Det särskildas platser - om etisk-politisk lokalitet och bioregionala visioner i Gary Snyders tänkande

Abstract

In Gary Snyder’s philosophical essays, questions of place, region, and being inhabitory are closely linked to ethical, political and ecological themes. Where these themes intersect, tensions generate – to the extent of which too little attention might have been paid. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to engage with the ambiguity of Snyder’s thoughts on locality, in the hope of both elucidating and putting into play some difficult and important questions regarding the concepts of place and being-in-place. The main questions that aid me in this are: How do Snyder’s ideas of place and region relate to his understanding of the categories of history, time and language? How can his thoughts be understood in relation to certain philosophical, religious and political traditions of thought? And lastly: what is the function of the concepts of borders and the sacred in Snyder’s thought, and how do they relate to questions regarding the particular? To work productively with these questions, I read his The Practice of the Wild and A Place in Space, as well as theoretical material that allows me to 1) focus on the connection between place and history, and 2) to examine Snyder’s concepts through a postcolonial and ecocritical perspective. The results of this include: a reflection on several dialectical movements in Snyder’s philosophy of place; acknowledging the aporia of the particular; and seeing the problems with modelling emancipatory politics on visions of the bioregion.