Nature - autonomous learning

146 de-naturalisationColumbia. Even in our supposed post-colonial period, Braun shows that thisconfining of natives to circumscribed spaces is repeated in the representationsof Macmillan Bloedel and environmentalists.These representationsacknowledge neither the history of displacement of native peoples northeir contemporary claims to own and use Clayoquot and other parts ofCanada. In sum, Braun (2002: 17) shows that ‘what counts as nature cannotpre-exist its [discursive] construction’ and that labelling some thingsas natural is politics by other means (see also Braun 2000 and Braun andWainwright 2001; for more on Clayoquot, see Magnusson and Shaw 2003).Discourse, discipline, nature and FoucaultThe third way in which discourses of nature have been understood bycritical geographers takes us away from the study of the non-human worldand more towards ‘human nature’: that is, the mind and the body. AsI mentioned towards the end of Chapter 2, those on the ‘cultural left’ ofhuman geography have made concerted efforts to de-naturalise ourunderstanding of subjectivity/identity and corporeality. In many, but by nomeans all, cases, these researchers have drawn upon the germinal ideasof the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1926–84). Foucault’smany writings contested the notion that minds and bodies are givenin nature.Though he recognised that humans are born with neurologicaland corporeal capacities that distinguish them from other species, hesaw these capacities as surfaces upon which discourses worked slowlybut steadily over time. In other words, Foucault argued that people’s mentaland physical characteristics were largely societal products not prescriptedby their biological make-up.Foucault saw societies as comprised of multiple, overlapping and oftenconflicting discourses. In contrast to the Marxian notions of ideology andhegemony, Foucault argued that discourses do not serve the interests ofone or other dominant group in society. Rather, he saw them as more diffuseand anonymous. In his historical studies of discourses about madness,criminality and sexuality, Foucault showed how discourses constitute thephenomena they purport merely to represent. For instance, his Historyof Sexuality (1979) traces the changing ways in which sexual identity andsexual behaviour has been understood in Western societies. As its titlesuggests, this book shows that sexuality is changeable and inconstant overtime, not a timeless biological imperative. In terms of sexual identities,