秋日，三十六

失去了睡到天亮的能力。過去幾日在word的介面上打了幾百次ecological這個字，今天在中大圖書館刻意找來這本，就早應該遇到的新書，才驚覺，可能每次寫上ecological的時候，我其實都不太知道它的意思。失去了耐性和沮喪的時候，幾乎打什麼字都會拼錯，或故意拼錯，然後用上自動修正功能，ecology/ecological是最常接受被功能修正的字之一。中大圖書館的效率非常可怕，這本書才印了沒多久，我就能在架上找到，又成了第一個借去此書的人。Timothy Morton好像受到四方八面的批評，尤其是討厭歐陸理論的一派，但卻很得Zizek歡心，連帶他亦火紅起來。稍為讀了一下，不難明白何以會惹來攻擊，那種文風確是不著邊際，但幾近信口開河的風格，也有吸引之處。又是在趕文到最後之際，那些深覺如果早點遇上就好了的書。這本書讓我確認了，我希望/應該走humanities而不是social science的路。好像有一陣子沒碰到讓我想在網誌提起的書了。

"A truely ecological reading practice would think the environment beyond rigid conceptual categories - it would include as much as possible of the radical openness of ecological thought. Ecocentrism has overlooked the way in which all art - not just explicitly ecological art - hardwires the environment into its form. Ecological art, and the ecoloogical-ness of all art, isn't just about something (trees, mountains, animals, pollution, and so forth). Ecological art is something, or maybe it does something. Art is ecological insofar as it is made frm materials and exists in the world. It exists, for instance, as a poem on a page made of paper from trees, which you hold in your hand while sitting in a chair in a certain room of a house that rests on a hill in the suburbs of a polluted city. But there is more to its ecological quality than that. The shape of the stanzas and the length of the lines determine the way you appreciate the blank paper around them. Reading the poem aloud makes you aware of the shape and size of space of the space around you (some forms, such as yodeling, do this deliberately). The poem organizes space. Seen like this, all texts - all artwork, indeed - have an irreducibly ecological form. Ecology permeates all forms. Nowadays we're used to wondering what a poem says about race or gender, even if the poem makes no explicit mention of race or gender. We will soon be accustomed to wondering what any text says about the environment even if no animals or trees or mountain appear in it."

Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought, p.11 (Harvard university press, 2010)

印刷得過份精美的書