Week 2: Bodies in/of nature Final Submission

Try to spend at least 2 hours every week working on your portfolio so you have a record of how your thoughts have developed and you don't leave it all to the last minute. You can do one longer post a week or as many shorter ones as you like. You don’t have to respond to all the prompts – just one or two is fine! You can post text, pictures, video, audio or anything else. Go wild, be daring and creative, and have fun!

 

Here are some ideas for this week, but please feel free to tweak them or invent your own:

  • Where is ‘wild’ for you? What is your relationship with the ‘wild’? Is it changing as you study for this module?
  • Have you ever been tempted by the image of the ‘lone enchanted male’? Or put off by it? What do you think about those ideas now?
  • What sorts of political response do ideas like 'the survival of the fittest' produce? How might thinking about 'entanglements' change the story?
  • Have you ever been tempted by the ideas we noticed in ‘The Good Reset’ cartoon by Bob Moran? How do you feel about that now?
  • Would you like to make a policy recommendation on the basis of this week’s work? Try to write in a way that would persuade a specific audience (eg policy-makers/politicians/general public)
  • What did this week's readings mean to you (write about one or more readings)? What did you agree or disagree with and why? What have they inspired for you?
  • What have you been noticing in nature around you this week? In what ways do your interactions with nature link with the work we are doing on the module?
  • Is there anything in the materials this week that you don't get?

Yoshiyuki Ishikawa

3 December 2022 at 15:11

This is a great analysis that addrsses the difficulties of, on the one hand, the temptation of "healing in nature" discourse, and on the other, its problematic framing (sexist, ablist, among other things) of nature. The strength of this essay was that it traversed across different fields, starting from personal experiences, archival and historical analysis, to popular culture, while keeping the thread of criticality throughout. I was intrigued by the concluding sentence which suggested you "hope to find kinship in nature, maybe some relief, but not healing." Would it be at all possible for both humans and non-human nature to reciprocate care and healing while dodging the dubious and exploitative relationship of one-sided healing experinece? Or, how can one invoke nature without assigning it a demand in service of humans? 
You might have read it already but your writing also reminded me of Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor, in which she addressed the metaphorical force of imagining illness, especially TB and cancer. Her account on TB resembled your description of Victorian nature therapy, and it might be interesting to think about how Victorian romanticisation of nature in turn reinforced romanticisation of illness/disability. You can listen to her lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WC5ncbR0zQ Wishing all the best for your work!

Monica De Quinto Schneider

3 December 2022 at 20:13

Hi Yoshiyuki, thank you so much for this lovely and insightful feedback. I will definitely check out that lecture and I try to expand on my argument along the lines you suggested! 

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