I have to admit, I was riding an absolute high this week in regard to this module; I found my key argument which linked my whole project together. Therefore, I wanted to get stuck into these readings on a topic that is so broad and malleable that I am sure that within 20 years’ time any history which conceptualises a self-contained system of humans influencing humans in isolation of the non-human, will be thrown upon the bone-heap. The history of the human will be considered antiquated and a product of a narrow-minded, human arrogance which realises itself throughout academia… of course, I do sound exceptionally glib, and I am trying to have fun while writing these. However, I do genuinely believe in the significance of what these “histories of the non-human” hold, and I believe that these histories contain within them a valuable, if not the most valuable, path for the development of future historiography.
One thing I wanted to test with this concept of the historical non-human was, how can we identify an intellectual history within a realm that includes the non-human? How can we bring in the non-human agent to a school of history which has at its core possibly the most human concept; the abstractions of our consciousnesses which we call ideas, emotions, and perceptions? To this end, the Emily O’Gorman and Andrea Gaynor piece was exceptionally useful.[1] This piece asks us to consider how human ideas may be impacted by nature, either through the direct-action of nature or through human semiotics, and how the actions and mentalities of nature may be impacted by the human. Also, through a series of semiotic leaps, how do some humans imprint the image of the non-human upon other humans and thus rob them of their agency and cultural intellectuality. O’Gorman and Gaynor relate this latter concept to post-colonial and classist power-relations over working-class Asian communities, however I thought this could be applied elsewhere. The portrayal of the autochthonous peoples who come from the lands now occupied by the USA could be an example of this. The images presented of these peoples as being part of the “natural” landscape of the now colonised North America, of them holding beliefs of an exoticised mysticism which provides them with their conceptions of the world through semiotic interpretations of nature, that they are part of the natural world which is now being ravaged and destroyed by the industrialism of the European-descended American, the image of which is used by such people as a poster-image for anti-littering campaigns, equates the agency and humanity of these peoples to that of the non-human.[2] Surely the act of dehumanisation and comparison to the non-human has been part of the process by which European migrants in America have intellectually justified the denial of rights and respect to these fellow humans, and thus the human perception of the non-human has effect on human ideas.
Other examples of non-human intellectual history could be the recent revelations regarding the increasing sophistication of whales learning to adapt to increased human hunting activity in the 19th Century, with knowledge on how to avoid ships being passed down the generations; the intellectual afterlife of which is still exhibited by whales today after centuries of destruction by humans.[3] How did the techniques of those people who were employed to hunt these whales affect these whales? How does this reconceptualise our understanding of the non-human? Equally, questions ripe for historical exploration are presented by the fact that the non-human has not always been seen as a totally isolated system, and especially in the realm of religion we see the destruction of the human/non-human dichotomy through the common intersection of the realm of spirituality. For instance, take the reaction of Leo III to the storms in Constantinople in 726, how he connected this to the realms of politics and economy and believed that the storm was the surest sign that Byzantium had lost favour with God which explained the political and economic decline the empire had been suffering, and thus led to him to assume an iconoclastic position to try and appease the God whom he saw in nature.[4] This final example relates to my Black Metal project as it reminds me of an interview with Einar Selvik of Wardruna in which he argues that one of the great tragedies of modernity which he is fighting against is the role of Christianity in removing ‘both ourselves and “god” from nature and we need these things back.’[5] The loss of our ability to not only appreciate and respect nature, but also to consider ourselves as a part of nature, and even that our humanity could be shared with all other things “non-human”, whether this be through how we conceptualise nature or through a belief in a literally shared experience of all things human and non-human alike, is something worthy of analysis.
Perhaps I will not have enough space to discuss the role of nature within Black Metal in my final project, but its significance should not be overshadowed even for a second. The passion which these artists show for their local landscapes and their polytheistic connections to the environment so directly influences their music in its lyrical content, its cover art, and its “general feel”, as well as their patriotic and anti-modernist ideologies (see Ísland, Steingelda Krummaskuð by Misþyrming for a contemporary example). Ultimately, while this may seem like an unnecessarily long series of ramblings on my part (I would go on and actually write an essay applying all of this to Black Metal, but I fear becoming a “blog-hog”), I have to say the length of this blog is simply due to the way in which ideas of non-human intellectual history has inspired me to consider such ideas, and should we work through these ideas we may eventually get to a point where we can resolve the paradoxical crisis which plagues so many of us; how we view our agency as being absolute in having created the climate crisis we now face, while experiencing ever-increasing angst at our perceived lack of agency in being able to resolve this crisis in the future.
[1] Emily O’Gorman & Andrea Gaynor, “More-Than-Human Histories”, Environmental History, No. 25 (2020), 711-735.
[2] Christa Grewe-Volpp, “The Ecological Indian vs. the Spiritually Corrupt White Man: The Function of Ethnocentric Notions in Linda Hogan’s ‘Solar Storms’”, Amerikastudien, 47: 2 (2002), 269-283.
[3] Hal Whitehead, Tim D. Smith & Luke Rendell, “Adaptation of sperm whales to open-boat whalers: rapid social learning on a large scale?”, Biology Letters, No. 17 (2021).
[4] Bettany Hughes, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities (London, 2017), 299-300.
[5] Einar Selvik in Dayal Patterson, Black Metal: The Cult Never Dies Vol. 1 (London, 2015), 113.
Hi Rory!
First of all, huge congratulations on finding your central argument – what a relief and excitement that must be. This could just be me, but it could be really interesting to see how that argument develops and evolves over the next few weeks- not in the least influenced by this week’s readings, but also anything else you may stumble across. I’d be inclined to take note of where it’s at every week, and see if anything shifts dramatically.
I also found the non-human histories approach really interesting – but have to say I prefer O’Gorman and Gaynor’s term of “more-than-human” history. How do you think this understanding will influence your project? Is there perhaps grounds to treat ‘Black Metal’ as its own, nonhuman actor? I also found the description of identifying “ontologically discrete” categories as helpful – in my mind diminishing the likelihood that as historians, we treat “nonhuman” history merely as the environment, or animals. I feel like there is a lot of scope within this field, but its still in its early stages, despite the historical precedence for such observations, as Bernhard explained in his Laki chapter.
I’d encourage you to look into the cover art, and other visual sources that you may be able to find, mostly because I feel we’re too quick to overlook them. I’m definitely interested in seeing how this project pans out, and how you manage to combine your interest in intellectual history with your passion for Black Metal music.
The question of agency is also a huge one – one too large for me to begin to tackle in this comment. It’s one I’ve been wrestling with myself in my own project: how to give the refugee agency when historically they have been afforded none – while trying to respect the primary sources as they appear. It makes me ask, how much of the concept of agency is socially constructed? How helpful is it for us to consider it in our approach? In thinking too much about agency and who has it, do we inadvertently remove agency from the very group we’re trying to help?
Those are just a few of my spiralling thoughts on the matter of agency – if you come to any conclusions in your own research, I’d love to hear them.
Honestly this idea makes a lot of sense and by god it is a good one (if you excuse the pun).
I have the same understanding of the original idea of people being part of the landscape being from the North American tradition although I wasn’t aware that it was tied into the post-colonial and classist power relation. Here are my two-cents on the matter.
1. The idea that enabled European colonisation to take over most of what is now North America (especially areas inhabited by the First Nations) was likely John Locke’s ideas on the Law of Nature permitting individuals to establish ownership over things, especially related to land. Essentially what you have is a clash of ideas. This has been referred to by many Post-Colonial philosophers (most notably the Subaltern School) as a kind of intellectual colonisation. In this specific case of the introduction of Land Rights to indigenous peoples in North America, they didn’t have a specific concept of Land Rights i.e. the land is a common resource that belonged to and benefitted all peoples. The introduction of Locke’s concept of Land Rights effectively discarded (or colonised) this idea of “Common Ownership” and forcefully imposed its own idea on the people that were already there.
This kind of “intellectual colonisation” or, domination as some would put it, has been discussed by people like Said and subsequently the Subaltern School (G.C. Spivak). Hence, in response to the kind of overarching question. The history of the Non-Human, specifically in relation to Intellectual history, can have an enormous impact on the human.
2. A second slightly different vein of thought that arose when reading your post is the whole Marxist concept of alienation. The original argument put forth by Das Kapital discusses the alienation of individuals from their means of production, product, and self. By extension, we can look at humankind’s alienation from their own environment.
To an extent we can draw parallels to Watsuji Testurō’s understanding of human interactions with the environment, but the Marxist vein speaks less of “resisting living” in one’s environment and more about “exploiting” one’s environment. This actually ties in really well with the concept of “Land Commodification”. Where the land ceases to have unique characteristics and instead becomes interchangeable. In the context of environmentalism, this has severe ramifications. If you don’t recognise that a 1000 year old forest has more value than a parking lot, you wouldn’t move to designate the area as a National Park.
In short, these two small ideas are two possible ways of thinking of how ideas and the environment are inter-related. How we think about the space that we inhabit changes how we fundamentally treat it.