3. Reading Shout Out

Cover image: a stack of neutral toned books and a coffee mug

Hello again blog readers! So this is a shorter post because I mostly just wanted to shout out this essay: “Risking Bodies in the Wild: the ‘Corporeal Unconscious of American Adventure Culture” by Sarah Jaquette Ray. It has so, so much interesting information about disability, environmentalism, wilderness and risk culture to unpack that I didn’t want to write a full reflection on it, though parts of it have definitely shown up in my other posts. There’s so much more good stuff in it though that I wanted to make it known if it interests you! Also, thank you Ari for recommending it.

I also included some quotes that really resonated with me from the essay for you to think on if you wish:

1. “Adventure culture relies on a ‘discourse of courage and conquest’ to ‘suture an anxious middle class masculinity’” and “equates physical fitness with environmental correctness” (33)

2. “Putting one’s body through great discomfort became a prescription for attaining transcendence or virtue bc it allowed the privileged to manufacture risk” (46)

3. “If the wilderness movement was responsible for imbuing the fit body with values of independence, self-reliance, genetic superiority, and willpower, and if wilderness was the setting in which to rehearse these values and reify the fit and healthy body, then wilderness and disability are constitutively mutually constructed” (48)

4. “A disability studies critique of environmental thought best proceeds from an understanding of how values of independence, self-reliance, and environmentalism emerged in opposition to technology” (49).

5. “Adventure culture’s foundational myth is that the value of the wilderness counter lies in the fact that the body is going places and doing things that are inaccessible to those who have not disciplined their body” (56)

Reference:

Ray, Sarah Jaquette. “Risking Bodies in the Wild: The ‘Corporeal Unconscious’ of American Adventure Culture.” Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities, 2017.