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214 214 four / Capitalizing on Contradiction Although increasingly conscious of environmental degradation, we remain remarkably unaware of how our behaviors affect ecosystems near and far. We know surprisingly little about the effect of human actions on the etiologies , the patterns of progression and regression, and the consequences of damaged environments. Felling trees clearly kills them, but to what extent does felling trees injure the flora and fauna that live in them or rely on them for sustenance? How much do these injuries matter? How many dead trees does it take to matter? If trees are left where they fall, their bodies can provide homes for other species; if they are removed, space is made for other plants to grow. It is uncertain whether this regeneration can compensate for taking down trees, regardless of why they were felled. Even more complex is determining the ecological cost of possessing an object constructed of trees logged elsewhere. Daniel Goleman points out concerning the “objects” with which we surround ourselves: We go through our daily life awash in a sea of things we buy, use, and throw away, waste, or save. Each of those things has its own history and its own future, backstories and endings largely hidden from our eyes, a web of impacts left along the way from the initial extraction or concoction of its ingredients, during its manufacture and transport, through the subtle consequences of its use in our homes and workplaces , to the day we dispose of it. And yet these unseen impacts of all that stuff may be their most important aspect.1 Goleman suggests that the effects of our acquisitions terminate the day “we dispose of [them].” Yet some cultural products languish for millennia. Human behaviors are nothing if not ambiguous: the acts themselves, as well as their causes and motives; their relationships with other actions, whether human or nonhuman, whether performed by a single individual or a group of people; their effects on human and nonhuman bodies; and the reactions they provoke. Behaviors tend to be some combination of unpredictable, Capitalizing on Contradiction 215 inconsistent, contradictory, and unclear. General patterns exist, but ambiguities are often a basic component of even the most expected, repeated actions. This is part of what makes human damage of environments so difficult to prevent or remediate. As the Korean writer Ch’oe Sŭngho’s “Saeu ŭi nun” (Shrimp Eyes, 1993) suggests, even something so seemingly innocuous as writing a poem can have ambiguous consequences. This prose poem—which like so many of Ch’oe Sŭngho’s texts is situated in an indeterminate location and whose only specifically “Korean” feature is the language of its composition—depicts an individual anxious that his efforts to celebrate a crustacean in verse might backfire and ultimately harm the very creature that has so mesmerized him. Admitting that he is still captivated by the two protruding, gleaming golden eyes of a shrimp he spotted one night swimming toward him while he was standing “on a lakeshore” (hosukka e sŏ), the narrator claims that these eyes are more beautiful than any he has ever seen. He wonders what to do with this vision: he questions whether it might be better to have it remain in memory, since translating it into written language could, he believes, “ruin the shrimp’s eyes” (saeu ŭi nun ŭl mangch’ida).2 The narrator does not elaborate on how writing about eyes might “ruin” them, but there are several possibilities. Perhaps his literary skills are not up to the task of describing something so magnificent, so any attempt to do so would be doomed and figuratively destroy the shrimp’s eyes. A greater concern from an ecological perspective is that alerting people to the splendor of this animal paradoxically might hasten its downfall. To be sure, if this individual has spotted an endangered species of shrimp, then publicizing its distinctiveness could result in increased protection of the animal. But how many times have people who have stumbled on spectacular plants, animals, and geological features regretted sharing their findings; word of magnificent landscapes spreads quickly and awakens desires to see them at first hand, which in turn can increase the possibility of devastating the very parts of the nonhuman that are being celebrated.3 In contrast with the Korean poet Chŏng Hyŏnjong’s “Kŭge mwŏni” (What’s That?, 1995) on the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India (1984), where writing about ruined eyes promises to save other, healthy...

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