Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World

8. Haiku and Beyond

145 8 Haiku and Beyond This chapter takes a closer look at the discourse of haiku as one based on very different assumptions from both those of destructive discourses and counterdiscourses in the West. The starting point is with the origins of human separation from animals and the natural world, and this leads on to a discussion of how haiku can facilitate reconnection. In The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram (1996) locates the start of the ever increasing separation between humans and the rest of nature in the invention of writing systems. No longer was language something fine-tuned to the community and land in a particular region, instead it became quite literally disembodied , cut free from the writer, and able to spread itself to new domains. Traditional stories about the local animals, plants, rivers, and trees became swamped by writing from different bioregions and different times. In addition, writing facilitates “sparsely linear or analytic thought” (Ong 2002: 40), resulting in “analytic categories that depend on writing to structure knowledge at a distance from lived experience” (Ong 2002: 42). In countries where writing is preeminent, the relationship between humans and other life-forms is increasingly mediated by language and other media. It is becoming more likely for people to come across animals and plants as they are represented in books, magazines, advertisements, films, toys, and clip-art than to notice them face-to-face in everyday life. There is growing awareness, particularly when it comes to the relationship between humans and other animals , of the importance of linguistic mediation, and the significant effects this can have (Glenn 2004, Schillo 2003, Dunayer 2001, Scarce 2000, Kheel 1995). 146 animals erased From these studies a picture is emerging of a wide range of discourses that construct relationships with animals in ways that further the separation between humans and the rest of nature. As discussed earlier, there is the jocular way that animals are used as insults in everyday conversation (chapters 1 and 2, also Goatly 2006), the more sinister way that animals are objectified and treated as inconsequential by the discourse of the meat industry (chapters 1 and 2, also Dunayer 2001), and the way that animals are treated separately from humans as part of the “environment” by environmentalist discourse (chapter 7). In addition , ecological discourse often treats animals and the ecosystems they are part of as resources for human use; conservationist discourse tends to treat animals as mattering only if they belong to a rare charismatic species; and finally, animal rights discourses represent animals narrowly as passive victims rather than agents of their own lives (chapter 4). Most studies of the discursive representation of nature have focused on discourses that have the potential to create undesirable relationships between humans and other life-forms—relationships of exploitation that lead not only to the suffering of animals, but also to ecological damage and negative impacts on humans. While critical awareness of dominant discourses and their potentially damaging effects is important, the next stage is analysis of alternative discourses that have the potential to construct more harmonious relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. Abram (1996), Snyder (2000), and Bate (2000) all agree that if people have lost touch with the natural world around them, and are engrossed in a symbolic world of writing, then it is through this symbolic world that people need to be reached initially and encouraged to enter into new relationships with the more-than-human world. Abram (1996) puts this eloquently, in a writing style consistent with its message: There can be no question of simply abandoning literacy, of turning away from all writing. Our task, rather, is that of taking up the written word, with all of its potency, and patiently, carefully, writing language back into the land. Our craft is that of releasing the budded, earthy intelli- haiku and beyond 147 gence of our words, freeing them to respond to the speech of the things themselves—to the green uttering-forth of leaves from the spring branches. (Abram 1996: 273) But how can writers write language back into the land in ways that contribute to more harmonious relationships between humans and the other animals, plants, and soil that make up that land? Answering this question requires a journey beyond mainstream Western discourses such as those of industry, biological science, and even environmentalism or ecology: a journey to discover new ways of representing...