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Ecology out of Bounds: Environmental Humanities Scholarship for Multi-Species and Transdisciplinary Contexts

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Ecology out of Bounds: Environmental Humanities Scholarship for Multi-Species and Transdisciplinary Contexts ECOLOGY OUT OF BOUNDS: ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES SCHOLARSHIP FOR MULTI-SPECIES AND TRANSDISCIPLINARY CONTEXTS Justin Derry A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HUMANITIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO Defense Date: January 27, 2017 © Justin Derry, 2017 Abstract This dissertation argues that the critical, political and ethical resources shaping popular and scholarly forms of Anglo-North American environmentalism lack the theoretical and imaginative tools to address the challenges of the Anthropocene (that is, the notion that the human species, enabled by a globally expansive petro- industrial apparatus, has become a dominant geological force). Unsettling notions of progress, agency, nature and the individual in novel ways, the Anthropocene changes the way humanists understand what it means to be human and what environmentalists have understood nature to be. As a result, I argue that the anthropogenic landscapes of the Anthropocene challenge writers, theorists, storytellers, artists, scientists and activists to open different kinds of intellectual and imaginative space. Therefore, drawing on feminist science and technology studies, multi-species anthropology and posthumanism, this dissertation contributes to the emerging field of the Environmental Humanities by conteXtualizing forms of environmental mediation responsive to Anthropocene environments. Making a mess of strict disciplinary and species divisions, my work addresses the way that different kinds of knowledge practice show up in and make a difference in the way bodies and multi-species assemblages materialize and function. Moreover, I distinguish my contribution to environmental thought by avoiding knowledge practices predicated on ‘into the wild’ narratives and ‘return to nature’ tropes. Problematically, these kinds of narratives are at risk of advocating masculine imaginaries of control and conquest, and moral superiority compleXes about self- sufficiency that delimit boundaries between the natural and the unnatural, the pure from artificial, and thus close off knowledge making work from play, eXperimentation, wonder and curiosity. More than a question of accurately representing what the Anthropocene is or is not, my research amounts to a pragmatic challenge about how to craft theoretical and textual practices that foster non-anthropocentric, multi-species and transdisciplinary media, publics and futures. ii Acknowledgements The help and support I have received while putting this project together have been immense and humbling. Being given the time, space, support and encouragement to complete this project has been a profound privilege. That many people have given me this (underserved) privilege is a gift and a responsibility I take very seriously. I have been given more than I can give back. In particular, my sincere gratitude goes to my committee members, Steve Bailey and Markus Reisenleitner, for their thoughtful feedback, productive questions, and for providing intellectually formative environments. I am deeply grateful to my amazing advisor Susan Ingram for being a true model of a Humanities professor, for knowing the right questions to ask, and for pushing my thinking in ways I did not know were possible. I also want to thank the community of inspiring teachers, fellow students, staff and librarians that helped me get through my time at York University. In particular, I am grateful to my Master’s supervisor Joan Steigerwald, Prof. John Dwyer, and the elevating friendships I formed attending the meetings of the Humanities Graduate Student Association and the Canadian Comparative Literature Association streams at Congress. Finally, this project would not have seen completion without the support provided by my family, in particular, my parents (Mary Ellen and Paul), sister (Kendra) and brother (Cameron). Most importantly, my debts of gratitude and respect can never be repaid to Laura, my best friend and inspiration, and our two young daughters, Lola and Emily. iii Table of Contents ABSTRACT II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III TABLE OF CONTENTS IV INTRODUCTION – KNOWLEDGE MAKING PRACTICES FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE 1 THE ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES: TRANSDISCIPLINARY FORMS OF ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIATION 3 A BRIEF SKETCH OF THIS DISSERTATION 9 CONCLUSION 20 CHAPTER ONE – WHEN THEORIES MEET: LOCATING THE ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES ACROSS POST-HUMANISM, FEMINIST STS AND MULTI-SPECIES ANTHROPOLOGY 23 RE-MEDIATING HUMANISM: CONNECTING ANTI-HUMANISM TO POST-HUMANISM AND POST- NATURE ECOLOGICAL THEORY 26 RE-MEDIATING THE SCIENCES: SCIENCE STUDIES, FEMINIST STS, MULTI-SPECIES ANTHROPOLOGY & INDIGENOUS ETHNOGRAPHY 36 CONCLUSION 53 CHAPTER TWO – MULTIPLE ANTHROPO-SCENES: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN THE ANTHROPOCENE, CAPITALOCENE AND CHTHULUCENE 55 THE ANTHROPOCENE AND THE ‘GOOD ANTHROPOCENE’ 58 THE CAPITALOCENE 64 THE CHTHULUCENE 67 CONCLUSION 70 CHAPTER THREE – KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN A TIME OF MASS EXTINCTION: THE GREAT PASSENGER PIGEON COMEBACK PROJECT VS. MULTI-SPECIES STORY-TELLING PRACTICES 72 THE CHALLENGE OF EXTINCTION AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN THE ANTHROPOCENE 77 DE-EXTINCTION AND ECO-MODERNISM 80 MULTI-SPECIES STORY-TELLING FOR A DAMAGED PLANET 94 CONCLUSION 106 CHAPTER FOUR – WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE NOW: REWILDING BLASTED ANTHROPOCENE ENVIRONMENTS 108 20TH CENTURY ENVIRONMENTALISM, THE GREAT DIVIDE AND CONSERVING NATURE 111 REWILDING AND RE-WORLDING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE 118 MULTISPECIES REWILDING AT THE OOSTVAARDERSPLASSEN (OVP) 127 CONCLUSION 134 iv CHAPTER FIVE – ECOLOGICAL STRUCTURES OF PARTICIPATION FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE: PAUL EDWARDS’ “SHIMMERING” CLIMATE DATA AND NATALIE JEREMIJENKO’S MULTI-SPECIES PUBLICS 136 MODELLING SHIMMERING CLIMATE DATA 138 FUZZY STRUCTURES OF ECOLOGICAL PARTICIPATION 146 THE ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH CLINIC 147 FERAL ROBOTIC DOGS 149 ONETREE(S): AN INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT 150 CONCLUSION 158 CHAPTER SIX – SUBMERGENCE AND EARTH-BOUND RESURGENCE: PLANETARY WRITING FOR LIVABLE ANTHROPOCENE FUTURES 160 TRANSCENDENCE: CONTEXTUALIZING SUBMERGENCE IN RELATION TO FRIEDRICH’S ROMANTIC WANDERER 165 THE WANDERER AND THE “HUMAN AGE” 173 RESURGENCE: SUBMERGENCE IN THE CHTHULUCENE 180 CONCLUSION 186 CHAPTER SEVEN – JEFF VANDERMEER’S WEIRD ECOLOGICAL FICTION: STORIES FOR A STRANGE ECOLOGY 188 VANDERMEER’S WEIRD ECOLOGICAL FICTION 193 WEIRD ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES: HYPEROBJECTS, THE ECOLOGICAL UNCANNY AND ECOLOGICAL MICROBIOMES 206 AREA X AS HYPEROBJECT 208 THE ECOLOGICAL UNCANNY AND THE RETURN OF THE NONHUMAN REPRESSED 210 MULTI-SPECIES MICROBIOMES 215 CONCLUSION 218 CONCLUSION – COMMUNICATION, CONNECTION AND COLLABORATION ACROSS SPECIES AND DISCIPLINARY LINES 220 BIBLIOGRAPHY 231 v Introduction – Knowledge Making Practices for the Anthropocene It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories. (Haraway “‘SF’: Science Fiction, Speculative Fabulation, String Figures, So Far”) The nonhuman environment first materialized for me as a wild, free space situated outside the suburban neighbourhoods of my youth, and early on became a place of wonder, interest and curiosity. Conflating rugged notions of the wild outdoors with freedom and individuality (both human and nonhuman), the notion that ‘real’ nature was ‘out-there’, past the artificial confines of my suburban neighbourhoods, provided a conceptual infrastructure and moral universe that rendered nonhuman environments as authentic, pure places increasingly steamrolled by a corrupt capitalist modernity. This early consciousness of the nonhuman environment was shaped by the politics of environmentalism as acid rain, ozone holes, and genetically modified crops came to populate the Canadian cultural media-scape of the 1990’s. The cultures, politics, aesthetics and embodiments specific to a form of environmentalism that opposed the subjugation and appropriation of organic, green space offered a space for my adolescent idealism to inhabit. From there, I moved into the archives, conceptual machinery and discursive apparatuses conteXtualizing the Environmental Studies program at the University of Waterloo (UW). Emphasizing social science methods and quantitative models of 1 analysis that focused on translating environmental problems into policy frameworks, this disciplinary space gave substance to a discursive, affective and political space mapped around questions of sustainable land-use, ecological foot- prints and rationally determined limits to growth. Although I became increasingly detached from the environmental idealism contained in the ‘tree-hugging’ environmental discourses and imaginaries of my adolescence, I found the discursive and theoretical infrastructures rendering the disciplinary spaces of UW’s Environmental Studies program too rational, quantitative and logically clean. In the end, I found neither of these forms of environmental mediation to be a good fit, as neither were built methodologically and conceptually to articulate the kinds of transdisciplinary, critically informed multi-species imaginaries, discourses, aesthetics and embodiments that I later found in the Environmental Humanities. Recognizing implicitly that stories make worlds and worlds make stories, as I later read in Haraway, I was content with neither the knowledge making nor the world making literacies, narratives, and apparatuses contained within the idealist environmental mediums of my youth or the liberal, policy driven mediums taught at the University of Waterloo. Missing the methodologically reflective,
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