Skip to main content

Random Diss Excerpt #2

CONTAINS ACADEMIC LANGUAGE. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.

‘The history of an environment is a history of the activities of all those organisms, human and non-human, contemporary and ancestral, that have contributed to its formation. We should liken the environment not to a container or backcloth within or against which life goes on but rather to a piece of sculpture, or a monument, except in two respects: first, it is shaped not by one hand but by many; and second, the work is never complete. No environment is ever fully created, it is always undergoing creation. It is, as it were, “work in progress”.’ (Ingold 1992: 50-51)


Ingold uses the term landscape to refer to the aspect of the environment that is immediately visible to us. A landscape is a totality of actions and interactions. It is the unfolding relations of beings and the environment, in congealed form. When we look at a landscape, we see ‘… a record of – and testimony to – the lives and works of past generations who have dwelt within it, and in so doing, have left there something of themselves’ (Ingold 2000: 189). Adam (1998: 54) also describes landscapes as evidence of mutually constituting activities, combining natural and cultural acitvities into a unified whole. Thus, as part of the landscape we humans are always taking up a view inside a landscape, rather than looking at it from a separate, cultural sphere, or a distant and external vantage point.


Adam emphasizes that a landscape serves not just as a record of human-, plant-, and animal-life, but also of weather, climate, and geological changes. In drawing attention to these, she points out that the environment is not wholly visible to us: ‘… the visible phenomena making up the landscapes have… invisible constitutive activities inescapably embedded within them’ (Adam 1998: 54). To create a receptiveness to the invisible aspects of the environment, she develops the concept of the timescape as an extension of the landscape perspective. A landscape and a timescape are not two separate environments. They are one and the same thing, except that the latter calls for a shift of emphasis from space to time. While landscapes are an embodiment of activities past and present, timescapes are the ‘embodiment of practised approaches to time’ (Adam 1998: 11). Thus, they are analogous in the sense that all activity is carried out in particular spaces and they take effect at particular times. Mbladkjgvaosdnbbbmflfffft!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Good mother, good academic?

I wrote this four years ago. The struggle remains the same, so yes, publish. And god, I so want to be over this dilemma. 2016. Yesterday I was proofreading my manuscript at home when the Little Big Boss came over crying. I had to put my pen down and console her. She didn't want to leave my lap so we compromised. We put her play doh on the table and I tried to work while she played. It went smoothly -- for about five minutes! Haha! The Artist in Residence is familiar with this scene. Starting when she was eight years old, she had to come along with me to academic conferences. She'd stay in her chair reading, or drawing and writing in her notebooks. People praised her and commented on how she was remarkably well-behaved. I had no idea just how remarkable her ability to sit still and focus was, until the Little Big Boss came along. With this one, sitting together quietly for a stretch of time is a much bigger challenge. The things that kept the Artist content at conference...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lola of Maipon

It's all too easy to fall asleep under the blanket of everyday life and to smother dreams with the mundane things I surround myself with. But once in a while, along comes a sparkling vision that jolts me out of my daily sleep and reminds me of the existence of convictions and worlds so different from my own. "Our beloved LOLA of Guinubatan, Maipon, Albay is the last true messenger of God. So, let us follow her holy teachings so that we will gain TRUE SALVATION without sufferings and without death." In another story I, the intrepid heroine, the adventurer seduced by mysteries, the pilgrim in search of truth, would follow them back to Guinubatan from Session Road, thirsting to see and hear their Lola for myself. However, it's all too easy -- much safer! -- to fall back asleep under the blanket of everyday life, and to smother dreams with the mundane things I surround myself with. Then along comes 9 a.m., and really, it's time to down the dregs of coffee at the bott...
4 comments
Read more

Ritual for all Occasions

Attended a talk delivered by Dr. Albert Bacdayan, UP Baguio. Feb. 20, 2013. "Ritual for All Occasions: The significance and persistence of the 'Senga' in Northern Sagada." The senga is a ritual in which at least one chicken and one pig -- sometimes more -- are sacrificed. The senga is usually performed for milestones such as the completion of a house, the opening of a new business, a wedding, a funeral, when someone is ill, when someone is leaving on a journey. He spoke of how Cordillerans have a ritual for almost every occasion or ailment. Indeed, the word he used was not ritual but "remedy."Dr. Bacdayan described this as a "healthy agnosticism."He mused that the abundance or such remedies and rituals is the reason there are rarely feelings of helplessness among Cordillerans. He described ritual as a bundle of activities that assures people and anchors identity. When one calls the old men and is the principal of a senga, you are perceived t...
Post a Comment
Read more