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Circumnavigating the Great Lakes by Land and Writing Towards an Aesthetics and Ethics of Nature and Sociality by Moheb Soliman A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto ©Copyright by Moheb Soliman 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44965-3 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44965-3 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada Circumnavigating the Great Lakes by Land and Writing Towards an Aesthetics and Ethics of Nature and Sociality Master of Arts 2008 Moheb Soliman Curriculum, Teaching and Learning University of Toronto Abstract This thesis explores the extent to which natural geography affectively orients sociality and subjectivity through the site of the Great Lakes region. It delineates this discrete space and potential through initially questioning the fixing of nature in Henri Lefebvre's legacy and geographic and ecological discourses. Based on a another project conducted in summer 2007 circumnavigating the Great Lakes by land and writing - poetry, prose and images of which are presented, this thesis conceives an aesthetics of approaching and living with natural space on its own terms. These are articulated through an inquiry of the sublime and disinterestedness in the films Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick. These ideas finally challenge a body of Great Lakes literature and theories of representationality and 'the gaze' in tourism studies through an emerging ethics of affect, attentiveness, and difference in nature and its imperatives, which is the central contribution of this thesis. Acknowledgements Thanks to Roger Simon for his encouragement and thoughtfulness as I tried to turn creative pursuits to a critical frontier, without collapsing them forever. Thanks to Kari Dehli for her teaching and talking throughout my time at 01SE. Thanks to mom and dad and Amira, and Matthew Million and Josh for traveling with me, and Rachel, who stayed after, and gave her sensational attention. Thanks to all the spectacular, homely, abrasive, and quiet places around the Great Lakes which I want to visit again and again. iii Table of Contents Introduction Two Writing Projects Chapter 1 Situating Great Lakes Geography Part 1: Region as Economy Great Lakes as Borderland Great Lakes as Megalopolis Part 2: Nature and the Production of Space Lefebvre's Legacy Rhythmanalysis Revisted Part 3: Ecology and Endangering Difference Chapter 2 Socializing with Nature Part 1: Affect, Ethics and Place The Animal Human The Creaturely Gorgeous Beasts Part 2: Recasting the Sublime Herzog's Half-Bored Interest Malick's Disinterestedness Chapter 3 Regarding Presenting the Great Lakes Part 1: The Looks of a Great Lakes Literature Part 2: Transgressing Tourism Studies Conclusion: Nature and a Heterogeneous Disposition References iv V Introduction Two Writing Projects mummed the concrete rubble to the lake Ontario wear me down to my girders the lake, the half-naked lake slipping off its jersey, started in with its cats' tongue Or something like that I'd texted you. At the outcropping park I wandered to there was concrete rubble on the shore the whole breadth of it. It was no time to go when I left home, getting dark and rainy. No one was there hardly the whole time I was there; men dog walker; I hopped a vehicle gate. There were low skittery trees and these - silver- brush's stems and mixed up grass and gravel. I was confounded enough, and then I saw the purple clouds and nothing in them all the way back to the horizon and the lake coming back more opaque and slate. I haven't mentioned the lake, but it was there the whole time, even before I got there; and it stayed, the weather and things got darker. And I was punched by it; I had to have my jaw hang the whole time I walked along it and would pause, it was staggering. What can I say; it was no place for people to certainly be then - when, so many other days it was; the place was made for leisure, but those terms were not lake's only terms. Was dumping rubble? This is not meant environmentalistically. Was spreading a positively barren livelihood of rubble its befitment? It didn't matter I saw. I walked on it to the water, numb with affect, and looked out. Up... down around me,. The wind- it was so dry, this brush- the light at such a blinkered grey dusk, the glinting silver stems with petrified blossom-tops were shuffling against each other like pencil lead. It scrawled all over. I broke one off; it was the only way I'd manage to part and turn for home. No sense was made and my troubles waned; I texted you when taking phone pics of the especially profound intimate thing, the rubble with lake and sky on top. Do I need say the affinity? It was a relief. To have come and been at this unsympathetic place was. A relief to come out your mouth without words, good grief. Written half a year before my circumnavigating the Great Lakes by land and writing, I still recall this visit to lake Ontario often, and especially now in recalibrating my tack towards geography in this project. Though this travel saw Toronto, Hamilton, Niagara Falls Canada, Windsor, Sarnia, Parry Sound, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie Canada, Marathon, Thunder Bay, Duluth, Sault St. Marie Michigan, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago, Traverse City, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, Niagara Falls New York, Rochester, Oswego, Kingston, Toronto, and pretty much every poorly-known or deeply-harbored small town in between that touches the water, this thesis hinges on conceptions of nature more than appearances of civilization- it takes its object as nature in part because nature can not ever be adequately arrived at. Not because nature can not be authenticated on its own terms - which may be 'neutrality' - nature is perfectly 1 2 neutral; but it takes considerable obliteration on our part to encounter it thus. We project on it, draw delusions from it, and meticulously trace it to the point of near erasure. But yet it exists; or, they exist; it is hard to say; whether to make discreet the numberless creatures and trees, or even somehow render apart the lake into- what? Our impulses of delineating being are confounded in encountering nature. It is because of all such reasons and more that this thesis essentially grapples with nature; because even projecting this as the constant goal doesn't get us half-way to substantially dealing with nature. We are not only inundated with civilization; we wield civilization ahead of us like a cart before the horse; we always already have 'civilization' in our hearts even when we fervently romance nature. Tracing the lakes' shoreline, though a simple and obvious route in one sense, was also a hyper-extending sort of exercise because it went against much more sound ways to spatially assess culture and the lakes, say by exclusively adhering to more established, civilized spatiality and societal markers - highways, exurbs, suburbs, downtowns, etc. Those distinct human features were of course also present in my experience with the lakes - human cultivation is ever-present even in 'nature' - trails are still signed, parks are planned and manned, shores and beaches are combed and coiffured. Therefore, circumnavigating the Great Lakes in attempt to attend to a spatializing of their exceedingly obvious natural geography and working back was a (frequently fumbled) balancing act, not an 'immersion' in nature. Though I took local roads usually closest to the water, Chicago same as Kincardine, it is a significantly revealing misstatement to say I came in from the lakes, into places. I come in / from the lakes into places 3 never having been / out there. This paradox validates what may appear a faulty approach to getting a handle on the Great Lakes Region; adhering strictly to the shoreline makes visceral the organizing geography of a space invisible to our humanizing schemas and proportions.

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