Gary Snyder

Numa estratégia biografemática inspirada na prática biográfica indicada por Roland Barthes, abordamos neste texto aspectos da vida do poeta, tradutor, antropólogo e militante ecologista Gary Snyder. Articulando filosofia zen-budista, mitologias ameríndias e o movimento beat, Snyder nos legou pistas para pensarmos uma ecologia desnaturada que fala em nome da experimentação intensiva e não apenas da preservação. Ao final, realizamos algumas aproximações entre o pensamento de Snyder e a antropologia de Bruno Latour.

Nature, Knowledge, and Protest

Melanie Arndt: Tschernobylkinder. Die transnationale Geschichte einer nuklearen Ka- tastrophe, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020, 499 pp., ISBN: 978-3-525- 35208-3. Nils Güttler: Alles über das Fliegen. Eine politische Wissensgeschichte des Frankfurter Flughafens, Vienna: Turia & Kant, 2020, 123 pp., ISBN: 978-3-85132-981-0. Katrin Jordan: Ausgestrahlt. Die mediale Debatte um „Tschernobyl“ in der Bundesrepu- blik und in Frankreich 1986/87, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2018, 424 pp., ISBN: 978-3- 8353-3304-8. Stephen Milder: Greening Democracy. The Anti-Nuclear Movement and Political Envi- ronmentalism in West Germany and Beyond, 1968–1983, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2017, 280 pp., ISBN: 978-1-107-13510-9. Christian Möller: Umwelt und Herrschaft in der DDR. Politik, Protest und die Gren- zen der Partizipation in der Diktatur, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020, 396 pp., ISBN: 978-3-525-31096-0. Martin Spenger: Green Beat. Gary Snyder und die moderne amerikanische Umweltbe- wegung, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020, 239 pp., ISBN: 978-3-525- 31098-4.

Deus salve a rainha e evite engarrafamentos: textos de jornalismo cultural

“Muito se fala em “jornalismo literário”, como se a segunda condição tornasse a primeira mais nobre, e como se a primeira ajudasse a segunda a se tornar mais “popular”, coloquial. Não parece algo que tire o sono de Ademir Assunção: ele não concebe a escrita a partir de um cânone, de uma idealização, de uma vontade externa, mas de sua própria inquietação. Ele também não teme a verdade — e ele a busca em qualquer lugar, seja no morro com Bezerra da Silva, seja caminhando pelas ruas de Porto Alegre a bordo de Mário Quintana. Ademir também escreve ficção, e os pressupostos — não as ferramentas — são parecidos com os de seu jornalismo. Em janeiro de 2004, com Adorável criatura Frankenstein, esculachava os ritos de legitimação de ídolos, marqueteiros, intelectuais e modelos-atrizes-apresentadoras do circo midiático brasileiro. Ele parece crer que a literatura (e também o jornalismo) age no mundo, muda o mundo e não está aí para fixar ou cristalizar as convicções, mas para sacudi-las, abalá-las, estremecer a árvore dos fetiches. O poeta beatnik Gary Snyder disse, certa vez, que a poesia é como um grande corvo sentado num fio de alta tensão, entre dois postes. “Ninguém presta atenção nela, mas ela vê tudo.” O jornalismo cultural praticado pelo Ademir é como aquele corvo do Snyder. Está lá, em todos os fios, com seu olhar escrutador. Os farsantes vão ficando pelos meios fios. Assunção vai enchendo todos os fios.”

Ecofeminist Theology: Intersectional Justice and Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism

The multi-faceted ecological crisis—combining problems of ecology, society, and religion—is tied to the ideologies implicit in Western thinking. In this essay, I outline an ecofeminist theology which addresses how the current ecological crisis we face—including but not limited to, climate change, mass species extinction, ocean acidification, the rise in wildfires and superstorms, glacial melt, pollution—are tied to problematic and incorrect ideologies. To do this, I utilize Val Plumwood’s robust ecofeminist philosophy to revealing harmful dualisms implicit in all forms of oppression. I critique transcendental monotheism for extracting life, God, and agency from the natural world. If God exists over and above the Earth, and this God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, this justifies the problematic lagged response to our urgent ecological crisis. In short, my ecofeminist theology (1) affirms intersectionality. It considers racial injustice and systemic racism are intertwined with the ecological crises. We cannot address our ecological crisis without also addressing racial injustice. (2) It critiques a transcendental monotheistic God as this reinforces irresponsible and apathetic responses to our multi-faceted ecological crisis. And (3) it affirms Plumwood’s “philosophical animism” as a way to retrieve nature in the active voice. By retrieving nature in the active voice, we retrieve a sense of groundedness in place through relationships with non-humans. Her “philosophical animism” affirms agency in the natural world without culturally appropriating Indigenous cultures. It is a way for Westerners to enter into dialogical relationship with the natural world. It is both political—affirming the rights of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color—and it is personal—engaging in a practice of the wild (Gary Snyder).

Born Orphans of the Earth: Pastoral Utopia in Contemporary Taiwanese Poetry

In 2011, amid a string of controversies in the Taiwanese countryside surrounding industrial pollution, urban expansion, the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, and the destruction of the natural and rural environments, poet and editor Hong Hong announced ‘the last pastoral poem’, suggesting that the representation of the countryside as bucolic landscape was an out-of-date and politically impotent trope. This paper argues, contrary to Hong Hong’s polemic, that depictions of pastoral utopia remain a vital and powerful alternative to the forces of urbanisation and industrialisation in Taiwan and the larger Sinophone world. The paper analyses poetry by contemporary poet Ling Yu against the background of the tradition of utopian pastoral writing represented by the book of Genesis, Virgil, Laozi, Tao Yuanming, and Gary Snyder. The paper argues for a poetics that symbolically mediates between nature and culture, and building and dwelling, by means of slow ‘cultivation’, in both the agricultural and aesthetic senses. The paper further draws on transnational Hong Kong poet Liu Wai Tong’s concept of ‘you-topia’ to suggest a means of reconciling Chinese tradition and contemporary ecocritical discourse.

Connecting Youthful Dissent and the Global Ecological Future when Teaching the Work of Gary Snyder

The essay presents through close readings an overview of Gary Snyder’s life as an ecologically focused poet, deeply grounded in the history and practice of Buddhism. John Whalen-Bridge explores effective techniques for teaching Snyder’s early works, select essays, and his magnum opus Mountains and Rivers Without End. The essay provides succinct guidance on basic Buddhist tenets, and illustrates how Snyder integrates the city itself into a vision of an ecologically sustainable future.

R. Crumb

Robert Crumb: Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self is the first monograph to explore the intersection between Crumb’s love of literature, his search for the meaning of life and the ways he connects his own autobiography with the themes of the writers he has admired. Crumb’s comics from the beginning reflected the fact that he was a voracious reader from childhood and perused a variety of authors including Charles Dickens, J.D. Salinger, and, during his adolescence, Beat writers like Jack Kerouac. He was profoundly influenced by music, especially the blues, and the ecstatic power of music appears in his artwork throughout his career. The first chapter explores the ways Robert Crumb illustrates works by William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Charles Bukowski. The book continues with individual chapters devoted to Crumb’s illustrations of biographies of blues musicians Jelly Roll Morton and Charley Patton; Philip K. Dick; Jean-Paul Sartre; Franz Kafka; and concludes with an exploration of Crumb’s illustrations to the book of Genesis. In all his drawings accompanying literary texts, Crumb returns to a number of key themes regarding his personal spiritual quest such as suffering and existential solitude; the search for romantic and sexual love; the impact of entheogens such as LSD on his quest for answers to his cosmic questions. We discover that Crumb gradually embraces a mysticism rooted in his studies of Gnosticism. In the final chapter on the book of Genesis, readers may observe the ways Crumb continues his critique of monotheistic religion in a variety of subtle ways. Robert Crumb: Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self concludes with an Epilogue which discusses Crumb’s present-day life in France and the ways he has continued to engage with spiritual and philosophical themes in his later work.