New BookInformation

Green SenseThe aesthetics of plants, place, and language

John Charles Ryan, Edith Cowan University, AustraliaSummaryBotanical aesthetics are the visual and embodied modes which inform the perception, understanding, and appreciation of plant life. Green Sense is an interdisciplinary study of human relationships to wild plants and the ‘cultures of flora’ that may characterise a region. The book explores botanical aesthetics through a study of the South-West region of Western Australia; a biodiversity ‘hotspot’ of international standing. Through a diverse range of materials, approaches, and perspectives, this title points to the interplay of values involved in cultures of flora, from visual aesthetics and scientific knowledge, to embodied appreciations and sensory entanglements. The book aims to better understand human relationships to wild plants, and offers an intriguing journey through science; poetry; philosophy; ethnography; Indigenous Australian knowledges; and regional tourism and memory studies. Green Sense will appeal to academic researchers, and all those interested in the hidden aspects of the human relationship with plants.

Key Features takes an interdisciplinary look at the relationships between people and plants explores cultural interactions with and aesthetic representations of Western Australia’s flora connects cultures of flora to global issues in botanical aesthetics, focussing on three botanically

important South-West sub-regions: Fitzgerald River and Lesueur national parks, and the Anstey-Keane Damplands in southern Perth, Australia

aligns with emerging work in ecological humanities draws on the writings of Martin Heidegger and the botanical works of Henry David Thoreau to

create a critical framework called ‘cultural botany’ features a series of ‘botanical interludes’ that introduce information about specific plants along

with poetic responses to the places where they grow

The AuthorJohn Charles Ryan a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Research in Entertainment, Arts, Technology, Education and Communications (CREATEC) and the School of Communications and Arts at Edith Cowan University in Mount Lawley, Western Australia. Prior to his appointment, he completed a research doctorate in Communications with a focus on ecocultural studies of Australian biodiversity and creative responses to place. In 2003, he was awarded a Master of Arts degree in Values and the Environment (MAVE) at the University of Lancaster, UK. With the artist Ellen Hickman, he is co-author of a volume of botanical illustration and poetry to be published in 2012. He is also a contributor to a forthcoming collection Fremantle Poets 3: Performance Poets. His ecocultural research has appeared in Continuum; Australian Humanities Review; Australian Garden History; Nature and Culture; New Scholar; and Transformations.

ReadershipBotanical researchers, thinkers, and advocates; plant lovers, bushwalkers, wildflower tourists, phenomenologists, philosophers, historians, geographers, ecocritics, scholars of cultural and memory studies, and those interested in environmental creative writing.

Contents

Prologue: Seeing-feeling-thinking flora; Part I Restoring sense to plant research: Cultures: The technicised plant in nature’s laboratory; Reconciling the “Two Cultures” schism; Towards transdisciplinary botanical thinking; Poeticising plant research: Floral poetics; Cultural botany: Bridging two cultures, building on cultural ecology; Fields; Introduction to the South-West; Reconfiguring botanical field work; Poetic enquiry into South-West flora; Ethnographies along the South-West wildflower trail; Gestural walking; Place as context; A practice of aesthesis; Part II Botanical Histories: Narratives: Thoreau’s approach to multiple narratives; The narrative streams of Zamia Palm; Nyoongar conceptualisations of plants; Plant narratives and aesthetics; Values: Plants and aesthetics: Reading Lindley’s sketch; Words and images: The anatomy of a botanical document; Metaphors and misnomers: Characterising the Swan River Colony; Vision and beauty: The Horticultural Object; Botany and commercialisation: Multi-sensoriality in economic terms; Colonisation and classification: Naming plants; Absences and aesthetics; Aesthetics: Plants as objects of sight: From visuality to sensation; Plants as objects of art: From artefacts to habitats; Plants as objects of disinterestedness: From detachment to engagement; Plants as objects of scientific discourse: From reason to embodiment; Theorising a corporeal aesthetics of plants; Part III Botanical Cultures: Green: Green speak; The positive-negative nature of green; Green fertility, dun sterility: South-West Australian contexts; Hope and Stegner: Unravelling greenness; Towards an aesthetics of xeriscapes: The Ravensthorpe Woman; Ethnography: Anthoethnography and the culture of wildflowers; What does wildflower tourism entail?; Breath of the bush: The history of South-West wildflower tourism; Mediation of presence: Contemporary wildflower tourism in the South-West; Anthoethnographic themes at wildflower venues; Beyond the flower: From wildflower tourism to botanical appreciation; The promise of anthoethnography; Memory: Remembering plants; The physiology of human memory; Botanical memory at the intersection of embodiment, environment, emotions, and ethnography; Botanical memories of mourning: Biodiversity, beauty and grieving; Botanical memories of celebration: Orchids, love and rapture; Botanical memories of embodiment: Sucking; Banksia nectar; The intricacies of botanical memory; Part IV Botanical Languages: Language; Gathering of tongues: Aesthetic language and flora; When language speaks, who listens?; Language, vision and flora: Towards “the Open”; Language, senses and flora: Botanical metaphor; Towards a language of plants and sensation; Poetry: Poeticising flora; Landscape poetry and habitat poetry; Reading Lansdown, Choate, and Kinsella as habitat poets; Celebration of landscapes and appreciation of habitats; Part V Botanical Futures: Mourning: A ‘species’ is bodiless; The Sixth Great Extinction; Landscapes of absence; Botanical ,emorials; From subject-centred mourning to connectivity mourning; Mourning the loss of flora; Walking: The botanising stroll: People embrace the bush; Techniques of walking: The habitus of bipedal movement; Distance and contact: Early South-West walkers and botanisers; Walking the flowering Landscape: Metavisual appreciation of plants; Bodily interaction and embodied appreciation; Aesthesis: The bodily senses and flora; Aesthesis: Perception and sensation; Floraesthesis and the metasenses; Body futures: Healing, wellbeing and flora; Aesthetics and aesthesis: Theorising bodily appreciation of flora; Coda: Prospects: Philosophical implications: Questions of intimacy and union; Past into present: Researching cultures of flora; Implications for creativity: Environmental practices and processes; Conclusion: Possibilities for ecocultural studies and the humanities; References

Publication: October 2012 Pages: 406 Size: 234 x 156mmHardback (ISBN 978-0-9573017-0-2) E-Book (ISBN 978-0-9573017-5-7) USD90/AUD85GBP/55.00_______________________________________________________________________________________________________TrueHeart Press, Hexagon House, Avenue 4, Station Lane, Witney, OX28 4BN

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