Philosophy in the American West

A Geography of Thought

Josh Hayes, Gerard Kuperus, Brian Treanor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367489502
• eBook ISBN: 9781000092417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: History

Philosophy in the American West explores the physical, ecological, cultural, and narrative environments associated with the western United States, reflecting on the relationship between people and the places that sustain them.

The American West has long been recognized as having significance. From Crèvecoeur's early observations in Letters from an American Farmer (1782), to Thoreau's reflections in Walden (1854), to twentieth-century thoughts on the legacy of a vanishing frontier, "the West" has played a pivotal role in the American narrative and in the American sense of self. But while the nature of "westernness" has been touched on by historians, sociologists, and, especially, novelists and poets, this collection represents the first attempt to think philosophically about the nature of "the West" and its influence on us. The contributors take up thinkers that have been associated with Continental Philosophy and pair them with writers, poets, and artists of "the West". And while this collection seeks to loosen the cords that tie philosophy to Europe, the traditions of "continental" philosophy—phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, and others—offer deep resources for thinking through the particularity of place.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Philosophy, as well as those working in Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities more broadly.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Thinking in the West
• 2 Continental philosophy beyond “the” continent
• 3 Prometheus’ gift of fire and technics: contemplating the meaning of fire, affect, and Californian Pyrophytes in the Pyrocene
• 4 The West as slaughter bench: thinking without revolutions in the American West
• 5 The end(s) of the American West: the time of apocalypse in the Westerns of Cormac McCarthy
• 6 The trees of the West: our elders, our teachers
• 7 Thinking wolves
• 8 Robert Smithson, entropic art, and the West
• 9 “Westering” and “breaking through”: Zen Buddhism on Cannery Row
• 10 Life in interregnum: Deleuze, Guattari, and Atleo
• 11 Monstrous topologies: Edward Abbey, Reiner Schürmann, and the fate of the American West
• 12 Western Turtle Island anarchy
• Index