Hi and welcome to episode 15 of Beautiful Losers!

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Our topic this week is nature, red in tooth and claw. Joining us is friend and former colleague Professor Derek Woods.

Derek is a professor of media and culture at The University of British Columbia and his work focuses on questions of nature, ecology, and technology. He recently edited a special issue of Diacritics called Terraforming with professor Karen Pinkus. 

The critique of nature is an intellectual cornerstone for this podcast. Listeners will recall how themes of nature emerged throughout the show in our discussion of biopolitics, humanism, and political responses to SARS COV-2. In all cases we seek to challenge ways that “the natural” is deployed as a metaphysical cover for more practical agendas and interests. 

We asked Derek to join us in order to lay out a two fold critique of nature: first there is the critique of nature, then there is the critique of the critique. Where we go from there is anyone’s guess, but Derek offers a few frameworks on how to reconstitute the original idea of nature without the same sort of ideological baggage that inspired the first critique.

A gloss of the critique goes like this: Our idea of nature exists in relationship with our idea of culture, but that relationship is arbitrary and imaginary. Sometimes this is referred to as society (as in nature vs. culture or nature vs. society). In high school many of us learn about narrative conflict in English classes as man vs. nature. Odysseus battles against gods and the seas and relies on his craftiness in order to escape peril. 

The categories of nature and culture do not exist as such. There is no “outside” of nature because the very idea of nature relies on some kind of cultural distinction that defines what constitutes “the natural.” The borders between these distinctions change over time, revealing that nature is nothing more than an idea of culture.

At this level of critique, something like systems theory is helpful. Rather than thinking in terms of categories, we can frame things in terms of complex systems that operate on different levels of observation. Derek’s essay uses systems theory ideas to frame what an ideology of “terraforming the earth” reveals about our ideas of nature. 

Why is this critique important? Well, a lot of cultural ideas are promoted and propagated based off of ideas of a primordial, pre-historic nature. Often these ideas come with a morality and an ethics and they are used to enforce or justify policy or economic behaviors. Consider the barefoot running fad or the paleo-diet. These trends suppose that there was a pre-historic cultural moment that was pure and unscathed by culture and that the peoples of those time periods lead superior lives. The fact that these paleo-21st century lifestyles are only enabled through modern technology is quietly erased from the argument. These practices are rather benign (who really cares how one justifies their footwear), but when it comes to ideas of race-science or gender the use of “nature” as a way to justify harmful policy bares its teeth. The value of the critique of nature is that it shows that there is no “essential” and unassailable notion of the human. Notions like “the human” or “the natural” are fields of interpretation, experiment, and transformation.

Our story does not simply end with the critique of nature. In fact, the critique of nature can be used as justification for exploitative practices. We took up this line of reasoning in our episode on Bruno Latour’s essay “Has Critique Run Out of Steam” and we make reference to the essay again in this conversation. The purpose of the critique of nature is not to simply justify the brutal extraction of energy for the purpose of human expansion, though there are versions of the critique that lead toward that end. 

The critique of the critique seeks to reconstitute an idea of nature without it having to rely on an arbitrary distinction between it and culture. In one sense the critique of the critique seeks to have its cake and eat it too. Can we hold onto the good parts of nature — the sense of ecological interconnectedness, an appreciation for the resources afforded to us from the natural world, a field of possibility and experimentation for creative exploration — without over-determining this idea within a metaphysical system morality? 

Derek’s work offers some possible answers to this question. In our conversation Derek outlines two strategies. First, a cultural aesthetics that seeks to reimagine nature in our daily lives. Rather than a primordial, prehistoric, and ephemeral concept this cultural aesthetics gives voice to the various ways that our lives intersect with nature on a daily basis. Second, a cultural  education in the natural world. This is a bit like the old 19th century natural philosophers. Like Linnaeus, Darwin, and Curie the scientific understanding of nature can have a re-enchanting effect. This enchantment doesn’t need to be metaphysical in order to be wonderful.

This was one of our favorite episodes to date, and we can’t wait to bring Derek back to throw him a bunch of impossible questions about nature, culture, and technology. 

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