Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature - John Bellamy Foster

While it is universally accepted that the work of Charles Darwin has revolutionized the natural sciences, lesser known is the impact it had on another of the 19th century's most formative figures. The publication of The Origin of Species helped cohere Karl Marx's ideas about the dialectical principles within the world. Much like Marxism was a philosophy rooted in the interactive, joint production of people and the world, Darwinian thought struck at two of the fundamental tenets of contemporary western thought: essentialism and teleology. By grounding history and society in a "materialist ontology of emergence" (p. 233) both Darwin and Marx would transform how humans conceived of their relations with the world.

John Bellamy Foster sets out to reveal a forgotten history of Marx's (and Engels') ecological thought. Tracing the intellectual development of a young Marx through his dissertation examining Epicurean philosophy, Foster sows the materialist seeds that will blossom into Marx's central works. Overlooked in western recountings of Marxist thought, Foster argues, is an almost proto-ecological ethic. This is was not because Marx was some closeted, dreamy-eyed romantic, but rather because he drew sharp connections between the alienation of men from the landscape, and the domination of the capitalist. In Marx's estimation, the progression of capitalism relied on a double alienation of the worker both from himself (his human-ness) and from access to the land. Only the disconnect of town and country fostered a people abstracted from the world. In a passage that presages our own modern ecological concerns, Marx writes:

"Man lives, from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man's physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature."

It was, Marx thought, that only through such an awareness could the formative ensemble of relations between people and the world be adequately conceived. Attempts to separate Marx's political economy from his ecological theory will, Foster argues, incorrectly assess both the home-ground and the implications of Marxist thought.

For Marx, the true dialectic requires a proper situating of relations. Marx was a thoroughgoing materialist, one who saw the relational interaction of things as the constant reinvention of the world. In this materialism Marx was echoing the words of Epicurus and Lucretius: in materialism he too imagined the fundamental premise by which men could be freed to make their own history. For Marx, the materialist conception of nature and the materialist conception of history went hand-in-hand. As such, he and Darwin can be heard to speak the message, registering in different octaves.

What Hath God Wrought - Daniel Walker Howe

One can almost book-end what Daniel Walker Howe terms the formative years of the American republic with the political career of John Quincy Adams. As Secretary of State for President Monroe, Quincy Adams would pen the Monroe Doctrine, asserting the rights of the United States to the continent and setting the course for American expansion. On February 21, 1848, Old Man Eloquent would die serving at his post in the House of Representatives, speaking out against the country's continued insistence of celebrating the Mexican-American War, ambivalent about the expansion he had helped to nurture. Though he was only one of what might be considered the grandest generation of statesmen (including Webster, Clay, Calhoun and Hart Benton, among others), Adams cast a special shadow as the conscience of the young and fitful nation. His death was the final knell sounded for an older America, as it receded into history.

Interweaving growing industrialization, the increasing power of differing sects of Protestantism, and the advent of the two-party political system, Howe persuasively argues that the thirty years from 1815 - 1845 set the course for America beyond the Civil War and into the twentieth century. Though Howe's work sets itself the ambitious task of reviewing the entirety of the nation's history for the period, as an introduction and overview it ably casts a broad scope while pulling out salient and memorable details which provide a flavor of the politics and personages of the time. Throughout he emphasizes the speed and abilities of communication and the development of infrastructure as forces that would shrink time and space and bring the frontiers of empire to the door of civil-society.

The work succeeds as both a top-down review of political power and a bottom-up examination of the role that burgeoning social movements played in the growth of the empire and the American psyche. Howe's work is perhaps at its most insightful where these two concerns meet: the emergence of the modern US political party system. From virtual one-party rule under the Monroe Administration to the splintering of both the Whigs and Democrats in the run-up to the Civil War, the unsettled issues and contestations of debate are shown to interact within evolving nested contexts. Concepts of person-hood and rights, state versus federal power, and the privilege of the many versus the protection of the few, were far from settled by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. As the Congress and the Supreme Court struggled to enumerate the roles of government and the rights of citizens, the parties jockeyed for position and influence. With such uncertainty the political winds of influence blew in great gusts, swinging between seeming Democratic hegemony and Whig ascendancy. Shying away from simply defining all politics through the lens of slavery, Howe argues that the "peculiar institution" is better understood as one of a host of political (and ethical) concerns - though this too would evolve over the period. Yet it was often the cleavage point of slavery which continued to divide North and South, and served as the discursive shorthand for the opposition of different ways of life and conceptualization of the relationships between government and the people.

Here we see the adolescence of America in all its fits and starts. From the halls of the Capitol to the swamps of Louisiana. Within the percolations of such an era of global uncertainty we glimpse the formations of time and space; and are given room to imagine a world as it has been, as it would come to be, and, what did not come to pass.

Song of Myself - Walt Whitman

Whitman writes of wonderful interconnection; cosmos wheeling underneath, numbered hairs and dignity within, and without. So many roads to walk and, similarly, to move under our feet. "And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe." How to synopsize, how to coalesce and communicate a statement of the self that is at once driving headlong, and similarly, felt at the margins? Both bold in assured dignity and timid in tentative wonder? Much as Whitman bequeaths himself to the dirt, or hastens to converse with the chorus of the all-purposed invisible, he lives and breathes, touching within and without, in surrender.

The binding notion for Whitman, in my own estimation (at least today) is total emptiness at the center: the arrival of oneself is the whole coming-together of an entire history of the universe - past, present, and at the knife-edge of creative novelty. We are, and it all is, constantly being reinvented. "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." Total stability renders phenomena immobile. Thermodynamics demands the loss of energy; the unintended outcome gives rise to the new world, and, thus, the new self. If we were already full, determined, drivers of our own destiny, then whither our new sense of self, our own transformation? We would be rendered immobile by Ecclesiastes - disparaging of nothing new under the sun. Recombination. Stagnation. Death there.

But I hesitate to simplify it, even so. Surely there is much more to find and be found. Wiser minds thinking wiser thoughts. The mountain doesn't simply come to Muhammad, nor can it provide our own salvation. Each, like Whitman, brings what he or she will to each new pass-way, each tight-rope movement. Transcendent effort, his, and each of us can meet him along the road - that place of co-production. Thus, the world is borne again, and each of us within it, and constituting it. Forever and ever. Great exultation there.

"I know I have the best of space and time, and was never measured and never will be measured."

Thanks, Gary.

Moa - Quinn Berentson

Quinn Berentson's Moa: the life and death of New Zealand's legendary bird, is part environmental and scientific history, part anthropological travelogue, and all elegy for these grand, extinct, birds of New Zealand. The moa emerges in Berentson's work as both product and producer; gateway into a disappeared world, and formative of this new-found place.

In detailing the settlement of New Zealand alongside the introduction of the moa to the western world, Berentson reveals how the last journey of the moa would be New Zealans's first: as they both entered into our consciousness. Uncovering the shifting grounds of uncertainty surrounding scientific discovery, Berentson allows us to peer into the unknown in the world around us, and reflect upon, not only how we come to know, but that we too leave footprints on the landscape trod.


Complete review published in Ostrich: Journal of African Ornithology

Trying Leviathan - D. Graham Burnett

The sound of a startling hubbub permeated New York City between Christmas and New Years, 1818. At issue was a court case debating a, seemingly, simple question, "are whales fish?" Yet, as D. Graham Burnett relates, this straight-forward question of classification and natural history was anything but, for it touched not only on the place of cetaceans and people in the "great chain of being," but also on the place of scientific and popular knowledge within the young American republic. In delving deeply into the historical and social context of the court case, Maurice v. Judd, Burnett has provided a far-seeing window allowing the reader to glimpse not only the evolution of classification within biology, but also contestations over who was the rightful representative of the natural world within the human sphere and the how definitions and placements of the natural delineated roles and differences within society.

It would be easy for a retrospective historian to look at this trial as one more tired example within the popular opinion versus scientific knowledge narrative. Luckily for us, Burnett has far too deft a touch, and is clearly too careful a thinker, to allow for such reductionist pandering. Rather than attempt to cut through the uncertainty and messiness of the period, with some modern-day dismissal of our naive and ignorant predecessors, Burnett sinks himself into the morass of context, to make us wonder along with everyone else, "what exactly makes a fish a fish?" Was it so settled that scientists thought whales were mammals? What about whalemen? Surely those who had actually grappled with a living beast ought to have their say. As for the common people, even their understandings were not so easily categorized. This final concern was of central importance. For, as the trial closed, it was about the practical application of understandings within the young republic, and how these differed across space, that would decide the fate of leviathan. Maurice v Judd was to become not only a question of classification, but of the placing of science within the politics and policy of the city.

Toward the end of his work Burnett refers to natural history of the period as existing within a "paradigm of confusion" and, indeed, it is the careful elucidation of this paradigm which grounds Trying Leviathan. Certainty and uncertainty rarely fall into such neat classifications. Too frequently we assume to know everything, or nothing. Truly, it is often the case that we have some information, that we move forward tentatively, with uncertainty. Capturing the spirit which animates the tough slog of living gives history a more nuanced, and yes, a more truthful animation.  Whether we hail the whale as a brother of Mammalia is about expertise yes, but also about common acceptation, which, like knowledge, is always subject to revision and change. We too are caught in the same morass; overwrought by the same hubbub.

Mayflower - Nathaniel Philbrick

After the perilous crossing was over, after the initial exploration of a mysterious shore was begun, and the first winter survived, the self-styled Pilgrims still had to carve a new life out of a landscape they could have never imagined. With a lifetime of vast uncertainties ahead, these believers tried to make sense of their lives, community, and faith in this new, unknown, and at many times perilous, world. Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower looks at the story of this preeminent early American community - those who Americans would claim as their progenitors - and how they lived and died, made peace and war, settled and fought on this new continent.

Central to Philbrick's work is his claim that the story of the Mayflower doesn't simply end with the Pilgrim's settlement at Plymouth Rock. Without developing crucial relationships with native people, any hope of Pilgrim survival would have been little more than a dream. Though both Indians and settlers ran the gamut of emotions and positions concerning these foreign people, avenues of exchange were forged and each came to rely upon the other. However, as the years passed, and the English became more comfortable and assured in this new world, their younger generations could not but help take the Indians for granted. Often seeing these, so different, people as obstacles to more peaceable lives, and along with unfettered access to a land they coveted, it is little wonder that conflict would arise. Philbrick's work continues through the end of King Philip's War and argues that the conflict remade the American landscape and was central to securing this new English preeminence. Contrary to the American national mythos, Philbrick demonstrates the tenuous nature of English victory in the war - and the precarious advantages they were able to exploit. We are left believing that history could have been written very differently indeed - that the future of this new world balanced on a knife's edge. Yet, by the time sachem Philip was killed in battle, the Indian population had been decimated and their claims to land usurped. Their numbers were never to rebound - nor was their land to be reclaimed.

These early days preceding the United States ought to remind us all of the humble and uncertain beginnings. As we look at the uncertainty of days gone by, we cannot help but wonder how things could have been, and what opportunities were lost along the way.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris

All energy.

The power and enthusiasms of Theodore Roosevelt crackle off the page of Edmund Morris' first of a three-part biography. From his birth and family origins unto the very precipice of the presidency, we see the young Theodore Roosevelt as a man never satisfied. Ever striving, succeeding (and failing), ever looking at what's next, Roosevelt seems to imagine a world on the cusp of being. Out West freedom is waiting to be harnessed. On the floor of the New York Assembly are problems to solve, foes to vanquish. Corruption in government is rampant. The natural world is in need of taming, exploration and explanation. To sit, to stagnate, is to watch life pass before you. Keep moving, seems to be his credo.

Yet for all TR's breathless efforts, we are left uncertain as to his motivations. Though it is always fraught to ascribe contemporary moralities to past periods, Morris more so questions Roosevelt's lack of common humanity. Why Roosevelt was driven to a life of public service remains largely uncertain - perhaps the man himself could not say. In all its power as a character-study Morris does wonder greatly at the young behemoth. We are left with the subtle feeling that Roosevelt's energies were expended more with an eye towards contest and glory than for any other notion. That it was the cultivation of his own imagined aspects of character, more than his impact on others, that drove Roosevelt so incessantly. Though we may wonder at this, it is not clear that Roosevelt ever did. We are left pondering: was the young Theodore Roosevelt a careful man? A thoughtful one? Does this change our estimation of his (coming in later volumes) greatness? Do we like Theodore Roosevelt?

While we may stand in awe of his efforts, his energies and his results, in the balance it is difficult to revere Roosevelt. The human dynamo blasts beyond everything in his path, yet when the points are tallied his success seems to reside largely in self-promotion. Thought he may embody the truly American spirit, a prizing of victory and glory without a reflection upon motivation and broader impact remains a tricky proposition. While we applaud his personification of our boundless enthusiasms, we simultaneously are given pause by the display of our many darker lights. Our tightrope between the past and the future is one strung across a chasm of uncertainty. Action and reflection are the opposing tensions holding our rope aloft. Pay too little, or too much, heed to one or the other, and we are lost. Some plow forward unknowingly, while others are paralyzed. Yet both falter. History would seem to conclude that Roosevelt found a balance which propelled him, and the country, forward. That, in his colossal efforts, he brought the world into a new age. Perhaps this demands a reassessment of the proper tension between action and reflection. We will see.