Writing Nature

The Creative Manoeuvres: Making, Saying, Being papers – the refereed proceedings of the 18th conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs: http://www.aawp.org.au/the_creative_manoeuvres_making_saying_being_papers, 2013

The genre of nature writing sets up an assumption of the writer’s physical participation with the world. It is an expectation that the contemporary nature writer will engage and form connections with the natural and cultural entities of a place, prior to constructing a narrative. These bodily experiences are expressed through the act of writing in order to explore the value of non-human nature and the complexity of human relationships with nature/culture. However, a multi-layering of nature/culture occurs in the production of nature writing. The text not only acts as expression of bodily engagement with the world but also presents the reader with a means of experiencing and connecting with place. I will discuss the notions of hybridity and embodiment as methodological tools for the nature writer with reference to Nigel Krauth’s work on writing from the body as well as contemporary renegotiations of Donna Haraway’s cyborg, and Janet Frame’s Living in the Maniototo.

The changing meanings of nature and its constituents (organic and inorganic matter, and organisms) have largely emerged from the new materialist interpretations of the naturalcultural reality as one of complex entanglements of the human and the nonhuman realms made visible in the porosity of bodily natures, trans-corporeality, and the interdependence of material and discursive practices. The new materialist accounts of physicochemical processes in terms of their agentic capacities and generative powers have also fundamentally changed our understanding of the concept of agency. Taking the new ideas in the framework of material ecocriticism, this essay will focus on the expressive dimension of material agencies as " narrative agencies, " which are comprised of compound individuals, a concept developed by the process philosopher Charles Hartshorne much before the emergence of the new materialist paradigm, to explain the creativity, imagination, and experience found in nature's individuals such as atoms, molecules, cells, and nonhuman species. Some are " low-grade " individuals, others, like animals, are " high-grade " individuals; but all have internal experience and are involved in an meaningful process of interpreting their environment and making an effect on surrounding entities, processes and flows of materialities. The argument presented here is that in the " storied world " of living nature, which material ecocriticism interprets as a site of narrativity, there is not only a capacity of agency but also an expressive function, nature's narrative ability.

Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 6.1 (2015), 2015

This interview discusses new nature writing in Europe with Greece-based writer Julian Hoffman. The dialogue explores the notion of new nature writing in Europe through Hoffman’s practice, from the legacies and influences of the tradition and the contemporary development of the form to the ecological, political and social considerations of the places and people that inform and inspire his work. Focusing in particular upon Hoffman’s 2013 publication The Small Heart of Things: Being at Home in a Beckoning World (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press), the discussion explores the ways in which the work approaches and accounts for the complex environmental and political geography of the region of the Prespa Lakes, described as a “transboundary park” bordering Greece, Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Exploring the interconnected attention that Hoffman directs towards the nature, history and politics of the area, the discussion explores the possibilities of social and cultural engagement in nature writing. Further, it examines the ways that Hoffman’s approach is informed by the particular complexities of the cultural and ecological landscapes of Prespa, addressing conceptions of nature and of place in borderlands and at the margins between regions. Additionally, the exchange explores Hoffman’s use of digital media to mix the tradition of nature writing with photography.

2002

This paper offers an ontological perspective to the notion of Form and explores the organization of nature in terms of processes of energy transfer and encoding that lead to the creation of information records. It is proposed that form accounts for the basic unity of information processing, inasmuch as it possesses a triadic nature that includes both the digital and analog components of information plus the intrinsic activity of their conversion process. Form expresses the indissoluble semiosis of processes and structures, and provides an interpretation of the mapping of the space of digitally encoded information into the space of analog information. This relationship in natural systems is made possible by ‘work-actions’ executed by semiotic agents. A discussion inspired by these relations of informational spaces is employed to illustrate how Peirce's categories that converge in the notion of form provide conceptual tools for understanding the hierarchical organization of nature...

"The proliferation of studies bearing on the intellectual movement known as the "new materialisms" evinces that a material turn is becoming an important paradigm in environmental humanities. Ranging from social and science studies, feminism, to anthropology, geography, environmental philosophies and animal studies, this approach is bringing innovative ways of considering matter and material relations that, coupled with reflections on agency, text, and narrativity, are going to impact ecocriticism in an unprecedented way. In consideration of the relevance of this debate, we would like to draw for Ecozon@'s readers an introductory map of the new paradigm and introduce what can be called "material ecocriticism." We will illustrate what we consider to be its main features, situating them in the conceptual horizons of the new materialisms. From this genealogical sketch, we will examine the re-definitions of concepts like matter, agency, discursivity, and intentionality, with regard to their effects on ecocriticism and in terms of their ethical perspectives."

Bloomsbury Semiotics 2: Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences, 2023

GELECEĞE GÖSTERGEBİLİMLE BAKMAK, 2023

International Journal of Žižek Studies, 2020

This article draws upon the work of Timothy Morton and Slavoj Žižek in order to critically examine how mountain bike trail builders orientated themselves within nature relations. Beginning with a discussion of the key ontological differences between Morton’s object-oriented ontology and Žižek’s blend of Hegelian- Lacanianism, we explore how Morton’s dark ecology and Žižek’s account of the radical contingency of nature, can offer parallel paths to achieving an ecological awareness that neither idealises nor mythologises nature, but instead, acknowledges its strange (Morton) and contingent (Žižek) form. Empirically, we support this theoretical approach in interviews with twenty mountain bike trail builders. These interviews depicted an approach to trail building that was ambivalently formed in/with the contingency of nature. In doing so, the trail builders acted with a sense of temporal awareness that accepted the radical openness of nature, presenting a ‘symbolic framework’ that was amiable to nature’s ambivalent, strange and contingent form. In conclusion, we argue that we should not lose sight of the ambivalences and strange surprises that emanate from our collective and unpredictable attempts to symbolize nature and that such knowledge can coincide with Morton’s ‘dark ecology’ – an ecological awareness that remains radically open to our ecological existence.