The Seasons

Description

Although the seasons have been a perennial theme in literature and art, their significance for philosophy and environmental theory has remained largely unexplored. This pioneering book demonstrates the ways in which inquiry into the seasons reveals new and illuminating perspectives for philosophy, environmental thought, anthropology, cultural studies, aesthetics, poetics, and literary criticism. The Seasons opens up new avenues for research in these fields and provides a valuable resource for teachers and students of the environmental humanities. The innovative essays herein address a wide range of seasonal cultures and geographies, from the traditional Western model of the four seasons––spring, summer, fall, and winter––to the Indigenous seasons of Australia and the Arctic. Exemplifying the crucial importance of interdisciplinary research, The Seasons makes a compelling case for the relevance of the seasons to our daily lives, scientific understanding, diverse cultural practices, and politics.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Thinking through the Seasons
Luke Fischer and David Macauley

Part I: Environmental Time

1. The Four Seasons and the Rhythms of Place-Based Time
David Macauley

2. The Seasons Embodied: The Story of a Plant
Craig Holdrege

Part II: Phenomenology and Poetics

3. A Poetic Phenomenology of the Seasons
Luke Fischer

4. Hölderlin, Heidegger, and Seasonal Time
Paola-Ludovika Coriando

5. Toward a Phen(omen)ology of the Seasons: The Emergence of the Indigenous Weather Knowledge Project
John Charles Ryan

Part III: Anthropology and the Arctic

6. Arctic Summer
Alphonso Lingis

7. Seasonal Affective Order: The Passage of Sense in Circumpolar Religion
Joseph Ballan

Part IV: Everyday Aesthetics

8. The Almanac Projects: Modeling the Seasons through the Material World
Jo Law

9. The Cycle of Seasons: The Temporal Structure of Fashion
Yvonne Förster

Part V: Decolonizing Literature

10. The Nature and Culture of the Seasons: Homage to Henry David Thoreau
Rod Giblett

11. The Decolonized Pastoral: Kinsella, Thoreau, and the Seasons
Tom Bristow

Suggestions for Further Reading
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438484266
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

THE SEASONS
THE SEASONS
Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives
Edited by
LUKE FISCHER and DAVID MACAULEY
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fischer, Luke, editor. | Macauley, David, editor.
Title: The seasons : philosophical, literary, and environmental perspectives / Luke Fischer and David Macauley.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021009169 (print) | LCCN 2021009170 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438484259 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438484266 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human ecology and the humanities. | Seasons.
Classification: LCC GF22 .S43 2021 (print) | LCC GF22 (ebook) | DDC 304.2/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009169
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009170
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Thinking through the Seasons
Luke Fischer and David Macauley
E NVIRONMENTAL T IME
1 The Four Seasons and the Rhythms of Place-Based Time
David Macauley
2 The Seasons Embodied: The Story of a Plant
Craig Holdrege
P HENOMENOLOGY AND P OETICS
3 A Poetic Phenomenology of the Seasons
Luke Fischer
4 Hölderlin, Heidegger, and Seasonal Time
Paola-Ludovika Coriando
5 Toward a Phen(omen)ology of the Seasons: The Emergence of the Indigenous Weather Knowledge Project
John Charles Ryan
A NTHROPOLOGY AND THE A RCTIC
6 Arctic Summer
Alphonso Lingis
7 Seasonal Affective Order: The Passage of Sense in Circumpolar Religion
Joseph Ballan
E VERYDAY A ESTHETICS
8 The Almanac Projects: Modeling the Seasons through the Material World
Jo Law
9 The Cycle of Seasons: The Temporal Structure of Fashion
Yvonne Förster
D ECOLONIZING L ITERATURE
10 The Nature and Culture of the Seasons: Homage to Henry David Thoreau
Rod Giblett
11 The Decolonized Pastoral: Kinsella, Thoreau, and the Seasons
Tom Bristow
Suggestions for Further Reading
Contributors
Index
Illustrations Figure 2.1 Craig Holdrege, “Group of Skunk Cabbage spathes as they emerge in March.” Figure 2.2 Craig Holdrege, “Two spathes.” Figure 2.3 Craig Holdrege, “Front part of spathe cut off to show flower head (spadix).” Figure 2.4 Craig Holdrege, “Skunk cabbage melting the snow.” Figure 2.5 Craig Holdrege, “Skunk cabbage development.” Figure 2.6 Craig Holdrege, “Fruit heads surrounded by decaying leaf stalks.” Figures 6.1 – 5 Alphonso Lingis, “Arctic Summer.” Figure 8.1 Jo Law, The Illustrated Almanac of the Illawarra and Beyond: September , offset lithographic print, 76 × 56 cm, 2016. Figure 8.2 Jo Law, “Shousetsu: Heaven’s essence rises, earth’s essence sinks/ North wind, freezing rain (3 of 5),” 2008, The Autumn Almanac of Tokyo. Figure 8.3 Jo Law, “Kanro: Sparrows enter the water and turn into clams/ Chrysanthemums bloom (2 of 5),” 2008, The Autumn Almanac of Tokyo. Figure 8.4 Jo Law, “Kanro: Chrysanthemums tinge yellow/ ducks migrate, 1 of 5,” 2008, The Autumn Almanac of Tokyo. Figure 8.5 Jo Law, “Shuubun: Beetles wall up their burrows / azuki beans ripen 2 of 5,” 2008, The Autumn Almanac of Tokyo. Figure 8.6 Jo Law, The Illustrated Almanac of the Illawarra and Beyond: May , offset lithographic print, 76 × 28 cm, 2016. Figure 8.7 Jo Law, The Illustrated Almanac of the Illawarra and Beyond: January , detail offset lithographic print, 76 × 28 cm, 2016. Figure 11.1 John Kinsella, “Brown-headed honey-eaters on ‘great tank.’ ” April 18, 2009.
Acknowledgments
David Macauley would like to thank Penn State University, Brandywine for support during work on this book. He received valuable assistance and intellectual friendship from Troy Paddock, Luke Fischer, Eric Orts, Richard Odabashian, and Howard Macauley. He would also like to acknowledge the constructive responses he received after presenting talks to the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, the Geo-aesthetics Society at Towson University in Maryland, the Becoming-Elemental Conference at Concordia University in Montreal, and the International Association for Environmental Philosophy in Philadelphia.
Luke Fischer would like to thank David Macauley for first suggesting that we co-edit a volume on the topic of the seasons. This idea came about after he (Luke) presented a paper on the seasons at the “Geo-Aesthetics in the Anthropocene” conference at the University of Maryland in 2010. At the time David was completing his book Elemental Philosophy, and there were significant points of interconnection between our respective research. In 2011 David Macauley, Craig Holdrege, and Luke Fischer presented a panel on the seasons (moderated by James Hatley) at the International Association of Environmental Philosophy conference. The presentations at these two conferences, as well as more recent exchanges with a number of scholars, have sparked valuable conversations for which he is grateful. He would also like to thank Jeffrey Hipolito and Dalia Nassar for their feedback and interest in this project.
We would both like to thank the academic journals Transformations ( www.transformationsjournal.org ) and Environment, Space, Place (published by the University of Minnesota Press) for permission to use and revise several articles for the present volume. The following articles first appeared in Transformations 21 (2012): Jo Law, “ The Almanac Projects: Modeling the Seasons through the Material World ” ; Joseph Ballan, “Seasonal Affective Order: Rhythmanalysis and Mesology of Circumpolar Religion” (in the present volume the title has been changed to “ Seasonal Affective Order: The Passage of Sense in Circumpolar Religion ”); Rod Giblett, “The Seasons: Homage to Henry David Thoreau” (in the present volume the title has been changed to “ The Nature and Culture of the Seasons: Homage to Henry David Thoreau ”). The following articles first appeared in Environment, Space, Place 5, no. 1 (Spring 2013): John Charles Ryan, “ Toward a Phen(omen)ology of the Seasons: The Emergence of the Indigenous Weather Knowledge Project ”; Tom Bristow, “Climatic Literary Geoinformatics: Radical Empiricism, Region, and Seasonal Phenomena in John Kinsella’s Jam Tree Gully Poems” (in the present volume the title has been changed to “ The Decolonized Pastoral: Kinsella, Thoreau, and the Seasons ”). The following articles first appeared in Environment, Space, Place 6, no. 1 (Spring 2014): Luke Fischer, “A Poetic Phenomenology of the Temperate Seasons” (in the present volume the title has been changed to “ A Poetic Phenomenology of the Seasons ”); Alphonso Lingis, “ Arctic Summer .” David Macauley’s article “ The Four Seasons and the Rhythms of Place-Based Time ” first appeared in Environment, Space, Place 10, no. 2 (Fall 2018).
We would like to thank Andrew Kenyon and Michael Rinella at SUNY Press in particular for their assistance, encouragement, and patience in seeing this book through to its completion. We would also like to thank the production editor, Ryan Morris, and the copy editor, Heather Grennan Gary. Finally, we extend our appreciation to the contributors to this volume and to the reviewers of a draft of the manuscript.
Introduction
Thinking through the Seasons
L UKE F ISCHER AND D AVID M ACAULEY
No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons … A book of the seasons, each page of which should be written in its own season and out-of-doors, or in its own locality wherever it may be.
—Henry David Thoreau, Journal , June 11, 1851
The Role and Relevance of the Seasons
We are living in a time in which we are likely more alienated from seasonal rhythms than in any other period of history. During long winter nights, we switch on electric lights and thus, as it were, artificially extend the day. Through indoor heating and air-conditioning, we sequester ourselves from the bitter cold of winter or the oppressive heat of summer. Modern technology enables us to control the temperature of our homes, shops, public buildings, and transport vehicles. This seeming ability to separate ourselves from the environing atmosphere is, in a deeper sense, a dangerous illusion. The fluorocarbons used in air-conditioning, for instance, are released into the environment and in turn contribute to global climate change. Ironically, when we cool ourselves in this manner we promote the further warming of the atmosphere. Of course, humans have always sought ways to cool their dwellings in summer and warm them in winter. Gas heating, for example, has replaced the hearth. The shady courtyards and fountains of Arabic architecture were actually very effective in providing cool sanctuaries in the summer. But these earlier forms of temperature regulation involved a closer connection to the elements—wood, fire, water, and the courtyard’s exposure to the outdoors—than those of modern technology.
Our apparent ability to detach ourselves from the climate—through the production of artificial