literature

Aliases: 

Wälder und Entwaldung

Wälder und Entwaldung

In this chapter of the German-language version of her virtual exhibition, “Mensch und Natur in der deutschen Literatur (Human-Nature Relations in German Literature),” Sabine Wilke examines forests and deforestation in works by Adalbert Stifter, Marlen Haushofer, and Elfriede Jelinek. For the English-language version of this exhibition, click here.

Einführung in die Ausstellung

Einführung in die Ausstellung

This German-language version of Sabine Wilke’s virtual exhibition features short excerpts from German-language literary texts that address human-nature entanglements. The aim is to show how literature can contribute to understanding and problematizing the relation between humans and nonhuman nature. What aspects of human-nature relations are addressed, at what point in literary history, and how are they shaped poetically? For the English-language version of this exhibition, click here.

"Global Plants and Digital Letters: Epistemological Implications of Digitising the Directors' Correspondence at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew"

Anna Svenson considers the epistemological implications of the digitization of the Directors’ Correspondence (DC) collection (1841-1928) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She concludes that care is needed to avoid replicating the invisible losses of extractive approaches to knowledge production, particularly in the context of collection-based biodiversity conservation.

"Becoming-With"

For the special section “Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities,” Kate Wright points to a photograph of two young men laughing as their hair stands up, only to be struck by lightning moments later, as a reminder of how tragic and dangerous the cognitive illusion of human exceptionalism can be. She sees Environmental Humanities as an attempt to address the systemic pathology of a species disconnected from the conditions of its world.

"Practising Nature: A Phenomenological Rethinking of Environmentality in Natural Protected Areas in Ecuador and Spain"

Examining three natural protected areas in Ecuador and Spain, Cortes-Vazquez and Ruiz-Ballesteros offer a more nuanced understanding of the connection between different regulatory regimes and the formation of environmental subjects, using a phenomenological approach that places more emphasis on the agency of the people subjected to conservation.