- Oct 2024
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engl252fa24.commons.gc.cuny.edu engl252fa24.commons.gc.cuny.edu
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even as Butler and Mutu can be read as offering a vital materialist ethics as an alternative to an environmental one, I argue that those readings are contingent on the troubling of that vital materialist ethics. Hierarchy and classifications are destabilized and reshaped, but they are not absent in the specific novels and diptychs I have highlighted here or across Butler and Mutu’s work more generally
Rewording for myself: Mutu's and Butler's works do offer an alternative to environmental ethics in the form of "vital material ethics" (emphasizing the importance of all things? or just living things? kinda unclear to me), however the works are entirely centered around the difficulties that come up with this alternative. Hierarchies are still existent, even if in different forms.
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In this intimate moment, Lauren is not like an animal, but instead becomes animal–opening her to a different set of experiences that radically deepens her connection to another form of life. Given her capacity for deeper connection, among other characteristics, Lauren offers a conception of humanity unwed to white, male, patriarchal, neoliberal, neoimperial conceptions of humanity.
Reminding me of Haraway! An emphasis on connections with and to The World and all it may contain (including people of course) that is not interwoven with all this stuff that had a hand in us getting us into trouble in the first place.
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Presumably, they do not need to learn to protect themselves because they have husbands and fathers to protect them. Lauren articulates these beliefs as silly and dangerous.
And she is right- these roles do not serve anyone now, and definitely will not if the world comes undone. So interesting to read her logical internal monologue against the backdrop of this world she lives- in which rape is such a prevalent danger and women are not always told they should learn to protect themselves as well as form themselves as individuals (rather than as connected to men: husbands, fathers, etc.). I did not think about this so hard when I was reading it but having my attention on it now makes me realize how much this juxtaposition emphasizes Lauren as a leader and individual.
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insist that “the West” itself–its divisions of space and its rigid notions of the human subject–are insufficient frameworks through which “global warming, severe climate change, and the sharply unequal distribution of the earth’s resources” can be effectively addressed.
This makes sense to me- like in the Ghosh reading when he talked about his personal experiences with climate change and how it has affected him and his family. Also reminiscent of that part in the Nixon reading where he talks about "environmental justice movements that have pushed back against an antihuman environmentalism that too often sought ... to impose green agendas dominated by rich nations and Western NGOs," (Slow Violence 2358)
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geographies. Through narrative and visual culture, Butler and Mutu delink geography and power and put all space into play in order to keep critical attention on black female subjectivity and resistive notions of ecological relationality.
Is Frazier saying that Mutu and Butler are able to focus black female subjectivity due to the fact that their work is not tied down by real places in real time (ex. USA right now)? idk what she means by "resistive notions of ecological relationality" though?
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Thusly, the politics–often explicitly stated by Butler’s characters or embedded within Mutu’s visual fields–are irreducible to the language of citizenship, cultural particularity, and national governance as we currently conceive of it
Interesting- to connect to Iton's quote above (and Chantal's comment on it) - Parable of the Sower is totally challenging (or at least forcing readers to think about) diaspora. When we think about the characters in it, they all come from what once was the USA, specifically California, but are traveling away from that area. The US is hardly recognizable in the novel anyway, I think they are also moving away from the concept of what it once was too. But anyway this group of people that were once a part of these specific places have moved past that to build their own community. "A unifying force rather than an isolating one."
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analytic that focuses on the ways in which their national and cultural differences /particularities justify their connected exploration. Instead, this article focuses on the through-lines that bridge Mutu and Butler: centered black female subjectivity, attention to place and displacement, land connectivity, scrutinized notions of citizenship, and the reconfiguration of the human subject
Rather than focusing on Mutu's & Butler's differences and how those have informed their work, Frazier is going to focus on the ways in which their work is similar, similar subjects, similar themes etc.
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This conventional wisdom might explain, in part, why Mutu as an artist and public figure and Butler as a social theorist and author offer alternative perspectives that often go overlooked in feminist and environmentalist circles.
Kind of reminding me of standpoint theory- the idea one's experiences and perspectives shape how they view the world. Frazier seems to be analyzing how Mutu's and Butler's "standpoint" inform their work and what the implications are in the central themes and messages of their work.
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author Octavia Butler and visual artist Wangechi Mutu
Interesting! I like that the author is pulling in two different art forms as a part of her argument, rather than analyzing only visual art or only literary work.
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- Sep 2024
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engl252fa24.commons.gc.cuny.edu engl252fa24.commons.gc.cuny.edu
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Even the name of the spaceship rings a sour note: against Lauren’s wishes the ship has been christened the Christopher Columbus, suggesting that the Earthseeders aren’t escaping the nightmare of history but are bringing it with them instead—not solving the problem, but simply starting the Capitalocene all over again somewhere else
Yikes! Reminds me of how in the book someone (Bankole maybe?) does bring up this point of how religions are bound to be changed and morphed despite the founder's wishes. She pushes back on this by saying at least while she's alive it won't... just goes to show that he was absolutely right. Makes you wonder what you can safely believe in- what is worth investing your future in if ideas can be poisoned and morphed by those who are selfish.
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The religion takes is name from a redemptive belief in that oldest and most cherished of science-fictional dreams, the colonization of the stars
While yes, this is ultimately what Lauren sees as the end goal and does play a heavy role in the Earthseed religion (and the book's general plot & worldbuilding), I think it is worth noting that Earthseed is also so much more than that! It is about adaptability and change, willingness to change. The need to focus energy and efforts toward action and community. This is what primarily stood out to me from the Earthseed religion, not the colonization of the stars necesarily.
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To say “the Anthropocene” is in some sense to name ourselves and our society as all already dead.
Woah! Did not even occur to me! Very true though- what do those pushing for "Anthropocene" title suppose comes next?
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Donna J. Haraway (2016) goes further still, offering the name “Chthulucene” to describe the world Capital is creating: monstrosity on an unthinkably large scale.
Interesting- I don't really remember Haraway's "Chthulucene" title in this way. I thought it was more about the interconnected nature of us and our world, how we are our world, etc. It (as I understood it) was not solely critical of capitalism like the name Capitalocene is- but instead more all encompassing. Could contain good and bad- could be neutral, which is why the phrase "monstrosity on an unthinkably large scale" is throwing me off.
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indeed, as an event which we have become so habituated toward that we imagine it as a catastrophe that has already happened, against which no point of political resistance seems imaginable.
Perhaps this is the root of the problem with the "spatial separation" that confused me in the paragraph above?
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The central division between that cosmic standpoint and our own is that the flattening power of contemporary universalism is predicated on temporal rather than spatial separation from the scale of human life: rather than the view of the Earth from the standpoint of deep space, ours is a view of the present from the standpoint of deep time. This is ultimately the view from a radically posthuman (and antihuman) future in which the human race has entirely disappeared.
Not very clear on what this means- it is reminding me of readings we have done that criticize naming this recent era the Anthropocene... this looks to me to be a continuation of that argument maybe? Is Canavan arguing it would be better for us to focus on "spatial separation"? Is the criticism of this thinking that it is so easy to imagine a distant future where humans are nearly eradicated, or have regressed?
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the Earth as viewed from space, a scale from which both human lives and human accomplishments are invisible—is a deep and abiding threat to “the human” as such: an obliteration both of humanity’s place in its material context and of humankind’s potential to undertake effective and meaningful action toward its own betterment (268).
Directly connected to much of what we have read so far. Ghosh touches on this by delving into these questions of why we are unable to perceive climate change as a real and imminent threat. Parable of the Sower also deals with this question- Lauren working through what it takes to make a better and more connected society and then creating that for herself and others.
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www.environmentandsociety.org www.environmentandsociety.org
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Mathematically, visually, andnarratively, it matters which figures figure figures, which systems systematize systems.
More of a side note observation- I'm really appreciating how these reading are intersecting climate change issues (and the political, scientific, and social issues that go along with it) in more creative ways, like here with the word play. It shows passion and care. It doesn't read as much like a boring academic paper as it does the writing of someone who is really invested in the topic. There is a particular level of care in making something eloquent and important also digestible.
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cheapening nature cannot work much longer to sustain extraction and production in and of thecontemporary world because most of the reserves of the earth have been drained, burned,depleted, poisoned, exterminated, and otherwise exhausted
Interesting to me because what is the plan? I feel like people always talk about the "future" and what it holds in terms of societal growth and technology, yet simultaneously leave out this big piece about resources.
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