AMES Colloquium: "Imagining an Environmentalism Without Transcendence in 18th-Century China"

Environmental viewpoints informed by Asian religions, ranging from those of deep ecology to that outlined in Prasenjit Duara‘s Crisis of Global Modernity, tend to regard broadly Asian notions of transcendence as a means of fostering more sustainable relations between humans and their natural environments. While many worthwhile case stu-ies consider the productive dynamic between local religious practices and meaningful environmental action, the broader view of "Asian" or even "Chinese" notions of transcedence as intrinsically conducive to environmental sustainability is patently characteristic of orientalist or reverse-orientalist ontology. As a counterpoint to such characterizations, this paper-in-progress imagines a premodern Chinese environmental sensibility without transcendence through a study of eminent Chinese poet Yuan Mei's (1716–1797) writings on lithic figures and trees. The first half of the paper examines Yuan Mei’s eccentric poetic treatments of geological phenomena, which Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist traditions often take as vehicles of cosmic transcendence. Rejecting such traditions, Yuan associates stone's transcendence with what I describe as a "demonic temporality," an understanding of geological deep time as a force indifferent or even threatening to humans, to whom transcendence is inaccessible. The second half of the paper draws a stark contrast between the demonic temporality of geological phenomena and what Yuan Mei's writings present as the shared ecocultural temporality of humans and trees. Situating Yuan Mei's poetic and prose depictions of trees against a backdrop of Qing border campaigns, which wrought simultaneous destruction upon (Han and indigenous "Miao") humans and trees among the southern border regions where Yuan Mei sojourned, I read Yuan Mei's environmental sensibility as anchored not in transcendence, but a sensitivity to shared vulnerability and the threat of erasure.

Alia Goehr is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. 

This event is in-person. 

The AMES Colloquium is a forum for academic research on Asia and/or the Middle East. The Colloquium is free and open to everyone. Sincere thanks for the sponsorship from Pat Hui Fellowship.