Workshop on Hartmut Rosa’s manuscript ‘Resonanz’ - Jena, May 30-31 2016 Barbara Muraca - Jena - Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften Rainer Maria Rilke: Durch den sich Vögel werfen, ist nicht der vertraute Raum, der die Gestalt dir steigert. (Im Freien, dorten, bist du verweigert und schwindest weiter ohne Wiederkehr). Raum greift aus uns und übersetzt die Dinge: dass dir Dasein eines Baums gelinge, wirf Innenraum um ihn, aus jenem Raum, der in dir west. Umgieb ihn mit Verhaltung. Er grenzt sich nicht. Erst in der Eingestaltung in dein Verzichten wird er wirklich Baum. Nature as a (stable) resonance axis? A reflection in three steps This reflection follows three lines of thought to discuss further what it means that nature is/might become an axis of resonance. The first line of thought refers to the aesthetic experience of nature (in the wider sense of the term) as 'Befindlichkeit' - which comes very close to Hartmut's concept of resonance in the sphere of nature, yet avoiding the pitfalls of a narrow phenomenology of a merely bourgeois aesthetics. The second line of thought moves along the frame and conditions for nature being an axis of resonance and addresses the relation between immediate experience and sociocultural mediation. The third step finally questions 'nature' as axis of resonance and offers a critique from a non-western perspective, while rehabilitating autonomy as a collective category. 1. La Nature que donc je suis - from 'bürgerliche Naturästhetik' to 'ökologischer Naturästhetik' Let me start by playing around with the famous title of Derrida's book "L'animal que donc je suis" and call this first part accordingly 'La Nature que donc je suis', the Nature which ultimately I am, die Natur, die ich nun doch bin. I refer here to Böhme's brilliant work on what he calls an 'ecological aesthetics': According to Böhme, it is a result of the Enlightenment that the body as 'Leib' has been defined as external 'qua' natural. Thus, the living body (Leib) turned for 'man' into external nature rather than being 'the' nature that he was to himself: ! "Der Mensch im Zeitalter der Aufklärung verstand sich als Vernunftwesen - und !definierte damit seinen Leib aus sich heraus. Der Leib war ihm nicht die Natur, die !er selbst war, vielmehr Natur an ihm, etwas Äußerliches" (1989, 32) Thus, external nature - the other of reason - could easily be kept at a distance as an object of scientific observation, use, and exploitation. At the same time, nature - as the other of society and culture - also became the object for what Böhme calls 'bürgerliche Naturästhetik': the naive, unreflected, wild, primitive, non-civilized, innocent other, that can be observed, contemplated, enjoyed at a distance, from the point of view of those, who are not engaged in a working relation to and with it. This corresponds to the aesthetics of the bourgeois intellectual who encounters nature in his/her leisure time. Such an aesthetic relation to nature does not - according to Böhme - mark a real opposition to modern natural science and the attitude of exploitation of natural resources. Rather, it is its necessary complement. In my own wording, I would say that the externalization and instrumentalization of nature and the aesthetic relation of contemplation, admiration, wonder, all that in environmental philosophy is termed as the 'amenity and recreation value' of nature, are the two sides of the same coin - to quote Böhme again: ! "Die bürgerliche Naturästhetik is somit durch und durch Ausdruck eines Menschen, ! der die Natur an sich selbst nicht anzuerkennen vermag und sie deshalb draußen, ! als utopisches Gegenbild seiner eigenen gesellschaftlichen Esistenz sucht" (45). It is questionable whether this kind of relation to 'nature' can be an axis of resonance that counterbalances reification, instrumentalization and exploitation. As an alternative, Böhme develops the concept of an ecological aesthetics of nature that starts from the living body (Leib) as the primary mode of our being-in-the-world as Befindlichkeit, in its double sense of being affected by our environment and occupying, creating a space or - in Böhmes terms - effusing an atmosphere in it. External nature is thus intended (following Marx) as Barbara Muraca - Jena - Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften our inorganic body, which always affects us and is affected by us. The living body is the closest nature, the nature that ultimately we are. Such a perspective encompasses also other forms of relation – beside the contemplative attitude – such as working, shaping, transforming, interacting, even fighting. In Böhme's words, it turns into a partnership relation, in which human creativity interacts with nature's own productivity, spontaneity, regeneration capacity, and - yes - renitence. 'Nature' is no longer a general object, a totality rather, it is what he calls an ecological fabric (ökologisches Gefüge), in which a buzzing world of activities, interactions, communication, voices, forms, colors is at place. Ecological fabrics are communication fields, in which the self-world relation is disassembled in a complex relational field encompassing multiple voices of - so to say - selves and (their) worlds.1 Such an interaction modus, in which - indeed - 'nature' is responsive, does not necessarily imply an instrumental relation. Just the contrary: once 'nature' ceases to be the external other, the passive object of use/contemplation, it becomes an interaction partner with her own contradictory, resisting, threatening, cooperating voice. Böhme has in mind as example the English gardens – as places in which human design cooperates with nature's own spontaneity and makes her room. Using something as a means leads to instrumentalization only if it is reduced to being a mere means with nothing left. When background, embeddedness, causal powers, reciprocity and conditions of reproduction are neglected, instrumentalization takes place and a resonance relation is rendered impossible, because the other is reduced to a mute, passive object at disposal. Interaction and transformation imply use, but leave the interaction partners in their own relational context. 2. Re-gained immediacy - socio-cultural framing of resonance axes Of course, stable axes of resonance are always dependent on a frame that keeps different, isolated experiences in an overall flow of symbolic meaning. The mode of entering the relation to nature as an axis of resonance is not based on immediate experience. Rather, it is strongly mediated by cultural patterns and habitualized by practices and rituals. The experience of resonance in modus II (as articulated experience in a specific sphere and not as the phenomenologically fundamental condition for the development of a self) is neither spontaneous nor immediate in our societies. Let me just for the argument refer to the ontogenetic development: for a child the world is (usually) responsive, both in terms of repulsion and of being answering. It is animated, acting, and sometimes threatening. Once the animistic phase is broken - mostly by entering puberty - the world indeed turns silent. The immediacy of the child's experience of fluidity in the self-world relation is interrupted and the magic is gone. The recuperation of resonance becomes possible through the mediation, what Hegel would have called the negation, the negative. All three axes that Hartmut mentions are accessible mainly by means of culture, education, symbolic significations, established imaginaries. The 'romantic invention' educates our view and gaze to see nature in a certain way. It literally frames the scene (think of Caspar David Friedrich's paintings with the figure of the spectator watching at the scenery, but also of the countless panoramic viewpoint in natural areas clearly marked by signs and explanation boards, or of the famous landscape photographies that tourists try to reproduce clumsily when visiting such places). This is also true of art and religion of course. Not only in the sense of the stratified meanings within religious traditions that allow for a self-world experience in the first place (because they give the 'world' its contour, form, and meaning), but in the more personal mode of mystic experience: it requires training, discipline, and learning to reach a relatively stable axis of resonance with a transcending dimension of reality. The responsiveness is not always harmonious (again, think of the mystics), but the symbolic framework offers interpretation paths for dealing with repulsion, silence, and indifference. The cultural frame allows us to re-gain the pristine immediacy of a resonance relation, yet in a mediated mode (in a Hegelian sense): even when we experience something as immediate, spontaneous, overwhelming, we are embedded in a context, in which the 1 Can we speak of 'self' for other than humans? At least in the very vague phenomenological view developed by Edith Stein in terms of a 'zero-point of orientation' - that could work well at least for living beings which orient 'world' around themselves (Stein 1980) Barbara Muraca - Jena - Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften access to that very experience is rendered possible at all. Referring again to nature as axis of resonance, a phenomenology should consider the context of meaning and the framework that sets up the scene. 3. Learning from indigenous people: inhabiting the land as an axis of resonance Thus, the bourgeois intellectual embodies the modern (Western) understanding of nature and - if I may borrow this term from Charles Taylor - shapes and legitimates our social imaginary because of its hegemonic power. It gives ultimately sense to practices and experiences. Once we leave the phenomenological meaning of resonance as a fundamental condition for the development of a self altogether and start analyzing the different historically and socially forms that resonance takes and along which axes it articulates itself, a critical perspective is required. Such a perspective would have to address the way in which nature as an axis or resonance has been established, for whom this is accessible and under which conditions, what alternative patterns, interpretations and practices are excluded. For example, on a global perspective, we are reminded that an understanding of nature as an axis of resonance in the mode of the 'romantic invention' has a rather imperialistic touch: this is the case, for example, when local people who have lived over centuries in a reciprocal and complex relation with their territory, where forests, mountains, and waters have been ever since a source for livelihoods and the basis for the social imaginary of the communities, all of a sudden are kicked out of their ancestral places to make room for nature conservation areas, in which no use or human interaction is allowed. Their struggle for the land is a struggle for the conditions for a good human life in the community – this includes material and cultural-symbolic conditions (the place is sacred to them). It is also a struggle for preserving stable axes of resonance that do not correspond to the frames imposed onto them by us. The term 'nature' makes no sense for many people in the world - it is not the way in which they would frame that specific self-world-relation with nonhuman others. Is this essential for redefining the good life? Well, indigenous people all over the world, small farmers, peasants would say that this is the only way of entering a meaningful self-world relation that bears a perspective for the future of their communities. The environmentalism based on the 'romantic' invention is indeed the downside of the exploitation and management of natural resources: it aims at creating and preserving special places, islands of intact nature, where no use is allowed, where 'wilderness' is restored and human intervention kept at bay - except for a 'consuming' attitude allowed by documentary films, exclusive journeys, imagination, photographies. According to post-development scholars, both traditions of environmentalism coming from the so-called Global North, the resource management approach and the nature and wilderness conservation approach, are tightly connected and reveal the same basic logic. Instead, another form of environmentalism, called environmentalism of livelihoods or environmentalism of the poor is at work in many parts of the world (Guha & Martinez-Alier 1997). From the point of view of the environmentalism of livelihoods, what is at stake is not very much 'nature', but the creative processes and cycles that sustain life in general and secure its reproduction for the community inhabiting the land and interacting with it. It refers to the struggles of indigenous people, small farmers, and women from the so-called Global South for the preservation of what Arturo Escobar calls a proyecto de vida (Escobar 2008), their collective vision for a self-determined and sustainable life in the community. The Land is the space that sustains the life project of the community and requires shared, social control of the modes of appropriation, use of, and relation to natural processes as the basis for food security, self-subsistence, and autonomy. Such a view articulates a decolonial view of nature (Escobar 2008, 154) that leads to what anthropologists call a cosmo-anthropo-vision, in which interconnection among different levels of the real (biophysical, human, and supernatural) leads to specific society-nature relations and nature-culture regimes. 4. What consequences can we draw from this for the concept of resonance along the nature axis? 1) All the examples that Hartmut refers to in the text concerning nature as an axis of resonance embody what Böhme terms bürgerliche Naturästhetik (tourism, the way in which oceans, mountains, forests and parks are 'maketed' or even earthquakes). This is problematic because in this case resonance reiterates an objectifying mode of relation, in spite of Hartmut Barbara Muraca - Jena - Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften continuously reassuring that he is following a phenomenological path and considering self and world as reciprocally co-constituting in a relational field. Following Böhme, we could push it even a little further: bürgerliche Naturästhetik in fact veils a form of alienation from own's one body as the nature that ultimately we are. 2) Böhme's analysis offers a feasible alternative path. The 'responsive, vibrant relationship between (a changing) self and (a changing) world' (p-5) and the ongoing self-world coconstitution does not take place so much in touristic trekking tours in the woods with breathtaking landscape views, or wale-watching experiences. Rather, it occurs in the less romantic mode of interrelation and interaction, transforming and being transformed, like the experience of the gardener in the English gardens, the organic farmer, or the urban bee-keeper. Moreover, the romantic invention of nature as an axis for resonance seems to be - if we are to follow Böhme less promising as a reconceptualization of nature that might be helpful for the ecological debate. In an analogous way, the idealization of the feminine as a 'poetic muse' did not necessarily led to a different relation between the genders. The responsiveness of 'the other' is embedded in a frame that determines how the answer can and should be (no wonder that eco-feminists stress the interactivity, co-productivity, and transformation in the relation to 'nature' rather than contemplation or recreation). The interactive mode of multiple relations, mediated by the living body as the nature that ultimately we are, offers a more encouraging alternative for addressing environmental issues. This could mark a different understanding of the relation to 'nature' and thus a different way of addressing the ecological crisis: rather than following the (romantic) myth of wilderness and the tradition of nature conservation for its own sake (and for our need for nature as our mirror), a different kind of environmentalism would assemble around the idea of cooperation, Gestaltung, interaction, co-creation, transformation within the (respective) limits and conditions of regeneration and reproductivity. 3) A decolonial view on nature might set up a different frame for nature as stable axis of resonance that counters bürgerliche Naturästhetik - not in the sense that we are supposed to import the indigenous understanding to our societies just like that. Rather, it can make alternative paths visible that are already at work here: think of urban gardening, small organic farming, decentralized commons-based (bio)technologies. These initiatives are struggling for a different framing for human-nature relations (consider how Kleingärten would be different if they were free from the iron rules concerning their shape and the space to be dedicated to different formats!). This seems a much more promising path for a post-growth-society. The struggle for the kind of 'frame' for nature as a stable axis of resonance is taking place everywhere. 4) Finally, such struggles are ultimately struggles for autonomy - indeed! Autonomy is the basic condition for non-alienated axes of resonance. Yet, it is not so much about (individual) selflegislation in terms of control, domination, subordination of the other as Hartmut seems to imply. Rather, as Illich, Castoriadis, and Gorz have pointed out, autonomy is about freely chosen and collectively shaped self-limitation. It is about giving oneself one's own laws in the sense of a self-determination regarding the conditions, frames, and institutional settings that allow for selfworld-relations that are deemed as qualitatively high - to put in Hartmut's words. Autonomy means questioning established imaginaries and given frames for the definition of what is a good life and implies entering a negotiation with nonhuman others in setting up one's own laws instead of accepting them as given by science, technology, or - for that matter, 'the market' and any other hegemonic power. Bibliography Böhme, G. (1989): Für eine ökologische Naturästhetik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Escobar, A. (2008). Territories of difference: place, movements, life, redes. Durham: Duke University Press. Guha, R., Martínez-Alier, J. (1997): Varieties of Environmentalism : Essays North and South. London: Earthscan Stein, Edith. 1980. Zum Problem der Einfühlung. München: Kaffke.