Intermediality and the textualized nonhuman
Résumé
In Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (1985), the nature writer Tim Robinson warns the human observer against the temptation to “read” the nonhuman as a text: “If a gleam from the low sun comes across to catch the countless overlapping marks on the sand, then idleness and the absence of humankind can tempt one into the error of thinking: ‘Signatures of all things I am here to read’” (230). Taking up this cautionary statement, and in view of the convergence between ecocriticism and intermediality (Bruhn), my aim in this paper is to ponder the extent to which we should bring our critical metalanguage under scrutiny. The ethical drift of material ecocriticism demands that we recognize the narrative agency of “storied matter” (Oppermann; Caracciolo), and interpret the signs sent out by the nonhuman world, a stance exemplified by bio- and ecosemiotics (Williams and Bédard). Yet, if the nonhuman turn involves such reading practices, how does it move beyond updating such heuristic models as the book of nature (Davis)? Does human interpretation rely on the semiotic fallacy critiqued by W.J.T. Mitchell when he highlighted the political and ethical issues inherent in textualizing images? This paper will examine texts of nature writing that explore the shoreline as an intermedial space and it will address the related issues of semiosis, legibility, and liminality.