Tracking Thoreau: Double-crossing Nature and TechnologyTracking Thoreau explores the constellation of three central issues in Thoreau's oeuvre: nature, culture, and technology. Dolis reads Thoreau's major works as principally concerned with the composition of the self through writing, through narration, an activity inextricably bound up with the apprehension of structures common to both nature and culture, structures which, in turn, unavoidably implicate style - that is, technique. As did the ancient Greeks. Thoreau understands technology as a defining moment for not only culture, but nature as well, that inaugural act in light of which each is able to appear in the first place. Technology is always already in place at the beginning of things: it occupies the site of subjectivity. Arguing against the most recent trend in Thoreau studies, Dolis contends that, for Thoreau, nature is primordially a construct: it cannot be understood apart from language, through cultural constructions, techniques by means of which the subject composes the object. Both nature and the very nature of nature itself are subject to this single configuration. Subjectivity, in turn, entails its own technology, its style. |
Contents
| 17 | |
The Nature of Technology Viewing the Construction of Things | 58 |
The Technology of Nature Constructing the View of Things | 93 |
The Nature of Nature Techne The Subject Matter Itself | 129 |
The Technology of Technology Poiesis What Matters to the Subject ItSelf SelfTechnology | 149 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Bachelard becomes bricolage building Cape Cod civilization commerce common Concord configures construction culture culture's death Derrida discourse distance dwelling earth economy extravagance F. B. Sanborn fact fiction figures fire hand heart Heidegger Henry David Thoreau Henry Thoreau Heraclitus higher laws inhabitants insofar Inversely ironically Jacques Derrida ject Ktaadn labor language light living logos Martin Heidegger meaning Merrimack Rivers metaphor Metonymy mind moose myth narration narration's narrative nature nature's never object origin path physis poetic Poetics of Space poetry poiesis pond Princeton railroad récit recites reflects sauntering scene sense sound space speak stands step style subject matter takes techne technique thinking Thoreau's oeuvre thought tion trans transfigures transforms translates transports truth ture turn University of Minnesota University Press Walden Walden Pond Walking WCMR wild woods word writing York
Popular passages
Page 25 - Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end...