| Summary: | This study examines the cultural construction of nature on Canada's west coast
and relates it to the continued presence of a 'colonial imaginary' in practices and
rhetorics surrounding the use and management of nature and resources in the region.
The work weaves together three arguments. First, drawing on recent
scholarship in social theory, it is argued that what counts as 'nature' on Canada's west
coast does not pre-exist its construction in and through a series of discursive, social,
technical and institutional practices whereby it is made visible and available to forms of
instrumental reason. The work therefore draws attention to the role that language plays
in disclosing a world of involvements and intentions such that our exhibitions of nature
are intimately related to how nature is encountered and remade in everyday practices.
Second, it is argued that the construction of nature in British Columbia is always
implicated in relations of power and domination, but that epistemological traditions
which locate nature as something that exists completely apart from our constructions of
it makes these relations difficult to recognize. In particular, the study explores how
constructions of nature at various sites - from the abstractions of industrial forestry to
the paintings of Emily Carr - serve to naturalize, or contest, the hierarchical power
relations generated by colonialism on Canada's west coast. Third, it is argued that the
construction of nature does not belong to a singular or unified History, but rather that
nature is constituted in and through social practices that are multiple and discontinuous
and which carry their histories with them. Thus, by relating constructions of nature to
the perpetuation of colonialist practices in the region, two further arguments can be
made. First, that colonial discourse is neither singular nor unified. And, second, that
postcolonialism is not simply an historical stage that supersedes colonialism, but that the 'after-effects' of colonialism still infuse the present. This has important
implications for both ecological and anti-colonial politics on Canada's west coast.
Consistent with the theoretical framework, the work proceeds as a series of
studies rather than a single, unified account of nature's materialization. Each chapter
explores different ways that nature is 'framed', traces histories and spatialities that
organize and inform its appearance, and evaluates these practices in terms of a politics
of decolonization. Particular attention is paid to how these constructions of nature
authorize certain social actors to 'speak for' nature in the midst of struggles over the
fate of the region's temperate rainforests while marginalizing others, often those whose
lives are most closely tied to the 'nature' in question. By showing the ways that a
colonialist visuality continues to inform what counts as nature on Canada's west coast,
the thesis insists on the urgent need for a 'reflexive environmentalism' that takes
responsibility for the social and political consequences of its representational practices.
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