The American wilderness sublime cannot translate to densely inhabited Southern valleys

Evidence

Such strategies depended on a Manichean, trans-Atlantic split between a cultural and a natural sublime, whereby Europe’s soaring, hallowed architecture became shorthand for Culture and the American West’s soaring, geological edifices shorthand for Nature or, more specifically, Nature’s Nation. Thirty years on, in the Narmada Valley, such polarities were unfeasible for political, historical, and topographical reasons. At stake in the Narmada were literal temples not metaphoric ones, temples to be drowned, alongside the villages they had served for centuries, by the monsoon waters that rose higher each year with the ever-rising dam walls. When Roy writes that the Narmada dams were causing the “submerging of culture,” she refers to the inundation of densely populated village cultures inextricable from floodplain ecosystems in “the only valley in India, according to archaeologists, that contains an uninterrupted record of human occupation from the Stone Age.” This is a far cry from the inundation of symbolic temples of nature whose paradigmatic witness is an antisocial, often misanthropic man roaming a wilderness in resplendent solitude. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 437

Categorization

• XREF: Roy’s ‘submerging of culture’ parallels the reader’s slow-violence frame from Soundscape: the vanishings that destroy settled ways of life are cultural and ecological together, not just scenic. — connects to: Wilderness ethics fails whether it stresses continuity or independence alone — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 604; Wilderness is a state of mind defined by wonder, not a fact of nature; Wilderness wonder is a cultural state of mind, not a natural fact — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 78 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Guha’s 1989 essay presciently dismantled American wilderness environmentalism #corroborates (0.78) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 856
• Wilderness ethics fails whether it stresses continuity or independence alone #corroborates (0.75) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 604
• The Plan for the Valleys zoned by ecological hazard and beauty attributes #qualifies (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 708
• Wilderness is a state of mind defined by wonder, not a fact of nature #corroborates (0.72)
• Wilderness wonder is a cultural state of mind, not a natural fact #corroborates (0.72) — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 78