Reading the public comment : the keystone XL pipeline and future of environmental writing
Reading the public comment : the keystone XL pipeline and future of environmental writing. Knowledge which goes so far as to accept horror in order to know it, reveals the horror of knowledge, its squalor, the discrete complicity which maintains it in relation with the most insupportable aspects of power. Maurice Blanchot The Writing of the Disaster Theory can be the very place where this negative knowledge about the reliability of theory's own operative principles is made accessible, and where theoretical categories, like all classificatory schemes, keep on being voided, rather than appropriated, reiterated, safeguarded. Trinh T. Minh-Ha " Documentary Is/Not a Name " A desire for a social, political dimension in writing…has meant, in recent years, a conception of writing as politics, not writing about politics… Bruce Andrews " Poetry as Explanation, Poetry as Praxis " ii Nebraska's Sandhills, a cattle ranching region of grass-stabilized sand dunes and inter-dunal valleys, stretches 20,000-square miles across the north-central part of this Great Plains state—the equivalent of four Connecticuts. 1 It is the largest sand dune system in North America, and among the four largest on Earth. Despite its name, the region's riches – in ecosystems of ecology and economy – reside in water, not sand per se. Beneath the vast network of undulating sand dunes sprawls an equally vast hydrological network, including the largest freshwater aquifer in the world – the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies drinking water for eight states and about 30 percent of the groundwater used for irrigation in this country. 2 If geomorphology tells us to look at the relationship between topography and the geologic structures sustaining it – a surface and the infrastructure it's built upon-within – then to understand " the Sandhills " not just as a name and landscape but as a place represented in discourse and language, we need to understand the deep structures propping up the idea and image of 2 the Sandhills. They have been described, variously, as " fragile " 3 (for their rare sandy soil type—entisols), as " distinct " (home to 720 different plant species), as " mostly intact " 4 – and, as such, a place whose " ecosystem sensitivities " often dissuade cattle ranchers from overgrazing (so as to prevent erosion, ensuring sand-tolerant grass species their habitat). Very little of the Sandhills has been plowed (often, simply, because it's impossible: we're talking about sand, not soil). 5 …