The Ecology of Language and the Language of Place: Language as Environmental Response in the Era of the Anthropocene
- Date: Thursday, April 4, 2019 - 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Building: Scott House
Room: Senior Common Room
As humans, language is one of the most precious things we have. Language holds inside of itself all the things we hold dearest: memory, emotion, perception, experience, communication – life. Having the capacity for language is also what marks us out as unique, special, separate – exceptional, and it can serve to perpetuate the belief that we live outside of our environment: an audience member and not a player. This belief renders our attempts at conservation problematic. Conservation requires a protocol of action (or inaction) in relation to the world around us and, simply by virtue of our thinking that we can enact some kind of preservation of the natural world, automatically positions us as existing outside of, and exceptional to, our ecosystem.
In the era of the Anthropocene, language, particularly language for the land, is rapidly disappearing. Language also, arguably, comes to establish itself as an essential environmental response. As our least invasive means of conservation, language allows us to protect the land and nature, through our awareness of its existence, its biodiversity, the ways in which it changes over time and it furnishes us with the ability to share our experiences with others. This can only be achieved through the active use of language and naming and the pursuance of an active and persistent experiential engagement with the natural world around us. In this way, we will begin to see our place, our right here. As we adopt a parochial approach, and attune ourselves to the local distinctiveness, we will rediscover our place and our own place within it.
What is an appropriate response to the land in the face of the all-consuming Anthropocene? This seminar will attempt to provide a response.
Jessica Becking is a 5th year PhD candidate with the Cultural Studies department. Her work straddles the fields of landscape, contemporary art, language, ecology, and place studies and asks the question: what is an appropriate response to today’s environmental crises. She received her Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing and Publishing from Kingston University in the U.K. in 2012. Her ongoing doctoral work is supervised by Dr. J. Bordo.
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Posted on March 20, 2019