Mastery Of Nature Research Articles

Jane Austen and Animals by Barbara K. Seeber, and: Jane Austen’s Erotic Advice by Sarah Raff

Reviewed by: Jane Austen and Animals by Barbara K. Seeber, and: Jane Austen’s Erotic Advice by Sarah Raff Linda V. Troost JANE AUSTEN AND ANIMALS, by Barbara K. Seeber. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. 150 pp. $149.95 cloth; $149.95 ebook. JANE AUSTEN’S EROTIC ADVICE, by Sarah Raff. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 201 pp. $31.95 cloth; $21.99 ebook. Just when you think that everything that can be written about Jane Austen has been written, two books come along to demonstrate that there is plenty more to be discussed. [End Page 275] Barbara Seeber’s Jane Austen and Animals, a beautifully written and deeply researched contribution to ecofeminist and animal studies, covers a lot more than animals. “Jane Austen and Nature” might have been a more accurate title except that such a name would conjure up images of rocks and mountains, lakes and daffodils. Seeber’s concept of nature is more vital. There are animals aplenty to study in Austen—dogs, horses, ponies—but Seeber also discusses trees, agriculture, food, and weather. However, animals and nature are a vehicle for a larger topic. Seeber argues that “Austen aligns the objectification of nature with the objectification of women and, more specifically, the hunting, shooting, and racing of animals with the domination of women” (p. 11). She contends that “Austen suggests the subordination of women within marriage by consistently drawing connections between the subordination of nature, animals, and women” (p. 29). Where might Austen have acquired her ideas? Mary Wollstonecraft was an early participant in the discussion of animal rights and, in her writing, linked the plight of animals to the plight of women. William Cowper, especially in The Task (1785), emphasized animal rights and decried field sports, and William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron expressed similar views in their poetry. Austen was working within an established mode of discourse. On field sports, Seeber allies herself with scholars who see Austen as a critic of them (as opposed to, say, film adaptors, who regard them as a picturesque feature of rural life). In her juvenilia and letters, Austen takes “a censorious view,” and in the novels, her rabid sportsmen do not come off well (p. 50). John Thorpe, for example, can be judged by how he treats his horses: he dominates them and thinks that rest will ruin them (p. 41). Sir John Middleton and Charles Musgrove, both enthusiastic sportsmen, are intellectually blank. These are satiric portraits, but in the character of Willoughby, sporting proclivities accompany a “predatory nature,” and his “conduct towards women is repeatedly described in terms of ‘cruelty’” (p. 44). Sport objectifies animals; sportsmen can likewise objectify women. Even Captain Wentworth, an occasional sportsman, is not above reproach. Seeber calls him “a compromised hero” (p. 59). Among the few non-sportsmen, the most prominent are Captain Benwick and Mr. Darcy, the latter distinguished as a fisherman, a hobby that allows him to bridge class barriers. At Pemberley, we see “Austen’s compensatory attempt to imagine an ideal community where the relationship to nature does not inscribe social hierarchies” (p. 67). How to use nature was debated at the time. Seeber writes about how pets are “situated at the boundary between those animals we love and those we use,” and Lady Bertram’s pug springs to mind (p. 78). Seeber then convincingly demonstrates that Fanny herself becomes a kind of pet. The utility of animals leads naturally to food, and here, too, Austen is aligned with the [End Page 276] radicals. Seeber notes that “food does not create community—it creates division” and that “gifts of food enact power relations” (pp. 93, 105). Even plant food can be implicated. Mr. Knightley’s agricultural interests embody his authority: nature submits to him. However, mastery of nature does not succeed in Austen’s last works. The fragment “Sanditon” (1817) and the deathbed poem “When Winchester races” (1817) both focus “explicitly on a nature that resists human control” (p. 128). At the end of her life, Austen reminds us that “nature is not simply there for humans” (p. 128). While a few arguments are strained to fit its thesis, Seeber’s book is closely argued, well...

Introduction

Introduction

"Nanna Style": The Countercultural Politics of Retro Femininities

Over the past two decades in the West, practices of ethical consumption have become increasingly visible within mainstream consumer culture (Lewis and Potter). While they manifest in a variety of forms, such practices are frequently articulated to politics of anti-consumerism, environmentalism, and sustainable consumption through which lifestyle choices are conceived as methods for investing in—and articulating—ethical and social concerns. Such practices are typically understood as both a reflection of the increasing global influence of neoliberal, consumer-oriented modes of citizenship and a response to the destabilisation of capitalism’s certainties in the wake of ongoing climate change and the global financial crisis (Castells et al.; Miller).

Nathaniel Wolloch. History and Nature in the Enlightenment: Praise of the Mastery of Nature in Eighteenth-Century Historical Literature.

Nathaniel Wolloch. History and Nature in the Enlightenment: Praise of the Mastery of Nature in Eighteenth-Century Historical Literature.

Adolph Sutro and the Ruins of the Sutro Baths

The Sutro Baths (1894-1966) was a glass enclosed natatorium complex comprised of several large swimming pools innovatively engineered with an elaborate pipe system that drew water directly from the ocean. Completed in 1894 and opened officially to the public in 1896, it was also home to an eclectic museum and three restaurants. Adolph Sutro (1830-1899) designed the natatorium as part of a larger entertainment development that included a Bavarian inspired castle known as the Cliff House, a tree-lined park with classical statues, and an amusement parkway. During its first decades, the Sutro Baths was host to elaborate aquatic performances, orchestras, and vaudeville-style entertainments. Located in what was, at the time, the desolate inhospitably foggy area of San Francisco, it was an affordable entertainment for individuals from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds, even having its own rail line to take visitors from and back to the more densely populated areas of the city. Since 1966, the ruins of the burned and demolished baths have been left to the devices of nature, except for the occasional painting over of graffiti. This paper presents an iconographical analysis of the Sutro Baths ruins. Drawing directly from Erwin Panofsky's (1892-1968) iconological theory, in addition to Walter Benjamin's (1892-1940) definition of the aura, the following analysis will include an assessment of the ruins' expressive qualities, first through a visit to the site, followed by a brief biographical overview of its creator, Adolph Sutro, and concluding with a summary of the historical context of the site. This analysis will reveal ideas of amusement, cultural edification, and the nineteenth century architectural interest in the containment of nature within artificial environments. In direct contrast to this containment or mastery of nature is posed the paradox of the architectural ruin and the slow steady reclamation of nature.

Regressive Augmentation: Investigating Ubicomp’s Romantic Promises

Regressive Augmentation: Investigating Ubicomp’s Romantic Promises

China frente a occidente. Pensamiento gráfico, imagen y expresión arquitectónica: notas para una comparación

Traditional Chinese philosophy differs from Western thought in its essentially holistic conception of reality: it casts no separation between object and subject. The western method, essentially in mastery of nature, functions by analysing every isolated component in the objects of its study. Material progress has gradually extended this approach onto every aspect of our activity, while the East has always maintained its contextual and global standpoint and, as a result, a harmonious relationship with the world we inhabit. The scientific view successfully coexists with this empathetic and contemplative outlook. We shall set to understand the essence of the aforementioned difference by observing the aspects of drawing, painting and poetry in Chinese script. We will see the other, still present, traditional conception of the world surface in the way the contemporary architectural project is currently tackled and, especially, communicated.

Where Are All the Ecomasculinists in Mining?

Where Are All the Ecomasculinists in Mining?

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Ecocriticism and Eighteenth‐Century English Studies

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Ecocriticism and Eighteenth‐Century English Studies

Utopia and Ethiopia: The Chronicles of Lalibela as Critical Reflection

The article discusses the presence of emancipatory utopian ideas in Ethiopian history through a critical hermeneutical interpretation of Lalibela. Drawing on the concept of concrete utopia, the paper argues that the works and Chronicles of Lalibela secrete a concrete utopian surplus that points to the conceptualization of knowledge as critique and as the mastery of nature, of labor as a transformative and emancipatory activity, and of power relations as expressions of equality between subjects and ruler. The article contends that Lalibela's utopian surplus implies questions and reflections about social transformation, which, being rooted in Ethiopian history, provide possibilities for developing emancipatory ideas and practices that respond to the modern needs and aspirations of Ethiopians. It argues that, if Ethiopia is to extricate herself from the poverty and tyranny traps of passive modernization and successfully meet the challenges of modernity, reflection on and the quest for democracy and prosperity need to link up with the concrete utopian surpluses that inform Ethiopian history.

Entre a Psicanálise e o Romantismo: a razão, o limite e a civilização

The aim of this study is to contextualize and problematize the similarities and differences between the place that reason holds in the core of psychoanalytic and romantic thinking. Starting from the idea of rationality and mastery of nature and desire, we show how psychoanalysis and romanticism have the same object of analysis, but different methods and perspectives of approach. For this, at certain times it will be necessary to situate both psychoanalysis and Romanticism against the Enlightenment. As a parameter for our study, we will take the text A posição de Freud na moderna história das ideias, by Thomas Mann, where the author highlights how psychoanalysis at the same time stands for rationality but falls outside the scientific naturalism.

Sustainable development and environmental politics: Case studies from India and Australia

This paper uses Castoriadis’s idea of the imaginary and Agnes Heller’s conceptualization of modernity as an interplay of the historical and technological imaginations, to examine how modernity engages with the idea of development to foster a particular vision of the future as always in progression. It uses the examples of Tasmania and Kerala, in Australia and India, respectively, as case studies which challenge the dominant perception of development as a linear and progressive ideology of growth that translates into ‘the development of productive forces and the rational mastery of nature’. The case studies also show how, despite the radically different paths through modernity, it is the same logics of modernity that are at work in both locations.

Health Care and the Technological Project

For all of its political drama, the health care debate appears consumed with bureaucratic minutiae quite distant from political philosophy. Yet in important respects that debate is intimately connected with the founding premises of the modern technological project of the mastery of nature for the relief of man's estate as envisioned by René Descartes and Francis Bacon. This essay uses a recent discussion of the health care debate by bioethicist Daniel Callahan to raise some fundamental questions about the role of technology in our medical culture. It argues that modern health care is the Cartesian project come of age, and it uses Descartes' Discourse on Method to reflect on the possibility of a sensible politics of technology in our time.

TECHNOLOGY AND MONOTHEISM: A DIALOGUE WITH NEO-CALVINIST PHILOSOPHY

In Nature, Technology and the Sacred (2005) I argued that the modern project of the technological mastery of nature remains profoundly shaped by its religious roots. In this paper I explore connections and tensions between this analysis and the neo-Calvinist critiques of modernity and modern technology advanced by Herman Dooyeweerd and Hendrik van Riessen. I explore the relationship between Dooyeweerd’s analysis of Western culture as a sequence of religious ‘ground motives’ and my own in terms of the series of ‘orderings of the sacred’ which together constitute the ‘long arc of monotheism’. I relate van Riessen’s analysis of the internal structure of technology to my argument that this structure has been shaped by transformations in the sacred since the Protestant reformation. I conclude with some observations, prompted by the divergences between the two accounts, concerning the relationship between technology, monotheism, history and politics.

Making a Pig of the Humanities: Re-centering the Historical Narrative

Making a Pig of the Humanities: Re-centering the Historical Narrative

Portraying technology in gallery paintings

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the FPU Grant Programme and the Project HUM2007‐63267 from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, as well as the Fundación Esquerdo and the Residencia de Estudiantes of Madrid. Notes 1. Jones and Galison, Picturing Science; Lefèvre, Renn, and Schoepflin, Power of Images. 2. Speth‐Holterhoff, Les peintres Flamands; Filipczak, Picturing Art. 3. Hill, ‘Scientific instruments.’ 4. Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities; Olmi, L'Inventario; Grote, Macrocosmos in Microcosmo; Lugli, Naturalia et Mirabilia; Evans and Marr, Curiosity and Wonder. 5. Filipczak, Picturing Art. 6. Las Ciencias y las Artes. 93 × 114 cm. Oil on panel. Catalogue no. 1.405. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Díaz Padrón, Siglo de Rubens, 1297–1301; Díaz Padrón and Royo‐Villanova, David Teniers, 195–201. 7. De Maere and Wabbes, Flemish Painters, vol. 1, 374. 8. In fact, attributions regarding authorship vary according to interpreters. Particularly noteworthy is the similarity with the work entitled The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet (The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore), attributed to Hieronymus Francken II. Díaz Padrón, Siglo de Rubens, 1300–1. 9. From the history of science perspective see, for example, Daston, Renn, and Rheinberger, ‘Visions.’ 10. Alpers, Art of Describing; Stafford, Devices of Wonder; Kusukawa and Maclean, Transmitting Knowledge. 11. Burke, Eyewitnessing. 12. Hill, ‘Scientific Instruments.’ 13. Michel, ‘Mouvement perpetuel’; Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile.’ For a thorough and up‐to‐date account on Drebbel, see Keller, ‘Cornelis Drebbel.’ 14. Speth‐Holterhoff, Les peintres Flamands, Figures 11, 12, 21, 25, 32, 39, 42, 49. 15. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile,’ 124–38. 16. Galileo, Opere, vol. XI, no. 652, 655. Rubens, Letters, no. 52, 58 (to Valavez), 60 (to Valavez), 196, 235. 17. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile,’ Figures 1, 2, 3, 4; Marr, ‘Gentille curiosité,’ Figure 8.2. A drawing made by the Bohemian gentleman Heinrich Hiesserle von Chodaw, who attented Drebbel's presentation of the perpetuum mobile to King James I in 1607, is perhaps the one that resembles the painted version most (Drake‐Brockman, Figure 2). 18. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile’, 143–4. This mechanism for perpetual motion has been regarded as a predecessor of the barometer. Michel, ‘First Barometer.’ 19. Many are compiled in Rye, England as Seen by Foreigners, 232–42. 20. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile,’ 137. 21. An interesting exception could be the painting entitled Allegory of Hearing, by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens (Prado Museum, catalogue no. 1.395). One of the instruments on the wall (the second from the left), at the right‐hand side of the composition, seems to feature the distinctive ring‐shaped glass tube filled with liquid. This could be a model of perpetuum mobile rather different to those conventionally depicted. I was persuaded to look for a perpetuum mobile/clock‐like device in this painting after observing a perpetuum mobile in another Allegory of Hearing (Ertz, Breughel the Younger, 350, Figure 184) mentioned in Michel, ‘First Barometer’, 92, n. 7. Vera Keller has also noted this in her work on Drebbel. See Keller, ‘Cornelis Drebbel,’ 268. 22. I thank Simon Schaffer for his suggestions on accumulation and technology. On collecting and collections, Elsner and Cardinal, Cultures of Collecting and Impey and MacGregor, Origins of Museums. 23. Grote, Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. 24. Daston and Park, Wonders, chap. 7. 25. Swan, ‘Ad Vivum.’ 26. Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, Part IV. 27. Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels; Freedberg, ‘Science, Commerce, and Art.’ 28. Cook, ‘Time's Bodies’; Impey and MacGregor, Origins of Museums. 29. Rubens, Letters, no. 58, 97. 30. DaCosta Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature. 31. In sharp contrast with the allegories of ignorance represented in two paintings, most notably the one that rests on a chair in the center of the composition. Díaz Padrón, Siglo de Rubens, 1298–1300. 32. Daston and Park, Wonders, chap. 7. 33. Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs. 34. Stoichita, Self‐Aware Image.

Koyaanisqatsi

Marie Louise Von Franz reminds us that we must relate to the outer and inner world simultaneously—the world of human relationships and kinships and the inner world of the archetypes. We cannot have one without the other or else we risk becoming one-sided and out of balance. Translated, the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi means “life out of balance.” Immoderate consumption has precipitated the earth’s crisis of species extinction and global warming. On the other side of the oscillating psyche, animal rights and sensitivity emerges toward consideration for the well-being of all sentient creatures. The animal rights movement signifies the stirring of soul. The neglected animal body that resides within the psyche is alive in the instinctually deprived creature whose fur we touch and whose warm breath we feel. A casino was being constructed in western New Mexico, home to indigenous tribes. When it was discovered that the soil brought in to help build the foundation was from a burial site, construction was halted, until the soil was removed and a reparative ceremony held. Eros extends to ancestral bonds, and this illustrates what is missing in Western culture. Psychological research shows us the frequency with which we dream of the dead, and the deep meaning and fulfillment found in these dreams. Lacking cultural context, these experiences are interior and private, and the creation of meaning is a private experience. The feeling function is experienced on an internal level where it is differentiated and relationships with ancestors deepen and evolve over time. This experience nurtures the individual but does not tap into collective healing powers to balance the lopsidedness of the civilization. Mastery of nature was the spiritual impetus behind the historical and cultural developments that have become the technological age in which we live. What von Franz points us toward is moral courage to master ourselves by becoming fully ourselves and to heal the internal and external rifts that we so precariously endure.

William Smellie and Enlightenment Anti-Anthropocentrism

This article examines the anti-anthropocentric views of the eighteenth-century Scottish natural philosopher William Smellie, in particular in comparison with the predominant anthropocentric ethic of the human mastery of nature more common during the Enlightenment. Smellie's views on this issue, and their importance for understanding some key aspects of eighteenth-century cosmology, are outlined, as is also their relevance for understanding the history of modern anthropocentrism in general.

Introduction

IntroductionIn Honor of Val Plumwood, 1939–2008 Victoria Davion Click for larger view View full resolution Credit: Kumi Kato On the memorial site honoring Val Plumwood (valplumwood.com), she is described as an environmentalist-philosopher-feminist-author-activist-botanist-ecologist-naturalist-friend-conservationist-survivor-musician. However, those of us who had the pleasure to know her both professionally and personally will immediately realize that these words cannot capture the force that was Val. Val wrote, spoke, and acted upon what she believed with a vigor that was and still is immediately touching. Her theoretical work focused primarily upon looking at how anthropocentrism rests upon the problematic assumption that there is a significant moral division between humans and the rest of nature, and her work provided a systematic analysis of how this division has been historically constructed in the dominant western tradition. She argued that a fundamental reason/nature dualism underlies this tradition, in which whatever is associated [End Page 1] with nature (including colonized people, indigenous people, and women in general) is seen as inferior to whatever is associated with reason—dominant white men. Hence she argued that issues of social justice for humans and nonhumans are conceptually and historically intertwined. Plumwood is the author of three books: The Fight for Forests (1973) with her late husband Richard Routly, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993), and Environmental Culture (2002).1 She also authored over one hundred articles. In her obituary honoring Val,2 theorist/activist Freya Mathews says the following, which I believe truly captures Val's integrity and courage both as a theorist and an activist: "Caring little for convention, she unapologetically and energetically lived the life she theorized and never failed to speak out on behalf of nonhuman others who came into her path…. In this way she showed how philosophy could not only diagnose the world's ills but become something more than a charade of words—a way of life." Indeed, Val was truly a force of nature. It is in this spirit that Chris Cuomo and I offer a special issue of Ethics and the Environment in her honor. Direct all correspondence to: Journals Manager, Indiana University Press, 601 N. Morton St., Bloomington, IN 47404 USA iuporder@indiana.edu Acknowledgment This issue is partly in conjunction with "Environmental Justice and Ecofeminism: Ethical Complexity in Action," a two-day symposium in memory of Val Plumwood which took place at the University of Georgia in March 2009. Speakers included: Lori Gruen (Wesleyan University), Teri Blanton (Kentuckians for Commonwealth: www.ilovemountains.org), Jamie Baker Roskie (UGA Land Use Clinic), Chaone Mallory (Villanova University), and Piers Stephens (University of Georgia). Notes 1. Plumwood (Routley), Val and Richard Routley, The Fight for the Forests: The Takeover of Australian Forests for Pines, Wood Chips and Intensive Forestry, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, 1973; Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Routledge, 1993; Plumwood, Val. Environmental Culture: the Ecological Crisis of Reason. Routledge, 2002. 2. Mathews' obituary can be read at: www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/mar/26/australia.world [End Page 2] Copyright © 2009 Indiana University Press

Vale Val: In Memory of Val Plumwood

On 29 February 2008, Val Plumwood died of stroke at the age of 68. She was not only a seminal environmental thinker, whose book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature has become a classic of environmental philosophy; she was also a woman who fearlessly lived life on her own deeply considered terms, often in opposition to prevailing norms. In this obituary Freya Mathews discusses Val's life and her contributions to environmental philosophy.