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Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Knowledge

In such a world of hyperobjects, one that is “big…[with] too many working parts lacking in visible connections”, maybe what we need is a new way of understanding or 'knowing' the world. Based on the reading "The Inherent Violence of Western Thought", a chapter in "The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment" it seems we have inherited two models of what it means to know something. The first is related to "grasping, securing, making certain and mastering", which is associated with the Western Philosophical tradition; and the second is related to "following, hearkening, hinting and being guided", which seems to be pointing to a more ancient or pre-Socratic way of interpreting the world, but which also seemed to be revived by the postmodernists. Perhaps, in our age of hyperobjects, neither of these two models are satisfactory, or neither of them individually. The first model has been criticised heavily in recent times for its Anthropocentrism and may be responsible in some way for the climate disasters we are now facing. While the second model seems preferable in the way it promotes a more symbiotic or interconnected way of being with the world, we may argue now that no amount of hinting or following will stop the earth from being heated up. Perhaps we need to take what is best from both of them, or depart form these models altogether.

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Close Reading of “The World’s Biggest Membrane”
We both read Thomas Lewis' "The World's Biggest Membrane" through ecological lenses. Gemma's reading relates to concepts such as situatedness of the text and intra-action, and tells us how Thomas has addressed some challenges in conventional nature writings...

Gemma:
Thomas’ work opens with assertions of what the Earth is not, which proves an interesting place to begin, as, in denying the Earth the status of ‘organism’, he is highlighting all the things the Earth is: “big […] complex, with too many working parts lacking in visible connections.” The very nature of the writing here is that it compounds, and in doing so it reflects our own picture of the Earth.

The text from which this excerpt is derived suggests it is a series of “Notes of a Biology Watcher.” Using an ecomimetic lens, attempting to evoke the Earth as the subject of nature writing is a challenge. How can one give the sense of situatedness Morton describes when there is no way to observe our Earth but from our place within it? Does situatedness not rely on focusing on the situation, rather than the subject? If the ‘where’ of the text is everywhere, then does the lens of the writing not inevitably return to the subjectivity it is trying to avoid?

The very thing that makes the concept challenging is what makes it powerful. The reconciliation of the problem of situatedness lies, I think, within the concept of intra-action, and its relationship with eco-diegesis. In a sense, our place within and amongst the Earth is what makes writing about the Earth eco-diegetic, which overcomes this issue of eco-mimesis to a certain extent. We are of the Earth and a part of its ecosystems, in some sense, each of us an atom or quark within the cell membrane that is the Earth’s atmosphere. The Earth as a subject of nature writing is also the situation the subject finds itself in.

To return to situatedness, what then do we make of the experience of watching the Earth from space? It seems to me that Thomas at once shows us ourselves as the components of the Earth’s ‘cell’, but then shows us that the Earth is a cell in the organism of our universe. Thomas’ tonal shift shows his awareness of the challenge of this kind of nature writing. We begin in the present tense; “it is alive […] the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos.” From this present tense, he moves into the potential form in second person: “if you could look long enough, you would see…” here, we get a picture of the Earth as it is in his present view while writing, trying to give us the immediacy of nature writing with this narratological decision. He continues: “if you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen…” – here he expresses further self-awareness for the vastness of the Earth (which against our universe is but a cell). The shift to past tense while maintaining the potential form articulates the longing a human might have to really capture the Earth as a living organism, while coming up against our inability to explore and discover the length and breadth of its existence in our own lifespans.

Thomas cleverly makes use of simile, rather than metaphor to articulate a deliberate distance from too fully personifying the Earth: “it has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.” This simile, rather than drawing too close to anthropomorphism, comes closer to giving us a picture of the Earth as a cell. Paired with the images Thomas has chosen, this comparison grows stronger. So that we can understand the comparison not just visually but also conceptually, he begins with a scientific drawing of a cell. What follows are a series of images of the Earth from space, slowly zooming in on the atmosphere. The point of this slow zoom is to move from micro to macro (cell to Earth), but then to slowly begin homing in on the micro within the macro, and how these close observations might allow us a greater understanding of the planet, in the context of having the universe as the place we are now situated.

Merah sees this text as an organism, similar to how Thomas depicts the earth - a cell with a membrane and various organelles in it ...

Merah:
In ‘The World’s Biggest Membrane’, Thomas reads the earth as “a kind of organism” – a cell, and its atmosphere as the membrane. This comparison surprised me at first for the sheer differences in size between the earth and a cell, perhaps almost at the limit of our conceptions of physical scales. The links between them, however, immediately emerge, allowing me to make sense of the connections between living organisms on earth, through energy, oxygen, radiation… In the following close reading, I would like to “mak[e] sense” of this piece of writing precisely through finding connections and interrelations – perhaps, this text itself could be an organism, porous and permeable like the earth (and a “single cell”).

Everything seems to flatten in this text, as if “organelles” within the “membrane” of a cell, where they function in relation to one another in a non-hierarchical way. “It takes a membrane to make sense of disorder in biology”, writes Thomas, “… a cell does this, and so do the organelles inside”. Here, the “membrane” is identified as the common feature of all living organisms on earth, ranging from the smaller molecules within a cell, to a single cell, to the earth. The descriptions of the function of the “membrane” are particularly striking in the text, as it seems not only a biological structure but also a way of thinking about all the physical existence – it is what “holds”, “captures” and “releas[es]” energies. The membrane here is understood as a permeable, porous medium in which energy passes through the inside and outside of a cell, and from one organism to another. Perhaps, the membrane is where connections are made and where distinctions between supposedly different entities subside. This connection between organisms through the transference of energy extends further to the earth’s atmosphere which is similarly a membrane. Thomas’ language also seems to have the porous, permeable quality. Its description of as micro an entity as a cell fluidly flows to something grand as the earth, stating that “[e]ach assemblage is poised in the flow of solar energy, tapping off energy from metabolic surrogates of the sun.” The phrase “each assemblage” does not refer to a particular thing or organism. Rather, it encompasses all organisms, and how “energy” universally exists and “flow[s]” (a word that perhaps refers to the ever-present, constant process of energy transmission and conversion between different forms) in all them.

Interestingly, it depends on the membrane for energies to be withheld or released, but the omnipresence of energy also seems to collapse the very idea of a membrane, or at least, the idea of it as a kind of boundary that encloses something. Rethinking the phrase “it takes a membrane to make sense of disorder in biology”, I think it might also imply that “membrane” is an idea we human construct to “make sense” of the biological processes in the world, just as how the earth “began constructing its own membrane” when it “came alive”. The earth’s porous, cloudy mist that we call atmosphere emerges through time, in a series of ecological processes that involves the interaction of all organisms; while the hierarchisation of the large from the small, the centre from the margin, or the distinction of the inside from the outside, is perhaps a construct of the human perceptions. In Thomas’ writing here, the idea of the membrane, explained lyrically through universally applicable concepts in physics (energy) and biology (such as the interaction of oxygen and light both in organisms and at atmospheric level), also flattens such distinctions in terms of scales, hierarchy or categorisation. All elements such as the earth, human, solar energy all exist as organelles that connect and interrelate to each other within the text – which could itself be seen as an organism.

The positioning of the human in the text (the speaker and readers) also seems to be on par with all other elements. Thomas invites us to "see" the most intricate movements of earth's atmosphere, that “if you have looked long enough, you could see … If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion.” The speaker here seems not to speak for the earth, nor does he speak as a scientific authority, since the subjective mood here gently reminds us of our limited perceptions and observations of the earth as a common condition of everyone's experiences. Thomas does recognise this limitation of the human perception, and thus presents to the reader here, through the text, a possibility of perceiving, or imagining the earth’s existence through an astrological view. He also recognises the earth's agency, for the “continents” are “themselves in motion”, and we are to understand such agency through efforts ("looking for a very long, geologic time), rather than giving it one. Also, the “sheer size and perfection of function” of the earth’s atmosphere evokes a sense of admiration for its making as the one and only way it could be. It is far beyond our capacities to redesign the making of nature. The role of human activities, whether writing or scientific studies is perhaps to find ways that best describe and understand such makings more accurately and comprehensively. This recognition positions neither the speaker nor the human subjectivity as centre of the text; indeed, I would read this text as presenting the existence of the earth “as what it is”, as an assemblage inclusive of the membrane (atmosphere), and the “continents”, “crustal plates”, “water”, “current”, human beings and all the organelles in it. The effect on the readers is a humble, sustaining sense of being protected by the perfection of the making of the earth, and a reassurance of recognising such relationality of the mechanisms and lives within this organism.