I think there is a nature/culture spectrum. If we are to play with words.
Though, it seems to me, when using words and "arguments" one moves
"away" from "nature" and deeper into culture. Some sort of psychotic?,
self-absorbed looping.
I'd rather look for nature in a trance state - stripping away as much
socio-cultural stuff as possible.
For what it is worth, however, Eric Chaisson in his "cosmic evolution"
astrophysics speaks of humans as the eyes of the universe looking back
at itself. After all that expansion from a big bad bang, here we are,
looking at ourselves as part and parcel of it all. Then what?
I guess, for me, the idea of nature and "our" role and position in the
world, as a reflection, becomes about responsibility: shaking off the
shackles of oppression and getting down to, say, permaculture business
and other arts of not being governed.
At any rate, biomimicry sounds better than mimetic desire. Go for it.
In conclusion:
"...Burn the books they´ve got too many names and psychoses..", as the
great Alanis Morissette sang in 1998.
On 4/18/24 19:27, Ryan Griffis via nettime-l wrote:
Hi Everyone.
My take away from the last few decades of writing on “Nature” is that it's a
term that can only be understood/useful as a way to define relationships.
Increasingly, it seems like a term that defines relationships in some pretty
destructive, asymmetrical ways. I mean, it always has, but I guess it seems
impossible to maintain, even for subjectivities like mine who have historically
benefitted from it (though such benefits came with a pretty heavy price). FWIW,
I also don’t see much value is declaring “We’re “Nature”, everything’s nature.”
I just don’t know what that achieves or makes possible?
Jodi A. Byrd, Alyosha Goldstein, Jodi Melamed, & Chandan Reddy talk about
“grounded relationalities” and propose being “grounded” as:
"literally situated in relation to and from the land but without precluding
movement, multiplicity, multidirectionality, transversals, and other elementary or
material currents of water and air. This is a being grounded and living relationalities
in which the nonhuman world and the materiality of land and other elements have agential
significance in ways that exceed liberal conceptions of the human."
https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1521&context=english_fac
The philosophical/legal developments related to codifying (nation-state
granted) rights for non-human subjects forces this in some more literal,
practical terms, maybe. I’m saying that because the language of rights, as
we’re experiencing acutely in the US right now, requires intense specificity
and methods of enforcement. “Nature” is waaaaay too amorphous for rights. David
Takacs reports very briefly on some of the failures of the Ecuadorian
constitutional provisions that enshrine the rights of nature (see link below
for the article).
https://illinoislawrev.web.illinois.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Takacs.pdf
It seems more practical when it's a specific watershed, river, forest, tree,
species, etc. And those subjects need a representational form that begins with
relationships, rather than singular subjectivities. For example, the Martuwarra
(Fitzroy River) in Australia and the legal framework of “ancestral personhood”
that situates the river and its traditional stewards as co-constitutive of one
another, with a shared history. (Which I only just learned about in a lecture
by Takacs - I know there are likely folks here with more knowledge of this
example).
https://www.martuwarra.org/aboutus
I guess I’m landing on the desire to reconsider the relations that have fallen
under the Human-Nature framework/language, and instead using a framework that
represents more differentiated relationships that are grounded in specificity.
In a Venn diagram, I want to use more circles than just two (or one).
Apologies if I’ve gone WAY too far afield of the conversation!
Ryan
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