February 2, 2015 - 23:33
My mouth is a fire escape.
The words coming out
don’t care that they are naked.
There is something burning in there.”
-Andrea Gibson
Looking at Timothy Morton’s reading, I’ve (tentatively) decided look at the importance of art and other aspects of life besides the physicality of nature in ecology. He argues that “ecology isn't just about global warming, recycling, and solar power--and also not just to do with everyday relationships between humans and nonhumans. It has to do with love, loss, despair, and compassion. It has to do with depression and psychosis. It has to do with capitalism and with what might exist after capitalism. It has to do with amazement, open-mindedness, and wonder. It has to do with doubt, confusion, and skepticism. It has to do with concepts of space and time. It has to do with delight, beauty, ugliness, disgust, irony, and pain. It has to do with consciousness and awareness. It has to do with ideology and critique. It has to do with reading and writing. It has to do with race, class, and gender. It has to do with sexuality. It has to do with ideas of self and the weird paradoxes of subjectivity. It has to do with society. It has to do with coexistence.”
Taking from this, I’d like to go more in depth, looking at poetry (both written and spoken word) and novels. The way I see it, writing is one way in which we, as humans, portray our emotions and understandings of the world. Writing can also help us understand the way the world interacts with us and why we perceive things in a certain manner. In an ecological curriculum, while readings and discussions are critical, art and looking at the different interpretations of art, I feel, is just as critical. To most people, "word vomit" is unnecessary and words and thoughts should be filtered before being shown to an audience. To others, that lack of a filter is what brings out their true nature. Looking at this in an ecological curriculum may be incredibly beneficial in understanding the manners in which humans think and perceive things in their environment.
I’m not entirely sure where I want to go from there but I’d like to take the reading we did by Timothy Morton and understand his reasoning as to why he believes ecology can be found in more than just physical nature and then take that and put it in terms of what sort of an ecological curriculum would be most beneficial and interesting.