Blog Reflection

 Examining Diverse Perceptions of Space and Place

    I generally enjoyed the blogging aspect of the class in which I spent a lot of time working on posts and reflecting on the course texts. It also gave me a chance to think creatively while engaging concepts of inquiry in concert with colleagues. I think the blog element prepared me for discussions by giving me time to practice my responses to the texts before open discussions in the classroom, gave me new perspectives to think about by reading and commenting on other colleagues' posts, and it gave me opportunities to make connections outside of class with other texts, especially digital ones.

     Considering the posts about the weekly readings, I thought these were particularly useful and gave us opportunities to open our discussions, write as a community, think collectively, and think critically within the texts and concepts. It also expanded the context of eco-discourse and allowed me to step back and see each of our unique contributions to the study of ecology and writing. Such examples include Craig's post titled "Green Culture, or Not" where he referenced a wonderful political cartoon titled "Like Oil and Water" which was very close to the BP Oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Craig also had great videos on that post (and others) that enriched the Herndl and Brown discussion. Sam's comment in her post titled, "Food?" where she said she made an assignment in her class where "I had my English 151 class read an essay about the role corporations play in American obesity." Although it seemed to get a harsh reaction in Sam's class, I thought it was something worth considering for use in my classes and students could debate if it was set-up the right way. Finally, I really liked reading Si Yang's post "Localize the Uprooted Ones." I thought she made some valuable connections between Heise and Hooks and how the mind/body split has an effect on eco-discourse.

The peer review comments for the place pieces were helpful, unhelpful, and in one case served the person leaving the comment more than my work. To say the least, I had mixed feelings about the usefulness of this activity. The most useful comments were about the order of my place piece, making connections throughout to Cedar Falls, and adding more multi-modal elements to my discourse. Unhelpful comments on the place piece consisted of complaints about taking liberty with colored alpha fonts and referred to my reflective argument/exposition as a non-academic rant. First, I used colored fonts rhetorically to emphasize argument and reflection. Second, while certainly leaning to more radical elements of eco-discourse, I do not think my work ever advocated eco-terror or failed to open the discussion between anthropogenic and eco-centric exigencies. Strong discourse as it was, I think this reader missed the connections with Wendell Berry and toxic discourse and likely failed to even read the entire piece as they commented, "I already knew what you were going to say." Furthermore, this respondent failed to add useful comments about the overall theme of connecting the place of energy to places we are sentimental for and places we neglect. This person's effort was counterproductive to my work. However, others suggested they valued the use of color in the fonts and gave me useful approaches to making stronger connections with my material. Their comments also gave me reassurance to go out and shoot video at Cedar Falls, which added some more texture to the piece.

Considering reading my colleagues' posts, they gave me inspiration for posting both the place piece and weekly assignments, but they also helped me by revisiting sections and thinking about them again, or keying in on quotes I overlooked. For example, I liked how one student referenced Sanders when we read each others' place pieces, so I went back and revisited that text and used it in my own work and also thought about how to use it in my final. I also generally benefitted from the exposure to everyone's narratives because I worked to develop that more and make it more front and center in my place piece.

Finally, I thought the quality of my posting and commenting went above and beyond what was expected of me. I worked hard to make connections outside of the course texts with other media and discourse on ecology, and I spent a lot of time both writing and formatting the delivery of my posts. As for the comments, I tried to spend most of my time giving examples of what I thought was effective, then finishing up with an area or two that could be developed more, decreased or removed, and what I thought would be the advantage of making such change(s). I worked really hard to both post and comment something useful to my peers and myself every week.

Imagined Geographies

Nedra Reynolds begins her essay "Composition's Imagined Geographies: The Politics of Space in the  Frontier, City and Cyberspace," discusses "Importing Composition" by Muchiri et al. I made a note in the margins next to the quotation "The teacher in New York or Los Angeles may look out over a classroom and think, 'the whole world is here.' It isn't" (qtd in Reynolds 13). The note was that composition professors have capacity to hold honorable, yet misleading perceptions of space in our classroom. I'm seeing this all tying into the conversations about writing environments (particularily social/business/political environments, discourse communities so to speak) that we create in metaphysical spaces, in customs of discourse. This leads to the necessity of literacy studies.

One of the most interesting essays from Ecocomposition pages 97-208 was Long's Education and Environmental Literacy. Long's work over the years has covered 20th century American literature, environmental writing, and teaching reading a writing. For more on Long's bio and current work, visit here.

Where I believe Long arrives to by the end of his essay is that literacy studies help us find "the human center" situated in the world. Furthermore, the literacy approcah gives us and our students the opportunity to express who we are and receive and understand those expressions in writing communities. We share and enrich our cultural values by learning about other discourse communities and furthering our notions of tolerance, objectivity, and reflective thinking. Furthermore, we also have the opportunitiy to refine our own discourse communities in learning about others, even if we do not participate in them. Citing Martha Nussbaum (e.g., Nuss-Bomb with all respect) Long suggests "The citizen of democracy 'must incerasingly learn how to understand, respect, communicate if our common problems are to be constructively addressed'" (qtd in Long 131). He also calls attention to the value of literacy studies vis Giroux's study of Friere's "Critical Conciousness" which views "literacy as changing the world . . . understanding of citizenship, democracy, and justice that was global and transnational" (qtd. in Long 132).

However, what do we make of Nedra Reynolds discussion, particularly point #3 on page 13, about arguing for "a spatial politics of writing instruction that denies transparent space and encourages the study of neglected spaces where writers work" (13)? Is she talking about the same things that Long is exploring? I think they may share some common concerns about not only the importance of a literacy approach in some writing assignments, but also the value of expressing ourselves so we have a connection with the spaces around us so we can reach that unity so many of the pastoral texts we've read this quarter attest to such as Silko, Momaday, Sanders, etc. They indeed show us the literacy of places where they have dwelled, what it means to be and live there with the places they describe. However, the texts in Ecocomposition (pgs 98 - 206) and Reynolds' discussion, encourage a pastoral of the individual space and its connections to surroundings, not only physical, but socio-political places too.

If education is about learning and gaining intelligence, perhaps we should investigate more of the places we communicate within and the places where others coommunicate? 

Converging, tolerating, listening and sharing who we are may indeed indeed make us more intelligent, not just better citizens.

What is Ecocomposition Anyway?

Blog on Cooper's "Ecology of Writing" --go comment, I know you want to. 

From Cooper's "Ecology of Writing" she cites Stanley Fish who says, "readers are guided by interpretive strategies, that these strategies are constitutive of interpretive communities, and that the strategies originate with writers" (365). Such strategies, Cooper argues, are "part of the mental equipment of writers and readers" and such equipment requires our examination to understand communicative environments.

Dr. Stanley Fish - Professor of Law at Florida International University

As in David Orr's commencement address in 1990 to Arkansas College, he demonstrates the environment of academic discourse at AC, and arguably most higher ed institutions in the country. The interpretive communities of the academic college are much like German education at the beginning of the 20th century.  German education (in Wiesel's words) "'emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciouness, answers instead of questions . . . '" (qtd. in Orr 1). Looking at colleges as environments allows us to see what is advantageous, as well as what might be limiting or dangerous in said environment, as well as what other discourse environments can do to help improve that environment and influence thought diversity and awareness.

 

David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics. He is also a James Marsh Professor at large at the University of Vermont (Oberlin Web page).

This is evident in Orr's discussion of success. he says that our notions of success in our culture are warped and ill-conceived without much consideration of longevity and sustainability. he says that the planet "needs people who live well in their places" (see Owens' "Eutopia" on page 31 of Ecocomposition), and "people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane" (Orr 4). It is exactly this idea of success that defines the different environments of a college and a sustainable living movement and requires an ecocomposition approach to writing.

Ecocomposition can politicize and polarize a classroom, which is not the major point I think any of the authors are making on this reading list, although they do warn of it at varying degrees. What the point is overall I believe, is that we need to begin to view discourse communities as unique and specialized, but weak in that their perspectives are limited, myopic, and even self-serving and self-righteous. It is not just the business schools driven by The Art of War in teaching "success" in capitalism, but also the academics flying into distant cities to present papers and talks without really examining how their behavior affects places, people, and ecologies of local to global scope (Weisser and Dobrin 28). Citing Youngstown, Ohio where Orr grew up, he said that manufacturing corporations left that town disheveled because the "bottom line" ursurps "unemployment, crime, higher divorce rates, alcoholism, child abuse, lost savings, and wrecked lives" in what our culture values most (Orr 5). One last example, my favorite of Orr's, is how ecocomposition can help us see how limited our "worldy" views are that colleges and universities grant us in the United States. Orr argues, "no student should graduate without understanding how to analyze resource flows and without the opportunity to participate in real solutions to real problems" (Orr 6). The main point of Ecocomposition is that it is a realization that writing communities have limits, limits we shouldn't bind ourselves within as participants in the world.  

 Success, a fleeting term from discourse community to discourse community?

According to Weisser and Dobrin,

ecocomposition is an area of study which, at its core, places ecological thinking and composition in dialogue with one another in order to both consider the ecological properties of written discourse, and the ways in which ecologies, environments, locations, places, and natures are discursively affected . . . ecocomposition is about relationships . . . it is about the production of written discourse and the relationship to those places it encounters. (2)

Ultimately, I see ecocomposition as a useful way to teach discourse and demonstrate the importance of dialectical and critical thinking in the world at large today. Ecocomposition helps students understand how to step back and look at discourse as of a cultural phenomena, as potentially biased, and as one of many perspectives on issues of importance. Ecocomposition helps us realize that there are many locations of thought and value, and that is a wonderful argument for advocates of critical thinking. However, given its limitations, ecocomposition can politicize the classroom if not defined properly to students. As with the term environmentalist, many biases and prejudices are embedded in ecology, and hence ecocomposition. While it can apply to issues of sustainability, it is also more importantly applies to issues of location in not only physical space, but also the metaphysical space of discourse communities and the environmental factors that influence them.

Furthermore, we can alienate students with ecocomposition in assignments. In Derek Owens' outline of seven assignments, he demonstrates ways to write ecocomposition that doesn't stop at the Thoreauian place portrait, but delves into ecocomposition exigencies like "Eutopia," "Neighborhood Histories," "Tribal Testimonies," and "Future Scenarios" to name some examples (W and D 30-34). Such discourse opportunities extend participation to not only privileged narratives about pristine landscapes, but also to sites of cultural wealth that are not natural wonders in the sense of an outdoor documentary, but natural wonders of perspective, community, and people that can help us connect our fragmented ecologies of discourse across cities, states, nations, and the globe. As Killingsworth and Krajicek state, "some of our students in ecocomposition lack sufficient alienation or critical distance, just as we and our heroes may well lack sufficient socialization" (W and D 54).

 

308 Video Essay about Place and Ecology

Hey, check this out. A recent project that was turned into me. I thought it would be useful/worth considering for our class and especially the reading for this week.

Meet your Meat

Meet your meat is a PETA slogan that has been in use for years; it seems to have resonated with me because I kept thinking of it when viewing Food Inc., reading the excerpt from Omnivore's Dilemma, and Schnieder's essay on Slow Food, "Good, Clean, Fair." However, these texts remove some of the dramatization that alienates others considering how to act on the issue. Again though, the radical acts of PETA (and other environmentalists) have been instrumental to some of the progress and acceptance of perspectives like Pollan's, Kenner's, and Schnieder's. Groups like them bring hard issues to the surface.

The texts by Schnieder and Pollan fill in some gaps from Food, Inc. that I found particularly helpful to my inquiries. The details about feeding cows rendered animal fat and ignoring the instincts we have to keep food and fecal matter apart were very powerful in Pollan's excerpt--I can't wait to read that book.

Teaching the slow food philosophy was an interesting detail in Schnieder's essay. I though the example of Alice Waters showing Petrini the effectiveness of "school vegetable gardens" Can anyone really complain about teaching young students about vegetable gardening? Many probably would complain, but the connection to our health and longevity as a species cannot be denied. Furthermore, growing something with your own two hands alleviates depressive thoughts and emotions, as well as gives you a sense of appreciation for what you have and your abilities to support local sustainability.

Another more important quote from Petrini about the interconnectedness of food, culture, health, ecology and thinking:

I also like how this quote about the new gastronomy ties the readings together. Perhaps this is a new aim for food and culture programming on television; demonstrating sustainability and fine food working together and really emphasizing the origins of the dish's components.

 Has our food culture gone out of control because of financial exigencies?

If it were only that simple . . . 

Considering Omnivore's Dilemma, I am curious about what Pollan is saying about the details of how the federal farm bill should be considered a food bill. What does that entail?

The trope of the feedlot as a city is such a good metaphor that it is quite literal in many ways. The subsidization of corn and the fossil fuel need to generate and transport it is harrowing. Can we change this behavior or is out culture too resistant? I was near a pig feedlot in South Carolina a few years ago and the stench of sulphur and cesspits was ubiquitous and nauseating. Our culture hides this stuff away and it is something hard to support when you are informed.

Green Culture Wars

So what is the best way to be an agent of  sustainable lifestyle?

After reading Marilyn Cooper's "Environmental Rhetoric in the Age of Hegemonic Politics: Earth First! and the Nature Conservancy," I felt like I was partly being given an overview (a limited one at best) of environmental organizations that vary in radicality, and I felt like I was partly given an endorsement of the Nature Conservancy. The example of Earth First! (the only example!) was a horrible essay/article, probably one of their worst, about cattle grazing on park lands that completely relied on assumptions and did not have much credibility as it paints the government and ranchers as evil tyrants, over and over, without civility. So first, I just want you to compare the Web sites of Earth First! and the Nature Conservancy in order to see that EF! has more to say than diatribes about cow shit blighting the landscape.

Earth First!

Nature Conservancy

Cooper argues, "if Deep Ecology is not challenged at the philisophical level, the number of environmentalists committed to ecotage is likely to grow" (249).  I agree with her concern, but she does little to emphasize what is valuable in the Earth First! organization. David Foreman, the founder of Earth First! mentions that the organization is about civil disobedience and taking alternative approaches to ecological preservation. I do not agree with armed confrontations and violence to achieve environmental conscience and sustainability in our civilization, but that is not the whole of Earth First! and I doubt the entire organization supports violent action for environmental stewardship. If Cooper spent more time on diverse examples from the two organizations, rather than her stab at credibility in her account of Gramsci's radical democratic theory, I think she would have been much more credible and her article would be profoundly more effective. Nonetheless, I praise her for taking a stand and trying to converse about sustainable sustainability in the world. 

As you can see in the EF! Web site, there is a lot more going on than eco-terror and uncivil disobedience. It is markedly much less business looking than the NC Web site, and it focuses on broader, more global issues than NC, which is in ways myopically focused on US ecosystems that turn profits. The links, Dangerous spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Bear Mountain Development, Vancouver Island, BC, Mountaintop Mining, Hemp, Recycling Styrofoam

Alternative Energy and Run Your Car on Veggie Oil  all seem much more associated with civil disobedience and nonviolent action/discourse than the brief example that is given by Cooper. I just want to expand or perspectives here because Cooper's exposition is limited and misleading I believe. 

Look at the top of the post at the enviro-fascist parody, you will see that and a whole other string of negative depictions of environmentalists when you search "envieronmentalist" on 

Google images

 What does this reveal about Google and its sponsors? Is there anything dialectic about their depiction of enviromentalists?

 Is there anything, but stereotypes here? I felt like I was listening to Glenn Beck describe environmentalists.

 Cooper references Gramsci stating, "leadership is the winning of power through building an intellectual and moral consensus, the establishment of hegemony" (241). She seems to align Nature Conservancy with this statement and Earth First! with "domination is the naked exercise of power, the use of law or armed forces to liquidate . . . opposing groups" (241). I hope to challenge that alignment and associated stereotypes that are rampant about environmentalists in general, but also those about Earth First! that Cooper perpetuates in her article. If you take the time to look closely at Earth First! they are actually providing education about sustainability that does not advocate enviro-fascism and uncivil disobedience. 

Maybe Earth First! can re-shape their identity and work more with eco-satire, aligning their identity with hegemony and proving they are not a bunch of blood thirsty tree huggers, 10K strong. Unfortunately, stereotypes are what many Americans complacently lap up from the spoon. Cooper states, "the problem with the environmental movement lies not in the lack of agreement over how to pursue the goal of protecting biodiversity but rather in the absence of 'healthy interaction between the more radical groups and the mainstream groups'" (256). Do you think Cooper reinforces this or damages it?

 

Heise, Eco-Discourse, and Imag(in)ing the Earth

First, I'd like to say that I am a sci-fi enthusiast and I have never heard of Le Guin's World 4470. The book sounds great and I love the idea of "'wide-range bioempathic receptivity.'" I hope to get to it this summer after I read P.K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which equally piqued my interest after reading Buell last week. If you have an interest in imagining the Earth via fiction, then I suggest you read Dawn by Octavia Butler. In her book, Aliens come and salvage Earth (and humanity) after a nuclear confrontation that kills nearly every human on the planet. What is relevant and interesting to our reading of Heise is that the Oankali (Aliens in the book) ships are organic, living organisms. Perhaps Butler was influenced by Buckminster Fuller's Spaceship Earth allegory from 1963? While one could argue that Butler was primarily concerned with hierarchy in human cultures in the book, I think her demonstration of an organic ship of which every living thing on it was interconnected demonstrates an eco-criticism that prompts readers to evaluate their connection (and imagined disconnections) with the suffering and health of other living things, as well as Earth as a whole "sentient superorganism"

An interesting concept discussed in Heise's piece is the sense of Spaceship Earth, whatever allegory we use, can find itself "in a complex conjunction with darker visions of global collapse or conspiracy on the one hand and with the call to return to local environments and communities as a way of overcoming the modern alienation from nature on the other" (20-21).  This connects with Buell's discussion of place and space because how we encompass the earth and all its organisms takes the shape of problematic ideologies (How do we be and let be?).  Heise comments that "the environmentalist emphasis on restoring individuals' sense of place while it might function as one useful tool among others for environmentally oriented arguments becomes a visionary dead end if it is understood as a founding ideological principle" (21). Does this give us a sense of apprehension when ascribing ideology to place, especially since the EJ movement is clearly linked to ideologies about culture and people?

So should we read Heise as backing off of "the recuperation of a sense of place" as Buell may invite and re shaping our stance to understand how places and processes are interrelated and how our activities affect this connection (ow, that hurts my brain . . . )

What impact does Google Earth and Kilma's installation at the Whitney have on our sense of Spaceship Earth? Does it make Earth more of a thing to be consumed? Is this an illusion of connectivity? How much of what is represented on the application is anthropocentric? Ecocentric?