Our goal for this week and next--and in the writing of our seminar papers--will be to explore the frontiers of ecocriticism. Where, from your perspective, do they lie? Might posthumanism be the way of the future for ecocritics?
More immediately, and potentially more importantly, what's the deal with Derrida's cat? (FYI: it took me the better part of a day to wade through Derrida's essay, so budget your time accordingly).
Also, don't forgot to prepare your 1-8 minute presentation of your seminar paper--and now would be a good time to start working on your annotated bibliography, too.
until Wednesday,
kevin
9 comments:
April 2, 2008
John S. Sonin
Eng. 423-Maier
Blog—11
Endless Mirroring
Derrida’s reflecting “cat” seems to be signifying the evolution of Ecocritticism from the days of W. Long and Burrough’s in the context of a contemporary self-awareness in nature writing evolving from a self-denial of any consequence. As much as I concur with the optimism of Long, and disprove of Burrough’s degradation of him, the self-awareness of Derrida’s reflections on Others, animals (cats) most poignantly, seems to be recognizing the levels of description I discerned reading Bates and his cybernetic relationships.
Gotta run, more later!
Ben Crozier
4/2/08
I wonder that the President of the United States had nothing better to do with his time than participate in the "Nature Faker" controversy, which on the whole struck me as being rather absurd. John Burroughs accused Long and others of lying purposefully and distorting facts, when it seemed to me that this was not the case. Of course, not having read Long and others, it is difficult to judge. Regardless, it seemed that the "fakers" were in no way claiming that their work was scientific, which their opponents argued. I also found it interesting that Burroughs didn't seem to respond to the criticism that some of his observations were less than factual. Once again, it seems to be a question of valuing intuition versus scientific "fact." I also thought the mention of Native Americans was interesting, as well as the slight deviation in some of the articles about representations of nature, as when William Hudson writes, "to humanise animal life is to falsify, to caricature it."
As far as Derrida goes, it was difficult reading. There were some interesting points, and I was especially attuned to what he said about the treatment of animals in Genesis. What he said about shame was interesting, and it seems to relate to Sartre's recognition of the Other in his "Being and Nothingness." I also thought that his point about grouping all living non-humans into the "Animal" category was interesting. On the whole though, it was difficult to (follow). What was the deal with "I am (following)"; there was a note from the translator but it still confused me. Also, what does he mean when he talks about erasing traces? And what is the importance of autobiography?
Thanks for suggesting an order to read them in Kevin. You go from a modern media perspective of nature in Gerrard to “Nature Fakers” and their ideas of how media should portray nature in the beginning of the 20th century to Derrida who says, no matter how you look at it it doesn’t matter, it goes back to far to be looked at in terms of what’s a proper portrayal of nature and instead needs to be looked at as how exactly we screwed animal(s) from the time of their naming by Adam or Ish. You can deconstruct all the arguments to that point but who do we follow from the deconstruction? Just a little rant.
Ben has a good point though, why was the President so enthralled in the ‘nature faker’s’ debate that he had to put in his two pennies. Abbott puts it nicely and I’ll leave it at that.
My thoughts are turned towards Derrida and his use of the Chimera and Bellerophon in his argument advocating the destruction of the idea of nudity, animal and the human/animal issue. Derrida argues that when his cat sees him in the nude he feels shame, the cat feels no shame because it can’t conceptualize his, Derrida or humanities, or its own nudity, therefore the cat “would be in nonnudity because it is nude, and man in nudity to the extent that he is no longer nude”. It’s the shame in nudity, I argue, that is what ‘separates’ us in reference to ‘nature’. In Derrida’s confusing way he argues that the shame that we feel stems from the fall from grace and the fact that ‘animals’ did not fall from grace, they were subjected the moment God gave Adam the ability to name them. So later in his argument he talks about the Chimera, I won’t go into the fact that it was portrayed as a woman, and how it was brought down by Bellerophon who tamed his half brother, Pegasus, after he was sent to Lycia to be killed by a host king. Anyways, the point is after Bellerophon kills the indestructible Chimera he goes back to the city in order to bring it to ruins with the help of his father, Poseidon, and is stopped by the shame he feels in seeing the nudity of the women who are prostituting themselves in order to stop Bellerophon from destroying their city. His shame is why he loses, why he can’t follow through, granted it’s shame for other beings that are nakedly prostituting themselves. Ok, so again another rant but this is where I’m going to start my discussion in class. In the shadow of a master deconstructionalist I’m going to poke holes in his metaphor of the Chimera as the wronged animals and himself as Bellerophon.
April 2, 2008
John S. Sonin
Eng. 423-Maier
Blog—11
Endless Mirroring
Derrida’s reflecting “cat” seems to be signifying the evolution of Ecocriticism from the days of W. Long and Burrough’s in the context of a contemporary self-awareness in nature writing evolving from a self-denial of any consequence in the observed biosphere. As much as I concur with the optimism of Long and his attempts to know the individual animals intuitively, and disprove of Burrough’s degradation of him, the self-awareness of Derrida’s reflections on Others—animals (cats) most poignantly—seems to be recognizing the levels of description I discerned reading Bates and his cybernetic relationships. This alteration in our cultural way of knowing may be the understanding, and our descriptions of that understanding when communicated, that will alter the downward-spiraling, eternal conflict way of knowing that has wrought so much self-defeating, unnatural, de-autopoiestic, cultures to the human animal.
The self-regulating machine is synonymous with our globe. Like the governor link on an internal combustion engine but not a hybrid of humanity, does not acquire that self-regulation to assure self-destruction. As sure as Long, et.al., with their focus on the individual animal around the turn of the last century, may have precipitated a commonality of emotions amongst animals and brought us closer to unity with nature, Derrida’s attention to self-awareness and the pollution of our observations from our own vision, may help us see the pattern that connects everything.
Andy Lounsbury
2 April 2008
I'd like to say that Derrida, on the whole, makes my head heard. He does make some interesting points, although he likes to go on tangeants. his section on the naming of animals/nature in genesis was interesting, and it was definitely nice to see something besides serpeant = bad. i think the most interesting aspect of the article was in the beginning (before my head started hurting), when he addresses the differences between humans and animals. i can find no fault in his argument--humans are the only soecies that wears clothes (although i guess it defends how you define 'clothes'). i thought that was a unique way to define the separation, although i wasn't sure how it was significant. maybe that was his round about way of saying that there is no difference.
Gerrard was gratifyingly headache free--i was particularly interested in the distinction between domestic and wild animals. i think it's kind of pointless to separate animals like that, especially once you take into consideration places like zoos and the 4,000+ households that have tigers registered as pets. would a stray dog be considered wild or domesticated?
as for Derrida's cat, i can only conclude that his cat was staring at him the whole time he was writing the article and he felt abliged to include it.
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
What I do
Is build or crush.
Matt Boline
To answer one of Ben's many questions, I think that the I am is a reference to God. Derrida is talking about the naked Genesis and the "Great I am" is a reference to God I think that it is a Hebrew translation for God. I think that Derrida is creating his own translation of the creation story. One in which God is replaced with Nature and Man is still man, but you're right man is an animal. The man-imal has the ability to make promises. Sounds like the task given to man by God as the steward of the earth. I think that the interpretation of Derrida's creation story is an ecocentric creation story that places the Nature (God) in the supreme throne as the almighty. The cat s Eve whom the man is embarrassed to be scene naked in front of. The weird sexual overtones of the man and cat interaction upholds this interpretation. Cats also have a sort of dualistic character representation in that they occupy two worlds, day and night. Much like a snake or serpent being a sort of intermediary character that can move on land and water and slithers on the ground. Is he saying that women are evil like the snake in Genesis then?
Derrida's interpretation falls right in line with the phenomenological pursuits that he held in high regard. He is talking about a literal conscious event, but shapes it in terms of the Old Testiment. Which is the essence of the Torah, which Derrida would have been familiar with as a Jewish man in Algiers.
April 2, 2008
John S. Sonin
Eng. 423-Maier
Blog—11
Endless Mirroring
Derrida’s reflecting “cat” seems to be signifying the evolution of Ecocriticism from the days of W. Long and Burrough’s in the context of a contemporary self-awareness in nature writing evolving from a self-denial of any consequence in the observed biosphere. As much as I concur with the optimism of Long and his attempts to know the individual animals intuitively, and disprove of Burrough’s degradation of him, the self-awareness of Derrida’s reflections on Others—animals (cats) most poignantly—seems to be recognizing the levels of description I discerned reading Bates and his cybernetic relationships. This alteration in our cultural way of knowing may be the understanding, and our descriptions of that understanding when communicated, that will alter the downward-spiraling, eternal conflict way of knowing that has wrought so much self-defeating, unnatural, de-autopoiestic, cultures to the human animal.
The self-regulating machine is synonymous with our globe. Like the governor link on an internal combustion engine but not a hybrid of humanity, does not acquire that self-regulation to assure self-destruction. As sure as Long, et.al., with their focus on the individual animal around the turn of the last century, may have precipitated a commonality of emotions amongst animals and brought us closer to unity with nature, Derrida’s attention to self-awareness and the pollution of our observations from our own vision, may help us see the pattern that connects everything.
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
What I do
Is build or crush.
That connecting pattern is, now that I’ve been made aware of how other critiques’ have syllogized Winnie the Pooh with Derrida’s “Following…” discourse, we must follow the tracks of other evolutionary maturation to discover ourselves. But at the same time we have our noses to the tracks made by Others’—as with the absurdity that made me laugh upon recognition of where the Pooh story was going as Kevin read it last night—Derrida is positing our need to reflect upon ourselves and where we are. He’s saying that by hunting after ourselves, if we don’t see how the track is our own before meeting our prey, and I’m fully conscious of the metaphoric contradictions (but therein lies the symbol of human self-annihilation), we will be ‘chasing our tails’ into eternity.
The comparison between the Garrard and the Derrida readings is what most stuck out for me; Particularly, the representation of animals in movie and television productions. The Donna Haraway reading comes to mind to because she argues that it that modern technology is a part of the imperial gaze that dominates nature and woman. The Garrard reading corresponds it this because it shows how nature is misrepresented as reality when in fact nature is manipulated by technology. Manipulated representation of time and space, scenes of wildlife for dramatic affect do not give us accurate depictions of nature. Rather, nature is always seen by us (humans) as we explore (see) their worlds. Furthmore, what and how we see are the products of production companies like Disney who has not always taken the welfare of the animal into consideration. Disney depicted wild animals because there was money in it. Mickey Mouse is an example of the company misrepresenting the animal for sake of profit. Disney is a prime example of the imperial gaze where the animal is dominated by the human. The animal is made into an image that benefits man. Derrida argues that the gaze is in one direction human to animals. As Abram also argues the imperial gaze has killed reciprocity between the human and animal worlds. Derrida goes further by elaborating how humans make themselves different through clothing and writing. Derrida uses Lewis Carroll’s novel Through The Looking Glass as an example of the image of the animal becoming distorted and questions reciprocity between human and animal world.
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