[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> no people.

[McKenzie Wark <mw35@nyu.edu>]

Doug Henwood points out that 'nature' is often used as an explanation
for the social world, whereas I had made the opposite point, namely
that nature documentaries often treat the animal world as if it behaved
according to human assumptions.

A better way of putting it might be that there's a traffic in metaphors
between the human and natural worlds. Each locks the other into a
certain notion of 'normality'. You sure don't see documentaries about
multipartner homosexual behaviour among monkeys as part of the
norm.

I was reading recently about the rhizosphere, a biological realm made up
of fungus and micro organisms that can be found in the soil, and seems to
play a distributive role in relation to spreading nutrients among the trees
that tap into it. A biological welfare state.

Alan Sondheim's 'no people' is a useful text in just plain rejecting the
metaphorical baggage that connects the animal and human worlds, and
rejecting it from a speaking position in language that is, paradoxically,
the aniaml's. Sondheim uses the animal's speaking position to say no to
what we would ahve it speak. Kinda neat, i thought.

ken wark

>
> I'd always thought it was the other way around - that nature
> documentaries and such reduce the human to the animal: that they're
> little morality plays of the nakedly Darwinian red in tooth & claw
> sort. Relatedly, I've been struck lately by the way libertarians,
> for
> all their talk of human freedom, love to invoke genetic
> imperatives,
> as if competitive capitalism is coded in our DNA.
> --
>
> Doug Henwood
> Left Business Observer
> Village Station - PO Box 953
> New York NY 10014-0704 USA
> +1-212-741-9852 voice  +1-212-807-9152 fax
> email: <mailto:dhenwood@panix.com>
> web: <" target="l">http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com>
>
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