English

I loved all of the works in Shonibare's exhibit, but I was especially captivated by his series of works, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters".  Based on a 1797-98 print of the same title by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, which was part of a series critiquing the Spanish society in which Goya lived, Shonibare's series features 5 photographs, identical to Goya's print except for the sleeping figure and the phrase written on the desk.  Shonibare's photographs are each focused on a continent- one each for Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.  In each photograph, he features a person whose apparent race contradicts the expected race for someone from the continent being portrayed, and, while the words on the desk in Goya's print translate to "The sleep of reason produces monsters," the words in Shonibare's photos ask, for example, "Does the sleep of reason produce monsters in the Americas?"  The animals in Goya's print- owls, bats, and a large cat that I can't exactly identify- are reproduced exactly in each of Shonibare's photos, symbolizing the monsters that the human figure's sleep of reason is seen to produce.

Colors, Patterns, Stillness and Liveliness, Wheelchair and Stilts, Conflicts and Companionship. So much is happening simultaneously in the Shonibare’s Magic Ladders exhibit. It is difficult to narrow in on one element of such an intentional, “provocative examination of European colonialism and European and African identities” (Media Preview, scan 6), but I think what struck me most was the representation of children and adults, and the contrasts between the roles they embody. The adult figures are purely embodiments of their roles in society, pre-defined by their profession and achievements. Of the 24 adult figures (including the five men in the aluminum prints), 22 are seated. All of the adult statues are headless. Perhaps this is representative of their fixed roles in life. They have reached their destinations and rather than strive for progress and knowledge, they have relaxed into their roles, unporous to discovery.

In all this talk about place and placelessness and belonging and home and porosity and everything, I remembered an idea I heard a few years ago in a Vlog Brothers video: the improbability of place. The video (which I'll include here if anyone wants to watch it) does a much better job explaining this concept that I probably could, but the idea more or less boils down to just how amazing it is that things are where they are and how they are and what and when. We condsider all these places when we talk about home–Bryn Mawr, Houston, Oregon, Madison, Chicago, Istanbul–but we never stop to think about how these places came to be and how amazing it is that they exist at all. The United States, for example, exists because a group of settlers formed an army and defeated the British, and ruthlessly laid claim to this entire swath of land, and came out on the winning side of both World Wars and the Cold War. But the US also exists because one explorer went the wrong way trying to find India and landed at a continent that existed where it did due to the motion of techtonic plates and the breaking up of Pangea, but only after the infamous Big Bang created that which is the Milky Way galaxy and our solar system in the first place. And if one takes the time to think about all of these events, and the billions of others not mentioned but of equal importance, that conspired to create any of the places we call "home" in the first place, claiming a city or a state or a two-story structure in suburbia as "home" seems rather arbitrary and shortsighted.

After reading The Ecological Thought by Timothy Morton I was focusing in on when he discussed nature and art as well as the idea of coexistence. At the beginning he says “Ecological thinking is to do with art, philosophy, literature, music and culture…Ecology includes all the ways we imagine we live together. Ecology is profoundly about coexistence” (4). I completely agree with his statement because nature can be found in all different aspects of life especially when it comes to thinking of objects at natural instead of man-made. On page 8 he goes into talking about residents not wanting solar panels because they don’t look natural or wind turbines will spoil the view. Renewable energy is something I’ve recently been passionate about and in my opinion I believe that incorporating solar panels and wind turbines into our environment is beautiful and is natural. The point of using solar panels and wind turbines is by harnessing Earths natural resources, which should be seen as beautiful. 

I like and agree with much of what Timothy Morton wrote in the excerpt of "The Ecological Thought" that we read, but I can't completely agree with his statement that "Fixation on place impedes a truly ecological view."  I can easily agree with one possible meaning of his argument, that we need to stop focusing just on the areas that we consider home, that we must be concerned with the world beyond ourselves.  However, when Morton writes that ecology has to do "with race, class, and gender... with sexuality...", acknowledging both the importance of people in ecological thought and the importance of acknowledging systems of oppression, I don't think that place can be separated from that.  Place plays an integral role in affecting privilege and marginalization, in determining who experiences the effects of environmental degredation and who doesn't (as Eli Clare and bell hooks made quite clear in their writings).  Growing up in a surburban, white, upper middle class neighborhood, I have been continually privileged and shielded from the effects of global climate change and other ecological threats.  For me, because of the place I come from, environmental justice has always been abstract- not a matter of life or death.  Therefore, when Morton lists the identities and marginalizations that matter to ecology, when he says that ecology has to do with "ideas of self", I don't know how he cannot include place in that list.

"Ecology equals living minus Nature, plus consciousness." This is the first sentence of Morton's last paragraph in his introduction to The Ecological Thought. I start here because I am unsure if I understand what this means. He capitalizes Nature, and says that nature is "like a reflection, we can never actually reach it and touch it and belong to it". How is nature separate from ecology? Isn't our search for "Nature" a driving force in our modern consciousness, living, and thought that define ecology? Our fascination with Nature connects our society to issues of the environment and our impact on it. How does one subtract nature from life and from consciousness? Perhaps my definition of nature is different from his meaning of Nature. He says that "what we call 'nature' is a 'denatured', unnatural, uncanny sequence of mutations and catastrophic events". But isn't this ideal and unattainable concept of Nature something that defines us as humans and defines our interactions with the environment? I suppose I am getting caught up in a definition. Perhaps the "artificial construct" of Nature is a counterthought to ecology?

As much as I loved bell hooks' way of thinking about home and culture of belonging, it was somewhat comforting to see that people like Morton do not necessarily agree with that view of home/place - and it was also very confusing. For while I haven't experienced a culture of belonging first-hand, I want to believe such a thing is possible, and attainable for me. And at the same time, I am conscious of the very legitimate points made by Martin and Mohanty, who (from what I could gather from their complex language and sentence structures) argue that any community of sameness and comfort inherently shuts out others and makes oppression possible. Which sucks (to put it more bluntly). I can only assume that more oppression (akin to the Ku Klux Klan) is the last thing bell hooks would want, so how can I reconcile both of these ideas? And how does Morton's fit in, his criticism of "fixation on a place"? Maybe all that matters (to me) is how each of these arguments fits into my own understanding of home, place, and community as these things relate to environmentalism/social justice. For example, a community that is actively working to fight oppression might, on the way, exclude some voices, but if they are working hard to be anti-opressive (which, honestly many enviro-justice communities aren't, or think they are but get criticized for not doing enough) and simultaneously trying to end oppression of certain groups of people and/or the environment, maybe that's ok.

Morton had me at Wall•E. That right there was and remains to this day one of my favorite Pixar movies (though I still love you, Toy Story and The Incredibles) if only for the ecological message. It fascinated me that this movie, which contained almost zero dialogue except for the ubiquitous John Ratzenberger, a Hal-like sentient steering wheel, and an old tape of Hello, Dolly could explain to the masses the importance of an ecological conscience much more easily and accessibly than any explanation I had ever offered. I had tried to tell people for years to pay attention to what people have done and continue to do to the planet, gave examples of contemporary disasters, and pointed out the consequences social, political, and enconomic that such degradation has engendered, but most often I was met with condescencion, blank stares, and sometimes outright hostility. Most Texans, I discovered, don't take kindly to someone telling them why their gas guzzling pickup truck might be a bad thing for the planet.

Like Morton, I too think that the ecological thought is more than just taking the scientific stand and that it's more than just global warming, recycling, and solar power. To be environmentally aware is to take everything in our sorroundings into effect. Not only the ecosytem and our connection with the living and non living aspects of it, but also the relationships we build, the art, and awareness. I don't think an environmentalist should take offense or feel at all like we're degrading the meaning or importance of the term "environment". If anything, they should agree with what Timothy says, "Ecology includes all the ways we imagine how we live together." Nature exists in all different types of ways and humans are not going anywhere for a long time. Rather than creating boundaries and making everything seem like it belongs in a certain category, we should push for coexistence. 

Reading Morton's introduction to his text "The Ecological Thought", I was especially struck by the fact that he kept referring to this way of thinking as "Dark Ecology" or an infection or virus that ultimately " affects all aspects of life, culture, and society" (11). Morton also mentions that "a truly ecological reading practice would think the environment beyond rigid conceptual categories--it would include as much as possible of the radical openness of the ecological thought" (11). I believe this relates to what he says on later in the text--"Fixation on place impedes a truly ecological view" (26). It is important to cosider the fact the ecological thought is all encompassing of different areas of thinking as well as interactions between people and between people and their environment. Reading this text reminded me of a comment that Michael made in Camden "the environment is all around us". How can we get people to care about holding a truly ecological thought and taking care of the environment when it is "not in their backyard?" One quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel that has always resonated with me is that "few are quilty, but all are responsible". Perhaps, having more people acknowledge the ecological thought will get them to understand the role they have in protecting the environment.