De-peripheralisation
De-peripheralisation, on the other hand, seeks to undo this marginalisation between culture and nature. Adding the prefix “de” denotes a sense of removal or opposition to the word. A de-peripheral view embodies the ideals of post-dualism by refusing the hierarchy of living beings. By embracing de-peripheralisation, one also allows animals, insects, plants and nature itself to occupy the central gaze with or without the presence of the human. It effectively opens a free pathway to and from the foreground, without strict confinement to the periphery as the ‘inferior’ being.
Theory
De-peripheralisation echoes Bennett’s theory of Vital Materialism, recognising the agential power of nonhuman life in not only existing, but affecting and mobilising change in the Anthropocene. To acknowledge nonhuman vitality thus liberates nonhuman beings from the periphery and remarkably, the human gaze from structuralism.
When Heidegger talks about his notion of Gestell, he explains the role of technology in shaping our “enframing” view of the world. Undeniably, technology has helped consolidate the binary of human and nature, as well as propagate society’s solipsism. Consequently, a de-peripheral gaze arrives with a mission to alter our Gestell for an ecological vision.
A non-representational view, which refuses human-constructed paradigms as part of the Gestell, allows one to encounter nature differently and perceive nonhuman ‘beings’ objectively and absolutely. Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism opens a critical opportunity to inquire deeper into the epistemological parameters of de-peripheralisation. Kant’s theory on appearances entails a dichotomous conception between phenomena and noumena, which he describes as the division between a representational reality and an unfiltered inaccessible reality. For Kant, the phenomenal ‘reality’ is saturated by self-constructed representations and modified through human sensory perceptions. Contrarily, the noumenal world is impossible to gain access to, given that humans are inherently conditioned to interpret and encounter the world through representations. Placing Kant in conversation with my e-concept highlights the complexity of attaining a non-representational and non-anthropocentric vision of the natural world. From this perspective, we can only appreciate de-peripheralisation as a model that recognises the alienation of the natural world and more powerfully as verbal condemnation of the oppressive confinement of nonhuman beings. Kant’s theory suggests that doing anything substantial about our Gustell is futile because leaving an essentialist representational view only repositions us in another framework of representation. Regardless of whether such representation is eco-unitary, we remain stuck in a phenomenal world - a representational world.
Nonetheless, de-peripheralisation aims to alter the human gaze and undermine harmful representations that justify violence against the more-than-human world. It is a vision that accommodates for the natural world and creates a doorway out of the periphery. While we are still not able to access noumena, we at least get a glimpse of what it might be like to live in a reality not defined by human-centrism.
Sarah Laanani (5260338)