Being Salmon, Being Human by Martin Lee Mueller

Author:Martin Lee Mueller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2017-10-12T20:29:59+00:00

Since its beginnings, modernity has advocated a kind of “narrative hegemony,” the expectation that one “right” story would emerge by virtue of technological and moral progress. The modern story was fueled by epistemological optimism, or the idea that as the rational intellect withdrew from the world and cut ties with tradition, it would gradually come to a clearer and more perfect understanding of the world and of humans’ place within it. The mind-body split and the human-world split would eventually overcome all uncertainties and create a world with no more imperfections.18

In Descartes’s age, the un-centering of Earth had left Europe’s educated citizenry in a precarious state of distrust. In that context, the Cartesian split became a remarkable success story. Descartes responded to his contemporaries’ widespread insecurity by offering a desirable counternarrative. The Cartesian split was a victory of the rational intellect over the body, a victory over convention, boosting a general mood of epistemological optimism. Every new achievement of the rational intellect would bring Europeans a little closer to what Bacon had so cunningly spoken of as the “millenarian promise of restored perfection.”19 The new story quickly gained momentum: The rational intellect would look ahead and not turn back. It would create an immaculate world, a world dictated by reason alone, no longer vulnerable to outside forces.

But the story of humanity-as-separation not only alienates mind from body, and it not only estranges humans from river deltas, mountain plateaus, aspen groves, bears, or salmon. It also splits “our story” from “other stories.” It reflects an ambition to “otherize” that which is perceived to be “outside.” This creates a strong pressure to deny that there might be other narratives, other stories that can function as primary sources of intelligibility and value.

And so the Cartesian split also tends to marginalize other-than-modern (typically oral and indigenous) cultures. There is a parallel logic at work here. Oral, indigenous cultures who have not endorsed the mind-body split, or the human-world split, might be perceived as “not quite human.” They might be perceived as “more animal than human,” as having “not yet” adopted modern ways, and as somehow “lagging behind.” The modern split from the world elevates itself to a historical norm by which all are evaluated. Just as the perceptual othering of salmon can make it seem normal, even desirable, to exploit the salmon, the othering of nonmodern humans can make it seem normal, even desirable, to exploit those humans who have not subscribed to the dominant narrative.

Music That Rises from the Earth

The modern experience of time is a peculiar thing. As Freya Mathews has observed, modernity’s hallmark is radical change, a commitment to the ever-emerging new, a deep dissatisfaction with the given. Modernity fetishizes a radical discontinuity with the past and dissociation from tradition. When our attention is directed only to the new, time is perceived as moving in a rectilinear way, a straight line, from a distant past toward a not-too-distant future. This sense of time has trouble turning back and is more skilled at seeing what lies ahead.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.