'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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cultural studies and nature
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February 6, 2008
Stephen Muecke, in a talk given to the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia's annual conference in Adelaide in December----Sustaining Culture puts his finger on my unease with cultural studies. The text is published online in The Australian.
My unease is the way cultural studies understands nature, presupposes the nature/human divide, and understands nature. Muecke says:
Unfortunately for cultural studies, it seems stuck with the human scale of things. It is the inheritor of the western European modernist view that the world is divided between the natural world on one side (accessible only to hard science) and the cultural world on the other (full of imperfect perceptions and values). So because cultural studies is intrigued merely by human variety and power struggles identified as human (as opposed to struggles against rising sea levels, accumulating waste, rat plagues or Muzak in supermarkets), it has abandoned nature to the scientists.
He's dead right. We can add environmental concerns such as rivers, habitat and biodiversity to Muecke's dust mite. The nature side---processes , assemblages and things--- goes. Nature only appears inside culture as if it were part of a text or on the television screen. Muecke says:
So the critical theorist sits cornered in the modern apartment of culture, grumbling about dominant discourses and the construction of reality, looking for cultural margins to celebrate, having conceded that the techno-capitalist machine has either destroyed everything else or it is about to. But you are only in this depressing trap if you accept that modernism is the only Enlightenment cutting edge, progressively separating us from ancient superstitions and pre-modern cultures, which are supposedly closer to nature. But natural things and wholesome primitive cultures are not being left behind, and there was never any purity about such things anyway. There are only natural-cultural hybrids.
Nature and culture were never separated except in the absurd machinery that created the sciences and the humanities as two cultures, one of facts and the other of values. Cultural studies works in terms of dominant cultures, subcultures, gender-based ones and so on, appearing outlined against the backdrop of a singular nature. If cultures were the main actors, they differed by mere convention, these conventions as understood as cultural constructions and multicultural diversity was valorized.
What then of nature? It is only seen within culture. Nature, its processes, assemblages and things, has been gobbled up by society and culture. Muecke doesn't really explore this other than pointing the way beyond cultural studies as a ‘post-literary’ discourse premised on the natural science/humanities divide. (I'm not sure where the social sciences fit in). Muecke is optimistic:
So how will cultural studies change once it admits [natural] things and non-humans into co-existence and dignified consideration? Ignoring science-humanities divisions, you may want to describe the interplay of real things in a situation. Seb's allergy is a problem of growing levels of pollutants, the role of medicines and the medical industry, the technological aspects of bedrooms and contemporary housing, including cleaning; the physiology of human respiratory tracts; the bio-chemical analysis of the key protein chitin in dust mites, and finally the culture of dust mite behaviour.
I'm not sure that cultural studies is ready to make the shift. The shift that is taking place is towards communication and information technology, as exemplified by contiguous articles on knowledge, power and the internet, electronic space, and communities in cyberspace.
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The culture(s) of environmentalism? Pop psychology: Problem solving among engineers? Bone density problems among self identified Emos? Kangaroos, Crocodile Dundee and the misrecognition of Australia in global politics.
Perhaps cultural studies stands to one side partly because it was pushed? What are you doing when you document the impact certain kinds of development are having on the Victor Harbour environment? Maybe cultural studies are not, of themselves, the problem so much as the reluctance of the natural sciences to give them credence? Maybe cultural studies is a gigantic wank after all, and the Gold Coast is no different from Kings Cross? Maybe brawls over the existence of global warming are more properly attributed to the science than power struggles between varieties of humans?