Rod Giblett - Böcker

This lively new study is a critical cultural history of communication technologies, from railways and telegraphy to computers and the Internet, in which Rod Giblett argues that these technologies play a pivotal role in the cultural history of modernity and its project of the sublime.

Sigmund Freud’s essay 'The Uncanny' is celebrating a century since publication. It is arguably his greatest and most fruitful contribution to the study of culture and the environment. Environmental Humanities and the Uncanny brings into the open neglected aspects of the uncanny in this famous essay in its centenary year and in the work of those before and after him, such as Friedrich Schelling, Walter Benjamin, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Bram Stoker. This book does so by focussing on religion, especially at a time and for a world in which some sectors of the monotheisms are in aggressive, and sometimes violent, contention against those of other monotheisms, and even against other sectors within their own monotheism. The chapter on Schelling’s uncanny argues that monotheisms come out of polytheism and makes the plea for polytheism central to the whole book. It enables rethinking the relationships between mythology and monotheistic and polytheistic religions in a culturally and politically liberatory and progressive way. Succeeding chapters consider the uncanny cyborg, the uncanny and the fictional, and the uncanny and the Commonwealth, concluding with a chapter on Taoism as a polytheistic religion. Building on the author’s previous work in Environmental Humanities and Theologies in bringing together theories of religion and the environment, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, ecocultural studies and religion.

Psychoanalytic Ecology applies Freudian concepts, beginning with the uncanny, to environmental issues, such as wetlands and their loss, to alligators and crocodiles as inhabitants of wetlands, and to the urban underside. It also applies other Freudian concepts, such as sublimation, symptom, mourning and melancholia, to environmental issues and concerns. Mourning and melancholia can be experienced in relation to wetlands and to their loss. The city is a symptom of the will to fill or drain wetlands.This book engages in a talking cure of psychogeopathology (environmental psychopathology; mental land illness; environ-mental illness) manifested also in industries, such as mining and pastoralism, that practice greed and gluttony. Psychoanalytic Ecology promotes gratitude for generosity as a way of nurturing environ-mental health to prevent the manifestation of these psychogeopathological symptoms in the first place. Melanie Klein’s work on anal sadism is applied to mining and Karl Abraham’s work on oral sadism to pastoralism. Finally, Margaret Mahler’s and Jessica Benjamin’s work on psycho-symbiosis is drawn on to nurture bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregional home habitats of the living earth in the symbiocene, the hoped-for age superseding the Anthropocene. Psychoanalytic Ecology demonstrates the power of psychoanalytic concepts and the pertinence of the work of several psychoanalytic thinkers for analysing a range of environmental issues and concerns. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental psychology, psychoanalysis and the environmental humanities.

Many ways of thinking about and living with ‘the environment’ have their roots in the Bible and the Christian cultural tradition. Environmental Humanities and Theologies shows that some of these ways are problematic. It also provides alternative ways that value both materiality and spirituality. Beginning with an environmentally friendly reading of the biblical story of creation, Environmental Humanities and Theologies goes on to discuss in succeeding chapters the environmental theology of wetlands, dragons and watery monsters (including crocodiles and alligators) in the Bible and literature. It then gives a critical reading of the environmental theology of the biblical book of Psalms. Theological concepts are found in the works of English writers of detective and devotional stories and novels, American nature writers and European Jewish writers (as succeeding chapters show). Environmental Humanities and Theologies concludes with an appreciation for Australian Aboriginal spirituality in the swamp serpent. It argues for the sacrality of marsh monsters and swamp serpents as figures of reverence and respect for living bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregions of the living earth in the Symbiocene. This is the hoped-for age superseding the Anthropocene. Environmental Humanities and Theologies is aimed at those who have little or no knowledge of how theology underlies much thinking and writing about ‘the environment’ and who are looking for ways of thinking about, being and living with the earth that respect and value both spirituality and materiality. It is a new text nurturing sacrality for the Symbiocene.

Psychoanalytic Ecology applies Freudian concepts, beginning with the uncanny, to environmental issues, such as wetlands and their loss, to alligators and crocodiles as inhabitants of wetlands, and to the urban underside. It also applies other Freudian concepts, such as sublimation, symptom, mourning and melancholia, to environmental issues and concerns. Mourning and melancholia can be experienced in relation to wetlands and to their loss. The city is a symptom of the will to fill or drain wetlands.This book engages in a talking cure of psychogeopathology (environmental psychopathology; mental land illness; environ-mental illness) manifested also in industries, such as mining and pastoralism, that practice greed and gluttony. Psychoanalytic Ecology promotes gratitude for generosity as a way of nurturing environ-mental health to prevent the manifestation of these psychogeopathological symptoms in the first place. Melanie Klein’s work on anal sadism is applied to mining and Karl Abraham’s work on oral sadism to pastoralism. Finally, Margaret Mahler’s and Jessica Benjamin’s work on psycho-symbiosis is drawn on to nurture bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregional home habitats of the living earth in the symbiocene, the hoped-for age superseding the Anthropocene. Psychoanalytic Ecology demonstrates the power of psychoanalytic concepts and the pertinence of the work of several psychoanalytic thinkers for analysing a range of environmental issues and concerns. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental psychology, psychoanalysis and the environmental humanities.

Sigmund Freud’s essay 'The Uncanny' is celebrating a century since publication. It is arguably his greatest and most fruitful contribution to the study of culture and the environment. Environmental Humanities and the Uncanny brings into the open neglected aspects of the uncanny in this famous essay in its centenary year and in the work of those before and after him, such as Friedrich Schelling, Walter Benjamin, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Bram Stoker. This book does so by focussing on religion, especially at a time and for a world in which some sectors of the monotheisms are in aggressive, and sometimes violent, contention against those of other monotheisms, and even against other sectors within their own monotheism. The chapter on Schelling’s uncanny argues that monotheisms come out of polytheism and makes the plea for polytheism central to the whole book. It enables rethinking the relationships between mythology and monotheistic and polytheistic religions in a culturally and politically liberatory and progressive way. Succeeding chapters consider the uncanny cyborg, the uncanny and the fictional, and the uncanny and the Commonwealth, concluding with a chapter on Taoism as a polytheistic religion. Building on the author’s previous work in Environmental Humanities and Theologies in bringing together theories of religion and the environment, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, ecocultural studies and religion.

Presented here for the first time and for meditation and emulation are the words and work of many environmental apostles. The words and work of each apostle are designed to delight and inspire the reader to begin or continue to lead a life of environmental action for conservation and contemplation of nature for spiritual succor in the age of climate change. All the usual suspects are here, such as St. Francis, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Judith Wright, but New Lives of the Saints emphasizes some aspects of their words and work often ignored or overlooked, such as Thoreau on swamps and Leopold on marshes. Also included are some unusual and unexpected environmental apostles, such as Walter Benjamin, Raymond Williams, Seamus Heaney, and Paul Virilio, all of whom contributed to green thinking as this book shows. Other environmentally apostolic writers, such as Walt Whitman, Sidney Lanier, Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, Felix Guattari and Kelly Barnhill, are also discussed.Beginning with two environmentally and animal friendly retellings of the legends of St. George and St. Margaret involving dragons, the book goes on to devote a chapter each to ten other environmental apostles as patron saints of a special type of environment or of an approach to environmental conservation and contemplation. These saints sing the song of the earth, including its swamps, marshes, bogs, fens, national parks, mountains, forests, oceans, seas, airs, rivers, reefs, trees, cities, peoples, places, plants, animals, and so on. They provide nurture for living a life of hope and symbiotic livelihood living sacrally with the earth. New Lives of the Saints crosses the great divide between fiction and non-fiction and mixes the genres of story and essay. It is a ground-breaking work of environmental counter-theology for the symbiocene, the hoped-for age superseding the Anthropocene.

Combining memoir and studies in the Environmental Humanities, Black Swan Song weaves together an autobiographically-based account of the unique life and work of Rod Giblett. For over 25 years he was a leading local wetland conservationist, environmental activist, and pioneer transdisciplinary researcher and writer of fiction and non-fiction. He has researched, written, and published more than 25 books in the environmental humanities, especially wetland cultural studies, and psychoanalytic ecology. Black Swan Song traces Rod’s early and later life and work from being born in Borneo as the child of Christian missionaries, through his childhood in Bible College, being a High School dropout and studying at three universities to becoming an academic, activist and author, and now a writer. Following in the footsteps of New Lives of the Saints: Twelve Environmental Apostles, Black Swan Song also comprises conversations in conservation counter-theology between the twelve minor biblical prophets and twelve environmental apostles, such as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Rachel Carson. It also introduces the lives and works of twelve more environmental apostles, such as John Clare, Rebecca Solnit, John Charles Ryan, and others who have made a valuable contribution to green thinking and living. Black Swan Song mixes modes and genres, such as memoir, essay, story, criticism, etc., making up the writer’s black swan song. It provides ways of living and being with the earth in dark and troubled times by providing resources of a journey of hope for learning to live bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregional home habitats of the living earth and in the Symbiocene, the hoped-for age superseding the Anthropocene.

Many ways of thinking about and living with ‘the environment’ have their roots in the Bible and the Christian cultural tradition. Environmental Humanities and Theologies shows that some of these ways are problematic. It also provides alternative ways that value both materiality and spirituality. Beginning with an environmentally friendly reading of the biblical story of creation, Environmental Humanities and Theologies goes on to discuss in succeeding chapters the environmental theology of wetlands, dragons and watery monsters (including crocodiles and alligators) in the Bible and literature. It then gives a critical reading of the environmental theology of the biblical book of Psalms. Theological concepts are found in the works of English writers of detective and devotional stories and novels, American nature writers and European Jewish writers (as succeeding chapters show). Environmental Humanities and Theologies concludes with an appreciation for Australian Aboriginal spirituality in the swamp serpent. It argues for the sacrality of marsh monsters and swamp serpents as figures of reverence and respect for living bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregions of the living earth in the Symbiocene. This is the hoped-for age superseding the Anthropocene. Environmental Humanities and Theologies is aimed at those who have little or no knowledge of how theology underlies much thinking and writing about ‘the environment’ and who are looking for ways of thinking about, being and living with the earth that respect and value both spirituality and materiality. It is a new text nurturing sacrality for the Symbiocene.

This lively new study is a critical cultural history of communication technologies, from railways and telegraphy to computers and the Internet, in which Rod Giblett argues that these technologies play a pivotal role in the cultural history of modernity and its project of the sublime.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many of the world’s great cities were built on wetlands and swamps. Cities and Wetlands is the first book to explore the literary and cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the relationship between human culture and the environment.Cities covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and Washington.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many of the world’s great cities were built on wetlands and swamps. Cities and Wetlands is the first book to explore the literary and cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the relationship between human culture and the environment.Cities covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and Washington.

In Canadian Wetlands, Rod Giblett reads the Canadian canon against the grain, critiquing its popular representation of wetlands and proposing alternatives by highlighting the work of recent and contemporary Canadian authors, such as Douglas Lochhead and Harry Thurston, and by entering into dialogue with American writers. The book will engender mutual respect between researchers for the contribution that different disciplinary approaches can and do make to the study and conservation of wetlands internationally.

Melbourne, founded in 1835 among marshes and beside a sluggish stream, grew from wetlands into a world-class modern city. Drawing on a wide range of historical, literary and artistic sources, this book explores the cultural and environmental history of the city and its site. Tracing the city from its swampy beginnings in a squatter’s settlement nestled in the marshy delta of the Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers, Rod Giblett illuminates Melbourne through its visible structures and the invisible history of its site.The book places Melbourne within an international context by comparing and contrasting it to other cities built on or beside wetlands, including London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles and Toronto. Further, it is the first book to apply the work of European thinkers and writers on modernity and the modern city – such as Walter Benjamin and Peter Sloterdijk – to an analysis of Melbourne. Giblett considers the intertwining of nature and culture, people and place, and cities and wetlands in this bioregional and ecocultural analysis. Placing the city in its proper bioregional and international contexts, Modern Melbourne provides a rich historical analysis of the cultural capital of Australia.

In Wetlands and Western Cultures: Denigration to Conservation, Rod Giblett examines the portrayal of wetlands in Western culture and argues for their conservation. Giblett’s analysis of the wetland motif in literature and the arts, including in Beowulf and the writings of Tolkien and Thoreau, demonstrates two approaches to wetlands—their denigration as dead waters or their commendation as living waters with a potent cultural history.

Using the rich and vital Australian Aboriginal understanding of country as a model, People and Places of Nature and Culture affirms the importance of a sustainable relationship between nature and culture. While current thought includes the mistaken notion—perpetuated by natural history, ecology, and political economy—that humans have a mastery over the Earth, this book demonstrates the problems inherent in this view. In the current age of climate change, this is an important appraisal of the relationship between nature and culture, and a projection of what needs to change if we want to achieve environmental stability.

With a focus on the settler societies of the United States and Australia, Photography and Landscape is a new critical account of landscape photography created through a unique collaboration between a photography writer and a landscape photographer. Beginning with the frontier days of the American West, the subsequent century-long popularity of landscape photography is exemplified by images from Carleton Watkins to Ansel Adams, the New Topographics to Richard Misrach, all of whose works are considered here. Along with discussions of other contemporary photographers, this extensively illustrated volume demonstrates the influence of settler societies on landscape photography, in which skilled photographers captured the fascination with and the appeal of the land and its expanse.The latest installment in Intellect’s Critical Photography series, Photography and Landscape is a visually striking introduction to one of the most important modes of photography.

Tracing the life of the plants and animals of Forrestdale Lake through the six seasons of the local indigenous people, the first part of Black Swan Lake presents a wetlands calendar over a yearly cycle of the rising, falling and drying waters of this internationally important wetland in south-western Australia. The second part of this book considers issues and explores themes from the first part, including a cultural history of the seasons and the black swan. Black Swan Lake is a book of nature writing and environmental history and philosophy arising from living in a particular place with other beings. The book is a guide to living simply and sustainably with the earth in troubled times and places by making and maintaining a strong attachment and vital connection to a local place and its flora and fauna. Local places and their living processes sustain human and other life on this living earth.

Traditional cultures have a long and vital association with wetlands as sacred places imbued with spiritual and ceremonial significance that provide physical sustenance and sources of materials in paludiculture. Ancient Greek and Roman cultures denigrated wetlands as places of disease, terror, horror, the hellish and the monstrous.

The book brings together philosophy, ecoculture and political ecology in a creative, critical and timely manner to outline how one might live sacrally with the living earth. Drawing on a rich variety of ecocultural texts and from a wide range of philosophers and other thinkers from the ancient Greeks to the present day (principally Peter Sloterdijk and occasionally Byung-Chul Han), the book invites the reader to step along the pathway for living with nature sacrally in the Anthropobscene away from the drive for mastery of nature to the desire for, and pleasures of, mutuality with the living earth. Giblett begins with discussions of the four elements, the humors, the monstrous, the sublime, slime, the uncanny; going on through the landscapes of World War I and II, mourning, melancholy, despair, cities, slums, tombs, wombs, and being born; and finally concludes with bio- and psycho-symbiosis, livelihood, bioregion and the living earth.

Forest Family highlights the importance of the old-growth forests of Southwest Australia to art, culture, history, politics, and community identity. The volume weaves together the natural and cultural histories of Southwest eucalypt forests, spanning pre-settlement, colonial, and contemporary periods. The contributors critique a range of content including historical documents, music, novels, paintings, performances, photography, poetry, and sculpture representing ancient Australian forests. Forest Family centers on the relationship between old-growth nature and human culture through the narrative strand of the Giblett family of Western Australia and the forests in which they settled during the nineteenth century. The volume will be of interest to general readers of environmental history, as well as scholars in critical plant studies and the environmental humanities.

What do two white men born in the century before last have to say that could possibly be of any use or value in the current conjuncture of climate collapse, the end of the age of fossil fuels and much life on earth, and the recent re-rise of reactionary forces against progressive politics? Turns out, a lot, especially for waking to nature, place, life, social injustice, environmental destruction, industrial capitalism and its technologies. Henry David Thoreau – an inspiration for William Melvin Kelley’s writing on ‘staying woke’ – and Walter Benjamin suggest sensory means for waking the consumer asleep under the “phony spell” of the “putrid magic” of the commodity; provide tools of theory and critique for waking to sexism, racism, and placism; empower the weak with a robust vocabulary for telling the stories of people and places; create resources of hope and limit the prospect of despair about the future; and point to pathways for being at home with the living earth. These are all vital facets of psychopolitical ecology.Waking to Nature with Thoreau and Benjamin discusses topics both writers share in common, such as memory, dreaming, waking, walking, water, swamps, lakes, the body, and the senses, and highlights convergences and divergences between them. It is the first book of psychopolitical ecology and the first to bring together these two timely thinkers and writers for whom life is the union of materiality and spirituality.

What do two white men born in the century before last have to say that could possibly be of any use or value in the current conjuncture of climate collapse, the end of the age of fossil fuels and much life on earth, and the recent re-rise of reactionary forces against progressive politics? Turns out, a lot, especially for waking to nature, place, life, social injustice, environmental destruction, industrial capitalism and its technologies. Henry David Thoreau – an inspiration for William Melvin Kelley’s writing on ‘staying woke’ – and Walter Benjamin suggest sensory means for waking the consumer asleep under the “phony spell” of the “putrid magic” of the commodity; provide tools of theory and critique for waking to sexism, racism, and placism; empower the weak with a robust vocabulary for telling the stories of people and places; create resources of hope and limit the prospect of despair about the future; and point to pathways for being at home with the living earth. These are all vital facets of psychopolitical ecology.Waking to Nature with Thoreau and Benjamin discusses topics both writers share in common, such as memory, dreaming, waking, walking, water, swamps, lakes, the body, and the senses, and highlights convergences and divergences between them. It is the first book of psychopolitical ecology and the first to bring together these two timely thinkers and writers for whom life is the union of materiality and spirituality.