Another Thomas Berry quote worth spending a bit of time with:<\/p>\n
“Acceptance of the challenging aspect of the natural world is a primary condition for creative intimacy with the natural world. Without this opaque or even threatening aspect of the universe we would lose our greatest source of creative energy. This opposing element is as necessary for us as is the weight of the atmosphere that surrounds us.”<\/em> (The Great Work<\/em>, p. 67)<\/p>\n Berry defines “the wild” as “the root of the authentic spontaneities of any being” (which sounds Deleuzian to me) and which is counterposed to a second constituent force in the universe, discipline or form. “The wild,” as my colleague Stephanie Kaza paraphrases in her review of The Great Work<\/a>, “is the expansive force, the disciplined is the containing force, ‘bound into a single universe and expressed in every being in the universe’ (p. 52).”<\/p>\n I wonder how this dyadic understanding stacks up against the more monistic, Deleuzian-Spinozian (and Whiteheadian) views that see form-building, or morphogenesis, as part of the same process of spontaneous becoming (e.g. as developed by Manuel DeLanda in A New Philosophy of Society<\/a>, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy<\/a>, and A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History<\/a>). This could probably be boiled down into the question: can the two (the expansive and the containing, the Yin and the Yang) also be one (the Dao)? Is Deleuze\/Guattari’s ‘desiring-production’ (connection, becoming, subjectivation) analogous to the Dao, as Deleuzian<\/a> acupuncture theorist <\/a>Mark Seem has suggested, with any perceived differences being only differences of emphasis — Deleuze focusing more on the open-ended possibilities of becoming, and Daoism focusing on the patterns by which that process of becoming works itself out in time and in space, territorializing and deterritorializing as it goes?<\/p>\n These are rhetorical questions, of course. It’s time to go hear what wisdom my friend Cate Sandilands and British lit crit Greg Garrard can impart about “Our Critical Challenges: What’s Next for Ecocriticism?” (I’m at the ASLE conference in Victoria, British Columbia. More on it soon.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another Thomas Berry quote worth spending a bit of time with: “Acceptance of the challenging aspect of the natural world is a primary condition for creative intimacy with the natural world. Without this opaque or even threatening aspect of the universe we would lose our greatest source of creative energy. This opposing element is as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4415,688977,691847],"tags":[228,16779],"class_list":["post-1083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecophilosophy","category-geo_philosophy","category-religion-spirituality","tag-deleuze","tag-ecotheology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-ht","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1082,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/06\/02\/thomas-berry-passes-away\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":0},"title":"Thomas Berry passes away","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The tributes are starting to come in for Thomas Berry, Catholic ecotheologian (or \"geologian,\" as he sometimes referred to himself), scholar, and spiritual\/deep ecological visionary, who passed away at age 94 yesterday. Berry is best known for books including The Dream of the Earth, The Universe Story (with physicist Brian\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"ThomasBerry.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/06\/ThomasBerry.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1442,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/12\/09\/the-attractions-of-process-metaphysics\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":1},"title":"the attractions of process (metaphysics)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"With Whiteheadian process philosophers and object-oriented ontologists meeting minds in Claremont, Chris Vitale softening up to OOO, Levi Bryant declaring himself a process philosopher -- more precisely, that he's \"always been, [is], and will always be a process philosopher\" -- and Ian Bogost sharing a very sympathetic attempt to develop\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9651,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/05\/22\/pointing-to-omega\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":2},"title":"Pointing to Omega?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, so I watched Harry and Meghan's royal wedding (not so much intentionally as to enjoy the loving company of my co-habitants) and was impressed by the tension between Bishop Michael Curry's sermonizing on love and the dour and perplexed faces of many of the royal-loving Brits in the audience.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3772,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/05\/04\/the-idea-of-nature-refigured\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":3},"title":"The idea of Nature, refigured","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In defiance of the idea that Nature -- the thing, or the idea (capitalized or not), or both -- is either dead or unnecessary, I feel like posting some favorite passages from \"Nature Alive,\" the second of A. N. Whitehead's two 1933 lectures on nature, published in Modes of Thought\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/04\/natura-naturans1-275x171.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6925,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/10\/14\/objectivity-2-0\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":4},"title":"Objectivity 2.0?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Continuing on the \"sciencey\" thread from this post... (I'll come back to the \"14 billion years\" issue, since it's been pointed out to me that my criticism of the concept of measuring time would only apply -- if the scientists are correct -- to the first few seconds or so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"http:\/\/normangalinsky.com\/images\/large\/ImplicateOrder.300f.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/normangalinsky.com\/images\/large\/ImplicateOrder.300f.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8848,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/06\/29\/toward-telling-an-adequate-story\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":5},"title":"Toward telling an adequate story","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This post builds\u00a0on the previous\u00a0one on the state of the eco-humanities.\u00a0Here I focus on the substantive elements for narratives adequate to the Anthropocene. One of the challenges of our time is to learn to\u00a0tell an adequate story of\u00a0humanity's current predicament. Next spring's Stories for the Anthropocene Festival\u00a0in Stockholm aims to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"ss9-1-300x300","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2016\/06\/ss9-1-300x300-275x275.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}