Recent news stories accompanied by dramatic images of fires in North America (Watts, 2021), along with extreme weather events in India and Pakistan, are so shocking, it’s incredible to think governments and corporations still dither and waffle, rather than genuinely addressing the behaviours that have led to catastrophic human-induced climate change. Instead the same newspapers reel out yet more stories about badly behaved conglomerates. And politicians, in the UK at any rate, seem at best resentful and mostly focused on a phoney culture war of their own making, which they finally and hopefully seem to be losing. If temperatures higher than 50 degrees Celsius aren’t going to catapult our leaders into drastic action, what exactly will?
I suspect the world will be hamstrung until leaders acknowledge how unhelpful a certain view of reality has been, a view that fetishises endless growth and celebrates what philosopher Erich Fromm (1900-1980) referred to as ‘negative nationalism’. It’s a view tied to individualism, separation, isolation, linearity, and imperialism. I read the following comment in the Guardian article about the extreme heat with sadness. After all, if our climate scientists are suspicious of non-linearity, then what hope do the rest of us have, never mind the defensive egos that make it into government?
In a report about 54.4C heat, we are told that scientists are;
“…investigating whether other human-driven climate factors may be worsening heatwaves in ways that models do not accurately represent, such as long-term droughts amplifying short-term heatwaves, or Arctic warming slowing the jet stream and causing more summer weather systems to get blocked. “These hypotheses could mean we have underestimated heatwaves in climate models. But this is still an if.
“Matthew Huber, who heads the Climate Dynamics Prediction Laboratory at Purdue University said conjecture about these potential non-linear causes were at the cutting edge of science and were still being evaluated (my italics).”
Watts, The Guardian,2021
I enjoy my scientist magazines but that’s as far as it goes and I tend to remember that actual scientists know far more than I ever will. But, I have always explored language in my work and have picked up on ‘tells’ embedded in texts for most of my life. Huber is probably right to be cautious but alongside reports of a more entangled view emerging, there are always examples of continued linear and dogmatic thinking. And I can’t help wondering, that if someone like me has taken on board that we must begin to see differently in order to address our problems, then why are so many scientists, not to mention science educators, still reluctant or even oblivious? And how, if they are still doubtful, can we convince politicians to think holistically?
In the West, a willingness and even an ability to see life in entangled, non-linear terms remains tenuous and unusual, despite plenty of discourse to suggest the older view is being interrogated and re-evaluated across disciplines. (Technology may be changing that, which is something to address in another post). We Westerners have a long and deeply embedded history of separating, isolating and objectifying. In my studies I have noticed how dualism often persists and is lodged in our language, even when people are writing about ontological entanglements. Nevertheless, I’m still surprised, but apparently shouldn’t be, when I see examples of bewilderment, distrust or only a dawning realisation that our enquiries might benefit from being pursued using a systemic lens, one that recognises an interdependent and relational universe, and challenges habitual linear perception.
Consider the reservations about non-linear relationship in Huber’s response and then the very opposite in Areilla Azoulya’s (2019a) blog posts, Unlearning Decisive Moments of Photography. Azoulay is also the author of The Civil Contract of Photography (2008) and the posts I refer to preceded the publication of her later book Unlearning Imperialism (2019b). The latter’s blurb tells us “Azoulay argues that the institutions that make our world, from archives and museums to ideas of sovereignty and human rights to history itself, are all dependent on imperial modes of thinking”.
As so much of Western science has informed that view for centuries, and played a significant role in invention and innovation in the industrial age, I have to remind myself that it is not surprising that such a view persists and with such alacrity. And I’ll admit, when I first read Azoulay’s blogs while researching an essay, making sense of her argument was challenging because it seemed so alien. (Regardless, it fuelled an already present sense of discomfort with many aspects of photography, making me an increasingly conflicted photographer.) Azoulay asks us to consider, not the individual devices, technology and chemicals associated with photography’s invention, but rather the ‘body politic of users’ who invented a world in which an optical machine would be required to enclose (and outcast), categorise, and invent distinctions, often hierarchical, between peoples, based on a so-called ‘New World’ vs. Old World value system. Goldsmith’s Andrew Fisher (2009; 37) writes in a paper called ‘The involution of photography’, Azoulay ‘subtends’ the production and consumption of photography. In other words, she brings pre-emergent motivations for photography and its historical and ongoing uses into an overarching entangled narrative. He’s not entirely convinced by that. But by doing so, she not only queries its entire raison d’etre, while undermining its moral validity, Azoulay rejects linear temporality and spatiality. When I attempted to discuss these ideas with fellow students, some were dismissive and impatient. But as Karen Barad writes in her 2007:29 book, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, it takes an enormous amount of scepticism towards a Cartesian view to even begin to query it, for that is what Azoulay is doing. Whether she refers to imperialism or, like Barad, to Cartesianism, or like so many scientists and writers might, to dualism, it all equates to the same thing: that is, to continue to see life as a linear, well-ordered, tidy and easily categorised forward-facing sequence of unrelated objects, which can be broken apart, catalogued and archived, is problematic. Across disciplines, the older view, we are repeatedly warned, warps and deforms our understanding of history, ourselves, reality, and especially the colonial project, race, extraction, financial models, not to mention the relationship we humans have with nature (of which we are a part). And that it would serve us better to see all those elements as integrally interrelated, and also constantly reforming.
Making any type of work, whether it’s academic or practical, that attempts to reject that older view or at least interrogate it, is fraught with challenges. I speak from experience. We are so used to imposing unity, order and simplicity, while denying liveliness, entanglement and chaos, that expressing it and reading it feels almost impossible. But – and this is why it matters – until we can accept that not everything and indeed a great deal of existence simply cannot fit neatly into an imperially-coded, easily catalogued filing system, we are going to struggle to address our increasingly difficult environment. Until we recognise that the whole is more significant than the sum of its parts, we are likely to fail in our efforts to overcome the perils we face, such as loss of diversity, climate change, the mass movement of people and the destruction of habitats. Until we look at and experience life more holistically, we are going to struggle to understand our problems, never mind address them.
Scientists such as Huber, of course, may be right to proceed with caution. And perhaps it does me well to remember that this transition may require decades and aeons to filter through the West’s collective mind. However, the horrifying increase in temperatures suggests we might not have that time. What has all this to do with photography? If Azoulay is right, that we must learn to undo our imperialist view of reality, and that photography is an emergent outcome of a violent imperial project which insists on a linear view, it seems prudent to ask: is photography best-placed to help us to see differently? Or can it only perpetuate an unhelpful view that no longer serves our needs? While temperatures soar and Amazon forest fires emit more CO2 than the forest can absorb (Carrington, 2021), it’s worth figuring out, and fast, what might help and what hinders us. Mind you, given that over the weekend a man thought shoving a firework in his anus was worth doing, and an image of that went viral, I suspect we have a way to go.
Azoulay, A. (2008) The civil contract of photography. (1st pbk. ed) New York : Cambridge, Mass: Zone Books ; Distributed by The MIT Press.
Azoulay, A. (2019a) Unlearning Imperial Sovereignties. At: https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/series/unlearning-decisive-moments-of-photography/ (Accessed 14/07/2021).
Azoulay, A. A. (2019b) Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. (s.l.): Verso Books. p.656.
Baggini, J. (2019) How the world thinks: a global history of philosophy. (s.l.): (s.n.).
Barad, K. M. (2007) Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Field, S.J. (2021) why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers/ At: https://astronautflowers.online (Accessed 04/04/2021).
Fisher, A. (2009) Andrew Fisher: The involution of photography / Radical Philosophy. At: https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/the-involution-of-photography-2 (Accessed 14/07/2021).
Garrington, D. (2021) Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs. At: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs (Accessed 14/07/2021).
Hickel, J. (2020) Less is more: how degrowth will save the world. London: William Heinemann.
Watts, J. (2021) Health warnings as Death Valley scorches in 54.4C heat. At: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/12/health-warnings-as-death-valley-scorches-in-544c-heat (Accessed 14/07/2021).