At the Mercy of Gaia: Deep Ecologial Unrest and America’s fall as Nature’s Nation in Kingdom of the Spiders

Jacob Lillemose; Karsten Wind Meyhoff

doi:10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1572386

Authors

Jacob Lillemose Copenhagen Center for Disaster Research, Denmark
Karsten Wind Meyhoff Institut for Kunst og Kulturvidenskab, Copenhagen, Denmark

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1572386

Keywords:

Gaia, dark ecology, animal horror, Maurice Maeterlinck, natures nation

Abstract

This paper looks as the animal horror genre as a way to discuss current notions of ecology in relation to a specific American idea of being “Nature’s Nation”. The central work for the discussion is the movie Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) by John Cardos, which depicts how a small Arizona town is taken over by a “swarm” of tarantulas. Without any obvious explanation the spiders slowly but steadily invade the town and start killing both other animals and humans until they have completely covered the town in their web. The paper connects the movie to a long tradition of fiction describing how nature turns on humans and reverses the power relation between man and nature that is fundamental to modernity. Moreover, the paper connects the movie to Maurice Maeterlincks ideas of swarm communities as mani-fested by ants and termites to argue that these communities are ecologically superior to the the communities of man-made civilisation. Finally, the paper discusses Kingdom of the Spiders and animal horror in general in relation to recent ideas of non-human ecologies and critiques of anthropocentrism and makes the point that these works of fiction serve as both dramatic and philosophical visions of a world without humans.

References

Abbey, Edward (1990): Desert Solitaire. A Season in the Wilderness, Cambridge: Touchstone Books.

Abbey, Edward (2007): Monkey Wrench Gang, London: Penguin.

Crist, Eileen (2013): ‘Ecocide and the Extinction of Animal Minds’, Marc Bekoff (ed.): Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 45-61. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226925363.003.0003

Crist, Eileen (2014): ‘Ptolemaic Environmentalism’, G. Wuerthner, E. Crist, and T. Butler (eds.): Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of the Earth, Washington D. C.: Island Press, 16-30. DOI: 10.5822/978-1-61091-559-5_3

Freud, Sigmund (1998): Det uhyggelige (The Uncanny), Copenhagen: Politisk Revy.

Herbert, Frank (2007): Hellstrom’s Hive, New York: Tor Books.

Hughes, Richard T. (2004): Myths America Lives By, Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Lillemose, Jacob (August 15, 2013): ‘Afsked med den kære klode’ (‘Departure from the Dear Planet Earth’), Politiken.

Lillemose, Jacob & Meyhoff, Karsten Wind (2012): ‘Rural Angst. Deliverance og det brutale møde med det postindustrielle Amerikas efterladenskaber’ (‘Rural Angst. Deliverance and the Brutal Encounter with the Detritus of Post-Industrial America’), Kultur & Klasse, 113, Vol. 1, Århus Universitetsforlag, 133-156.

Linklater, Andro (2002): Measuring America. How the United States was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History, New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

Maeterlinck, Maurice (1901): Le vie des abeilles, Paris: Bibliotheque-Charpentier.

Maeterlinck, Maurice (1926): La vie des termites, Paris: Bibliotheque-Charpentier.

Maeterlinck, Maurice (1930): La vie des fourmis, Paris: Bibliotheque-Charpentier.

Miller, Perry (1967): Nature’s Nation, Harvard: The Bellknap Press of Harvard University. DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674865549

Morton, Timothy (2013): Hyperobjects. Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Min-nesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Næss, Arne (1973): ‘The Shallow and the Deep Long-Range Ecology Movement’, Inquiry, 16, Vol. 1, New York, Routledge, 95-100.

Sakolsky, Ron & Koenhline, James (ed.) (1993): Gone to Croatan. Origins of North American Drop-out Culture, Automedia/AK Press.

Schmidt, Leigh Eric (2005): Restless Souls. The Making of American Spirituality, San Francisco: Harper.

Thoreau, Henry David (1854): Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Harvard: Ticknor and Fields.

Thrower, Stephen (2007): Nightmare USA, Surrey: FAB Press.

Weil, Kari (2010): ‘A Report on the Animal Turn’, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 2, Vol. 21, Durham: Duke University Press, 1-23.

Weisman, Alan (2007): The World Without Us, New York: St. Martin Press.

Weisman, Alan (2014): Countdown: Out Last Best Hope for a Future on Earth, New York: Little, Brown and Company.