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On Active
Grounds
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Environmental Humanities Series
Environmental thought pursues with renewed urgency the grand concerns of
the humanities: who we think we are, how we relate to others, and how we
live in the world. Scholarship in the environmental humanities explores these
questions by crossing the lines that separate human from animal, social from
material, and objects and bodies from techno-ecological networks. Humanistic
accounts of political representation and ethical recognition are re-examined
in consideration of other species. Social identities are studied in relation to
conceptions of the natural, the animal, the bodily, place, space, landscape, risk,
and technology, and in relation to the material distribution and contestation of
environmental hazards and pleasures.
The Environmental Humanities Series features research that adopts and adapts
the methods of the humanities to clarify the cultural meanings associated with
environmental debate. The scope of the series is broad. Film, literature, televi-
sion, Web-based media, visual art, and physical landscape—all are crucial sites
for exploring how ecological relationships and identities are lived and imagined.
The Environmental Humanities Series publishes scholarly monographs and
essay collections in environmental cultural studies, including popular culture,
film, media, and visual cultures; environmental literary criticism; cultural
geography; environmental philosophy, ethics, and religious studies; and other
cross-disciplinary research that probes what it means to be human, animal, and
technological in an ecological world.
Gathering research and writing in environmental philosophy, ethics, cultural
studies, and literature under a single umbrella, the series aims to make visible
the contributions of humanities research to environmental studies, and to foster
discussion that challenges and reconceptualizes the humanities.
Series Editor:
Cheryl Lousley, English and Interdisciplinary Studies, Lakehead University
Editorial Committee:
Brett Buchanan, Philosophy, Laurentian University
Adrian J. Ivakhiv, Environmental Studies, University of Vermont
Cate Sandilands, Environmental Studies, York University
Susie O’Brien, English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
Rob Shields, Henry Marshall Tory Chair and Professor, Department of
Sociology, University of Alberta
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On Active
Grounds
Agency and
Time in the
Environmental
Humanities
Robert Boschman
and Mario Trono,
editors
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This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation
for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications
Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada. Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada
Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of
the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
This work was supported by the Research Support Fund.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
On active grounds : agency and time in the environmental humanities / Robert
Boschman and Mario Trono, editors.
(Environmental humanities)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77112-339-6 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-77112-341-9 (EPUB).—
ISBN 978-1-77112-340-2 (PDF)
1. Environmental sciences—Philosophy. 2. Humanities—Philosophy. I. Boschman,
Robert Wayne, 1961–, editor II. Trono, Mario, [date], editor III. Series: Environmental
humanities
GE40.O5 2019 179’.1 C2018-904626-0
C2018-904627-9
Cover photo courtesy of Robert Boschman. Cover design by Sandra Friesen. Interior design
by Angela Booth Malleau, designbooth.ca
© 2019 Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
www.wlupress.wlu.ca
Excerpt from Strike/Slip by Don McKay. Copyright © 2006 by Don McKay. Reprinted
by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada
Limited.
Excerpted graphic novel plates from the 30 Days of Night graphic novel universe by
Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. First copyright © 2002 by Idea and Design Works LLC.
Reprinted by permission of Idea and Design Works LLC.
This book is printed on FSC® certified paper and is certified Rainforest Alliance™ and
Ancient Forest Friendly™. It contains post-consumer fibre, is processed chlorine free,
and is manufactured using biogas energy.
Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material
used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and
omissions called to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmit-
ted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a
licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access
Copyright licence, visit http://www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
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CONTENTS
List of Images | vii
Acknowledgements | ix
Introduction: Ecocritical Agency in Time | 1
Mario Trono and Robert Boschman
I ECO-TEMPORAL LITERACIES
CHAPTER 1
“The clock’s wound up”: Critical Reading Practices in the Time of Social
Acceleration and Ecological Collapse | 33
Paul Huebener
CHAPTER 2
A Better Distribution Deal: Ecocinematic Viewing and Montagist Reply | 57
Mario Trono
CHAPTER 3
Allô, ici la terre: Agency in Ecological Music Composition, Performance,
and Listening | 87
Sabine Feisst
CHAPTER 4
The Environmental Vampire: Terror, Time, and Territory after 9/11 | 107
Robert Boschman
II TIMELINES AND INDIGENEITY
CHAPTER 5
“We are key players …”: Creating Indigenous Engagement and Community
Control at Blackfoot Heritage Sites in Time | 139
Geneviève Susemihl
CHAPTER 6
Mapping the Mining Legacy of Navajo Nation | 165
Lea Rekow
PHOTO ESSAY
Agency and Time on Active Grounds: A Memoir of Bruno Latour and Gaïa
Global Circus | 193
Robert Boschman
v
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vi Contents
III ANIMAL AGENTS AND HUMAN / NON-HUMAN INTERACTIONS
CHAPTER 7
The Gaze of Predators and the Redefinition of the Human | 209
Karla Armbruster
CHAPTER 8
Anim-oils: Wild Animals in Petro-Cultural Landscapes | 235
Pamela Banting
CHAPTER 9
Reacting to Wolves: The Historical Construction of Identity and Value | 263
Morgan Zedalis and Sean Gould
IV SYSTEMS CHANGE IN TIME
CHAPTER 10
Declarations of Interdependence: Unexpected Human–Animal Conflict and
Bhutanese Non-Linear Policy | 287
Randy Schroeder and Kent Schroeder
CHAPTER 11
Effective Environmental Action in Canada: The German Energiewende
as a Model of Public Agency | 305
Mishka Lysack
CHAPTER 12
Culture as Vector: (Re)Locating Agency in Social-Ecological Systems
Change | 327
Nancy C. Doubleday
About the Contributors | 349
Index | 355
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LIST OF IMAGES
SEC. I An organized social scene for touring humans viewing geologic epochs,
south of Drumheller, Alberta | 31
CHAPTER 1
Fig. 1.1 Go RVing Canada | 40
Fig. 1.2 Go RVing Canada | 41
CHAPTER 4
Fig. 4.1 | 108
Fig. 4.2 | 109
Fig. 4.3 | 111
Fig. 4.4 | 114
Fig. 4.5 | 115
Fig. 4.6 | 120
Fig. 4.7 | 121
Fig. 4.8 | 123
Fig. 4.9 | 125
Fig. 4.10 | 127
Fig. 4.11 | 129
SEC. II Ice fishers seen from the St. Mary’s Reservoir Dam embankment in
Southern Alberta. Here in 2013 an important archaelogical discovery
was made | 137
CHAPTER 6
Fig. 6.1 McKinley coal mine | 168
Fig. 6.2 Stream bordering McKinley mine | 169
Fig. 6.3 San Juan power plant | 170
Fig. 6.4 Four Corners power plant, with coal ash ponds in the foreground | 171
Fig. 6.5 Monument Valley abandoned uranium mine with radioactive waste in
foreground | 174
vii
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viii List of Images
Fig. 6.6 Phytoremediation project, Cane Valley | 176
Fig. 6.7 Cows grazing on burial cell, Monument Valley | 177
Fig. 6.8 Breached Church Rock tailings pond (spill site) next to State Route 566 | 180
Fig. 6.9 Preparing to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Church Rock
spill | 181
Fig. 6.10 UMTRA disposal cell at Shiprock. Evaporation pond in background, San
Juan River in foreground | 183
Fig. 6.11 Church Rock Uranium Legacy: Remembrance and Action Day | 187
PHOTO ESSAY
Fig. PE.1 Looking for the K-T: Bruno Latour, geological time, and the geosocial | 194
Fig. PE.2 Actor Claire Astruc, Gaïa Global Circus | 195
Fig. PE.3 Alberta Badlands, aerial view | 197
Fig. PE.4 Bruno Latour and Olivier Vallet look east | 198
Fig. PE.5 The Social: a plaque stands just below the K-T boundary | 199
Fig. PE.6 Spinning the Devonian, with Bruno Latour and Olivier Vallet | 200
Fig. PE.7 The Collection: Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, Drumheller | 201
Fig. PE.8 Bruno Latour and the composition of facts | 202
Fig. PE.9 Horseshoe Canyon, Alberta | 203
Fig. PE.10 Gaïa Global Circus: post-finale packing | 204
SEC. III Raccoon print | 207
SEC. IV Under a crumbling bridge on the Salmon River, British Columbia, a chain
anchors the structure to a tree | 285
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The chapters in this volume are part of the wider, dynamic, and
committed community of Environmental Humanities scholars who
function in adaptive and shifting configurations across disciplinary and
international boundaries. We acknowledge that community’s dedica-
tion and vitality and its roles, direct and indirect, in helping bring this
book forward.
Two people in particular at Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Direc-
tor Lisa Quinn and Senior Editor Siobhan McMenemy, have been
instrumental in bringing On Active Grounds to press. The rest of the
staff at WLUP have been equally committed in their efforts on behalf
of this book, and we the editors gratefully acknowledge those efforts.
The look and feel of this volume attests to their labours as much as
anyone else’s.
Our colleagues at Mount Royal University are responsible for the
genial, supportive environment in which this project germinated and
grew. From our department (English, Languages, and Cultures) to our
Faculty (Arts) and the wider university community, we have been the
beneficiaries of all kinds of support. We especially acknowledge and
thank two successive Deans of the Faculty of Arts, Jeffrey Keshen and
Jennifer Pettit, for their unremitting backing of On Active Grounds.
Like Keshen and Pettit, Connie Van Der Byl, Director of the Institute
for Environmental Sustainability (IES), has anchored us with funding
support without which OAG would not exist, as has Michael Quinn,
Associate Vice-President of Research. Quinn’s Office for Research,
Scholarship, and Community Engagement (ORSCE) maintains an
open-door policy that has been essential to us.
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