Remote Control 3: Annotated Bibliographies

Ecology is Racist — It’s Time to Eat

A limited annotated bibliography by SPURSE, summer 2020 --ongoing[1]

1. The classical western ecological paradigm is structurally flawed in that it is founded upon a fundamentally false idea: that there is an actual entity called “Nature” which can be in its simplest defined as the living world without humans [2]. This approach to Ecology, as the study of the part of “world without humans”, is only possible if (1) we ignore the near total erasure of peoples living in deeply entangled ways with their environments perpetrated by racially based genocides, ethnic cleansings and enclosures of the early modern period that ultimately produced lands that were seeming uninhabited, and could be defined as “Nature” [3], and (2) we elide the importance of peoples — especially indigenous peoples deep tens of thousands of years long massively transformative co-shaping of all environments [4].

2. Prior to the arrival of European colonizers/settlers, every square centimeter of the Americas and the indigenous worlds globally had been profoundly co-shaped for tens of thousands of years by diverse First Nations peoples. The genocide that put a halt to the indigenous co-shaping was unimaginably [5] merciless: in the context of the Americas killing over 90 percent of the first nations populations, possibly as many as 100 million, in a little over a century with practices of ethnic cleansing moving the rest off the land and onto distant imprisonment [6]. The modern natural sciences began (ecology and conservation being very late comers to the field), after the remarkable indigenous co-shapers were already nearly fully silenced, and a post-indigenous so-called “wilderness” was open for discovery, exploration, colonization, study and theorization as a seemingly non-human environment [7]. It is this silenced reality that we now reflexively and unconsciously call “Nature’ [8].

3. Classical ecology and its subdivisions (especially conservation) objectivizes and reinforces this problematic structurally racist reality without even being aware that Nature is a culturally limited, historically modern framework based on a racially loaded category error (that humans are distinct from ecosystems). Historically, the conservation (of post genocidal/ethnically cleansed landscapes) [9] movement built upon this conceptual illusion and used it to further a Nativist purification agenda that further removed indigenous communities from lands to produce National Parks and Wilderness Preserves [10]. All the early conservation writers and activists (Thoreau, Emerson, Muir, Roosevelt, and others) were social and ecological racists concerned about both the purity of peoples (the Anglo-Saxon race) and places (a pure unsoiled spiritualized wilderness) [11]. Their logic’s diverse offspring were the Nazi’s (with their program of “Blood and Soil”), Trumps disparagement of immigrants and obsession with walls, and the Native/Invasive conservation practices endemic today— amongst many other equally problematic movements [12]. We do not wish in any way shape or form to conflate these different offspring — but — it is critical that we recognize that they share the same category error, history, structural logic and purificationary zeal [13]. The practices of environmental racism and the poisoning of vast tracts of our world are also built directly upon this framework: we “rightfully” set aside and protect pure untouched-by-human-wilderness, and fully exploit other areas of limited value because of “human intervention”. It is no accident that these binary practices of purification/exploitation impact peoples of color as well as the poor and marginalized most directly [14].

4. The classical ecology and conservation disciplines cannot be simply revised, we need alternative practices to Nature, Classical Ecology, and Conservation. Furthermore, these models [15] divest indigenous peoples of their various modes of ecological stewardship which, privileging forms of interdependent multi-species commons, have evolved alongside their unique cosmologies [16] Ecology has evolved significantly beyond this paradigm with far more entangled and dynamic models — and it is these that refute “nature” in radically diverse manners that we should look to for future practices and research programs [17].These exist in great abundance — the full scope is beyond the limits of this annotated bibliography. But, we would suggest that what many alternatives share is an interest in cosmologies that have new models of agency that see humans as one agent in a radically impure world full of equally powerful and equally entangled agents [18]. The Novel Ecosystem framework, Animist Kinship Models, Totemistic Cosmologies, Entangled species models, co-evolutionary models of Niche Construction, TEK cosmologies and others are critical.

5. Our own specific interest is in seeing these forms of entangled agency as extended practices of eating. Everything is eating and being eaten. We individual humans are an entangled community [19] of trillions of creatures all eating each other into a semi-stable meta-being we call the individual. Eating is different than food — food imagines a world of product, eating imagines everything is alive and active. The planetary ethos needs to be eating well — the ethics and aesthetics of eating properly and beautifully while similarly being eating.

[1] The literature covering the many fields touched upon here is vast and this short annotated bibliography reflects the history of our engagements. We have placed books in relation to specific claims, many other texts that could serve equally well, & the books mentioned could just as well be placed in relation to other claims in this document. This is an ongoing project, please reach out to collaborate: info@spurse.org

[2] Note: Most authors in the annotated bibliography unpack and critique this claim. Below is one starting point: Racist Culture: Philosophy & the Politics of Meaning (David T. Goldberg). Goldberg unpacks the philosophical project of the west/modernity with its conception of reason and truth to disclose its inherent racist logic. Nature as Event (Didier Debase) a critique of the modern invention of Nature, and a powerful mannerist alternative by a French scholar of A. N. Whitehead. The Falling Sky (Kopenawa & Albert) Davi Kopenawa presents an astonishing detailed non-western animist perspectival cosmology of a world filled with “human” beings that take the form of everything from clouds to trees to humans to monkeys. Confronting this cosmology makes it impossible to assume the logic of Nature (or even human/non-human) is universal. The book ends with a Yanomami critique of the west as “the people of merchandise”. Decentring 1788: Beyond Biotic Nativeness (Lesley M Head), an example of one of many research articles on the problematic racial logic of the concept of Nature as applied in ecology and conservation (in this case analyzing the context of Australian conservations). The Western Illusion of Human Nature (Marshall Salins) A brief and powerful critique of both the model of the human and the model of the environment that lies at the heart of the western project to define humans universally and universally distinct from their environments. The Ecology of Others (P. Descola).

[3] See footnote 6

[4] See section #2.

[5] The “Pristine Myth” Revisited (William M. Denevan). A survey of the evolution of the Myth of Nature in the Americas. Evolving views on the Pleistocene colonization of North America (Daniel Amick) A good survey of current knowledge on the early human co-shaping of North America, 1941: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (Charles Mann) Mann synthesizes the vast literature on how densely populated the Americas were, and how profound the human co-shaping of the environment was prior to European arrival. This book makes it impossible to continue the racist lie that indigenous peoples were simple “noble savages” who lived as one with “nature”. The ecology of the Americas is the outcome of an intensive, long-term, sophisticated engagement by numerous first nation peoples. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia (Bill Gammage) A work of similar scope and impact of 1491, but in the Australian Context. Gammage makes a passionate argument for an alternative history of agriculture and its impact on human cultures. Part of a movement to uncover and articulate indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) as a radical alternative paradigm to the western model of Nature + Conservation. Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition (C. Levis et al) Groundbreaking work showing how the most bio-diverse ecosystems on the planet were strongly manufactured and co-shaped by first nations groups. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources (M. Kat Anderson) A seminal work fully explicating the First Nations co-shaping of the ecology of California. Salish Sea Basin was one of the most populated areas of North America at time of contact (Gordon McIntyre).

[6] Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 (A. Koch et al) An analysis of the state of Indigenous co-shaping of the environment and the impact of European arrival which lead to the death of 90% of the human population of the Americas. The authors argue that the end of indigenous engagement with the environment of the Americas as a result of colonial genocide was so dramatic that it lead to the little ice age in the late Middle Ages across Europe.

[7] Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Virginia D. Anderson). Empire of Cotton (Sven Beckert) A global survey of the rise of world wide extractive capitalism that reshaped cultures, environments, and all species. The Origins of Capitalism: A Longer View (Ellen Wood) A history of capitalism that refuse to think of it as an inevitable development or progressive outcome that freed humans from constraints of commons and barter economies, a common mistake made by many historians from the popular, Yuval Noah Harari, to the classical, E. P Thompson. Beckert and Wood place capitalism’s emergence within a specific milieu (English farming practices of the late Middle Ages) and connect it to new models of land ownership stemming from the enclosure of the woodland commons.

[8] Shades of Darkness: Race and Environmental History (Carolyn Merchant) Merchant is a critical historian of the American project of producing “nature” and its origins in a racist, Christian model.

[9] Beyond Nature and Culture (Philippe Descola) a wide ranging anthropological rethinking of historical cosmologies, with an exceptional critical investigation of recent historical development of the western model of Nature+Culture as a divide between active humans and nature. Against the Grain (James C. Scott) A detailed account of the entanglement between sedentary agrarian practices and the contingent development of specific characteristics of western civilization. Scott links the emergence of statehood to the domestication of reproduction, be it plants, animals or humans, and the rise in patriarchal domination and hierarchical labor relations.

[10] Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (Mark Spence) as the title makes clear ethnic cleansing was critical to the production of our modern “wilderness” a very good history of how this came about. Kiumajut: Talking Back (P. Kulchyski & F. Tester), A critical account of how the concept of Nature affected the indigenous peoples of Canada.

[11] Environmentalism’s Racist History (Jedediah Purdy) Good introductory survey article.

[12] An Evolutionary Perspective on Strengths, Fallacies, and Confusions in the Concept of Native Plants (Steven J. Gould) Importantly, despite its popularity in many conservation circles, the Native/Invasive model is as far from settled science as one could get, Gould and the authors below present a good overview of the serious flaws in the paradigm: Researching Invasive Species 50 Years After Elton: A Cautionary Tale (Mark A. Davis), ‘The Denialists Are Coming!’ Well, Not Exactly: A Response to Russell and Blackburn (Mark A. Davis and Matthew K. Chew) Don’t judge species on their origins (Mark Davis et al). Perspectives on the ‘alien’ versus ‘native’ species debate: a critique of concepts, language and practice (C. R. Warren).

[13] Modernity and the Holocaust (Zygmunt Bauman).

[14] As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice (Dina Gilio-Whitaker) Significant survey and reframing of Environmentalism, Environmental Racism, Ecology and the long history of the Indigenous fight for Environmental Justice, Sovereignty, and a space for their cosmological difference.

[15] Novel Ecosystems: Intervening in the New Ecological World Order (R. J. Hobbs et al) major survey of the alternative ecological models to the Nature paradigm. Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell (P. Pignarre & Isabelle Stengers), Details the moderns project of delegitimizing alternative cosmologies and difference.

[16] The role of prehistoric peoples in shaping ecosystems in the eastern United States: Implications for restoration ecology and wilderness management (Thomas Neumann) Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development (Vandana Shiva) A detailed account of the resistance to western modes of ecological domination based on historical and contemporary accounts of women in rural India. Shiva’s examples draw from unique embedded forms of interdependent commoning that fall outside the standard model of western ecological thinking, which privileges the separation and conservation of “wild” areas. Agriculture in North America on the Eve of Contact: A Reassessment (William E. Doolittle). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. (R.W. Kimmerer) Botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer explores the interlocking development of animist cosmologies, ecological practices and ritual within the American context. Rather than a wholesale dismissal of science as a totalizing project of modernism, Kimmerer demonstrates how the specific applications of the scientific methodology can be applied in parallel with Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America (Nancy Turner). Dine bahane: The Navajo Creation Story. (P. Zolbrod). The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds (E. Viveiros de Castro). How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (E. Kohn).

[17] Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast (Peter Del Tredici). Science for the Sustainable City (Pickett et al).

[18] The Universe of Things (S. Shaviro). The Ends of the World (D. Danowski & E. Viveiros de Castro). A Thousand Plateaus (F. Guattari & G. Deleuze). The Mushroom at the End of the World (A. Tsing). Dark Emu (Bruce Pascoe). Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indiginism (J. Watson). Culture and the Course of Human Evolution (G. Tomlinson). Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (A. Maree Brown). The Different Modes of Existence (E. Souriau). When Species Meet (D. Haraway).

[19] The Forest and The School: Where to sit at the dinner table? (Pedro Neves Marques ed.) A very large collection of important texts considering Anthropofagia both as a cultural movement and a philosophy — a “cannibal metaphysics” from various perspectives — all informed by an animist logic of which De Castro says “when everything is human, the human is an entirely different thing”, Eat Your Sidewalk Cookbook (SPURSE) our own attempt at reconsidering eat as an act of multi-species commoning/composition. Foraging as a practice of co-composition. After Nature is a model of ecology, Food Sovereignty the Navajo Way: Cooking with Tall Woman (Tall Woman & C.J. Frisbie), The Noma Guide to Fermentation (R. Redzepi & D. Zilber), Symbiotic Planet (Lynn Margulis). Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Culture and Ecological Diversity (G. Nabhan, ed.).