CRITICAL REFLECTION
Furthermore, this theoretical framework is enhanced by American environmental historian William Cronon’s introductory passage in his 1996 text Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place of Nature, which provides invaluable insight into the “holocaust” (23) – the blazing fires of Orange Country in Southern California. Cronon’s fear of the destructive forces of nature whilst viewing the burning city from his position in an airplane flying safely above the scene of destruction, perfectly articulates the author’s attempts to articulate both the natural world and the corresponding human perceptions of it. As relevant to the course, Cronon distinguishes between ‘environmental thinking’ and ‘ecological thinking.’ An example of this is the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado, United States, which was one of the worst toxic waste dumps; a place most people actively avoided for decades due to its toxicity. However, since then, its diverse wildlife population has thrived in comparison to many of its surrounding areas, with wildlife such as buffalos, deer, amongst other animals, plants and minerals aiding in the process of natural alignment and preservation (27-28).
A central dilemma for environmentalists is whether to clean the waste dump, via methods that involve man-made sustainability, handling and intervention, while endangering the creatures that live in that environment… or leave it be and let the toxic remain.
Cronon argues that environmentalist thinking simply doesn’t work in situations like the one outlined, “since we have no clear indication of what would be ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural.’” (28) Essentially, thinking about nature is rendered redundant by archaic assumptions of the natural world as a passive entity in the background of the lives of humans, who occupy the foreground and cater to the survival and destruction of the anthropocentric perception of the ‘natural.’
The case of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal is an example of the ‘Naturecultures’ concept, exemplified by the manner in which the approach to finding a solution to the toxic environment was manifested in the combination of humanity rationality and intellectuality via western sciences and ideologies.
The metaphor in the opening of the article, in which Cronon surveys the fiery destruction of a city from a position of safety in man-made transportation, highlights what he argues is a “product of the European Enlightenment,” in which nature has become a “secular deity on this post-romantic age” (36) – an Eden of beauty, or in this case an Eden of the sublime. When the author is viewing the fires from above he sees nature at its wildest, breaking the mechanics of human structures in one swoop… but it is the fact that we assume that he sees it as brilliant and unstoppable (not that nature isn’t) merely a part of western perceptions and culture of nature as a non-subject, unconscious environment – not as its own complex being (Plumwood)?
Stemming from Cronon’s analysis, it is important to acknowledge two different modalities of ecocriticism: macroecocriticism – referring to large-scale examinations of nature, such as Cronon’s wild, blazing, disastrous fire – and microecocriticism, referring to aspects of the trivial and mundane, such as a discarded Coke can or a page of paper, which simultaneously provide a comprehensive and wholesale analysis of the natural world. By acknowledging the diverse levels at which the natural world can impact human experience, we can learn to appreciate and observe what could be considered 'eco-microagressions': subtle ways in which nature 'revolts' against anthropocentric ideologies on a daily basis. This notion is postulated in our short film and photo essay, which highlight the differences between the big and small, the macro and the micro, the unforgettable and the forgettable, the local and the global, the personal and the public... thus achieving a complex understanding of humanity’s multi-faceted relationship to its surrounding environment.
Images of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and its marginal portrayal
