Discourse, Nature, Power: Intemperate Rainforest

The end result of so much poststructuralist rethinking of "nature" leads us to this unanswerable quagmire: does nature exist? Bruce Braun's Intemperate Rainforest takes us in a whole different direction, showing that the implications of seeing nature as a discourse of power doesn't undermine nature itself, but rather seeks to make human relations between each other and with nature more ethical.   Nature may not be "innocent" and "pure," but seeing it as such has more to do with social justice than it has to do with critiquing nature itself, whatever that is. It's because of books like this that I am such an interdisciplinary theory-geek. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Braun is a geographer, but you can see in his work that he brings literary critical theory questions-- humanistic questions if you rather-- to bear on field research. That is, he engages Foucault, Haraway, and Bruno Latour (another theorist we should and could be reading in this class, but are not).  And his "texts" include eco-tourism operations, Emily Carr's paintings, television programming, 19th-century geological texts, 20th-century forestry maps, billboards, and national park promotional materials. This is an impressive range!

What is he saying about these forms of discourse?  
What's wrong with them?  
What is "nature" in all this, to Braun?  
And, most important, how might his insights be applied to your own observations about SE Alaska? 

Perhaps after reading his chapter on Clayoquot, you'll want to do a discourse analysis of this film: Fury for the Sound: The Women of Clayoquot: http://www.furyforthesound.org!