian impulses back to America’s infancy. Since the beginning of the semester, however, I’ve been wondering if ecocriticism can inform even earlier works, specifically the pastoral literature of antiquity. So I was interested in Bennett’s statement “the pastoral looms large in deep ecocriticism” (303). “Pastoral” can be a pretty general term, and I think Bennett could have spent some more time defining it or at least providing us with some textual examples. As I have not read either the Love essay that he cites or the body of deep ecocritical work that deals with the pastoral, I am uncertain that his representation of the ecocritical view of the pastoral is accurate. But, assuming that it is, I would like to complicate some of the claims about the pastoral by looking briefly at Vergil’s Eclogue I (Loeb edition translated by H. Rushton Fairclough).
First of all, according to Bennett, Love claims that “pastoralism will only become more significant as its chief concern, the interconnections between human beings and nature, comes to dominate a time ‘when the comfortably mythopoeic green world of pastoral is beset by profound threats of pollution, despoliation, and diminishment’ (“Et” 196)” (303). While Vergil’s Eclogue I does depict a “comfortably mythopoeic green world” of sorts, it is a world ravaged by war and under threat from Octavian’s land seizures. Meliboeus says “we are leaving our country’s bounds and sweet fields. We are outcasts from our country” (2-3). This “classic pastoral” world is not, as Bennett claims, a place where “the city dwellers took a refreshing trip to the country in order to return to their home rejuvenated” (303). Rather, it is a world profoundly affected—even infected—by the city; so much so that Tityrus must go to Rome in order to plead his case and maintain control of his lands. The “city dwellers” who enter the pastoral world do not do so for refreshment; they are, according to Meliboeus, “godless soldier[s]” and “barbarians” (70-71). This ostensibly idyllic country is a place where “bare stones cover all,” and “the marsh chokes … pastures with slimy rushes” (47-48). The countryside is populated by miscarrying goats --“the hope of the flock” (14-15)--, which Meliboeus later describes as “once happy” (74). When the poem concludes, the pastoral world itself seems to mourn the strife inflicted upon it: “Even now the house-tops yonder are smoking and longer shadows fall from the mountain-heights” (82-83).
Thus, I fear that without proper definition the traditional pastoral might become a “straw terra,” so to speak, a genre that might be “reconceptualize[d] … [to be] relevant for a contemporary world” on insufficient grounds (303). I suggest that ecocriticism take another look at the classical pastoral to see how a melancholy rural landscape threatened and repossessed by an alien city might overlap or interconnect with our concerns in more contemporary literature.
First of all, according to Bennett, Love claims that “pastoralism will only become more significant as its chief concern, the interconnections between human beings and nature, comes to dominate a time ‘when the comfortably mythopoeic green world of pastoral is beset by profound threats of pollution, despoliation, and diminishment’ (“Et” 196)” (303). While Vergil’s Eclogue I does depict a “comfortably mythopoeic green world” of sorts, it is a world ravaged by war and under threat from Octavian’s land seizures. Meliboeus says “we are leaving our country’s bounds and sweet fields. We are outcasts from our country” (2-3). This “classic pastoral” world is not, as Bennett claims, a place where “the city dwellers took a refreshing trip to the country in order to return to their home rejuvenated” (303). Rather, it is a world profoundly affected—even infected—by the city; so much so that Tityrus must go to Rome in order to plead his case and maintain control of his lands. The “city dwellers” who enter the pastoral world do not do so for refreshment; they are, according to Meliboeus, “godless soldier[s]” and “barbarians” (70-71). This ostensibly idyllic country is a place where “bare stones cover all,” and “the marsh chokes … pastures with slimy rushes” (47-48). The countryside is populated by miscarrying goats --“the hope of the flock” (14-15)--, which Meliboeus later describes as “once happy” (74). When the poem concludes, the pastoral world itself seems to mourn the strife inflicted upon it: “Even now the house-tops yonder are smoking and longer shadows fall from the mountain-heights” (82-83).
Thus, I fear that without proper definition the traditional pastoral might become a “straw terra,” so to speak, a genre that might be “reconceptualize[d] … [to be] relevant for a contemporary world” on insufficient grounds (303). I suggest that ecocriticism take another look at the classical pastoral to see how a melancholy rural landscape threatened and repossessed by an alien city might overlap or interconnect with our concerns in more contemporary literature.
Some thoughts on Tallmadge
In a gesture which seems to completely divorce ecocriticism from literary studies, Tallmadge defines a curious new “ecological method of criticism” (282). Close reading is just not going to cut it for him because it belongs to conventional literary studies and apparently does not go far enough. As I was reading his essay, the main question on my mind was the question of audience. Who is he writing for? It seems he has in mind a new breed of literary eco-scholars, scholars – if they can even be called that - who go “far enough.”
Tallmadge’s starting point is David Abram’s argument that we have grown deaf to nature and become desensitized to it. It brings to mind Rousseau’s theory of “the natural man,” corrupted by the evils of civilization. Our natural capacity for compassion and pity has been destroyed. Enter nature writing. Enter the eco-scholar, a tutor of the land, engaging with nature through “whole-body encounter[s]” (287).
Tallmadge wants a method “to match our mountains,” a method that will force us to consider nature “in more than a casual way,” the implication being that intellectual labour itself will not carry us far enough (283). We need “fresh air,” we need “field work” (284). We need “field-based reading” (284). And our model should be natural history, a scientific practice and a literary genre all rolled into one!
Interestingly, Tallmadge’s field research project does little more than corroborate King’s account. Hardly a piece of literary scholarship, it might make an interesting contribution to autobiographical studies which are concerned with the question of boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. But how is it ecocritical? Tallmadge himself admits that his escapade added “balance to interpretation,” but that’s pretty much it (291). It is not “an actual demonstration of the method” (291). Wow. I guess we are left on our own to try to envision what an actual demonstration would look like.
Despite the many problems Tallmadge’s new method might pose for literary criticism (for example, what if we are dealing with a fictional mountain? How can you have a “whole-body encounter” with a fictional mountain?), what seems to be most problematic is his questioning of intellectual inquiry. His premise is that intellectual inquiry by itself is not adequate because of its alienating effect. It alienates us from real nature, from the real world. This premise is wholly drawn from Abram’s “alphabetic literacy” argument, which assumes that there once was a golden age when we were all noble savages living in perfect harmony with nature. Even if this were true, Abram’s universalist thesis seems to conflate all human culture without taking into consideration that different peoples and different civilizations construct the nature/culture divide differently. Besides, one could easily argue that intellectual inquiry does not necessarily need to alienate us from nature or anything else for that matter (i.e. Plato’s argument that philosophy is the only road to truth).
Tallmadge’s starting point is David Abram’s argument that we have grown deaf to nature and become desensitized to it. It brings to mind Rousseau’s theory of “the natural man,” corrupted by the evils of civilization. Our natural capacity for compassion and pity has been destroyed. Enter nature writing. Enter the eco-scholar, a tutor of the land, engaging with nature through “whole-body encounter[s]” (287).
Tallmadge wants a method “to match our mountains,” a method that will force us to consider nature “in more than a casual way,” the implication being that intellectual labour itself will not carry us far enough (283). We need “fresh air,” we need “field work” (284). We need “field-based reading” (284). And our model should be natural history, a scientific practice and a literary genre all rolled into one!
Interestingly, Tallmadge’s field research project does little more than corroborate King’s account. Hardly a piece of literary scholarship, it might make an interesting contribution to autobiographical studies which are concerned with the question of boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. But how is it ecocritical? Tallmadge himself admits that his escapade added “balance to interpretation,” but that’s pretty much it (291). It is not “an actual demonstration of the method” (291). Wow. I guess we are left on our own to try to envision what an actual demonstration would look like.
Despite the many problems Tallmadge’s new method might pose for literary criticism (for example, what if we are dealing with a fictional mountain? How can you have a “whole-body encounter” with a fictional mountain?), what seems to be most problematic is his questioning of intellectual inquiry. His premise is that intellectual inquiry by itself is not adequate because of its alienating effect. It alienates us from real nature, from the real world. This premise is wholly drawn from Abram’s “alphabetic literacy” argument, which assumes that there once was a golden age when we were all noble savages living in perfect harmony with nature. Even if this were true, Abram’s universalist thesis seems to conflate all human culture without taking into consideration that different peoples and different civilizations construct the nature/culture divide differently. Besides, one could easily argue that intellectual inquiry does not necessarily need to alienate us from nature or anything else for that matter (i.e. Plato’s argument that philosophy is the only road to truth).
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