Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar
Landscape integrates both natural and cultural aspects of a particular geographical area. Environmental elements include geological landforms, waterscapes, seascapes, climate and weather, flora and fauna. They also necessarily involve human perception and inscription which reflect histories of extr...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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James Cook University
2022-03-01
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| Series: | eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.jcu.edu.au/etropic/article/view/3877 |
| _version_ | 1819156937340616704 |
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| author | Anita Lundberg Hannah Regis John Agbonifo |
| author_facet | Anita Lundberg Hannah Regis John Agbonifo |
| author_sort | Anita Lundberg |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description |
Landscape integrates both natural and cultural aspects of a particular geographical area. Environmental elements include geological landforms, waterscapes, seascapes, climate and weather, flora and fauna. They also necessarily involve human perception and inscription which reflect histories of extraction and excavation, of planting and settlement, of design and pollution. Natural elements and cultural shaping by humans – past, present, and future – means landscapes reflect living entanglements involving people, materiality, space and place. A landscape’s physicality is entwined with layers of human meaning and value – and tropical landscapes have particular significance. The Tropics is far more than geographic and needs to be understood through the notion of tropicality. Tropicality refers to how the tropics are construed as the exoticised Other of the temperate Western world as this is informed by cultural, imperial, and scientific practices. In this imaginary – in which the tropics are depicted through nature tropes as either fecund paradise or fetid hell – the temperate is portrayed as civilised and the tropical as requiring cultivation. In order to frame this Special Issue through an example that evokes tropicality we undertake an ethnographic and ecocritical reading of Avatar. The film Avatar is redolent with images of tropical landscapes and their nature-culture entanglements. It furthermore reveals classic pictorial tropes of exoticism, which are in turn informed by colonialism and its underlying notions of technologism verses primitivism. Furthermore, Avatar calls to mind the theories of rhizomatics and archipelagic consciousness.
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| first_indexed | 2024-12-22T16:00:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a64a3d715016427cab97bc6e267a95ed |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1448-2940 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-22T16:00:48Z |
| publishDate | 2022-03-01 |
| publisher | James Cook University |
| record_format | Article |
| series | eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics |
| spelling | doaj.art-a64a3d715016427cab97bc6e267a95ed2022-12-21T18:20:42ZengJames Cook UniversityeTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics1448-29402022-03-01211Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via AvatarAnita Lundberg0Hannah Regis1John Agbonifo2 James Cook University, AustraliaThe University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and TobagoOsun State University, Okuku, Nigeria Landscape integrates both natural and cultural aspects of a particular geographical area. Environmental elements include geological landforms, waterscapes, seascapes, climate and weather, flora and fauna. They also necessarily involve human perception and inscription which reflect histories of extraction and excavation, of planting and settlement, of design and pollution. Natural elements and cultural shaping by humans – past, present, and future – means landscapes reflect living entanglements involving people, materiality, space and place. A landscape’s physicality is entwined with layers of human meaning and value – and tropical landscapes have particular significance. The Tropics is far more than geographic and needs to be understood through the notion of tropicality. Tropicality refers to how the tropics are construed as the exoticised Other of the temperate Western world as this is informed by cultural, imperial, and scientific practices. In this imaginary – in which the tropics are depicted through nature tropes as either fecund paradise or fetid hell – the temperate is portrayed as civilised and the tropical as requiring cultivation. In order to frame this Special Issue through an example that evokes tropicality we undertake an ethnographic and ecocritical reading of Avatar. The film Avatar is redolent with images of tropical landscapes and their nature-culture entanglements. It furthermore reveals classic pictorial tropes of exoticism, which are in turn informed by colonialism and its underlying notions of technologism verses primitivism. Furthermore, Avatar calls to mind the theories of rhizomatics and archipelagic consciousness. https://journals.jcu.edu.au/etropic/article/view/3877tropical landscapesnature-culture entanglementsAvatarexoticismprimitivismrhizomatics |
| spellingShingle | Anita Lundberg Hannah Regis John Agbonifo Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics tropical landscapes nature-culture entanglements Avatar exoticism primitivism rhizomatics |
| title | Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar |
| title_full | Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar |
| title_fullStr | Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar |
| title_full_unstemmed | Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar |
| title_short | Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar |
| title_sort | tropical landscapes and nature culture entanglements reading tropicality via avatar |
| topic | tropical landscapes nature-culture entanglements Avatar exoticism primitivism rhizomatics |
| url | https://journals.jcu.edu.au/etropic/article/view/3877 |
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