October 16 - 18, 2007 

The Myth of Primitive Human Ecology: Rethinking Pre-Colonial Ecology For Developing New Environmental Strategies

Phillip Drake

Department of Literary Cultural Studies

University of Hawai'i at Manoa

In this paper I will discuss what I call the myth of primitive human ecology to examine its production, and how the myth limits contemporary environmental discourse. Primitive human ecology is the concept of utopian ecological relations between humans and the natural environment before colonialism and capitalist development.  By examining fossil records on Oahu, and working with Marx’s “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts,” Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes, Arturo Escobar’s article, “After Nature,” and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” I will explore how conceptions of nature and ecological relations are constructed, and then demonstrate how the myth of primitive human ecology presents a deficient intellectual model for combating harmful environmental development.

I will examine how the natural environment is conceived by differentiating intelligible and excessive expressions of nature. By “knowing” nature humans can intellectually and physically manipulate their environment, while “excessive” expressions of nature disrupt human manipulation.  How we reconcile the human with nature—how the human is reinserted into the multiple articulations of nature is critical to re-conceptualizing environmentalism today.  While capitalism and colonialism are the most efficient ideological apparatuses in the destruction of nature, environmental activism must move beyond reactionary discourses of preservation and conservation that reify indigenous ecology.  By examining pre-colonial human ecology, we are offered a
perspective outside of contemporary political production where we can reimagine the social relationships that alienate the human from nature, and develop more effective environmental strategies.

 

About Phillip Drake

 

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