December 16, 2015 - 14:19
Aayzah Mirza
Revision Paper
December 18, 2015
In my first draft of this paper, I explored the notion of ecological intelligence as one governed by the selective permeability of humans. In her article Porous Bodies and Transcorporeality, Stacy Alaimo presents the view that "all entities or bodies are characterized by a porosity that allows the outer world to flow through them", however she fails to acknowledge the semi permeability of human membranes. Thus her concept of ecological intelligence defies the very core of human physiology and subsequently, human nature. On the other hand, being too selective also has its own perils, which could lead to the formation of an egocentric, parochial outlook. It is incumbent upon us to stretch our boundaries and realize that our narrative is not the only one with relevance and there lies a plethora of voices that we might resonate with if only we bother to listen.
Surely, in more cases than one, this selectivity arises from our educational formation. These early years of our lives our generally referred to as our formative years, and the lack of presence of a global viewpoint, might make it improbable that we develop ecological intelligence in our later years. Although I retain my claim of human selectivity, I simultaneously promote its extension. Certainly, making ourselves aware of every single issue, and every single dimension of this world is impossible, but by approaching one topic through as many lenses as we can, we might be able to widen our horizons to some extent. In my history class, for example, we expanded the title of the class, "Women in Britain since 1750", to women in the empire as well, and by refusing to give in to conventional historiographical ethnocentricity, looked at texts from different cultures and how these, together with other aspects of class and race weighed in the production of a "British Woman". From reading the narrative of slaves from the Caribbean, to accounts of local Indian women, we returned the gaze, and explored how being a white British woman did not only carry significance for the person who possessed these attributes, but also for all those other women. The preservation of British domestic values in the memsahib of an Anglo Indian home in the nineteenth century did not only establish the oppression of the white woman, but in doing so, also promulgated the white superiority that was employed as justification for colonization. Even though we did not explore all narratives from all colonies, we were able to get in quite a lot of insight from people from different backgrounds and cultures in different parts of the world. In developing this link, slowly through the course of the class, I have certainly become more cognizant of the need for global perspectives when studying any topic.
Recent years have brought to us the ever so solidifying reality of climate change, a repercussion of excessively selective thinking, which has been motivated by economic gains and maneuvered by politics. We put the impact of excessive carbon dioxide emissions on the back burner, quite literally fueling our desire for economic boost without any thought about its implications for the earth and its many inhabitants that we separated from ourselves due to ideological, geographical and racial differences, to say the least. However, climate change demonstrated how we are inextricably linked; how China's carbon dioxide emissions can affect low lying areas like the Maldives, and how it is high time we employ some semblance of ecological intelligence, not only in our personal lives, but also in our national policies.
With this context, it is crucial for an environmental studies class to engage in approaches from various parts of the globe. I greatly appreciated the evolution of texts in our ESEM class from those concerned with the individual to those about the broader schemes of the environment. However, in order to think ecologically, we should know how other individuals share this bond with the environment. Instead of reading texts from all US based authors, it would have been productive to also have a few "foreign" texts. These could have been included in any part of the course, from the inception to the end. Not all students in our classroom are from the United States, and if we can attain something valuable and credible from these classes, then certainly we also have something to give back. Looking at the same topic from different lenses does not necessarily expand the implications, often times it only leaves us with the realization that despite all our differences, we are similar, we are linked, we are in the same world at the same time, and together, we are responsible for maintaining it.
Works Cited:
Alaimo, Stacy: Porous Bodies and Tran-Corporeality, Larval Subjects(Levi R. Bryant) (May 24,2012) Accessed: 10-12-15