Imagination and Environmental Political Thought by Bowman Joshua J.;

Author:Bowman, Joshua J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wilderness and the Arcadian Longing

The problem of the “Arcadian longing” and Thoreau’s concept of “wildness” have significant parallels in modern environmental politics and thought, and especially in the wilderness movement of the mid-twentieth century. One of the first problems in Thoreau’s legacy for the politics of wilderness, though, is the appeal of “wildness” as the preferred characterization of freedom. The wild is uninhibited and uncivilized. There is little room for a restraining ethical will or for attention to expediency and tradition. Yet it is that same wildness which is at the root of threats to wilderness. Westward expansion in the nineteenth-century United States, for example, was often characterized more by anarchy than by order. Uninhibited by a rule of law or by the trappings of a civilized society, great tracts of land were taken over, land was overfarmed or overgrazed, great herds of Bison were decimated, forestry was unregulated, and many scenic landscapes and trails were exploited by local entrepreneurs. Undeveloped land was abused, fought over, and under-valued. Such lack of restraint is characteristic of an idyllic imagination which rejects limitations and moderation. While wildness elevates an abstract autonomy, the moral imagination strives to navigate the difficult tension between liberty and restraint without abandoning either. Freedom, as such, is not the problem, but a freedom characterized by wildness drives the immoderate use and abuse of the very land that the wilderness movement seeks to protect. While Thoreau seems to recognize the need for restraint in his opposition to the Mexican-American War and his advocacy in Walden for simpler living, the elevation of wildness and his enthusiasm for John Brown’s lack of restraint demonstrate a significant tension which would be inherited by later environmentalists.

Jack Turner observed a similar problem after noting how many writers have misquoted Thoreau as saying “In Wilderness is the preservation of the world.” Turner worries “that mistaking wilderness for wildness is one cause of our increasing failure to preserve the wild earth.”[46] Many readers interpret Thoreau as equating “wilderness” and “wildness” because they never stop to ask what Thoreau meant by “wildness” or even “world.” Turner tries to remedy this confusion by looking closer at Thoreau’s own etymology of “wild” and “world” and concludes that Thoreau’s influential phrase, “is about the relation of free, self-willed, and self-determinate ‘things’ with the harmonious order of the cosmos.”[47] Still, it’s not immediately clear how the “wild” and a “harmonious order” might be realized.

This confusion emerges, in Turner’s estimation, out of a lack of direct human experience with “wild, nonhuman nature.” Contemporary discourse about “nature” and the “wild” lack the rich insight of distinct engendering experiences. Even Thoreau’s readers, who often claim to have had such experiences, seem to be unaware of what he actually meant. Indeed, it is curious how little Thoreau writes about preserving the wild which he insists will preserve the world. Perhaps this oversight is due to the observation that those who live closest to the natural nonhuman world seem much less inclined to champion environmental causes than those who reside in urban areas.

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