Environmental Media
wilderness
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
readings
William Cronon (1995). “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the
Wrong Nature” In William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human
Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90 (21 PAGES)
John Scalan (2005) “Garbage Metaphorics” in On Garbage. Reaktion Books Ltd,
UK. pp. 13-55 (42 PAGES)
Optional:
William Chaloupka and R. McGreggor Cawley (1993) The Great Wild Hope: Nature,
Environmentalism, and the Open Secret. In: In the nature of things : language,
politics, and the environment (1993) Jane Bennett and William Chaloupka, editors.
University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London.
→ Chapter 6 Going Wild: The Contested Terrain of Nature pp.111
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35 (2009).
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
http://
www.outsideonline.co
m/outdoor-adventure/
media/Reboot-or-DieTrying.html
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
http://
www.elasticspace.com/
2013/09/theimmaterials-project
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
http://
opinionator.blogs.nyti
mes.com/2012/03/29/
nature-deficit-disorder/
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
“
...in less than a generation’s time,
millions of people completely
decoupled themselves from nature.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/nature-deficit-disorder/
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
http://
www.cbsnews.com/
news/what-doesnatural-really-mean-onfood-labels/
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/14/planet_earth_vs_roads_the_epic_conflict_that_will_define_the_future_of_the_world/
wilderness
William Cronon “The Trouble with
Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong
Nature”In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking
the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90)
The time has come to rethink wilderness.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
Why?
For many Americans wilderness stands as
the last remaining place where civilization,
that all too human disease, has not fully
infected the earth.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Hopetoun_
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
Remember the feelings of such moments,
and you will know as well as I do that you
were in the presence of something
irreducibly nonhuman, something
profoundly Other than yourself.
Wilderness is made of that too.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smFxLr-caeI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smFxLr-caeI
Now let’s go back 250 years in American
and European history...
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
Cronon (1995) shows that:
...strongest associations of wilderness then
were biblical.
...a place to which one came only against
one’s will, and always in fear and trembling.
...value arose solely from the possibility that
it might be “reclaimed” and turned toward
human ends vs. raw state.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
parks
Thoreau in 1862 declared
wildness to be the preservation
of the world...
invites us to
find a sense of
meaning of
direction and
purpose in life
through
immediate
contact with
the living
creatures
leads to
sympathy with
intelligence
lying outside
the bounds of
positive
science,
traditional
philosophy, or
conventional
religiosity
originary
thinker in the
philosophy of
nonviolent civil
disobedience
environmental
protest
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nattrans/ntwilderness/essays/preserva.htm
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
When John Muir arrived in the
Sierra Nevada in 1869, he
would declare:
1838 – 1914.
ScottishAmerican
naturalist,
author, and
early advocate
of preservation
of wilderness in
the United
States.
“No
description of
Heaven that I
have ever
heard or read
of seems half
so fine.”
...various corners of the
American map came to be
designated as sites whose
wild beauty was so
spectacular that a growing
number of citizens had to
visit and see them for
themselves
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
http://www.wyndham.com/property/XLVON/Images/42255_x1.jpg
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
Yellowstone
became the first
national park in
1872.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
The key to Yellowstone's future as a national
park, though, was the 1871 exploration
under the direction of the government
geologist Ferdinand Hayden. Hayden
brought along William Jackson, a pioneering
photographer, and Thomas Moran, a brilliant
landscape artist, to make a visual record of
the expedition. Their images provided the
first visual proof of Yellowstone's wonders
and caught the attention of the U.S.
Congress.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
1872
http://yellowstone.net/
history/files/
2011/02/027351.jpg
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
1872
http://yellowstone.net/
history/files/
2011/02/027351.jpg
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
1872
http://yellowstone.net/
history/files/
2011/02/027351.jpg
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
“
Various tribes, in spite of their long
association with the Park, were not
consulted with regard to the creation of
the Park.
http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/688
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
ownership vs inhabitation
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
1903
He took the view
that the President as
a “steward of the
people" should take
whatever action
necessary for the
public good unless
expressly forbidden
by law or the
Constitution
As president, Roosevelt created five
national parks (doubling the previously
existing number); signed the landmark
Antiquities Act and used its special
provisions to unilaterally create 18 national
monuments, including the Grand Canyon;
set aside 51 federal bird sanctuaries, four
national game refuges, and more than 100
million acres' worth of national forests.
http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/people/historical/roosevelt/
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
http://www.nps.gov/
yose/historyculture/
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com
index.htm 2014 / IIT
1917
Clare Marie Hodges became the first female
National Park Ranger at Yosemite.
http://www.pbs.org/
nationalparks/
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com
2014 / IIT
media_detail/317/
1920
“
Before the establishment of the National
Park Service in 1916, the parks had
existed as a haphazard collection of
scenic places – occasionally guarded by
the Army, often ignored by Congress,
and in many ways controlled by the
railroads that had funded much of the
development in the parks.
http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/history/ep4/
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
1920
Mather, the first director of the National Park
Service, was determined to change all that.
He wanted more national parks within reach
of more people, and he wanted them
promoted as one cohesive system.
http://www.pbs.org/
nationalparks/history/
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com
2014 / IIT
ep4/
What did he do?
1964 Wilderness Act
http://www.wilderness.net/nwps/legisact?print=yes
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
sublime
...one of the most important expressions of
that broad transatlantic movement we today
label as romanticism.
sublime
a (1) : to elevate or exalt especially in dignity
or honor (2) : to render finer (as in purity or
excellence)
b : to convert (something inferior) into
something of higher worth
In the theories of
Edmund Burke,
Immanuel Kant,
William Gilpin,
and others, sublime
landscapes were
those rare places on
earth where one had
more chance than
elsewhere to
glimpse the face of
God.
...the strongest emotion which the
mind is capable of
feeling. ...because I am satisfied
the ideas of pain are much more
powerful than those which enter on
the part of pleasure
Edmund Burke (1729–1797). On the Sublime and
Beautiful.
The Harvard
Classics. 1909–14.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
In the theories of
Edmund Burke,
Immanuel Kant,
William Gilpin,
and others, sublime
landscapes were
those rare places on
earth where one had
more chance than
elsewhere to
glimpse the face of
God.
http://
www.iep.utm.edu/
kantaest/#SH2c
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
In the theories of
Edmund Burke,
Immanuel Kant,
William Gilpin,
and others, sublime
landscapes were
those rare places on
earth where one had
more chance than
elsewhere to
glimpse the face of
God.
The term "picturesque
beauty" was originally
defined in Gilpin's, The
Essay on Prints (1768)
http://
faculty.winthrop.edu/
kosterj/engl203/
overviews/sublime.htm
He wrote the rules
explaining how to paint
or sketch a scene in
nature to cause the right
circumstances for
reflecting on it in
tranquility...
http://
faculty.winthrop.edu/
kosterj/engl203/
overviews/sublime.htm
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
frontier
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of
the Frontier in American History"presented at
a special meeting of the American Historical
Association at the 1893 World's Columbian
Exposition in Chicago.
This hugely influential work marked a turning
point in US history and culture, arguing that
the nation’s expansion into the Great West
was directly linked to its unique spirit: a
rugged individualism forged at the juncture
between civilization and wilderness, which for
better or worse lies at the heart of American
identity today.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
The mythic frontier individualist was almost
always masculine in gender: here, in the
wilderness, a man could be a real man, the
rugged individual he was meant to be before
civilization sapped his energy and threatened
his masculinity.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/s_z/turner.htm
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
This nostalgia for a passing frontier way of
life inevitably implied ambivalence, if not
downright hostility, toward modernity and
all that it represented.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
What does the end of the frontier mean?
And for whom?
For many women,
Asians, Mexicans who
suddenly found
themselves residents
of the United States,
and, of course,
Indians, the West was
no promised land.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/s_z/turner.htm
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
For the bourgeoisie... the frontier might be
gone, but the frontier experience could still
be had if only wilderness were preserved.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
The dream of an unworked natural landscape
is very much the fantasy of people who have
never themselves had to work the land to
make a living— urban folk for whom food
comes from a supermarket or a restaurant
instead of a field, and for whom the wooden
houses in which they live and work apparently
have no meaningful connection to the
forests in which trees grow and die.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
The myth of the wilderness as “virgin ”
uninhabited land had always been especially
cruel when seen from the perspective of the
Indians who had once called that land home.
http://yellowstone.net/history/files/2011/02/027351.jpg
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
The removal of Indians to create an
“uninhabited wilderness”—uninhabited as
never before in the human history of the
place—reminds us just how invented, just
how constructed, the American wilderness
really is.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
The central paradox:
Wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in
which the human is entirely outside the
natural.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
“If nature dies because we enter it, then the
only way to save nature is to kill ourselves
(p.13)”
In groups, discuss how Cronon explains this
impossible dualism?
Cronon’s argument:
We thereby leave ourselves little hope of
discovering what an ethical, sustainable,
honorable human place in nature might
actually look like.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
The Slums of Aspen:
Immigrants vs. the
Environment in America's
Eden (Nation of Newcomers:
Immigrant History as
American History)
by Lisa Sun-Hee Park (Author), David Naguib
Pellow (Author)
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
nature
John Scalan (2005) “Garbage Metaphorics”
in On Garbage. Reaktion Books Ltd, UK. pp.
13-55 (42 PAGES)
...a human propensity for differentiation (a
complicated way of saying we choose or
accept something whilst rejecting something
else) that inaugurates a lifetime of cuttingoff, disconnection and removal.
Nevertheless, these activities become the
principal means of marking off the valuable
and worthy, and in this sense differentiation
is what establishes culture.
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT
According to Scanlan, what is garbage?
In groups, find 3 key descriptors he uses to
explain “garbage” and report these back to the
class.
How does Scanlan link the concept of ‘waste’ to
those of ‘wilderness’ and ‘nature’?
Look for terms like ‘human endeavor’, ‘ruin,’
‘indeterminateness,’ ‘nature’s chaos,’ and
‘idleness’.
Work in groups, and report back.
(Hint: p22+)
How does Scanlan link the concept of ‘garbage’
to ‘memory’?
Work in groups, and report back.
Icon Credits
Covered wagon designed by James Keuning
Indian designed by Simon Child
Brush Harvesting and Hiker designed by Luis Prado
Preservation designed by Donata Bologna
Creation designed by Jakob Vogel
American Flag designed by JB
Map designed by DEADTYPE
Car designed by Murali Krishna
Farmer designed by Jerry Wang
From the Noun Project
thenounproject.com
Mél Hogan www.melhogan.com 2014 / IIT