Question 1: What is at stake?
What is "Wilderness"?
Jot down your ideas of this concept and how they are related to
the Wilderness image.
What are the sorts of things we are questioning when we start
to challenge concepts of 'wilderness'?
By questioning the concept of 'wilderness' you begin to open up
a whole range of issues upon which our understanding of ourselves
and our surroundings are based. Our 'ontology',
our underlying motives and modes of operation come into question
and become open to challenge when we begin to look at what we consider
to be wilderness and possibly more importantly, what we consider
to be nature and what is not.
As we have pointed out in Chapter One of Key Questions,
we need some epistemological
language to help us interrogate our ontology. Chapter One also helps
to make the distinction between ontology and epistemology which
is sometimes not so easy to grasp.
Are we part of nature, or are we separate from it?
If you think about it, this question has an enormous bearing upon
our actions, both on a day to day basis as well as the broader issues
of how we manage resources, what we consider to be sustainable,
how we use land (or don't use land) and how we conceive of others
using land and resources.
The idea of 'wilderness' and the opportunity to challenge the notion
cuts at the very core of the concepts that make up contemporary
western society and calls into question some of the basic and fundamental
assumptions we have. What we assumed to be infallibly true doesn't
hold the same weight it used to. The concept of truth, and more
specifically in this case, the existence of wilderness doesn't match
our experience when we sit down and really think about it. See the
discussion of 'truth' in Chapter One of the Key Questions
book.
Can you have a wilderness with feral buffalo running through it
like in Kakadu?
If so, when did the buffalo become naturalised? If not, what places
can you consider to be wilderness and how do you define your concept
of 'wilderness'?
The thing is, our concepts of 'wilderness' as with every other
concept we have , is a construction
that is a product of our history and culture, both individually
and collectively. We develop an idea of what wilderness is by interacting
with our culture and, for the most part, collecting and codifying
our experiences so that we can describe what wilderness is to our
satisfaction, or at least act in a way that is consistent with our
deep down, culturally shaped, understanding of what 'wilderness'
is.
'Wilderness' is a part of the 'western' grand narrative
that assumes and encourages us to assume that humans are somehow
separate and distinct from nature, that there are places in the
world where humans have no impact. See Langton's popular definition
of 'wilderness' in her article Reading Intro. 1. Her article
begins to open up the question of 'wilderness' and challenges the
validity of this popular narrative.
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