Construction of dams was actually destruction of ecosystems
Evidence
Our idea of progress is so bound up with the idea of putting something new in the world that it can feel counterintuitive to equate progress with destruction, removal, and remediation. But this seeming contradiction actually points to a deeper contradiction: of destruction (e.g., of ecosystems) framed as construction (e.g., of dams). Nineteenth-century views of progress, production, and innovation relied on an image of the land as a blank slate where its current inhabitants and systems were like so many weeds in what was destined to become an American lawn. But if we sincerely recognize all that was already here, both culturally and ecologically, we start to understand that anything framed as construction was actually also destruction. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 642
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: This sets up the core ‘manifest dismantling’ concept by inverting constructed-vs-destroyed: what was called construction was destruction, so demolition becomes creative conservation.
- DEEPTHINKING: The reframing that ‘anything framed as construction was actually also destruction’ is a dense, paradigm-level inversion — exactly what the reader needs to defend Odell against the withdrawal misreading.
Related
- Construal of land as blank slate made historical destruction pass for construction. (similarity 0.91)
- Manifest dismantling is creative purposiveness that redirects, not abandons, work. (similarity 0.80)
- Dismantling can be a purposive form of progress (similarity 0.79)
- Dam removal required building a new riverbed from scratch (similarity 0.78)