planetary perspectives: technology and the natural … · imagination of the global. oxford, new...

Analysis The Air Traveler‘s Perspective “But at/ what point did we become so familiar with/ such long perspective”?

“below, the maps we rode”

Planetary Perspectives: Technology and the Natural World in Ed Roberson’s Poem “Topoi” (2010) Judith Rauscher (University of Bamberg)

Subhead!Body Text!

Conclusion From Plane-tary Perspective to

Planetary Consciousness

Ed Roberson’s poem “Topoi” is a planetary poem as Jahan Ramazani defines it in his study A Transnational Poetics. Its speaker is a passenger on a plane descending into Newark, which awards him/her a view of “the whole width/ of the state of New Jersey.” Roberson’s speaker is startled by this sight that has become all too “familiar” to the 21st century air traveler, and by consequence begins to reflect on how such a “long perspective” awarded by modern technology changes our very conception of humans’ relation to planet Earth.

In the second quarter of the text, the poem nostalgically dwells on the effect that a less all-encompassing, exclusively planar ‘worldview’ of the “early hunter” might have had on his mapping of, and making sense of those same terrains that the speaker sees spread before him like a literal “map” taken “off the wall.” Opposing - by means of poetic language - a world full science but empty of meaning and a world of vision and imagination, Roberson’s “Topoi” seems to argue that advances in technology and knowledge have caused our alienation from nature and planet Earth, so much that humanity can be aptly figured as a “trained bear/ dancing on a circus ball.”

Abstract Poetry in the Age of Globalization and Migration

Frequently it is argued that - living in the 21st century - we are living in an age of globalization and migration. This age of globalization and migration is defined as one dominated by technologies of communication and transportation, which are said to have alienated and to continue alienating the postmodern subject (figured as migrant or traveler) from nature through a variety of processes of deterritorialization.

Contemporary poetry participates in the discourse surrounding globalization and migration by imagining travel by plane, train or car that are centrally concerned with the subject‘s relationship to place. Yet, instead of focusing on conditions and effects of displacement in the sense of ‘placelessness,’ many of these poems stress the desire and the need for emplacement in an increasingly technologized world.

The Planetary vs. The Global (Gayatri Spivak 2003) “The globe is on our computers. No one lives there. It allows us to think that we can aim to control it. The planet is in the species of alterity, belonging to another system; and yet we inhabit it, on loan.” (72)

Key Concepts

International Conference “Risk, Effects and Affect: Technology and Narrative in the 21st Century” YOUNG SCHOLAR FORUM Nov. 23, 2012!

References Primary Text Roberson, Ed. “Topoi.” To See the Earth before the End of the World.

Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2010.

Secondary Sources Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental

Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden: Blackwell, 2005. Heise, Ursula K. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet. The Environmental

Imagination of the Global. Oxford, New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Spivak, Gayatri C. Death of A Discipline. The Wellek Library Lectures in

Critical Theory. New York: Columbia UP, 2003. Ramazani, Jahan. A Transnational Poetics. Chicago, London: U of

Chicago P, 2009. Thornber, Karen L. Ecoambiguity. Environmental Crises and East Asian

Literatures. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2012.

The Planetary Poem (Jahan Ramazani 2009) The planetary poem according to Ramazani is defined by a speaker “viewing the Earth from the extraterritorial perspective” that expresses “the lived experience of the planetary “ and evokes “concepts of a ‘located and embodied’ cosmopolitanism that aesthetically enacts multiple attachments rather than none” (17).

Technology does not alienate humans from nature in Ed Roberson’s poem “Topoi” but effects a critical revision of human-nature relations. In “Topoi” the speaker not only literally gains a different perspective on the world through air travel (a plane-tary perspective if you will), s/he eventually develops a planetary perspective which entails a new kind of ecological consciousness. Albeit conflicted, this planetary consciousness highlights humans’ absolute dependence on the complex ecosystem that is the earth and thus the risks involved in neglecting one’s responsibilities towards it.

Planetary Consciousness (Karen Thornber 2012) For Thornber, enhancing the planetary consciousness of literature means 1) “moving the object of study from interactions among people to both these interactions and those between people and environments” 2) “assessing the environmental cosmopolitanism of these interactions” 3) “increasing the geographical breadth of scholarly research” (26)

Scientific & Rational Language

5 TOPOI!!The plane begins its descent into Newark from the west!at the Delaware Water Gap; the whole width!of the state of New Jersey is the base of a triangle!underlying that approach to its point.!!Geography test, problem off the wall!to the ground, whole highway systems!unfold again below, the maps we rode. But at!what point did we become so familiar with!!such long perspective we could look down!and recognize the pile of Denver by the drop off!and crumble of the plate up into the Rockies,!or say That's Detroit! ! by the link of lakes by!!Lake St. Clair some thirty-thousand feet!above Lake Erie while just barely spotting Huron!on the horizon?!!Same earlier hunter had a similar picture in his head!for getting around, and what he saw seems map!his feet figured what a Boeing 757!picks up and puts down pacing off!!my passing through the world by air.!But we've seen the ground ball up into one!step and stand on nothing else, our footing in!the vacuum, diminished sky of solar space.!!Yet we haven't seen again his vision, haven't yet!dreamt from it even such map as he had!hunted by; we haven't seen answered from that garden's!gazing ball whether there is direction after all!the dream-lines!!have been hunted to circumference. Like trained bear!dancing on a circus ball, we look down, our feet in a step!from which there is no step off,!----------------------------------------------------- page break!!this footprint all of step ever taken.!

!The hunted step, kept far and fast enough!away from the hunter to keep the distance of its life,!shortens to none between them or is that!!shit outcome stepped in, become their one,!in perspective, step from which there is no step out of.!In that sense of "the surface aver which!a phenomenon exists," the earth is the footprint of life.!!Gaia's gravity-swayed steps take on orbit,!we in the tropic of balance, in a basket!on her head, a blue wrap of sky, sun!ripens the thin rind of the plane to home.!!Sweet fruit of the journey, of all journey,!fruit of all step home is the sweet fruit!that is all of step that is ever taken.!!The earth is all of step ever taken!by most of us, we think; but the aisles of air!we walk about with the seatbelt sign off!hang off our backs angel‘s wing or motion!!lines such as drawn in cartoons or the tesseract!of four dimensions. Cube sunk in a square of space,!sunk in a space of time. Our cubed world!worn as a helmet among!!strung dimensions far distant enough to see!the ball that all our ways are woven from:!sand, the lens grinder's patient hand, sore elbow, head!in the stars, he looks down at his feet. Sunk in time,!!the footprint of life is death, the grave!there is no step out of, the compost earth.!The earth is the footprint of life.!

The Vision of the ‘Early Hunter’ “Yet we haven’t seen again his visions, haven‘t yet/ dreamt from it even such

maps as he had/ hunted by”

Concrete Geographies

Plane-tary Perspective

Visual Mapping

Perceived Geographies Lack of Sense & Meaning?

Concrete Geographies

Planar Perspective

Imaginative Mapping

Lived Geographies Sense & Meaning as Illusion?

Religious & Affective Language

“The hunted step, kept far and fast enough away from the hunter to keep the distance

of his life” The Hunter The Hunted

“shit outcome stepped in, become their one, in perspective, ... there is no step

out of, the compost earth”

The Hunter = The Hunted One Shared Destiny

No Possibility to Escape

“Gaia’s gravity-swayed steps” “fruit of all step home is the sweet fruit” “The Earth is all of step ever taken”

“Angel’s wing or motion/ lines” “in cartoons or the tesseract”

Planetary Perspective I

Separate Destinies Possibility to Escape

Planetary Perspective II

the aisles of air/ we walk Angels wing or motion/ lines

“strung dimensions far distant enough to see/ the ball that all our ways are

woven from:/ sand, the lens grinder's patient hand, sore elbow, head/

in the stars, he looks down at his feet.”

Scientific & Affective Language

Planetary & Planar Perspective

Language of motion

Planetary Consciousness

In the end, the poem contradicts such a conclusion and argues that a technologically informed planetary perspective reminds human beings of their dependence on, rather than their separation/independence from that “ball that all our ways are woven from.” It suggests that a planetary perspective may lead to planetary consciousness - to borrow ecocritic Karen Thornber’s phrase - and hints at humanity’s responsibility toward this planet we call “home.”