Going over the literary texts in the class, we reiterated that it’s helpful to focus on the concepts that we grasp, as opposed to trying to understand every single sentence of the reading. I have found a practice that is helpful for me is relating the idea to something I’ve seen before, as I did in one of my previous posts about objects asserting themselves in the movie “The Bicycle Thief”.

Although I found this past week’s readings a little more difficult to grasp, I did pick up on Bruno Latour’s rejection of modernity. “Latour puts it later in his Politics of Nature, a pluralistic multiculturalism is always opposed to a homogeneous mononaturalism. We are told that nature is one, but that humans have numerous diverse perspectives on it. Not surprisingly, Latour rejects this modernist vision” (Harman 57). I understand Latour’s stance that nature is not homogenous or stable at all and I think that popular culture is reflecting this idea more and more through the media.

Movies and Television shows such as Planet Earth, Life, and Blue Planet are just a few examples of the way that nature is currently being portrayed. These movies and shows’ sole objective is to show the diversity and the importance of every aspect of the natural world, paying little to no attention to human beings. From microscopic organisms floating in the ocean to the great redwoods of California, these shows aim to reveal the significance of every aspect of nature. They display that nature not only strongly impacts the world, but that it is the world. Nature’s constantly evolving action is what creates the cycle of life. These shows represent the significance of nature so much so that humans, in comparison, seem homogenous and unimportant.

From what I gathered, these shows can work as examples of Latour’s rejection of mononaturalism. That is, if I grasped the concept correctly. If I am way off base, any comments would be helpful and very much appreciated.