Nature - autonomous learning

de-naturalisation 141For Derrida all meaning is created through a simultaneous process ofdifference and deferral that is internal to language. For instance, the meaningof the word ‘nature’ in any given context depends upon its oppositionto terms like ‘culture’ or ‘society’.These latter terms are nature’s ‘constitutiveoutsides’ or ‘absent presences’: the word nature needs these antonymsin order to be understood. For Derrida it follows from this that the meaningof a word or sound is thus always deferred (or postponed). Since meaningis never wholly present in the word or sound used then the apparentstability of meaning is only ever that: apparent not real.The intellectual projectof Derrida and his followers has thus been to de-construct language.Derrideans show how apparent certainties of meaning are always subvertedif one subjects them to a ‘symptomatic analysis’. This is not to say thatthere is not relative stability in the relationship between signs, meanings andreferents.What Derrideans are saying is that this relationship is not givenin nature but, rather, contingent and open to challenge. It should be notedthat in Derridean circles, the terms ‘language’,‘text’,‘representation’ and‘discourse’ are often used interchangeably.This capsule description of Derrida’s thinking is sufficient to helpus comprehend a germinal piece of research by Bruce Braun, a Universityof Minnesota geographer. Braun has combined Derrida’s ideas with thoseof post-colonial critics to analyse how a high-profile ‘wilderness area’ hasbeen understood by those groups most concerned about its fate. I mentionedpost-colonial thinking in passing in Chapter 2. Here it’s sufficientto say two things about this mode of thinking. First, following Said’s (1978)classic book Orientalism, it argues that colonialism is still with us – eventhough the era of formal colonial occupation by Western powers may beat an end. Specifically, post-colonial critics argue that colonial beliefs aboutnon-Western Others still infuse Western cultures. This means, second,that the term ‘post-colonial’ is simultaneously literal and ironic.Thoughpost-colonial critics acknowledge that Western countries no longer rulein Africa, Asia and elsewhere, they question whether we are quite as‘post-’ (or beyond) the colonial period as we think we are.The wildernessarea the struggle over which Braun has examined is Clayoquot Sound inBritish Columbia, Canada. His analysis is more precise than Cronon’s,though it has the similar intention of exposing how the non-human worldcannot ever be comprehended ‘in the raw’. How, then, does Braun scrutinisediscourses of nature in Clayoquot Sound using Derridean and post-colonialthinking and to what end?