Wilderness is a cultural construct, not a place that exists apart from humanity
Evidence
It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it’s a product of that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made. Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural. As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires. — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 5
Categorization
- XREF: Central thesis that anchors the whole polyad’s opening move; connects to Reading the Landscape’s disturbance history and settler-colonial erasure of Indigenous presence in an ‘empty’ wilderness. — connects to: Every landscape, from city to wilderness, is both cultural and natural — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 82; Wilderness is a cultural construction, not an untouched natural sanctuary — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 5; The word wilderness once meant desolate wasteland, not sacred refuge — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 8 (+12 more)
- DEFINE: Defines the core distinction the reader is after: wilderness-of-idea as a human creation masking itself as wilderness-of-land.
- SEED: The mirror metaphor — wilderness as reflection of ‘our own unexamined longings’ — could seed an essay on how environmental purity narratives reveal the values of their authors.
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
Broader Connections
- Nature’s qualities are historical, not fixed, under human mastery
#corroborates(0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 825 - Human society is a historical reality that appropriates nature rather than submitting to it
#expands(0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 142 - Calling a place by its true name transforms wilderness into homeland
#expands(0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 123 - Nature is what human perception and behavior make it, not a hallucination.
#corroborates(0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1439 - Human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations, not a fixed essence.
#corroborates(0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 617