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Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Ashleigh- note 5

I find the concept of 'genuine meanings' existing behind our surface-level understandings of existence to be an extremely interesting concept. Connecting this to extinctions, it is apparent that we structure our understandings of the world around dominant social narratives. The assumptions, for instance, that extinction is irreversible and time is linear remain prevalent in society today, despite science having already proven otherwise. It is important to recognise that what is real and genuine does not always align with what we believe.
Linking back to the concept of global, ecological interactions, 'genuine meanings' enable human kind to reconnect with the natural world. The natural world is not simply a different space, but a different idea. We re enter it when we become aware of how its processes interact with us.
This brought to mind a short documentary on how wolves- through their interactions with other beings, which in turn interact differently with the surrounding world- are able to change the course of rivers. The wolves have no independent ability to do this, the process depends entirely upon interactions, which cause observable physical effects. This really reinforced for me how necessary the connections between beings really are, and processes like this can occur without us even noticing or attempting to apply meaning to it.

Our beliefs frame our existence, as we live and act in accordance with them, and they resultantly mediate our interactions within the world and thus impact the world itself. But so too does the world around us perform its own interactions which require no meaning to be applied to them; they simply exist.

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CLOSE READING CLOSE READING: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927)

Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, which charts the dissolution of the Ramsay family in twentieth century Britain, is widely heralded as a classic portrait of familial belonging and loss in the midst of World War I. However, employing the theoretical framework of ‘deconstruction’ – conceived by French semiotician Jacques Derrida in his seminal 1972 essay Plato’s Pharmacy (Derrida, 1972) – effectively eschews the traditional critical inclination towards a human-oriented focus of Woolf’s text, in favor of an eco-critical approach. A comprehensive and deconstructive analysis of To the Lighthouse, that is bereft of the textual intentions of its author, subsumes the popular anthropocentric focus on domestic drama between human actors, thus unveiling the influential and unconventional motif of furniture in the everyday lives of Woolf’s protagonists. By examining the manner in which recurring fixtures of the material world constitute a discourse between human and environmental spheres, To the Lighthouse contributes to the growing assemblage of eco-critical literature.

In her 2012 article States of Suspension: Trans-corporeality at Sea, University of Texas at Arlington professor Stacy Alaimo dismantles the contemporary global capitalist dichotomy of active consumers and passive commodities, in order to conceive the material interchanges that occur between humans and objects. Alaimo’s perspective is reinforced by American feminist theorist Karen Barad’s assertion that the individual human’s immersion in a “dynamic process of intra-activity” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) with the material world evokes our post-humanity. Essentially, this notion revises the traditional perspective of humans as makers and creators of the material world, instead focusing on the “(post)human” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 479) as a progressive model, which is continuously “part of the world in its becoming.”

In To the Lighthouse, the ideas of Alaimo and Barad are reflected by the manner in which pieces of furniture enact as pervasive forces that infringe on the interiority of the human characters who utilise them. This is illustrated in a scene where Mrs. Ramsay sits on a chair whilst knitting. The standard chair is conventionally perceived as a human capitalist construct, in the sense that it is derived and created from features of the natural world – leather, metal, plastic, wood – and subsequently labeled in terms of its value in the economic marketplace. However, an examination of Woolf’s text questions the capacity of chairs to subversively escape the human-oriented role prescribed to them via their ability to expose seated subjects to unforeseen vantage points. For example, positioned on her chair, Mrs. Ramsay gazes at the beams of the lighthouse clashing against the vast, impenetrable ocean and is suddenly struck by the realization of, “[h]ow could any Lord have made this world […] [in which there is] no reason, no order, no justice.” (Woolf, 1927, p. 54) Mrs. Ramsay’s incidental epiphany highlights the potential of the material world – passive objects, generally considered submissive to the active consumer – to structure and restructure humanity’s place in the ecosphere. This coincides with the perspectives of Woolf, herself, who believed that genuine meanings existed behind the appearance of the material world, which occasionally revealed itself to “shock” humans, highlighting how “beneath the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we – I mean, all human beings – are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art.” (Chun, 2012, p. 53)

Another way in which intra-activity between the human and the material can be conceived in To the Lighthouse is evident in the manner in which objects effectively chart the political, social and cultural events which inflict their human owners. American marine biologist Rachel Carson’s correlation “temporal and oceanic expanses” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 485) is employed by Alaimo to explicate the extent to which the human and non-human combine in affairs of “science, politics, ethics, and the mundane.” (Alaimo, 2012, p. 489) In To the Lighthouse, the manner in which the human protagonists’ attempts to understand each other are effectively articulated and modulated by the furniture that surrounds, structures and comforts them. This idea achieves further resonance via the potential of furniture to express the novel’s divergent themes of peace and conflict. For example, Woolf’s central message of human connections being undergirded by material values – most prevalent in Mrs. Ramsay’s belief that the family legacy will thrive via the inheritance of antiques and heirlooms – is subsumed by a table subversively scripting the social sphere of a Ramsay family dinner. In chapter seventeen of ‘The Window’, the wooden dining table transcends into a resolute patriarch holding the fragmented family, or disembodied “faces on both sides of table,” (Woolf, 1927, p. 79) together, thus achieving stability within the human social sphere. Moreover, this concept of furniture as family – the inanimate object as animate human – is reinforced by “bare legs of tables”, “empty wardrobes” and “mattresses” (Woolf, 1927, p. 105-106) evoking the disintegration of the Ramsay family via the material mirroring and mimicking human emotion. Furthermore, American academic Christopher Watkin’s delineation of objects as “co-producers” in human society, due to the role of “nonsocial, non-human resources” in the creation of “gods, machines, sciences, arts and styles” (Watkin, 2018) can be extended to toy with the idea of the material as a close family member of the human, thereby strengthening the mutual ties between furniture and the Ramsays in To the Lighthouse.

Overall, a close reading of the role of furniture in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, in conjunction with a wide range of scholars, theorists and philosophers – such as Stacy Alaimo, Karen Barad, Rachel Carson and Christopher Watkin – highlights the manner in which the material autonomously infringes on the social sphere of humanity. Subsequently, the potential of the natural world to speak, comfort and strengthen the human subject effectively allows the environmental sphere to transcend into an 'eco-skeleton' which supports and structures the routine, existence and conscious of humanity, thus highlighting its invaluable role in our lives.

REFERENCES

Derrida, J. (1972). Chapter 11: Plato’s Pharmacy. Retrievable from http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/derrida_platos_pharmacy.pdf.

Chun, M. (2012). Between Sensation and Sign: The Secret Language of the Waves. Journal of Modern Literature 36 (1): 53-70. Doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.36.1.53.

Watkin, C. (2018). To the Lighthouse Archives – Christopher Watkin. Retrievable from https://christopherwatkin.com/tag/to-the-lighthouse/.

Woolf, V. (1927). To the Lighthouse. New York, United States: Oxford University Press.

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How Wolves Change Rivers