Williams and Marx reflections

In Raymond WIlliams’ ‘Ideas of Nature,’ he deals principally with the evolution of humankind’s relationship to nature, or rather: the ‘idea’ of nature.  Although most people, Williams claims, think of the world of nature in contrast to the world inhabited by humans, our manner of thinking about nature is paradoxically shaped by human history.  Humans have an inherent connection to nature by the ways in which we attempt to understand it.  Williams begins his discussion by detailing the critical moment in human history where there was not only a singular God, but also a singular Nature.  We personified Nature in order to explain her as the minister of God: all actions that could be explained back to Nature were simplified and demystified within a language of “providence” and “destructiveneess.”  This singularity, the author argues, does nothing for his attempt to grow closer to an understanding of nature.  A simplified description does more to separate than it does to connect.

Williams then goes on to say that the evolution of our understanding of nature was ironically ushered in by scientific ideas of evolution.  Humankind began to feel the need to relate to God through the avenue of Nature.  What is troublesome, however, is the need felt by humans to then lay out a language that “intervened” and “controled” Nature due to their God-given right to command the elements and find the tools of God within them.  In essence, man “abstracted” himself from nature.  Williams then cites Hobbes and Locke, who differ in opinion of how humankind best exists with Nature, as well as Rousseau, which begins a conversation of humankind, Nature, and property.  Ultimately, these conversations are here only because we have separated ourselves from Nature.  Williams claims that we have distinguised between Nature and God in order to examine, experiment, and produce.  We ‘project’ ourselves onto Nature, splitting ourselves; but when we alienate nature, we inevitably alienate ourseves.  We separate ourselves from the effects of our interactions with Nature, which puts us dangerously close to absolving ourselves of responsibility for it.  Only when we realized that we must identify ourselvs as “one” or as a part of Nature will we learn the language of the conversation that needs to take place.

In Leo Marx’s ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ he develops on the thread where Williams left us.  He discusses the ‘pastoral ideal’ in art and in literature as a “powerful metaphor of contradiction” between ’society’ and Nature.  There is another discussion of separation here.  There are two kinds of pastroalism according to Marx: sentimental and imaginiative.  The former primarily serves the purpose of defining societal feelings, such as the need to ‘get away from the city’ and into the country.  People under a sentimental notion of pastoral feeling turn away from the harsh reality of technology that human society has become.  The imaginative expression, on the other hand, exists in literature and descriptive art form.  The art within ‘pastoral literature’ attempts to capture the feeling of the human juxtaposed to Nature.  The landscape is idealized and high metaphor is used in order to convey impossible thoughts of refuge within nature.

Nathanial Hawthorne is Marx’s prime example; he usees natural facts “metaphorically to convey something about a human situation.”  Marx’s argument seems to say that Hawthorne, as an artist, sees trouble in the advancement of technology and its encroachment onto Nature.  This both destroys humankind’s refuge of contemplation and serenity, and promotes complex emotions in regards to the advancement of our society.  Marx makes note of the “little event” that is a popular trope in literature, as the sign of technology, the machine, invading natural spaces.  There is an interrupted ideal.  Hawthorne’s biggest contribution to Marx’s essay here is his line which says: “when we see how little we can express, it is a wonder that any man ever takes up a pen a second time.”  There is something sublime and magical that results from the relationship man has with nature, and the inexplicable emotion he feels when this places begins to be invaded by the creations of his own species.  Marx uses Hawthorne to urge the consideration of a widened gap between pastoralism of the mind (in which we consider the effects of nature) and pastoralism of sentiment (the urge we feel to leave society behind).  Marx’s essay agrees with the message of Williams’: when we begin to recognize this separation that we have created between the world of humans and the world of nature, we will notice how utterly connected they already are within ourselves.  When we keep these worlds mentally separated, however, we run into the danger of forgetting how the wastefulness and disruptiveness of the world of machines affects the pastoral world we hold so close to our beings.

Questions for discussion:

1. What does Marx mean when he says “Art, as usual, has been on the scene first?” on page 18 of his essay.

2. Does Leo Marx provide any motivation for how we are to avoid or lessen the encroachment of technology onto the world of Nature?

3. What are the benefits and negatives of the intellectual separation of economy and ecology that Williams mentions at the end of his essay?

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