Cultural Geography

cognitive dualism or ontological ‘outsides’. In a

study of discourses of geology in Victorian

British Columbia, Braun’s concern is to under-

stand how the province’s resources were made

visible and legible as objects for calculable

economic action. Criticizing Marxist work that

either seeks or assumes a material nature some-

how knowable outside discursive-material prac-

tices, he focuses on how colonial geologists like

George Dawson ‘ordered’ and ‘enframed’ the

‘natural landscape’ and has thereby ‘stresse[ed]

the “implosion” of the epistemological and the

ontological ... achieved continuously in the

mundanepractices of daily life’ (2000: 14). Note

that in bringing ‘science’ – in this case a field

science – within the orbit of culture, Braun

leaves absolutely no room for a ‘non-cultural’

knowledge of, or access to, nature. He thus com-

bines an activist view of knowledge (including,

presumably, his own) and a materialist view of

nature, while insisting that the latter can neverbe

approached with any immediacy. As Massey

puts it in a different context, there’s ‘an ever-

changing and causal relationship between intelli-

gibility and materiality’ (2000: 10).

Though Braun never phrases his work in these

terms, his approach echoes a philosophical tradi-

tion, stretching back to Hegel, Leibniz and

Spinoza, that emphasizes the active and social

character of knowledge. Contrathe categorical

distinctions of the Cartesian–Kantian tradition,

Braun sees all such distinctions as discursive

products. As such, he arguably pushes beyond

the limit case of binary thinking found in Adorno

and Horkheimer while avoiding the monistic

position that ‘discourse is all there is’. Because

discourse is for Braun a culturally fashioned

form of practice, he is able to approach nature’s

materiality without laying claim to knowing it

‘as it is’. What he does, in effect, is ask the

following question: which natures matter, how

and with what consequences? His answer, vitally,

is that there is no single answer since natures are

materialized in historico-geographically contin-

gent and variant ways.

CONCLUSION: CULTURES/

NATURES/MARXISMS

In this chapterI’ve sought to review a diverse

tradition of Marxist work on nature and culture

(and economy). I’ve sought to avoid a parochial

focus on geography by situating the discipline’s

Marxists within a more expansive intellectual

terrain. Moreover, I’ve sought to avoid teleology

in my account. As we’ve seen, the journey from

determinism to materialization has not been a

linear one. It’s important not to fall into the pre-

sentist trap of believing that the most recent

Marxian work on culture and nature somehow

transcends all that has gone before. By way of a

conclusion, I want to reflect on where Marxists

might go next in their attempts to understand the

materiality of those things we call natural.

Perhaps the place to begin is with work like

that of Braun, which seems to address the con-

ceptual divisions and dilemmas of the Marxist

work reviewed in this chapter. One of the objec-

tions to Braun’s focus on ‘materialization’ is that

it overemphasizes the power of language and

culture. This objection could as easily come from

‘green’ Marxists – like James O’Connor or

David Harvey – as it could from deep ecologists

and others with an environmental sensibility. It

amounts to the claim that if it’s impossible to say

with any certainty what ‘materially’ is happening

to nature today, then we lack the political means

to judge ‘better’ and ‘worse’ imbrications of

culture–nature–economy. This lack seems par-

ticularly problematic in light of the perceived

environmental problems of our time. Braun’s

response might reasonably be as follows: since

discourse is performative, and since nature

cannot be known as such, it’s politically possible –

indeed necessary – to engage in ‘strategic essen-

tialism’. That is, Braun might argue that it’s right

and proper to speak in the name of nature tout

courtin the interests of a more socially and eco-

logically just world – even as we acknowledge

the hazards/impossibility of claiming to ‘know

nature’. Here, then, a Marxian diagnosis of cur-

rent socio-environmental ‘wrongs’ and the quest

for future ‘goods’ would entail making reflexive

‘truth claims’ about the state of culture–nature in

a capitalist world without supposing that those

truths are singular or value-free.

So far so good. But my worry is that the focus

on ‘materialization’ as a means of getting beyond

analytical ways of grappling with culture and

nature is far too lexical and anthropocentric. It is

lexical because it is primarily concerned with the

cultural politics of representation. Though lan-

guage is, quite rightly, granted an effectivity, the

implication is that words(written and spoken) are

the primary ways we engage with the world as

capable agents. They, paceBraun, apparently

enable and disable other forms of practice. This

semio/phonocentrism links to the problem of

anthropocentrism. Once it is conceded that the

possession of language (however expansively

defined) is the starting point for inquiry, it

becomes very hard to acknowledge other ways in

which the materiality of nature might make itself

felt. Indeed, for all its subtlety, Cheah (1996)

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