Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics by Michael Boyden (review)

IF 0.3 3区 文学 0 LITERATURE, AMERICAN
Abby Goode
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Michael Boyden takes up these questions in <em>Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics</em> (2022), a wide-ranging study of climate and sensibility in American literary encounters with the tropics, especially the Caribbean. Highlighting this lesser-known history of early climate thinking and embodied knowledge, Boyden shows how deeply entrenched conceptions of tropicality continue to shape current climate change debates. In this Anthropocenic era, Boyden's work offers a timely and vital <strong>[End Page 485]</strong> intervention into ongoing conversations about climate injustice and the interrelated impacts of colonialism and environmental degradation. This book will appeal to scholars interested in early and nineteenth-century American literature, transnational American studies, Caribbean history, aesthetics, environmental humanities, and science studies.</p> <p>As Boyden highlights, climate was not always understood, as it is today, as a singular, global, and abstract concept oriented toward the future. In the eighteenth century, thinkers such as John Locke prioritized direct sensory knowledge as a mode of understanding the climate: we can feel and understand the climate on our skin and within our individual bodies. Boy-den refers to this epistemological framework as \"climate sensibility\" or \"the mutual imbrication of atmospheric circumstances and embodied knowledge\" (2). This framework contrasts sharply with that of today's climate science, which prioritizes weather patterns, simulation, and future predictions over bodily sensations: a wind chill on one's face does not negate the broader phenomenon of global warming. Far from arguing against this point, Boyden shows how abstract models of climate knowledge gradually eclipsed climate sensibility as the dominant epistemological framework. As part of this process, climate transformed from a spatial concept into a temporal one. In its earlier version, climate functioned as an index for \"ranking civilizations according to spatially defined zones\" (6). This spatial conception of climate was rooted in the primacy of sensory knowledge and the mutual imbrication of bodies and discrete climatological zones. Today, however, climate is understood as a process, its impacts defined increasingly in terms of future projections that elide individual bodily experience.</p> <p>Importantly, for Boyden, this shift in climate thinking occurred through literary encounters with American tropics during the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries—a threshold period fraught with Euro-American imperialism, industrial slavery, and environmental degradation in the region. By focusing on the tropics, Boyden uncovers a lesser-known, early transformation in climate thinking, one that \"prefigures the modern climate imaginary but also points to its fundamentally political qualities\" (10). In other words, the notion of a future-oriented, singular climate did not come out of nowhere; it emerged from encounters with the American tropics and histories of settler colonialism. For American travel writers coming from the north, the tropical climate stimulated the senses and provoked anxiety about the atmosphere's impact on bodily health and <strong>[End Page 486]</strong> moral stability. The tropics, in this context, served as a key imaginative resource for climate theories, particularly as the climate gradually mutated from a spatial concept rooted in sensory experience to an abstract, singular one rooted in averages and predictions. Yet during this transition period and beyond, the settler colonial divisions between the temperate and torrid climates, and the moral, sexual, and bodily assumptions that attended them, persisted in various forms. As Boyden argues, these pejorative assumptions about the tropics—about their inhabitability, their association with moral degeneracy and sexual excess—continue to lurk within today's climate change communication: \"What is this 'hothouse' earth if not a futurized version of the unhabitable tropics as they figured in the colonial visions of earlier times?\" (32).</p> <p>The picturesque aesthetic is central to Boyden's analysis of what he calls \"the climatic regime\"—the key period of transition from a pluralized, spatial climate to an abstract, singular climate. Boyden highlights the...</p> </p>","PeriodicalId":44043,"journal":{"name":"EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eal.2024.a934213","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, AMERICAN","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

  • Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics by Michael Boyden
  • Abby Goode (bio)
Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics
michael boyden
Oxford University Press, 2022
214 pp.

What might the early American tropics have to do with today's climate crisis? What can we learn from late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conceptions of climate, the body, and tropicality that might shed new light on contemporary debates about global climate justice and science? Michael Boyden takes up these questions in Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics (2022), a wide-ranging study of climate and sensibility in American literary encounters with the tropics, especially the Caribbean. Highlighting this lesser-known history of early climate thinking and embodied knowledge, Boyden shows how deeply entrenched conceptions of tropicality continue to shape current climate change debates. In this Anthropocenic era, Boyden's work offers a timely and vital [End Page 485] intervention into ongoing conversations about climate injustice and the interrelated impacts of colonialism and environmental degradation. This book will appeal to scholars interested in early and nineteenth-century American literature, transnational American studies, Caribbean history, aesthetics, environmental humanities, and science studies.

As Boyden highlights, climate was not always understood, as it is today, as a singular, global, and abstract concept oriented toward the future. In the eighteenth century, thinkers such as John Locke prioritized direct sensory knowledge as a mode of understanding the climate: we can feel and understand the climate on our skin and within our individual bodies. Boy-den refers to this epistemological framework as "climate sensibility" or "the mutual imbrication of atmospheric circumstances and embodied knowledge" (2). This framework contrasts sharply with that of today's climate science, which prioritizes weather patterns, simulation, and future predictions over bodily sensations: a wind chill on one's face does not negate the broader phenomenon of global warming. Far from arguing against this point, Boyden shows how abstract models of climate knowledge gradually eclipsed climate sensibility as the dominant epistemological framework. As part of this process, climate transformed from a spatial concept into a temporal one. In its earlier version, climate functioned as an index for "ranking civilizations according to spatially defined zones" (6). This spatial conception of climate was rooted in the primacy of sensory knowledge and the mutual imbrication of bodies and discrete climatological zones. Today, however, climate is understood as a process, its impacts defined increasingly in terms of future projections that elide individual bodily experience.

Importantly, for Boyden, this shift in climate thinking occurred through literary encounters with American tropics during the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries—a threshold period fraught with Euro-American imperialism, industrial slavery, and environmental degradation in the region. By focusing on the tropics, Boyden uncovers a lesser-known, early transformation in climate thinking, one that "prefigures the modern climate imaginary but also points to its fundamentally political qualities" (10). In other words, the notion of a future-oriented, singular climate did not come out of nowhere; it emerged from encounters with the American tropics and histories of settler colonialism. For American travel writers coming from the north, the tropical climate stimulated the senses and provoked anxiety about the atmosphere's impact on bodily health and [End Page 486] moral stability. The tropics, in this context, served as a key imaginative resource for climate theories, particularly as the climate gradually mutated from a spatial concept rooted in sensory experience to an abstract, singular one rooted in averages and predictions. Yet during this transition period and beyond, the settler colonial divisions between the temperate and torrid climates, and the moral, sexual, and bodily assumptions that attended them, persisted in various forms. As Boyden argues, these pejorative assumptions about the tropics—about their inhabitability, their association with moral degeneracy and sexual excess—continue to lurk within today's climate change communication: "What is this 'hothouse' earth if not a futurized version of the unhabitable tropics as they figured in the colonial visions of earlier times?" (32).

The picturesque aesthetic is central to Boyden's analysis of what he calls "the climatic regime"—the key period of transition from a pluralized, spatial climate to an abstract, singular climate. Boyden highlights the...

美国热带地区的气候与风景如画》,迈克尔-博伊登著(评论)
以下是内容的简要摘录,以代替摘要:评论者 迈克尔-博伊登(Michael Boyden)所著《美洲热带地区的气候与风景如画》 艾比-古德(Abby Goode)(简历) 《美洲热带地区的气候与风景如画》 迈克尔-博伊登 牛津大学出版社,2022 年 214 页。早期的美洲热带地区与当今的气候危机有什么关系?我们可以从 18 世纪晚期和 19 世纪关于气候、身体和热带性的概念中学到什么,从而为当代关于全球气候正义和科学的辩论提供新的启示?迈克尔-博伊登(Michael Boyden)在《美国热带地区的气候与风景如画》(2022 年)一书中探讨了这些问题,该书对美国文学与热带地区,尤其是加勒比地区的接触中的气候和感性进行了广泛的研究。博伊登强调了这一鲜为人知的早期气候思考和体现知识的历史,展示了根深蒂固的热带概念如何继续影响着当前的气候变化辩论。在这个人类时代,博伊登的著作及时而重要地 [第 485 页] 介入了当前关于气候不公正以及殖民主义和环境退化的相互影响的讨论。本书将吸引对早期和 19 世纪美国文学、跨国美国研究、加勒比历史、美学、环境人文学科和科学研究感兴趣的学者。正如博伊登所强调的,气候并不总是像今天这样被理解为一个面向未来的单一、全球性的抽象概念。在十八世纪,约翰-洛克等思想家将直接感官知识作为理解气候的一种模式:我们可以通过皮肤和身体感受和理解气候。博伊登将这一认识论框架称为 "气候感受性 "或 "大气环境与身体知识的相互交融"(2)。这一框架与当今的气候科学形成了鲜明对比,后者将天气模式、模拟和未来预测置于身体感觉之上:一个人脸上的风寒并不能否定更广泛的全球变暖现象。博伊登非但没有反驳这一点,反而展示了气候知识的抽象模型是如何逐渐取代气候感性成为主流认识论框架的。在这一过程中,气候从空间概念转变为时间概念。在早期版本中,气候是 "根据空间定义的区域对文明进行排序"(6)的指标。这种气候的空间概念植根于感官知识的首要地位以及身体与离散气候区的相互交融。然而,如今气候被理解为一个过程,其影响越来越多地从未来预测的角度来定义,而忽略了个人的身体体验。重要的是,对博伊登来说,气候思维的这种转变是通过十八世纪末至十九世纪中叶文学作品与美洲热带地区的接触而发生的--那是一个充满了欧美帝国主义、工业奴役和该地区环境恶化的门槛时期。通过关注热带地区,博伊登发现了气候思想中鲜为人知的早期转变,这种转变 "预示了现代气候想象,同时也指出了其基本的政治特质"(10)。换句话说,面向未来的单一气候概念并非凭空出现;它产生于与美洲热带地区的接触以及定居者殖民主义的历史。对于来自北方的美国旅行作家来说,热带气候刺激着他们的感官,并引发了他们对大气对身体健康和 [第 486 页完] 道德稳定的影响的焦虑。在这种情况下,热带成为气候理论的重要想象资源,尤其是当气候逐渐从一个植根于感官体验的空间概念转变为一个植根于平均值和预测的抽象、单一的概念时。然而,在这一过渡时期及以后,殖民定居者对温带气候和热带气候的划分,以及与之相关的道德、性和身体假设,仍以各种形式持续存在。正如博伊登所言,这些关于热带的贬义假设--关于它们的可居住性、它们与道德沦丧和性欲过剩的联系--继续潜伏在当今的气候变化传播中:"这个'温室'地球是什么,难道不是早期殖民主义者眼中不适宜居住的热带地区的未来版本吗?(32).风景如画的美学是博伊登分析他所称的 "气候制度 "的核心内容--气候制度是从多元的空间气候向抽象的单一气候过渡的关键时期。博伊登强调了...
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来源期刊
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE LITERATURE, AMERICAN-
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
33.30%
发文量
62
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