Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, EcologyPostmodern Wetlands explores the representation of wetlands (swamps, marshes, etc.) in western culture. For many, wetlands are a place of disease and horror often associated with the melancholy and the monstrous; in short, they are 'black waters'. Yet, ecologically, wetlands are vitally important for human and other life on earth: they are 'living' waters. The aim of this book is to produce a cultural critique of wetlands as both living and black waters. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and methodologies, the book analyses wetlands in relation to aesthetics and philosophy, cities and human psychology, mythology and narrative and medical, military, social and conservation history. It discusses these issues using examples across a variety of genres and making reference to British, American and Australian wetlands. |
Contents
Where Land and Water Meet | 3 |
The Sublime | 25 |
The WorldWomb as Wetland the Modern | 77 |
Copyright | |
8 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic African Queen agriculture argues associated beautiful Black Swamp body breast Buttinger calls capitalist Chapter cloaca colonial dark David Miller dead death decolonisation depths disease Dismal Swamp drainage draining Drowned World Eagleton elements excrement feminine Fens Figure Freud grateful guerilla Harmondsworth hell horrific horror human ibid Irigaray Kant Kerans Kingsley Kristeva lagoon lakes land landscape Leopold living black waters London Lyotard malaria marsh monster matter Mekong Delta melancholia melancholy metaphor miasmatic theory Miller monstrous mother Mudfog Mudrooroo narrator nature novel object patriarchal western culture Penguin perhaps Perth placenta Plain of Reeds postmodern precisely Rainbow Serpent region repressed River Sartre sexuality slime slimy smell Sofoulis solid story Stymphalian birds sublime surface swamp serpent Swan Coastal Plain symptom things Thoreau trans trope uncanny unconscious unhomely University Press Viet Cong Vietnam Waterland Western Australia wetlands wetlandscape whereas the sublime wilderness womb writing