Intersecting Bodies, Selves and Environments
CTMP3210.03F
The traditional view of the relation between humans and nonhuman nature is regarded by many as dualistic insofar as it posits not only a distinction and separation between humans and nonhuman nature, but regards humans as superior to nonhuman nature, on either religious, metaphysical, moral, or even evolutionary, grounds. In this course, we will examine three different strategies for overcoming this view.
DESCRIPTION
We will begin by examining phenomenological attempts to overcome dualistic accounts of the relations between perceiver and perceived, mind and body, and mind and world. Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception and the body-subject will be supplemented by the ecological psychology of James Gibson. Once we have restored perception to the world and the world to perception, we will turn to the broader notion of Being-in-the-world as it is developed in the phenomenology of Heidegger, Bachelard and Casey. In particular, we will examine the phenomenological retrieval of notions like dwelling and place as well as its importance for
ecological understanding.
In the next section, we discuss attempts by radical ecologists to establish a nondualist view of the relation between humans and nature. We will begin by examining selected writings by Aldo Leopold and Arne Naess as well as consider the influence of evolutionary theory and Eastern metaphysics on the development of deep ecology. We will then turn to the claims of cultural and critical ecofeminism about the relation between humans, in particular women, and nature.
In the concluding section of the course, we will examine some postmodern strategies for overcoming dualistic thinking about culture and nature. We will investigate to what extent our notions of nature and wilderness, for example, are social or cultural constructions and, if so, what implications this has for environmentalism.
TIMETABLE
Lecture
TR 4:05 - 5:25
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