Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 16:11:25 +1100
From: amiles-AT-rmit.edu.au (Adrian Miles)
Subject: Re: Ideology:  or, the "real" problem here...


Crispin wrote:

>i think that the claim that  we've got pure research and its pure knowledge
>and then problematic (but also felicitous) uses of that research and
>knowledge is just too easy.  now i'm not going to give an argument: the
>relevant thing would be a *genealogy* connecting the modes of domination of
>the environment and of persons over the last 400 years with enlightenment
>scientistic rationality.  i have actually tried to do some of that work.
>but think about how descartes, e.g., views nature, or animals: think about
>that in contrast with the ways, say, that the yoruba or the lakota do.  and
>then think about how these folks actually *live* in relation to the world.
>and think about the role of science in setting up that worldview and then
>"confirming" it.

while enjoying the current thread (sort of) this sort of comment runs the
risk of doing to these cultures exactly what 'science' is being criticised
for.

What I would like to suggest is that these 'non-science' cultures by being
outside of 'enlightenment scientistic rationality' are considered not to
have committed our sins upon the 'environment' (read 'world').

OK, not an evolutionary biologist, botanist, or whatever so experts nail
me; in Australia there is open debate about the impact of Aborigines on the
local environment, and it is, I believe, a generally held view that through
their cultivation of fire they have had an instrumental impact on the
evolution of the Australian environment. Some (I *think*) have even
suggested that they have probably caused the extinction of some species.

There is also evidence that in the South Pacific many cultures have had a
nomadic history because they've continually overused their environment and
have been forced to move because of what we might today call environmental
degradation of their environments. (This was suggested by, I believe,
Andrew Ross at a Cultural Studies conference at Melbourne University about
3 years ago.)

If this is the case then environmental domination is not limited to
'enlightenment scientist rationality' and in the context of the present
thread might suggest that an overly simply binary opposition is being
argued between 'science' and 'nonscience' where 'nonscience' is being
treated as virtually 'pure' and certainly too easily.

then again, this could all be just wandering a bit too far off thread, and
certainly aways from D&G.

Adrian Miles

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amiles-AT-rmit.edu.au - http://www.ss.rmit.edu.au/miles/
Chris Marker WWW site: http://www.ss.rmit.edu.au/miles/marker/Marker.html
Lecturer Cinema Studies & New Media, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
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